elseagoat Posted March 21, 2012 Share Posted March 21, 2012 (edited) Please excuse the mic quality! I know it is terrible nothing I can do about it though. Anyways, what do you guys think about the spell? Any suggestions? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sSL16ZSd3k http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=13549 Edited March 24, 2012 by elseagoat Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jet4571 Posted March 21, 2012 Share Posted March 21, 2012 I like it, looks more usefull than half the spells out there. i want to see without TGM and in a bigger city though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fg109 Posted March 21, 2012 Share Posted March 21, 2012 So the IMOD is the graphics bug you mentioned? Because wow, the screen gets really dark. Otherwise, I liked it. I agree the portals aren't the best, but what else are you going to use? I took a look at the explosions, and none of them seemed to really fit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guardianl Posted March 21, 2012 Share Posted March 21, 2012 What is the cost of casting the spell? It should be high I think... Just a suggestion:the name is alright if you wish to change how about perhaps: soul contract or gate to underworld, Soul Eater, Soul Devourer.As it seems the shade takes everything after it's summoned as it's a dark spell and is powerful it shouldn't give you souls as demons are not benevolent. Or you get a soul at cost of some of your health as well. Or it will be overpowered... As the spell is demonic (necromancy) a true demon summon will never give you something for free. Risk you dyeing while summon exist or when you summon and the shade dies not able to do what it's summon for demons are vengefull and it will seek revenge namely you so a heavy HP hit occurs or death. The spell should be very powerful but yet risky to cast. You can also limit per shade per enemy and give it a custom model to make it look more badass and scary... Other then that I like it well done. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SinderionsBones Posted March 21, 2012 Share Posted March 21, 2012 I agree with above, other than balancing questions(inevitable for any combat spell) I like it. Refreshingly original, but still nicely within the realm of necromancy. I do have a question for a theoretical scenario. What if you cast this in the middle of something like one of the War zones from the... WARZONES mod? or something with near that many NPC's lol. Will your computer go on strike for all the crap it's having to do? Also, do they attack followers? Several mods out recently have been bad at that. Awesome aoe effects and all, but will also target all your friends >.< Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
elseagoat Posted March 21, 2012 Author Share Posted March 21, 2012 The idea or "lore" behind the spell as I see it is as follows. Conjurers utilize magic that revolves around the creation of pathways through which entities are pulled, and then proceed to exert a magical control over the mind of the entity should it be conscious. This is how Daedra are summoned and how the conjurer is able to have the creature do its bidding, despite the immortal Daedra being unwilling to serve the mortal conjurer. Necromancy, a subset of Conjuration, deals less with the creation of these pathways between the planes of existence and more with the manipulation of souls. Soulless bodies of the dead can be manipulated using similar magic to that which is used to command the Daedra for a short time. This particular spell opens a pathway to a yet unknown plane of existence. Within this plane, ghostlike creatures exist, exhibiting unique physical properties that makes their physical form impossible to destroy through any known means, yet they cannot exist outside their own plane of existence. For this reason, the conjurer of this spell must create a gateway and maintain it in order to allow the physical properties of this other plane of existance to "bleed" into the mortal plane, creating a localized area around the portal where these beings can exist. This particular type of gateway is unidirectional, creating a powerful suction that pulls the very fabric of space through it and out the other side, for this reason, these ghostlike creatures are unable to return or bring with them the souls they harvest. Their numbers are infinite and exist solely to separate and gather mortal souls, lending to the conclusion that they were created as workers or simply as tools to aid in the collection of mortal souls by some powerful unknown entity. Their physical form appears as a partial humanoid skeleton, which leads many to believe that these entities are created from the souls of mortals that have been somehow intercepted while in the void between planes of existence. Once the gateway is open, the entities that pour through would normally be indiscriminate in the souls that they reap, The conjurer uses his power to exert control over otherwordly beings to prevent them from harming himself or his allies, by convincing the ghostlike creatures that enemies or other creatures are a more appealing source of a soul. Because the portal is uni-directional, the souls of the fallen mortals are merely freed by the creatures instead of harvested, allowing the conjurer to gather them in soul gems. The planes which make up Oblivion are defined primarily by exclusion. Any plane which is not Nirn itself, not one of the planets or moons, and not Aetherius itself, is generally considered to be an Oblivion plane. It is commonly believed that there are an infinite number of such planes, though Tamrielic scholars are aware of only a small handful. As for the mechanics of the spell, it is not dissimilar to Blizzard, the master level destruction spell. This is because I based the design of the spell off of Blizzard. It places the "portal" on the ground, and enemies in the area around the portal essentially take "damage over time" in the form of a ghost attacking it. The ghosts are scripted to function more like a "debuff" type damage over time effect than an NPC. They will only be created when a hostile (to the player) NPC enters the area near the portal. If you piss off an entire town, then the spell will create 1 ghost for every pissed townsman in the area around the portal, but if for some reason you are in a town and the townsfolk are not hostile to you yet there is a single enemy nearby, the spell will only create 1 ghost to attack your enemy, leaving the non-hostile townsfolk alone. But the second a townsman in this scenario decides they want to throw a punch at you, a ghost will appear to harvest their soul. One ghost is created per hostile enemy within the radius. Each ghost is invincible, and cannot be killed. Each ghost will pursue the enemy that it was originally created to attack, ignoring hits made against it, it will almost never decide to attack a new target, meaning that there will never be more than one ghost attacking an enemy at any given time. If an enemy leaves the area around the portal or does, the ghost attacking it will die. If the portal closes, all ghosts will die. The spell will not create ghosts to attack anyone that cannot die or be soul trapped. So that means that if an essential actor is attacking you, this spell wont be of much help. The spell costs some arbitrary amount of magicka that is similar to most master level spells, but a bit on the higher end, because the spell is pretty potent. It scales with your level, so it should remain useful at all levels. Against a single enemy such as a guard, the spell will not completely kill the guard on its own, but it will help you significantly, though weaker enemies may be killed within the duration of a single cast. I plan on tweaking the ISODs for the spell to make them better, I made the ISMODs for it from scratch, and I had no idea what I was doing (there are a lot of knobs and buttons on the ISMOD form). There is also a slight ISMOD bug when recasting the spell before the previous one finished, which causes the ISMOD to simply not occur, should be pretty easy to iron out. It also needs sounds. I am looking for a howling wind or perhaps a "distant ghostly screaming" loop sound to use, but I haven't found a good one yet. Thanks for the input guys! Hopefully this will be the first of many. I plan to overhaul conjuration. Originally I wanted to separate atromancy and necromancy a little in the tree, giving Twin Souls more to atromancy and changing the necromancy branch to focus on a powerful single undead minion instead of two weaker ones, and I thought this spell would make a great master level perk replacement for Twin Souls (in the necromancy branch). Now I am not sure, I am thinking that maybe it should just be trained instead. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
elseagoat Posted March 21, 2012 Author Share Posted March 21, 2012 (edited) I agree with above, other than balancing questions(inevitable for any combat spell) I like it. Refreshingly original, but still nicely within the realm of necromancy. I do have a question for a theoretical scenario. What if you cast this in the middle of something like one of the War zones from the... WARZONES mod? or something with near that many NPC's lol. Will your computer go on strike for all the crap it's having to do? Also, do they attack followers? Several mods out recently have been bad at that. Awesome aoe effects and all, but will also target all your friends >.< It would probably slow down your FPS. I rounded up about 15 dudes in a town and then hit this spell, creating 15 shades. It slowed my computer down a bit but it was definitely still playable, and I am on a laptop. For reference, I play BF3 on low settings because otherwise my framerate is at risk to drop below 20, I can play at medium, but I don't ever want to risk that moment when I am in a jet and I turn and all the sudden the whole map is in front of me and has to render, slowing me down to 19fps and getting me killed. It does help though that the spell is limited in area. The enemies have to remain pretty close, if they move away, the ghost chasing them is disablenowait() and delete(). So there may be lots of dudes everywhere, but the spell will only "double" the number of actors within a small area. Edited March 21, 2012 by elseagoat Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SinderionsBones Posted March 21, 2012 Share Posted March 21, 2012 Looks like a good start then :D Who knows what strange, and henceforth unimagined properties the soul and its discarded vessel holds. What threads will the unhinged pull at in search of power over life and death. Could they be approaching the long lost secrets explaining the true reason necromancy was so universally feared and outlawed in ages past? If such beings could exist in a plane so fundamentally different and detached from the natural laws of Nirn, seeking only the essence of the living, what then, is the limit of the universal power source we call our soul? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
elseagoat Posted March 21, 2012 Author Share Posted March 21, 2012 (edited) Haha that's awesome. I need to get you to write some stuff for me that I can put in books in the game lol. Edited March 23, 2012 by elseagoat Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
elseagoat Posted March 23, 2012 Author Share Posted March 23, 2012 I have updated the spell, it is 100% and I think it looks very good. Might be hard to see in the video, but in the game it feels really cool. Causes a framerate drop if you cast it right in the middle of tons of dudes, but it subsides within 1 second. Plus, you typically cast master spells right before enemies are on top of you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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