Oblivion

I have a small sample of mods installed and they appear to be as variable in quality as DS mods. I should be able to learn a lot by looking at what works well, and what doesn't.

One thing I may try is modifying the Sirens' quest. There's already a mod to provide more choices that the author considers fair game for others to extend.

I think one of the options could be turning Gweden Farm into a legitimate brothel. The third girl who never appears in the Flowing Bowl could have differences with the other two about the right way to run the place (Where's the repeat business if you rob the clients?). Letting her survive the fight, and then having some follow-on quests to recruit more girls for the place would make a sensible story line. Once the place is fully staffed, you'd get a small income from it.

If Tsarrina gets killed in the fight, then the existing conclusion remains. Otherwise, the undercover guards leave you to clean up and continue with the new branch. This should not break anything already there, and just needs a few extra characters (and scripts) added.

The thing I like about this project is that it could be as small or large as I want to make it. The number of extra girls could be anything from zero to a dozen, I could leave the building alone, or extend the basement to an extra floor, add costumes, etc.
And of course, I could do all of the above and build it up progressively, as it could be "complete" at any stage, each new recruit for the place being a separate add-on quest. I could even farm those out to other modders.

Or I could get back to the DS projects and leave this to later.

I've completed the Mages' and Fighters' Guild quest series, almost done the Main quests, and played around with a sprinkling of the other lines. Just need a few more Nirnroots to mark that one done, too.

My character has a nice collection of jewellery making her almost invulnerable, leaving time to enjoy the scenery and advance whatever skill or quest appeals at the time. But mines, caves and Aeylid dungeons are getting a bit repetetive, and I'm running out of objectives to aim for, other than the completions of sets, like houses, horses, quest series, or whatever. I don't know if I can be bothered raising every skill and stat to 100, as I just don't need some of them any more.

I have resisting making any mods of my own, so I may be able to put this one aside and get back to DS2 again soon. Hopefully, I've picked up some ideas I can use in the DS2 projects.

I did make a mod that does the first step of the Gweden change - i.e. you can complete the Sirens' Deception quest with Tsarrina alive and surrendered. It's not really complete as there is no sound to match the dialog, and there are no continuation quest hooks in it.

But I then got a bit carried away trying the other aspects of Oblivion mod-making and created a ridable bear to play with animations. Which became a polar bear, so I could do a texture change mod. Which then became the mount of an NPC with custom armor for the mesh aspect.

The inspiration came from an old (1980's!) ad for Peppermint Schnapps (Rumple Minze). Oblivion doesn't allow weapons or shields when mounted, but the rest was possible.

The bear-riding animation for walking pace looked bad, so I had her run always, which makes it a bit difficult to get a screenshot of her in motion.

I set her to patrol between Cloud Ruler Temple and Bruma's north gate. Before release I need to move her somewhere else in the mountains where she can't affect any quests, but where you can still find her.

Looks good. Perhaps you could give her a home (like horses have a home stable) that she retreats to when left alone...

Also, I believe the mod "Deadly Reflex" allows mounted combat, so you might be able to get your sword / shield pic that way.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7w4w1gxeDkw

That might mean extra work! Right now she just uses the same kind of script that the other Imperial Riders use. They have two endpoints and patrol between them, attacking any of the respawning monsters that stray onto the road.

Mounted weapons are just not needed. I gave her a silver claymore so she can whack at any kind of monster she needs to, and getting off the bear to do so also lets the bear fight, which it would do better than a horse does. The girl in the ad's just posing for the camera!

Suggestions on where in the snowy mountains she belongs would be welcomed. It has to be somewhere she won't kill anybody useful, but also a place you'll visit and find her. I suppose I could add/mod a quest to involve her, but that's more work than I'd intended for a simple eyecandy mod. I did add some Peppermint Schnapps (= Cyrodilic Brandy + some Resist Frost) to her inventory, but there's no way to get it unless you kill her for it. I need to turn on the Buy/Sell option but there may be problems with that interfering with the "must arrive" on the Travel AI.

I started a game of Diablo 2 on an older PC while XP service pack 3 was installing itself on my main workstation, so I may be distracted over there for a while!

P.S. I found another "Bear mount" mod at Tesnexus, so I'll take a look and see if the walking animation works in that one. Mine has a bad keyframe that I can't find to delete.

(RE: distractions... I just got my skellie necro past NM Baal last night. ).

That's one good endpoint, but I need:

1) Another endpoint.
2) Some idea of the Travel AI package decides on a path. It looks like there's a preference for the main roads, and then I guess the minor "roads" come next, but just on the route she's currently on, I notice her cutting some corners and doing a bit of random wandering when there are choices of roads available (e.g. near Bruma)

When I first created her, I picked a couple of random locations in the mountains, and never saw her again! I presume she was somewhere between them, trying to walk through a rock that would not move. I've had issues with NPC's getting themselves stuck when I'm required to follow them, and had to push them away from their attempts to walk through furniture, walls etc., so i know it will happen to her.

I need to move her start position to the other side of the bear, too, because right now she's trying to walk through it in order to mount up. That results in her pushing the bear sideways down the hill for a time before things line up and she can get on its back!

I also considered Dive Rock, but I'm not sure if there's a decent path for her to follow up there. Don't want her to fall of!

Ninendava. It's an Ayelid ruin just SE of HM's shrine (NE of Sancre Tor), and AFAIK the only quest involvement for that ruin is inside (an Ayelid Statue). I don't know what the roads look like for the route though... (I'm just looking at a map).

Edit:
Here's a road map I found somewhere (in case that might help):

Looking very cool Ghastley. :thumbup:

I moved her to the Ninendava/Hermaeus Mora run, but now she's not riding the bear. I may have messed up the ownership of the "horse" when deleting and re-adding them, but there may also be an issue if one of them gets knocked off the mountain when killed. I left a dead polar bear at the foot of a cliff after riding it myself, and it respawned at the same spot, making it difficult to get them back together. This may be why Beth didn't put riders up in the mountains already.

I found her wandering around on foot at one point, but forgot to grab a screenie.

Edit: If you want to try her yourself, a beta version is at http://dslcv1-458.fast.net/oblivion

Even more edit: Now considering a move to Lipstrand Tarn, as Ninendava offers two routes to Hermaeus Mora, and she apparently can use either. I may also introduce a quest to get a bottle of schnapps from her, so there can be a quest marker arrow to help find her. I'd use addTopic to one of the minor NPC's at the shrine to introduce it, which should avoid conflict.
A "find her and ask for a bottle" task is probably easier to implement than making her a merchant, as well. More updates when I do so.

I have not noticed any one of you on the official Oblivion forum, or you do use different nicknames.
I'm there as "Elys", still modding Oblivion (mostly working on Pluggy, one of my Oblivion Script Extender plugin)

Hi Elys.
I haven't joined the official forums... choosing instead to spend my Oblivion forum time on the TESNexus. Perhaps I should check out the official site too...

Ah. I'm registered on TESNexus but I don't post there, if not sometimes reply to my mod comments.
I'm a lot more active on the official Oblivion forum

Wohoo rideable winnie !

Registered at Tesnexus just to download a few mods I wanted to look at. Not posted on any of the Oblivion-related forums. One factor is I can access this place at work, but many others are blocked at the proxy.

The Rumple mod was just thrown together as a test of the mod potential of the game. It let me build armor models, change textures, add script, add an NPC - everything except terrain and buildings - and some of it was easily "borrowed" from existing mods. I was fully expecting to complete the project and go back to DS2 work, but there are a few little issues that are holding me from doing that - like her getting lost all the time.

After moving her to a base at Lipsand Tarn, to reduce her path options (I thought) I have discovered that the AI will allow her to run straight down the mountainside, and following her on foot I came across a dead polar bear with its head embedded in a rock! I later found her back at Lipsand Tarn waiting for the bear to return. There are possibly settings in the AI dialogs that will prevent this, so I may have to post in the forums to find out a few answers. I didn't add the "Bottle of Schnapps" quest yet, so that may create a few more little things to clean up, and so on ad infinitum.

Also, having learned to do a few modding chores, I'm finding myself fixing the sloppy bits of the mods that I'm using - like gloves that don't hide rings, mesh weighting errors, texture seams that don't line up, scripts that don't test all the possibilities. So far I've resisted publishing the fixed versions, but if I release one of my own....

EDIT: Just discovered "Path Grids" by Googling around. I bet the mountain roads don't have any, because there aren't any Beth characters to use them. If so, I have a fix, but a LOT of work.

Re-Edit: The paths were there, but the wrong kind. A LOT of alt+clicking to turn a path blue, and she rides along the roads at last! I may still add a "buy me a bottle" mini-quest just because.

Edit cubed: Released her to the wolves at the Official Forum (which I recently joined). I should be able to get back to Lara soon!

Yup I just noticed your postys today on the official forum

what's the mod called, ghastley..?

I've been over there occasionally, as "BeakyChugger"

But it's only on my own site for download, (link in the post below).

Ha, ha - I found her..!!

that bear moves fast..
later she must have lost it, as I met her on foot..

- bribery didn't elicit any drinkies, though! :woot:

/me points ghastley to the Nexus...
http://thenexusforums.com/index.php?showtopic=76950

I notice that it's the usual request for "the same as I saw in..." referencing The Golden Compass. At least it wasn't another company's game this time.

Your post seems to have been mainly ignored, except I did one reference to Rumple Minze later on.

I'm trying to add a mini-quest to the mod, but I'm having problems trying to provide voiced dialog. For some reason, no existing character in the game ever says "Peppermint Schnapps" but I can probably cobble together "winter brandy" as an equivalent.

I'm thinking of trying Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul... it looks to be very extensive in how much it changes the game world.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBKjLxVJKRg

Anyone tried it before?

I've stayed vanilla in order to have a clean base for building mods, so I haven't tried anything I can't remove and continue. Mostly, the mods I've installed are ones where I wanted to do something similar and was looking for others' approaches to the same problems.

I suspect OOO would be a mixed bag of things you like and others you don't and it would be hard to separate them.

OOO is really an overhaul, be sure to check its documentation before using it to know if you will like it, because it changes Oblivion gameplay on many aspects.

I know that a lot will be changed... that's what I want. I've played the game a few times already, and going through again just gets repetitive (in spite of the mind boggling size of the game world) unless there are significant changes. I've started reading the OOO readme pdf but with the descriptions of a feature it is sometimes hard to understand how it plays (and the scope of change).

About the "mixed bag of things you like and others you don't", there is a certain amount of customization possible with the "lite" version, allowing you to start with the core overhaul stuff and put in the extras you want.

I've recently gotten back into Oblivion, trying OOO... and it certainly does change the game quite a bit. I like it.

Go Skyrim!

I need a new machine before I can do Skyrim. My current one is the last of the AGP line and barely copes with Oblivion.

BTW is it un-Steamed yet? I don't want to download it online (or have patches forced onto it) let alone run the game while connected to the internet.

wow, what a game..!!

beautiful countryside..

Solitude is very pretty.. :woot:

@Ghastley: Unofficially it is yes. Officially I doubt it will ever lose the Vaporware status.