Peanuckle on 10/4/2008 at 03:25

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You would probably get alot more feedback by posting this over at TESnexus or some oblivion fansite, rather than a forum existing for a completely different genre of games that has a passing mention of a board for it.

Opal-Eyed Fan on 10/4/2008 at 11:53

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Yeah I know there would be more feed back over there, but I've been hanging around the TTLG forums for years, ever since I started playing T:tdp back in the days. So as TTLG has their own oblivion section it felt rather natural to me to post here about my mod, especially since I would never found inspiration for this mod had I not loved the thief series so much. Besides, the average oblivion player seem to be more hack and slash oriented in general and this mod is all about sneaking around in the dark, stealing things without killing anyone.;)



thanks for the encouragement! :D I agree that Oblivion should have been darker, Especially the dungeons were never quite dark enough, and the peoples homes at night... :eek:

Opal-Eyed Fan on 10/4/2008 at 23:43

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The nighteye effect is hideous. Wont be needed for playing this mod. :angel:
I understand your concerns regarding absolute darkness.

The mansion that I built currently has 306 candles and torches, so it's pretty well lit. I'm going to see if I can't reduce the number somewhat, if I can I will.
A few days ago the prison had about 230 lights, but after I did some tinkering the number is now below 100 and things still look good.

A few months back I played around with a script I found in someone elses mod that enabled you to kill a candle by shooting an arrow at it. I tried it in the mansion but wow when lights go out rooms become too dark and you can't even locate the nearest door. Kinda sucked the fun out of it. :joke:

Next I made some changes to the script so that when I shot the candle with another arrow then the light would come back on. But In the end I ditched it. Giving the player a bow would enable him to obtain arrows from guards and suddenly the player would be armed and dangerous, which is not what I want. No weapons for the player.:thumb:

This mod has nothing to do with Cyrodiil so nothing will change there in any way. You don't start out in the imperial city when you begin a new game with this mod installed. You start out in the mod world. After playing through the mod, the player can go to the imperial city prison cell and rendevous with the emperor and start playing oblivion.

This is not regulare RPG kind of mod where you can chose between warrior wizard and thief, or focus on developing your skills...

the rules are simple:
1 different parts of the mod takes place in a world of eternal night, that means 24 hours of nighttime. This is not realistic but it lends great athmosphere to the mod.
2 at the beginning of the mod you can choose race, face and name. That's it, no class, no birthsign. Your sneak skill will be at 100, as you are indeed a master thief.
3 no weapons for you:eww: , your only way of surviving an encounter with guards is to run away and hide.
4 you'll have two spells as usual, the useless flare spell and the healing spell. Nothing more.

cheers!

Opal-Eyed Fan on 11/4/2008 at 17:15

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Yes you have a point :D and I have indeed concidered it at some spoint but chose to go this route instead. Two reasons for this, and besides most missions in Thief took place during the nighttime anyway.

1:) Well if the timescale was set to 1=1 things would take too long and the mod would get boring.
Most guards in the prison work in a two shift arrangement.
A guard sleeps for 8 hours, have 4 hours to do whatever, then goes to replace the other guard who then in turn goes to sleep for 8 hours etc...
The guards in the mansion however are awake longer during the day, they eat more often and only sleep in 4 hour shifts at night.
This makes the mansion feel more alive.
Learning npc's schedules can be an important strategy, if you know that a guard is going to move from his post and when, you got an edge,
and suppose you want something that a certain person carries with them, then maybe you got to find out when/where they eat/drink,
make sure you get them to drink a sedative and steal what you need after they pass out.

2 :) Most importantly, I decided when I began making this mod that hey in Thief you start on the outside and work your way to the inside without any loadzones,
so I'm gonna avoid the whole click on a door and get "teleported inside" immersionbreaking madness.
Yapp, downside is that if you do what I did, and you're on the inside during the day, you'll have sunlight shining through all off your walls inside, no way to block out the daylight, and thus no darkness inside buildings during day.
The only remedy to fix the problem is to make it nighttime all the time, which works like a charm.
It's nice to walk in and out of buildings without the usual loading of cells that is so common in Oblivion.

However I'm seriously debating with myself wether I should devide the prison level in to two seperate zones.

Oblivion favors no more than 20 actors in a cell.
I have 1 priest,
8 guards guarding the cellblocks
4 prisoners (one in each cell block)
2 guards keeping watch down by the factory area
1 guard guarding the outside of the prison.
1 assasin outside the prison
2 guards patroling inside the prison

Which leaves me with Oblivions restrictions, only one zombie to roam the mines below..

If I put the load zone between the prison and the mines
I could possibly have 20 scary creatures strafing around down there and put another npc in the prison somewhere.
It's rather tempting.

Haven't decided on that yet. :confused: :weird:

Opal-Eyed Fan on 12/4/2008 at 06:26

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Yes going through a loading sequence must never become a hazard to the player. If I put one in there, I would make an effort to avoid such situations as you described.

I'm trying out new ways of structuring the mod. Up until now the mod has been level based, meaning level 1 is the prison... (about 70 % finished)
once you exit the mines you click a gate which teleports you to level 2 which is a street,
that level is still on my todo list, (however it has a home for the player in one of the houses which I'm finished building)
then at the end of the street you click another gate and you are teleported to level 3 where you start outside the noble mans mansion (which is about 98/99 % finished). Not sure if such an old fashioned structure is the best way so I try to find alternatives. I'm an optimist in that respect, haven't given up yet:cheeky: .



Btw here's what the mansions entrance looks like from the outside (http://img230.imageshack.us/img230/383/mansionoutsidexi1.jpg) http://img230.imageshack.us/img230/383/mansionoutsidexi1.jpg


and here is the opposite view from the inside (http://img230.imageshack.us/img230/9304/mansioninsidepk0.jpg) http://img230.imageshack.us/img230/9304/mansioninsidepk0.jpg

It will be a bit darker in the mod though, as I used slightly more light now just for taking the pictures:angel: