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Post by dogonporch on Jun 14, 2019 2:13:01 GMT
My daughter is very much into flight sims. She always wanted to learn to fly and get a pilot's licence, but she has a disability which put a stop to that unfortunately. I know the one she has at the moment is fairly sophisticated and I can't remember which one it is. I'll have to ask her. The only flight simulator type program I still have loaded is Orbiter which is realistic spaceflight.
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Post by sleepygirl on Jun 14, 2019 2:17:56 GMT
Hero of Kavatch. Night is at level 100 for light armour now and she's at 'expert' level for blunt weapons and Block. So she's not quite your typical Blade. A sword isn't really her weapon, but she is persisting with learning how to use one. I've started to notice that the lesser kinds of Oblivion creatures are tending to back off and are hesitating before engaging with her now. The lower ranks of Daemora hesitate too. Some folk don't like the Oblivion realms, but I don't mind them. They are huge crumbling dangerous puzzle gardens with added pyrotechnics as far as I'm concerned. The lesser creatures like scamps are a bit annoying, but a Dwarven mace soon shuts them up. When I was younger I studied the sword arts so a proper fight with shield and your weapon of choice against a similarly equipped opponent is fine by me. Daedric weapons are pretty crap and they break after little use. They're heavy too and aren't worth much, so I don't even bother picking them up to sell to a mechant later. Something else I tried out now that Night is a bit more quick on her feet is once she's inside a sigil tower I get her to dodge and/or shoulder charge anyone in her way and run right past them. By the time she reaches the sigil platform she has to be really quick at grabbing the sigil stone because there will be at least a dozen or more very hostile Oblivion denizens hard on her heels. At level 12 I'm now seeing the stupidity of bandits with posh weapons and armour. After watching a bandit trying to hit Night with a double headed Dwarven axe he could barely wield I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. A duck to the side and a crack up the side of the head and it was all over for that particular idiot. After that I installed the Addendum - Diabloblivion.esp which gives bandits and marauders faulty and less than best junk equipment instead of pristine high end stuff.
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Post by naramoore on Jun 14, 2019 4:23:02 GMT
Welcome back
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Post by sleepygirl on Jun 15, 2019 7:53:20 GMT
Thanks naramoore, it's nice to be back Still running around saving a virtual world from an evil demonic god. I really don't know what to think of some those Mythic Dawn twits. My game character runs up to them, - they run up to her, - they fight for a bit then they just stop defending themselves and say, 'I do not fear death, - paradise awaits me.' Night, who is younger in UnDeath gets a little tormented over that before finishing them off. Eiolynn who is an ancient risen UnDead just kills them because she thinks they are too stupid to live; - and also because she hates the Mythic Dawn having dealt with them too many times before. And yes Queen Eiolynn is back. I thought I'd lost her, but then I found a few WIP texture files on one of my back up hard drives left over from when I was first developing her as a character. She has texture problems though because my present graphics card, - a GTX 960, - seems to want to make the normal maps on the body mesh go a bit odd whereas the Nvidia Quadro I was using before with these textures was fine with them. I tried all sorts of different kinds of normal mapping and adjusted the texture colours, but no dice. It's almost as if the body mesh has a specular shine that the GTX 960 is picking up on. On other work I've done with reskins for railway simulators I know exactly what to do to sort that kind of thing out, but with body meshes for Oblvion characters I wouldn't know where to begin.
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Post by sleepygirl on Jun 15, 2019 18:38:05 GMT
Some folk don't like the main quest in Oblivion, but I don't mind it. I've played it a few times now. but because I role play my characters and they are all different to one another it's never the same each time. I find it a good way to test a character too and I'm doing that at the moment with the newly resurrected Queen Eiolynn.
I originally created Eiolynn to play Oblivion with no levelling in place so she's a fairly tough character. Formerly a powerful necromancer in life she employed ancient and forbidden magics so that she would arise from her grave after death. Only something went wrong and it was hundreds of years before she awoke and the world had changed. The cities and lands she had ruled over were gone and a new human empire had arisen during the time she'd been in her tomb. And to cap it all off the long years in her tomb had not been kind to her. Her once sharp intelligence was now flawed and her swift ability to react as an expert swordswoman was but a shadow of its former self. Essentially in gameplay terms that means I gave Eiolynn high strength, endurance and willpower stats, but nerfed her intelligence and agility stats and when she levels up I keep them always well lagging behind. She's not all that good with magic and can't pick locks or use a bow very well, but put a sword in her hand and she's dangerous. She staggers a bit and sometimes gets knocked down, but if she lands a blow she hits like a truck. Eiolynn can regenerate health. That might sound like a cheat, but it's not if it's adjusted properly and over time I did a lot of fine tuning with it. If you were a powerful enough necromancer and determined enough to ensure you would return from the dead I doubt very much that you would mess up your potential immortality by making yourself vulnerable to getting killed all over again. And really it's not much different to pouring restore health potions down your throat during a fight which is pretty implausible when you think about it. Getting mobbed or cornered by multiple opponents is what will finish Eiolynn off so I have to be careful not to let that happen. In an unlevelled game Goblins can be a real threat for that happening and the same goes for the Oblivion realms.
And yesterday I said some terrible swear words. You know the bit in the main quest where Baurus and the PC go down into the sewers under the Imperial city to get the 4th Mythic Dawn puzzle book. In every game I've played so far Baurus gets killed by one of the three Mythic Dawn thugs that show up. Well yesterday I got Eiolynn to jump down off the catwalk and shoulder charge Raven Camoran back into the passageway just as he gets hostile, - which she can do with her nasty UnDead strength. He couldn't use his long sword very well in the passageway and Baurus couldn't get past me. The two thugs behind Raven Cameron couldn't get past either. Eiolynn was armed with a shortsword so it wasn't too difficult for her to kill all three of them while they were crushed up together. So yes! Baurus survived!.............And then the $@!%&@! game crashed. I went back to an earlier save three times to try and keep Baurus alive, but I just couldn't do it. Each time something went wrong so I finally gave up. Baurus is a character I always liked so I wanted him to live. Perhaps it's silly to get so wound up over a game and perhaps it's because I roleplay and get so immersed in the game I cared so much about it.
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Post by sleepygirl on Jun 18, 2019 5:45:52 GMT
Post deleted..
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Post by dogonporch on Jun 19, 2019 1:06:03 GMT
I think this site is dead. It was nice three years ago, but it seems everyone has run off with tawdry flashy modern harlots and forgotten Oblivion. Emma occasionally looks in...but she seems to be taking a break. This site is as only as dead as we make it.
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Post by sleepygirl on Jun 19, 2019 4:17:55 GMT
Well I'll keep on posting all my daft stuff and ranting on then. Latest picture of Queen Eiolynn. She must've mellowed a bit since she's wearing a Kavatch cuirass and joined the Blades. She still uses paralyse spells on people who irritate her and drinks wine to excess though so she's by no means a reformed character yet. Note the low Magicka stats. This is deliberate on my part. Eiolynn's birthsign has always been the Lady.
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Post by jgf on Jun 19, 2019 4:50:55 GMT
I think this site is dead. It was nice three years ago, but it seems everyone has run off with tawdry flashy modern harlots and forgotten Oblivion. I think you'll find nearly everyone who was active when you were here previously is still here. I like it because we aren't overrun with inanities and non-sequiturs (there is Farcebook for that) instead having a core of "old timers". But Oblivion is over ten years old now, positively archaic by computer standards, so I doubt there remain any highly populated forums for it, much less Morrowind. "Some folk don't like the main quest in Oblivion..." The quest itself isn't that bad but those Oblivion gates are so redundant and monotonous. I read there are only seven different maps for them, randomly generated, so it quickly becomes, "oh I've been here before"; then just find the sigil stone and leave (remembering to first send Vilja back). And I hate that once a gate is destroyed, it's smoking remains are a perpetual blight on the landscape til you finish that game; couldn't they disappear after a few days, especially as new ones continually appear. (I use a mod - www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/33533/ - that gives you some control, from having only the handful of gates required by the main quest to having 100 at a time with all respawning; though the destroyed gates still remain.) I haven't played Oblivion much recently, devoting my game time to rediscovered pleasures from the past or games I'd overlooked along the way. But am working on several graphics mods for Oblivion - that stream through Cheydinhall now comes from somewhere and goes somewhere, and towns are no longer strewn with boulders (wouldn't the stonemasons have cut those up first when they started building there). And slowly working on a "Vilja friendly" mod that edits places she can't go - such as a dungeon floor where you can easily clamber over some rubble to continue but Vilja runs back and forth and back and forth til you get far enough away for her to warp to you, or those chasms where you walk over on a fallen tree trunk and Vilja falls off the tree trunk - this is an ongoing project as I keep finding new problems, make a note of them, then try to find them in the CS.
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Post by sleepygirl on Jun 19, 2019 10:20:53 GMT
Old timer certainly is a good fit for me. Ten years doesn't sound like much, but I suppose it is. My now grown up children are still a bit amazed by the fact that for over half of my lifetime there was no such thing as a personal computer. I always liked Emma's site simply because sensible people seemed to come here and it seems that they still do. I should take down that picture I posted the other day. I was having a bad time with this illness I live with and I let the black dog get the better of me.
I do still enjoy the game landscape in Oblivion and there are some nice places for simply doing nothing more than having a wander about and picking the flowers (collecting alchemy ingredients). I do agree that the Oblivion sigil towers do get a bit monotonous once you've memorised the layout of them and yes I also agree that the remains of the gates should gradually disappear over time since they're made from materials from another realm that shouldn't even be in Tamriel. There's a good few quests I haven't done yet so after I've had enough of doing the main quest again I'll have a look at those. Having found some of my old back up files for mods I'd made ages ago I'd like to get them properly sorted and working again even though they would be considered a bit dated now. My UnDead characters are still using the old vanilla Oblivion body simply because none of the body mods that are around are suitable since I need a thin body mesh without the teenage boy wet dream enhancements that the current crop of female bodies have.
I will have a look at that gate mod you linked to since it sounds like a good thing to add into my game. My characters have never been ones to travel by the roads and will cut across country instead and I've seen so many clusters of gates in really remote locations while they've been out out and about which I think is a bit silly.
Your own mod ideas sound good. I have to agree about the boulders in the towns as they would be the first things to go when a town was being built. Companions have never really been a feature of my games since my characters have always been loners or in the case of Eiolynn just plain antisocial. I did try having companions in Morrowind, but I kept losing them in dungeons which sort of set my mind against them when I came to play Oblivion.
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Post by sleepygirl on Jun 19, 2019 13:08:53 GMT
I've just won this on our local on-line auction site here in New Zealand. It's the 5th Anniversary Edition and it didn't cost me very much at all. I've still got my original first issue Oblivion disc with the map and handbook, but despite searching everywhere I couldn't find my Shivering Isles expansion disc, - so finding this edition of the game in such nice condition was very welcome indeed.
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Post by jgf on Jun 20, 2019 0:42:27 GMT
We all have our days, especially as the years creep up on us; with enough years you can always blame anything on a "senior moment". FWIW, I recently returned from a week in Boston, where I watched my oldest grandson graduate from MIT ...how long before I get word I've become a great-grandfather. I try to ignore the down sides - visiting my doctors more than I visit my family, wondering if every new ache or pain is a symptom, not recognizing that geezer in the mirror. If your black dog is the same one of which Churchill spoke I can sympathize, he has been my companion since high school.
You may not care for companions but I heartily recommend trying Vilja, she is so far beyond the companions of Morrowind; I can honestly state were it not for Vilja I would have played through Oblivion a couple of times and removed it ...even though I prefer most games solo (one reason I dislike so many Oblivion quest mods is they saddle you with an army of NPCs). I've never lost her in a dungeon, we often get separated (such as when she falls off that tree trunk) but she will find a path to me or await my return; just remember when you are in an Oblivion plane to send her back to Cyrodiil before you take the sigil stone, otherwise she will disappear when the gate is destroyed (there are also a couple of points in her quests where she asks if you want her to stay, any answer other than a definite yes results in her permanent departure). She will pick flowers with you, go swimming with you, or just sit by the fireplace; in fact my only complaint is I wish there were more of her - more quests, more dialog, a few mods that would be nice additions to her.
I've asked about a mod to remove the destroyed gates (my logic being the gates are made of a rare crystalline substance highly prized for mystical properties and/or jewelry, so the townsfolk would make quick work of demolishing the remains, then nature would reclaim the land). One person told me this wasn't feasible because the gates needed to remain, though they didn't explain why. Another said it would be simple to script the gates to the 72 hour timer so, like a dead body, they would disappear after three days (they offered to do this when they had some time but I've heard nothing more, and it's been a couple of years now).
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Post by jgf on Jun 20, 2019 1:13:55 GMT
BTW, that copy of Oblivion is quite a find.
My first copy was a V1.0 disc for a few dollars on ebay; even after applying the official patch, I found couldn't use the DLC; and trying to decipher which OBSE might work was ridiculous. Complaining of this on another forum I learned there were basically four mutually incompatible versions of updated Oblivion with the same version number, in addition to the default V1.0; grumbling that i had to not only buy another copy of Oblivion but must try to get a complete set of the game, the DLC, and OBSE that were compatible, I met a kind soul who zipped his default install and uploaded it privately for me. That's what I've been using ever since.
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Post by sleepygirl on Jun 20, 2019 20:25:56 GMT
Yes I'm not so keen on the times in the main quest when there's NPCs following my characters around. Having three or so guards suddenly barging into 'her' fight with swords flailing is a good way to encourage Eiolynn to stand back and take no part in the attack anymore. I will admit she is getting a little better in her attitudes towards others though. I have no idea what kind of companion she might tolerate. Someone like Vilja might be a good influence for her so long as Eiolynn doesn't start thinking that burying her in a coffin for a few hundred years and then resurrecting her might be a good look for her.
Time and the creeping years is something I'm having to get used to as well. I'm now officially an old age pensioner which I find a bit amusing. Other than having a severe form of narcolepsy my health is actually very good and I'm not on any of the usual meds others my age have to take in order to keep their bodies working properly. I don't have any grandchildren; - I seem to have bred children who are loners just the same as I am.
I'm keen to get back to running Oblivion from discs and flag away running the game on either Steam or GOG. I have finally got my Steam install to behave, but it's not perfect by any means. The GOG version is Ok, but it's OBSE that's been the fly in the ointment since it needs its own special version and those available don't seem to be particularly up to date. I've loaded in the Oblivion gate mod and it seems to be working Ok. Since the gate sites don't disappear over time once closed it seems to be a good idea to limit their numbers. I know not a thing about scripting for Oblivion so I wouldn't know where to begin with making a gate removal mod. It is surprising though after all this time that no-one has made a mod like that though.
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Post by dogonporch on Jun 20, 2019 23:14:31 GMT
Gates are always there...just disabled. If you look at them in the CS, there is usually a bunch of large rocks covering the site that are disabled in-game to reveal a standing gate. The reason for the rocks is to cover Oblivion terrain that can't just be simply disabled. Terrain painting is a skill unto itself...you've no-doubt encountered the occasional sharp line. Those represent either poor painting on someone's part or a conflict between mods in the same exterior cell. Cells are divided into four quadrants which individually can contain up to 7 terrain types. Ctrl-Alt-I gets you into a given active cell's quadrant terrain list...there you can see all the different terrain types active. Sometimes there are 8 types of terrain...this produces sharp lines on the ground in-game...ugly. One of my recent mega-mods...Black Marsh Wilderness...went through the entire Leyawiin/Black Marsh region and got rid of the MANY terrain conflicts present. You might want to d/l it from LoversLab to take a look. Like my Hammerfell mod...it finishes the map right-up to the edge...greatly increasing your play/adventure area. www.loverslab.com/files/file/8176-blackmarsh-wilderness/www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/46934/?
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