[RELz] Integration - The Stranded Light

[bg2408]

Ich bin jetzt mal gaaaanz fies und stelle auch hier einen WIP-Thread meines aktuellen Projekts ein.

Warum fies? Weil es - sofern sich niemand bezüglich Übersetzung findet - KEINE deutsche Version geben wird. Tut mir leid, der Aufwand dafür ist viel zu hoch. In dem Sinne...

Entsprechend auch die Beschreibung jetzt 1zu1 noch in englischer Sprache...:

I am currently working on a quest mod, currently (for a lack of a better name) called "Integration". I don't know if there's even any interest in this mod, therefore this thread - to see if anyone would actually use it, if it gets more or less finished.

That's the first oddity: "More or less finished". For what I'm trying to do I will need much time - more than I have in the short- or middle term. So instead of working for years, then release it, and let it be finished, I plan on something like an "ongoing development" - i.e. whenever there are a couple of new quests done, releasing them. So a mod that grows with time, similar to how e.g. LAME as a magic mod grew over time. Only with quests this time .

Now that I mentioned LAME, that'll be the second odditiy: The mod will require LAME and RBP and Shivering Isles, also instead of voice overs there will be only silent dialog. No discussion about any of that, sorry.

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I am currently working on a quest mod, currently (for a lack of a better name) called "Integration". I don't know if there's even any interest in this mod, therefore this thread - to see if anyone would actually use it, if it gets more or less finished.

That's the first oddity: "More or less finished". For what I'm trying to do I will need much time - more than I have in the short- or middle term. So instead of working for years, then release it, and let it be finished, I plan on something like an "ongoing development" - i.e. whenever there are a couple of new quests done, releasing them. So a mod that grows with time, similar to how e.g. LAME as a magic mod grew over time. Only with quests this time .

Now that I mentioned LAME, that'll be the second odditiy: The mod will require LAME and RBP and Shivering Isles, also instead of voice overs there will be only silent dialog. No discussion about any of that, sorry.


What's integration about?

I've got three main goals.

1. The first, and most important one, is to get a kind of quest back into Oblivion that I feel are missing. The best description would probably be "Temple" and "Imperial Cult" in Morrowind - not the "divine theme", but in their quests. A bit thinking, often multiple solutions, quite heavy on social skills. That's what I miss in Oblivion. Others are trying to overhaul the default quests - I'd like to include new ones instead.

2. Making social skills actually important. In default Oblivion you can pretty much ignore Mercantile, Speechcraft, Personality and all that. This is what I try to amend, a bit at least, with the new quests. Quite complicated dialog trees, in which you can actually use these skills if you have them. Also using your guild rank if it makes sense, or having your race taken into account. A couple of examples from Oblivion which bugged me: There's one quest in Oblivion where you should bring as a Fighters Guild member a Mages Guild member some ingredients - and she treats you like dirt, even if you're the Arch Mage. Or the quest where the quest giver rants about Bosmer, apologizes to Maglir but not to you, even if you too are playing one.

3. A better integration (that's where the development name comes from ) between Shivering Isles and Cyrodiil, but also between my mods and Cyrodiil. This integration now is mostly done with the above described quests, example given quests that span both Cyrodiil and the Isles. So you have reasons, if you're on the isles, to go back to Cyrodiil once in a while. And in Cyrodiil to revisit the Isles, even if you're long done there with the main quest.
That's not the only one, though. In RBP there are a few selected custom races - while all of them are lore based, for some reason they're still missing in game. At least as friendly NPCs, with some modules already included in RBP you can already meet some of them as enemies . Anyway, including a few of them as friendly NPCs, explaining both their presence or absence, that too is important. And yes, expect weasel lore. Lots of it. I think I even topped the infamous "levitation act".


Example of Integration's quest design

Instead of just talking I'd like to describe a quest instead - which will also show the third oddity. This will all contain heavy spoilers - not about the game, but about Integration ;-).

For a reason I won't explain here you need the help of Bravil's count. Now several things can happen:
- if you mention the subject he'll throw himself into a rant about Khajiit, which will be even worse if you're a Khajiit. You'll need to calm him down, and you've got several options, depending on your knowledge. There's no "knowledge" skill in Oblivion, therefore others are used - e.g. mercantile for financial knowledge, conjuration for knowledge about Daedra.
- let's say you try to calm him down with mentioning Daedra. He then goes on into a rant which will either be again about Khajiit (if your Conjuration skill is too low), or he'll mention a nearby Daedroth (singular of Daedra, not the crocodile thingy) which gives him headache. You should simply get rid of it. The only thing the great count says is that this might be problematic, because it's a powerful daedroth.
- now it gets funny, because you've got several options now. Let's go straight ahead and speak with the Daedroth in question, which happens to be a Dark Seducer trying to bring people down the golden road into insanity. Beside combat you have a lot of options to deal with her. I don't want to spoil all of them, so only just a few: [Position] requires that you have a rank where you can actually issue orders to Dark Seducers. If you haven't, then this will fail. [Conjuration] is a really tricky one - it opens up various dialog options, and picking a wrong one will cause her to attack you. Also without both enough knowledge in Conjuration and an important info about Daedra (which you can get by prior speaking with some mages or reading books) you've got no chance to win this. Although if you're successful, you can banish her with a word.
- let's say that for whatever reason you get into combat with her (note that there are at least five ways to solve the situation without violence). If you have spoken with some mages before, or if you (as the player) know enough about Daedra, you'll know about an exploitable weakness. This one is scripted, not the usual "weakness to X" stuff. Well, if you don't know about that weakness and get into the fight (which can easily be prevented) - as the Count said, "happy dieing!"

Of course putting so much work in "side branches" requires a lot of time, therefore development is quite slow. To be honest the time it took me to create this one encounter would have been enough for three or four "kill and destroy" quests :blink:. Even setting up the necessary AI for the different outcomes... but let's not talk about that...

Oh and the third oddity: If you haven't guessed by now, the mod will include a lot of "odd" stuff . Odd in two ways - on the one hand there's a lot less handholding, like in the example

choosing the wrong dialog options can lead to unwanted results, also while gaining knowledge prior to taking action helps a lot, it isn't mentioned

- on the other hand also odd in it's content. Whatever I create outside of the number crunching tends to be a bit off, not taking itself all too serious .
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Ende der Fiesheit.