Vince

Tosky, 'Sorry, I can't download your model (I got a massive virus attack last time I downloaded from Megaupload). A few things that may help: The Diffuse and Ambient material colors make a difference in the .nif render, but do nothing in Oblivion. You can control the overall reflectivity by adjusting the alpha channel of the normal map. Usually the DXT5 format is best for this. You can change how glossy the surface is with the material Glossiness. If you can imagine your texture and material applied to a sphere, the glossiness determines the size of the reflected glint. Low glossiness (1 to 15) = big glint, High Glossiness (25 to 50) = small glint. See: *** Texturing 101 *** at TES Alliance. Normally, the Apply Mode (in the NiTexturingProperty block details) is APPLY_MODULATE. Some people use APPLY_HIGHLIGHT for metal, although I find the effect unrealistic. Your milage may very. If you get a chance post a screen shot. Good luck.

Arion, If you do decide to try the House Modder's Tool Kit (HTMK), Khettienna uses it a good bit so should be a good source of practical information. BTW, most of the great discoveries in history happened when a brave soul dared to get in over his head on something. Vince

Arion, I admire your quest for knowledge. As noted by others, SomeWelchGuy and Reneer have both developed schemes where exterior objects are placed outside the windows of an interior cell. SomeWelchGuy's "Immersive Interiors" has been quite popular. I experimented with 2D images outside interior windows a while back. Even with variable lighting, they never really looked right to me. The other option is to make an exterior home, where the "interior" is in the exterior cell. Although this is very realistic, it does have limitations. As WillieSea mentioned, you need to use scripts to keep it from raining or snowing inside. Also, objects (other that the PC, NPC's, and things held by the PC) don't cast real shadows in Oblivion. So, you need to adjust the reflectivity of the interior surfaces or use a lot of windows for the lighting to seem realistic. I wish you well in your quest. If you do decide to make an exterior home and don't want to learn 3D modeling right now, you might find my "House Modder's Tool Kit" (available at TES Nexus) useful. Good luck. Vince

Maybe you could post some pics?

Since you are already comfortable with PhotoShop, I'd stick with it. Probably the simplest way to create the .dds files you need for Oblivion is, as John suggested, DDS Converter 2. It's free and, besides .psd, will accept .bmp, .jpg, .png, or .tga images. It exports the three most common .dds formats used by Oblivion (.DXT1, .DXT3, and .DXT5). The other option is Paint.Net. Although I have PhotoShop, I often use Paint.Net as it loads instantly and outputs all .dds formats, including the uncompressed A8R8G8B8 format. Paint.Net requires Microsoft's (free) .Net Framework software, so you would need to install it in the Windows partition of your Mac. I'm sure StarX or ES can answer your PS related texture questions. If you need info on when to use which format and the basics of normal maps, glow maps, acceptable dimensions, etc., see *** Texturing 101 *** in the Texturing Workshops subforum. Good luck!

Attaching a screen shot of your NifSkope file, showing the exact texture path you used, may be helpful.

Just to clarify, the purpose of this topic was/is to discuss playing RPG's in a more real life like manner--regardless of how that's done.

I'm glad to see this is a topic of interest to others. There is a way to prevent the fustration of loosing your work due to a computer crash while maintaining the dead is dead aspect. There would be two kinds of saved games: the regular saved game that you could reload at any time, and a temp save made by the mod. The mod would make a temp save every, say, 20 minutes, each time over-writing the previous temp save. When you exit the game normally, that temp save would be removed by the mod (actually, replaced by a temp save of the game at the time you exit). However, if you crash, the temp save would be there and you could continue, never loosing more than 20 minutes. Also, if you need to stop playing, when you restart later the temp save made when you quit would put you back to exactly where you were when you quit. 20 minutes later, that temp save would be over-writen by the next, and so forth. Of course, you would be able to make a regular, permanent, save, say, every three hours of game play. This scheme would remove the risk of loosing everything due to a CTD, while still maintaining dead is dead. Of course, you don't have to have a mod to do this. You can make your own rule where, besides regular saves every so many hours, you make saves every 20 minutes that you will only reload if the game crashes. Besides using saved games to avoid permanent things like death, I have often used saves to get a more optimum outcome to an event. For example, say you open the boss chest at the end of a dungeon. You may get anything from 20 gold to the Necklace of Swords. If you got just the 20 gold, have you ever reloaded and tried again for something better? .

I spend a fair amount of my spare time playing RPG's and related games. The way I and most people play, we play for a while, then save, play some more, save, and so forth. We often save just before entering a new or dangerous area. Well a bad thing happened at work today--and I can't go back to a saved game to undo it. The bad thing happened and I'll have to deal with it. I've thought about playing an RPG that way. What if it was possible to write a mod that prevented you from saving the game except when the mod let you? Let's say that the mod would let you save once every three levels. Certainly, near the beginning of the game, that may be several hours or, possibly, days of play between saves. If your character gets killed or looses an important item, you have to redo many hours of play. If you played the game that way, even at a lower difficulty level, it would totally change how you play the game. If you know you absolutely can't afford to get killed when you enter this new place, your mindset would be very different from the usual: if I get killed, I'll just reload and try again. What do you think? Have you ever played a game that way?

There is only one vanilla Oblivion fireplace. I'm not near my Oblivion computer now, but it's "Kitchen..." something. The fireplace with the Abandoned Mountain Shack is available as a resource.

I'm a real fan of the original Divine Divinity, but based on several not so great reviews of Ego Draconis, didn't buy it. From your post you seem to like it a lot. Were there patches that made it better? Also, I understand that the game, and what you do, changes significantly when you get a Dragon Tower. Was that your experience? Relative to mods, I've haunted the Larain Studios sites for the last year or so and found no information on an SDK or construction set. Do you know of one? If the game was modable (is that a word?), that would certainly increase my interest in it.

Trollf, I read all of your post. Although it seems a bit wordy, I understand for your purpose that is probably necessary. I do have some suggestions. Relative to your sections II and III, Windmill Tilter recently posted a brief, elegant explanation: "... there are actually 2 models for everything you interact with in Oblivion. The visible one with no substance (higher face count made to look good), and an invisible solid one (lower face count to make it easier on the engine) that the physics engine interacts with. You need both the visible NiTriStrips and the physics model (or Havok) bhkCollisionObject in your NIF for it to work". In your section IV, in discussing BSXFlags, an essential detail is missing. Although everything you said is true, if the BSXFlags block is not a child of the root node, there will be no collision. It must be included in the Extra Data list in the Block Details of the root node. I hope, as you plan, that you can fill in details of the various parameters in the bhkRigidBody/bhkRigidBodyT block as this is frequently an issue, especially for weapons and clutter items. For example, the Blender NIF scripts version 2.3.13 does not set the bhkRigidBody parameters for bladed weapons correctly: if you drop the weapon it will bounce crazily all over the place. Fortunately, substituting a bhkRigidBody from a similar vanilla Oblivion weapon solves the issue. For others that may want to use this information, Knowing how to create collision shapes is also important. Besides echonite's tutorial, this is also covered in Blender2Oblivion Session 2 in Creating Collision in Blender about 3/4's of the way through the tutorial. A note on MOPPS since someone asked about it. All generalized triangular collision meshes are now exported from Blender as MOPPS. (You have to convert a regular mesh to collision in NifSkope if you want a triangular collision without MOPPS). Quoting from the Havok SDK "Havok has developed a new mid-phase collision detection system based on Memory Optimized Partial Polytope (MOPP) Technology. The revolutionary MOPP Technology significantly reduces the amount of memory required to store collision detection information ... An added bonus is that the new technology also improves game performance in many instances". As a practical example of this improvement, my shack has a complex collision for the floor (since there is a large, repairable hole in it). Using a triangular collision mesh before MOPPS, there was a small area near the stove where a PC would sink into the floor a few inches even though the collision mesh was continuous over that area. Switching to MOPPS fixed it. I look forward to more on this topic. Vince

I'm glad to see this thread. As my post in the original topic was one of those that prompted Joben to start this thread, I've included the description of the incident below--it could have happened to you!. The things we discuss here, and the actions we take in response, may come in very handy on some deserted road sometime in the future. About a year ago I was driving home from work when three bad things happened at the same time. 1) I had a flat tire. 2) The wheel was stuck on the hub and I couldn't get it off. 3) When I went to call 911, my cell phone didn't work! I later found it wasn't the battery; it had just died. If this had been on a rural, infrequently traveled road, it could have been a very serious situation. However, the road was well traveled and after about an hour, a big, burly guy in a tow truck pulled in behind me. I explained that I didn't need a tow, if I could just get the wheel with the flat tire off. He went up and slammed the wheel so hard the whole car shook--and the wheel was loose! I gave him $10, changed the wheel, got a new cell phone the next day, and put a 4 foot long 4x4 in the truck for future stuck wheels. So far, I've found some very interesting information after googling (yes, that's a verb now) "911 cell phone". As I start to get a real list of stuff, I'll post here.

Joben, I want to thank you for starting this topic as it's made me think about what I should have as an emergency kit, beyond the Swiss Army knife, flashlight, and lighter I keep in my briefcase. It's easy to think that, unless I go backpacking in the wilderness, I don't need an emergency kit. However I've had a couple of experiences that could have been very serious that convinced me that I should prepare for possible similar events in the future. About a year ago I was driving home from work when three bad things happened at the same time. 1) I had a flat tire. 2) The wheel was stuck on the hub and I couldn't get it off. 3) When I went to call 911, my cell phone didn't work! I later found it wasn't the battery; it had just died. If this had been on a rural, infrequently traveled road, it could have been a very serious situation. However, the road was well traveled and after about an hour, a big, burly guy in a tow truck pulled in behind me. I explained that I didn't need a tow, if I could just get the wheel with the flat tire off. He went up and slammed the wheel so hard the whole car shook--and the wheel was loose! I gave him $10, changed the wheel, got a new cell phone the next day, and put a 4 foot long 4x4 in the truck for future stuck wheels. So, I want to put a sports bag with emergency equipment and supplies in the trunk. I'm just starting to research possibilities and make a list. So far I've discovered that I can get a dedicated 911 cell phone for $30 that includes a charger, but it can only be used to call 911 (there is no contract or fees). I plan to fill out my list and would be interested to hear about others lists as well. A little thought and preparation now, could save a lot of grief on some deserted road in the future. BTW, Joben, did you create your logo with Inkscape?

Lady_Nerevar, I understand. I thought you were using regular havok shapes created in a modeling program like Blender or in NifSkope. I understand now that you are using the Yellow box like "collision boxes" from the CS as shown in the OP. I can't help you there.

I'm afraid I don't understand. If you create them in Blender you can certainly see them. If you turn on View Havok, you can see them in NifSkope. There's also a function key (I don't remember which) that makes them visible in the CS. Maybe you could explain a bit more.

Joben, It sounds like you are really into this, so would enjoy this even if you don't exactly get rich. Thank you for letting me know about Fenix. I'm getting a Fenix LD20 which should be ideal for my needs. Vince

Joben, There are couple of issues that might be worth considering. Does the key chain LED light in your kit need to be squeezed to light? The inexpensive ones (~ $6 US retail) I've seen need to be squeezed, so you couldn't use both hands to start the fire. The ones with a switch seem to go for around $10 US retail or more. Also, packaging can be important. If the kit is for emergencies, would a small box that could go in a glove box, purse, or brief case be better-- or a possible option? Whatever you decide, I want to thank you for posting this topic. I carry an "emergency kit" in my brief case during the week and in a sports bag on the weekends. It consists of a Wenger Handyman Swiss Army knife, a 2X AA waterproof Maglight, and a butane lighter. After reading your post, I started thinking about the kit and realized I need to update it. I'll upgrade the light to a SureFire LED mini light. The SureFires are awesome, if you can afford them, and the LED lasts longer and provides much longer battery life for the same light output. Also, you are certainly right about the butane at cold temperatures. I need to get a firesteel and practice using it. The Swiss Army knife's nail file should make a good scraper. Thanks. Vince EDIT: If you haven't seen it already, the following link lists fire starter kits from about $11 to $24 that you might compare to what you are thinking about: Going Gear Fire Starters.

wetblanket, it seems that Willie may have solved all your companion friendly issues. If you have any remaining, Emma is a member here and was very helpful to me in getting my shack companion friendly, although Vilja acts a bit strangely in the upstairs of the shack (since it's in an exterior cell). Her favorite "chair" upstairs is the outhouse throne!

Since Willie brought it up, some may be interested in the beginning of CRPG's on microcomputers. Rogue (~1980) is often credited with being the first CRPG for microcomputers (they were played on mainframes and minicomputers before that). However, Temple of Apshai (~1979) and Akalabeth: World of Doom (~1979) were a little earlier. World of Doom, written by Lord British, was the precursor to the Ultima series (Ultima 1 ~ 1980). The Wizardry series followed soon after (Wizardry 1 ~ 1981). I remember playing most of these and thinking how great they were. All those graphics look comical today, but they were certainly fun at the time. My favorite is still Wizardry Bane of the Cosmic Forge, crappy graphics and all. EDIT: I forgot one that is especially relevant to modders: Eamon. Eamon was a text based RPG generator. Originally released for the Apple in 1980 with a small bundle of RPG adventures, it included an RPG editor that allowed users to write their own. 'Best I remember, if you wrote one, you sent it to the original author and, if it was anywhere like half decent, he would add it to the bundle. That was thirty years ago and not too different from what we call modding today.