[Fish Tank Woes]

Any data stored in the save game is always loaded last. If the cell you have the fish tank in was loaded at any time in the past, the new 'existance' of water would be overridden by the save game saying there is none.

[Fish Tank Woes]

Syscrusher, this intrigued me and seemed to ring some lind of bell in my head. In blender >Shading(F5)> Mirror Trans > Ray Transp. In this box you`ll see a number of sliders towards the top like, IDR,Fresnel.Fac(which I take to be the factoring setting. On mouse over blender gives a description and there seems to be a possibility that these settings, or others in that box may help. I don`t know though since I didn`t export to game.

Just a thought, hope it helps.

[Fish Tank Woes]

Have you used a clean save game for your last test?

[Fish Tank Woes]

err, it was quite a long ago, so I don't remember clearly whether that was my idea or she got this from some other place/person... well the fishtanks in Korana's mod are slightly different from those made by Phitt - water object in nif file there has a special name for its material set - "lava". This allows to control the look of the water in tanks not by "normal" textures on HDD but by water settings in CS. For these fishtanks to work properly you need to enable water for that cell they are placed in and chose one of the water types from the list which looks good for you or create new water type and assign it for that property of the cell... and if your cell has no water set then the object looks just like a hyper reflective neon ;]

well, couple of more objects like that were made for the mod as well (bathtub, wash bowl, etc.)

[Fish Tank Woes]

@DarkRider: Interesting thread, but no, it doesn't look like that. I *have* seen that behavior elsewhere, though. I traced it down to a rendering decision about distant objects in interior cells. I can replicate it, for example, in extremely long, straight dungeon corridors -- in my new mod, one such situation I solved by adding a slight fog effect so the player can't see the missing geometry in the distance. As it turns out, the fog actually improved the overall look of the level, so I'd keep it even without the need to cover up one of Bethesda's glitches. :-)

The faces on the fish tank *are* rendering; they are just rendering as a 100% reflection of a [255,255,255] white light source that doesn't actually exist.

I have a working theory on this, that I'm going to check out next time I'm booted into Windows for modding. I think maybe Korana accidentally put a glow source into her Blender or 3DS model and it is embedded in the NIF. IOW, I think maybe her NIF combines a fishtank with something equivalent to those "phantom light bulb" Bethesda lights, but without any visible representation of the light source itself.

I'm really glad to have found another resource, but since Korana's resources are so good otherwise, I'd really love to be able to solve this one and offer a diagnosis and/or patch for her, as a thanks for all the other things she's contributed to the community.

[Fish Tank Woes]

Update: I am still puzzled why *this* mesh doesn't work, but the good news is that I found one by someone else that works perfectly, from all angles. The mod is called "Fishtanks", by Phitt, available here: http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=13542.

I'd still like to know what's going on with Korana's model, because I'd like to contribute a fix back to her if possible, but at least we now know that it's the mesh and not my cell nor my video card nor an inherent game engine limitation.

Syscrusher

[Fish Tank Woes]

I'm trying to use the fish tank from Korana's wonderful Shadowcrest Vineyard as a clutter item in my mod (she gave me permission to use her objects). I have created an Activator object with her NIF, and I looked at my object and hers in CS to ensure that all the parameters are the same. (In fact, I can replicate this problem by *literally* using another instance/ref of her object.)

The tank is clear from the -X and -Y directions in both CS and game mode, but shows a pure-white reflection from +X and +Y directions. I've moved it all over my cell, and I've varied the cell lighting parameters all over the place, including the "directional" ones. I made my cell's edit settings identical to her cell's settings.

In fact, I can replicate this problem with my cell's ambient light set to *zero* and no light sources present. That is, the cell rendering is entirely inky black except for the brilliant white glow of the tank Activator, which is not supposed to be a light source in the first place. If move around to the -X, -Y angle, the tank becomes black like everything else.

Finally, I tried (and carefully exited the CS without saving) changing the tank location in *her* cell so that I could see it from all sides. Guess what? The tank reflects white from the +X, +Y, and +Z sides but is clear from the negative axis sides.

To see if there was something directional about the tank object itself, I've rotated it, and have determined that its rotation doesn't matter. The problem is related to directionality of the cell, not the object.

I know there are parameters that control how reflective surfaces behave, but how is this surface reflecting when there is no light present? It's as if the game engine shines a brilliant white light from (X, Y, Z) == (+infinity, +infinity, +infinity) no matter what your cell lighting is set to.

Is this something I could fix in Blender's material and texture properties, to make the glass parts clear but non-reflective, or minimally reflective? Has someone else made a fish tank that works from all sides?

Thanks for any advice. I'm sure someone has invented this wheel, but I've spent two hours searching the Net without success.

Kind regards,

Syscrusher

[Belated intro post]

Oh, welcome to this humble corner of the internet. Better late than never, I think.

It sure is an ambitious project but given your background, you shouldn't have too much trouble. Also, is Tux with his Skyrim attire?

By the way, your avatar is also from what is probably my all-time favorite album. :-)

[Belated intro post]

Oh, welcome to this humble corner of the internet. Better late than never, I think.

It sure is an ambitious project but given your background, you shouldn't have too much trouble. Also, is Tux with his Skyrim attire?

Thanks for the welcome. The Tux is from a library I downloaded under GPL terms. I'm not sure if it's a Larry Ewing work or not, because it's been so many years since I downloaded it. I like this one because I happen also to make armor in the SCA, so it seemed appropriate as an avatar for me.

Kind regards,

Syscrusher

[Belated intro post]

A belated but sincere welcome, Syscrusher! My husband is a member here as well- gaming couples rule, methinks.

We've been pleasantly surprised how many other couples we've found, and also more people in our age bracket than we expected. The video game companies, TV shows, and some web sites make it seem that you're a relic if you're over 25.

[Belated intro post]

*agrees with everyone else here*

I'm really looking forward to your mod, Sys; it's sounding awesome!

Also... Wolfenstein 3D's still awesome

The very concept of a 3D game on an IBM PC was awesome at the time. I remember the first time I saw it, being totally blown away by a first-person perspective on anything other than a dedicated console with specialized display hardware. 640x480 was a lot of pixels to animate back then.

[Belated intro post]

Hello, all!

I'm relatively new to modding, but have been playing Oblivion since late 2009. I'm 47 and a long-time AD&D player, but before TES4 the last video game I had really played was Wolfenstein 3D under MS-DOS 5.0. No kidding.

We bought a Playstation 3 purely as a BluRay player, with no intention of gaming. My wife bought me a copy of Oblivion on a whim, and it literally gathered dust for several months before I cracked open the box, because I didn't think I had much interest in gaming. Then, one rainy weekend, she finally got me to pop it into the machine. Addiction took about fifteen minutes.

I played about half a dozen or so characters through the main quest on PS3, and some through KOTN and SI, then learned about modding.

Now, you have to understand, for me, modding isn't just about gaming. I'm an IT pro with a background in realtime programming and CAD (computer aided design) systems. Handing me a modding system is like turning a kid loose with the worlds biggest, coolest set of Lego blocks ever. I took one look at the Construction Set docs online and decided immediately that I had to build a Windows system just for that.

Normally, I run Linux on my Thinkpad laptop (a beast of a machine, not very portable at all) because that's what I use to earn my living and it's what I prefer to use to get work done. But my Thinkpad now dual-boots Windows 7 and Linux so I can mod at night and so I can play Oblivion when traveling on business.

My wife and I are collaborating, and hopefully pulling in several friends for voice acting (we have a fair number of friends with community theatre or similar experience), on a combination town/quest/house mod of fairly large scope. It's a project begun November 2010 with a projected release of summer 2011. Ambitious for a first mod? Yes, but I'm finding most of the tools to be pretty learnable because of my CAD and programming background. Hopefully we make something that is fun for people to play. We're certainly enjoying creating it!

Syscrusher

[Official TESA TESV Speculation and Info Thread]

Don't suppose we know if there will be ice in the game eh? It woiuld be interesting, and fun, to run across frozen ponds (and slip and fall)

An interesting thought -- Given the right choice of Havok material in Blender, I'll bet this could be emulated within Oblivion by substituting a very-low-friction solid material in place of trying to have actual frozen water.

[Official TESA TESV Speculation and Info Thread]

One thing that has not been discussed, rings and amulets. I expect to be able to put more than two rings and one amulet.

I can see the logic of only one amulet, in that the magic might conflict. And I can see a game-balance reason to limit the number of rings, not letting you wear one on every finger and thumb and toe. But I agree that more than two rings is reasonable. In our TES IV environment, my wife and I have it set up to allow up to two rings on each hand, which seemed reasonably balanced to us. Perhaps Bethesda could offer that as an INI setting in Skyrim.

Syscrusher

[Owned items mingled in one container]

begin OnActivate

   if myChestGBL == 0

      messagebox "You cannot open this chest"

   else

      messagebox "Take a look at this stuff"

      activate

   endif

end

You could also have one chest for each NPC, and place that stuff in each chest. Then you could 'removeallitems' the contents of that chest to the NPC that it belongs to. That way you don't have to move each item individually.

That's an interesting idea. It would be more persistent objects, but OTOH the scripting would be really simplified. I'll consider this as one of the alternatives; thanks.

[Owned items mingled in one container]

If you know what each NPC owns, then there is no need to look at 'ownership' or anything else.

The CS WIKI is a good place to look for functions and syntax on them. It will give you a good idea of what you can do.

Did that. :-) The issue isn't function syntax, but rather what general approach is best. Adding the known items is a brute-force method that I can use if I must, but there will be multiple NPCs' belongings represented, so it will become very tedious to hand-code the list into my script. Also, AddItem doesn't really move the existing item, but rather adds new references to an object ID, which is not what I want.

I really need a scripted way to iterate over the contents of a container. I found an OBSE tutorial at http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Walking_through_Items_in_an_Inventory that seems to give me the basics of what I need. The goal is to do this programmatically, rather than by an explicit item list, so that I can adjust the NPCs' inventory in character creation without having to remember to update a quest script item-by-item.

I don't see any decent way to iterate a container that doesn't require OBSE, but my mod already has that as a dependency elsewhere, so might as well use it here, too.

If you script an OnActivate block of code on the chest, you will 'override' the normal chest open inventory action. So, until the player says then want to keep it all, you would then and only then code the Activate function which would then allow the player to open the chest normally.

That sounds workable, and I believe some of the COBL activators do things like this. I'll go hunting for an example script.

Thanks!

[Owned items mingled in one container]

In a mod I am developing, one stage of the quest has the PC recovering property that belongs to several NPCs, from an intermingled container. I plan to have a message box when the PC activates the container which asks if they want to return the items to the NPCs. If the PC says no, then the container thereafter behaves normally, and the items within are available for looting as usual. If the player says yes, however, I need to distribute the items to the NPCs that I have previously defined as the owners.

I'm an experienced programmer in other languages (Java, PHP, SQL, etc.), but relatively new to TES scripting. So I'm not asking for detailed syntax advice here, just a guideline on what general *approach* to take with "tagging" the items in the common container.

My initial thinking is that the items need to exist outside the container at stage 1 of my quest, because I don't *think* you can set ownership on an item added directly to the container in the CS, right? So I'll put them all on a table or something and then have a script move them into the container (once) at the first step of the quest, and set their ownership just before doing so. I assume I can set owner on a reference, without having to make a custom object, right? I would hate for every instance of "torch" and "iron dagger" to have to be a custom object.

Is there a better way to do this? Will what I propose even work?

Thanks!

[Official TESA TESV Speculation and Info Thread]

Can't post image as I'm at college but I've seen a picture from game informer at the magicka level-up screen, and the race in the top right says Dark Elf

So no race-specific characters

That would almost certainly mean you are not stuck with a given gender, either. It sounds like the rumor I read was completely bogus. I will rest easy.

[Official TESA TESV Speculation and Info Thread]

Its just a crappy rumor, likely based on the player character Bethesda uses to show off the game (who is a male Nord named Bendu Olo).

I certainly hope you're right. :-) The name I heard in the online rumor -- and of course I couldn't re-locate that darned posting! -- was something different than the one you list here. But you are probably onto something with the theory that it's just a particular demo character name that someone took out of context.

Under the category of lame rumors, I saw a video out on YouTube of someone who thought they were cleverly leaking gameplay video, when in fact what they were "leaking" was the publicly-posted trailer. Doh!

[Official TESA TESV Speculation and Info Thread]

From some things I found on the 'Net (for whatever *that* is worth), it sounds as if TES V may force you to play as a particular (and male) character, rather than letting you create someone from scratch. I happen to be male, but this would be an unfortunate design choice for many female gamers. Has anyone heard anything at least semi-authoritative about character creation? I certainly hope what I read online is just an idle rumor.