[WIPz] Black Horse Courier Expanded

[Cliffworms]

NOTE

If you are interested in collaborating articles, PM me and I'll fill you on the details.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. Introduction

II. Features at a Glance

III. Articles examples (Spoilers!)

IV. Credits and Thanks

V. Progress

I. Introduction

I always felt that the Black Horse Courier was a cool concept but was not expanded enough. The game does provide articles for the Dark Brotherhood and the Thieves Guild along with some of the Daedric quests, but it could have provided articles for the Main Quest, Mages Guild, Fighters Guild, Arena and some misc. quests.

Not ALL quests are covered by the Black Horse Courier, mind you. Only those that I felt would concern the whole of the Empire, not only a local portion. So you won't read about a certain Anvil citizen who found mountain lions eating her rats.

Instead you will read about the fate of the Oblivion invasion, the rumors of Skyrim invading Morrowind or your sucess in the Arena matches.

II. Features at a glance :

- Around 35 new Black Horse Courrier articles

- New retextures over the BHC articles. You will now be able to read the article's title directly on the object instead of "opening" the reading screen.

- Some articles are published after the completion of a quest. Others are published right at the start of the game and are not quest-related.

- Articles cover the Main Quest, Guild Quests, some Daedric quests and some Misc quests.

- Some quest-related articles in vanilla Oblivion are changed a bit.

- Articles can be obtained by speaking to an employee of the BHC, finding them in homes, inns or guild halls. New bulletin boards are also added in the cities where the new articles are nailed on them.

- Some articles contain lore information about a specific subject, like necromancy or a short history of St-Alessia.

- Articles are given a "Pro-Empire" and "Pro-Nine Divines" feel since the BHC is funded by the Empire. Therefore, the tone of some subjects covered by the BHC is not from a neutral point of view. Like necromancers and the Dark Brotherhood.

- Vanilla quest-related articles will be distributed in the game world. In the vanilla game, they were located only in the BHC Office's basement.

III. Articles Examples (SPOILERS!)

Namira's Daedric Quest Spoiler written by WhoGuru

Empire's Official Declaration about the Oblivion Invasion written by Cirosan

Hircine's Daedric Quest Spoiler written by WhoGuru

Closing Oblivion Gates for the Common Masses written by WhoGuru

Black Horse Courier Article covers retexture

Black Horse Courier Newsboard

IV. Credits and Thanks

Frodo67 for helping me a lot with typos, grammar mistakes and sentence formulation.

WRITERS

WhoGuru a.k.a Redara Alleius

Cirosan a.k.a High Chancellor Ocato

Durza a.k.a Dursa Vreylanbin

Rowan (No journalist name yet.)

V. Progress

(Writing) Guild Quests : 100%

Writing) Main Quests : 100%

Writing) Misc Quests : 100%

(Writing) Daedric Quests : 100%

(Writing) Not quest-related : 100%

Game integration : 75%

Overall : 96%

[Vereta]

Damn awesome. I wish I could play Oblivion now...

[WhoGuru]

Oh you know I'm waiting eagerly for this one!    and having a blast writing for this one too, thanks!

[Cliffworms]

Thanks to WhoGuru, all articles have been written! Now is the time to finish doing the dialogue for article handling.

If you are willing to beta test, let me know!

[Vereta]

Ahhhhright!!! Can't wait for the release! Despite not being able to play it, I mean. Soon enough, though, soon enough...

[Cliffworms]

The betatest file will be ready Saturday or Sunday.

If you are interested look at the details below and send me a PM.

What needs to be tested is the following :

- Making sure the article delivery works by speaking with a BHC employee (The girls on horse, the men in the IC and the Khajiits running the office)

- Making sure that, on completion of an "article quest", the appropriate articles get activated in the game world and you can ask about them to the BHC employees. (A list of the game world places where you can find the articles will be provided)

- Proofreading the dialogue and articles in search of evil typos. (A test cell is included with all the articles in one box.)

- Making sure that the "Starter Script" works. The script runs on first activation of the mod and checks the progress of the character for enabling the quest-related articles.

You just need to pick one of those, or all of them. The more the better, of course.

I recommend you to have a character who has not yet started guild quests or someone who has completed one or more guild's questlines (Without cheating!)

Thank you very much and cheers!

[Cliffworms]

Testing is close to being finished!

Some betatesters reported evil pink textures, so this needs fixing. I assume it may be because Oblivion is installed on an external hard drive and, as such, NifExporter messes up the texture path somehow.

I already have plans for the second version. When the mod will be released, I believe it will generate even more interest for players to write articles. I have a long list of articles that will be written for the second version. (Around 50 )

[WhoGuru]

I swear Cliff I WILL Get in game and test tonight or tomorrow morning. Hubby's going back to work tomorrow so I wont have a sickie to take care of all day.

[PacificMorrowind]

I have a long list of articles that will be written for the second version. (Around 50 )

I'm not much of a writer... at least I abhor English class, but am an absolute spelling nit-pick, well anyways I volunteer to write some articles.

Pacific Morrowind

[WhoGuru]

I'm not much of a writer... at least I abhor English class, but am an absolute spelling nit-pick, well anyways I volunteer to write some articles.

Pacific Morrowind

Oh there are plenty to choose from! I'm having trouble deciding which ones I want to write. LOL

[Mannimagnus]

Im writin articles now too.

[Section_31]

I believe this plugin is finished, is it not?

[InsanitySorrow]

Yes this has been released and I am sure there is a RELz thread here somewhere, gonna lock this Necro thread.