A bunch of "Is this Possible"s

[JulianSull]

This is a list of things that I want to try to add to my game and I was wondering if any of these are possible and just a basic idea of how:

1) The player is in a boat, goes to the back of the ship on the deck. The player loses controls and sees a girl with a sword do an animated scene where she kills off two other enemies and then points a sword right in the face of the player. Optional: The player begins talking to the girl while the sword is still pointed at him.

2) Have a scene where something is chasing the player and his companion. During the chase, the enemy goes after the companion and the companion is pinned down by the enemy until the player goes over to the enemy and damages it.

3) Force a companion to stay on a high up ledge and shoot with a bow to the lower level where the player is stuck to offer support.

4) Have a pillar fall over and allow the player to walk up it (I was thinking about it, it kinda works like an animated door, so could I do something similar to that?)

5) Create a custom walking animation that makes the person look like they are hurt badly and limping

6) A scene where the player watches from the outside of city as a big rock is launched into the city, blowing up everything in the center and taking down a building with it.

7) Have a scene where the player is in an arena and one of the walls of the arena blows up, allowing the player to escape out of it.

8) A giant catapult like War Machine that has five weak spots. The four corners (two which hold the catapult, two which hold the main front entrance closed) and one in the center which is basically a ball of energy keeping it powered up. Each would need to be destroyable.

Are these possible assuming that I am good enough to make these and I have all available resources to make it?

[DarkRider]

1) The player is in a boat, goes to the back of the ship on the deck. The player loses controls and sees a girl with a sword do an animated scene where she kills off two other enemies and then points a sword right in the face of the player. Optional: The player begins talking to the girl while the sword is still pointed at him.

Fine detail behaviors like this can be difficult because it's hard to pinpoint exactly where the player will end up standing. That said, it's not impossible, but this particular scene would take, at the least, a new animation. There is no "blade in the face" animation in the vanilla game.

2) Have a scene where something is chasing the player and his companion. During the chase, the enemy goes after the companion and the companion is pinned down by the enemy until the player goes over to the enemy and damages it.

I'm gonna say probably not doable. When a creature attacks they are typically targeting the player not the companion and they are very difficult to force out of combat as long as they or their target is living. Meaning that, the creature is not going to stop the chase to "pin" anyone down. You'd also need new animations for the creature to pin and for the NPC who is being pinned. Seems a bit beyond Oblivion's AI and scripting capabilities.

3) Force a companion to stay on a high up ledge and shoot with a bow to the lower level where the player is stuck to offer support.

Might be simple if you can place a wall around the ledge that prevents the companion from jumping down, it may force them to just shoot from where they are. Provided they are close enough to the action to sense the combat.

4) Have a pillar fall over and allow the player to walk up it (I was thinking about it, it kinda works like an animated door, so could I do something similar to that?)

Possible, but would require a custom model and animation.

5) Create a custom walking animation that makes the person look like they are hurt badly and limping

There already is such an animation in the vanilla game, it's injured.kf

You can see it in action in this video, at 3:29-3:44

6) A scene where the player watches from the outside of city as a big rock is launched into the city, blowing up everything in the center and taking down a building with it.

Probably not doable in Oblivion, the mechanics of the game really don't lend well to "scenes" because it is a sandbox style game and there are many random unknown factors caused by the player's freedom. Add that to Oblivion's rigid engine and you don't have a great setup for what you describe. Of course if you were say, an animator, you could make some fancy cutscene and play it, but that's probably not in the realm of feasibility for a modder.

7) Have a scene where the player is in an arena and one of the walls of the arena blows up, allowing the player to escape out of it.

Could be faked with a sound fx, some fire, and a disable cue to disable the solid wall and enable the broken one.

8) A giant catapult like War Machine that has five weak spots. The four corners (two which hold the catapult, two which hold the main front entrance closed) and one in the center which is basically a ball of energy keeping it powered up. Each would need to be destroyable.

You would need a custom model, trigger zones could be used at the strike points to detect being struck by the player. Depending on how visual you want it to be, you could have parts disable on strike, so give the appearance of being destroyed.

Are these possible assuming that I am good enough to make these and I have all available resources to make it?

Sounds like most of what you're dreaming up is too visually elegant for Oblivion. Like most RPGs Oblivion works best with implied scenes rather than actual scenes. Visual scenes are difficult to implement as I said, because of Oblivion's sandbox nature and all the elements you'd have to account for, different settings, 1st person vs 3rd person, positioning etc. But I'm not saying you shouldn't be creative and think outside the box, you just may have to tweak your vision slightly. For example in your first scene on the boat, maybe instead of having the sword in the player's face, just have the NPC begin convo with her sword at the ready, very possible. Not as visually elegant as your description, but doable and still gets the idea across.

Hope some of that helps, others can probably toss in additional ideas. Good luck.

[JulianSull]

Fine detail behaviors like this can be difficult because it's hard to pinpoint exactly where the player will end up standing. That said, it's not impossible, but this particular scene would take, at the least, a new animation. There is no "blade in the face" animation in the vanilla game.

The thing is, if the player is coming through the only door that can get the player there, then I know exactly where the player is going to be standing if I start the scripting right away. I was also thinking, if I just make an idle animation for the girl that is pointing the sword in the players face and then have the speaking scripted instead of a normal convo then it shouldn't be too hard. Maybe just have her say one line then put her sword away and talk to the player. Can I also make a custom animation that involves a few people? I don't want it just to be vanilla sword strikes, I want it to be a custom fight. Assuming I take the time to learn how to animate something like that, wouldn't it just be like all of those custom dance mods?

I'm gonna say probably not doable. When a creature attacks they are typically targeting the player not the companion and they are very difficult to force out of combat as long as they or their target is living. Meaning that, the creature is not going to stop the chase to "pin" anyone down. You'd also need new animations for the creature to pin and for the NPC who is being pinned. Seems a bit beyond Oblivion's AI and scripting capabilities.

I was thinking about this one too. Could I change it to a find package, then have them do an animation together where she is pinned down by the enemy and then the next time they are hit, the animation stops and the companion takes over the find package to where the battle location is and the enemy takes on the ambush package towards the player?

Might be simple if you can place a wall around the ledge that prevents the companion from jumping down, it may force them to just shoot from where they are. Provided they are close enough to the action to sense the combat.

That works, I think I can get that to work somehow. This is actually in a cave, so it might take a little bit of work. Maybe a collision box that appears after the player falls down.

Probably not doable in Oblivion, the mechanics of the game really don't lend well to "scenes" because it is a sandbox style game and there are many random unknown factors caused by the player's freedom. Add that to Oblivion's rigid engine and you don't have a great setup for what you describe. Of course if you were say, an animator, you could make some fancy cutscene and play it, but that's probably not in the realm of feasibility for a modder.

The scene is the player is forced into a cage so I know exactly where they are. I was thinking, there are those meteor spells out there, so couldn't I just have that mesh go straight from the War machine to the city, then make a screen effect take over that makes everything go white, and then disable certain buildings and replace them in the city with other meshes?

Could be faked with a sound fx, some fire, and a disable cue to disable the solid wall and enable the broken one.

Yeah that works. I might do the same trick from above. Not AS amazing, but still might give you chills =).

You would need a custom model, trigger zones could be used at the strike points to detect being struck by the player. Depending on how visual you want it to be, you could have parts disable on strike, so give the appearance of being destroyed.

This would be really hard...but it's a big thing. It's the final boss.

Sounds like most of what you're dreaming up is too visually elegant for Oblivion. Like most RPGs Oblivion works best with implied scenes rather than actual scenes. Visual scenes are difficult to implement as I said, because of Oblivion's sandbox nature and all the elements you'd have to account for, different settings, 1st person vs 3rd person, positioning etc. But I'm not saying you shouldn't be creative and think outside the box, you just may have to tweak your vision slightly. For example in your first scene on the boat, maybe instead of having the sword in the player's face, just have the NPC begin convo with her sword at the ready, very possible. Not as visually elegant as your description, but doable and still gets the idea across.

Hope some of that helps, others can probably toss in additional ideas. Good luck.

Heh, I hope I get a chance to have my own company and make some of these a reality. Be really nice to have no limits to what I can create. Speaking of 1st and 3rd person, can I force one or the other?

[DarkRider]

The thing is, if the player is coming through the only door that can get the player there, then I know exactly where the player is going to be standing if I start the scripting right away. I was also thinking, if I just make an idle animation for the girl that is pointing the sword in the players face and then have the speaking scripted instead of a normal convo then it shouldn't be too hard. Maybe just have her say one line then put her sword away and talk to the player. Can I also make a custom animation that involves a few people? I don't want it just to be vanilla sword strikes, I want it to be a custom fight. Assuming I take the time to learn how to animate something like that, wouldn't it just be like all of those custom dance mods?

I did say it would be hard, not impossible

Having one way in can help isolate the player's position sure. I'm not sure how doable a choreographed fight scene is even with many custom animations. It would be very script intensive and would probably need to bypass Oblivion's fight engine as Oblivion fighting is really hack n slash. So they'd just be going through the motions. But it's likely possible, just very labor intensive; I would recommend evaluating just how big the payoff is though; you generally don't want to invest and exorbitant amount of work into something that is really small in the scheme of things.

I was thinking about this one too. Could I change it to a find package, then have them do an animation together where she is pinned down by the enemy and then the next time they are hit, the animation stops and the companion takes over the find package to where the battle location is and the enemy takes on the ambush package towards the player?

Provided you had all the animations, maybe, but I don't think you'd ever get the adrenaline fueled result you describe, it will likely be slow paced and look deliberately choreographed. Oblivion AI is only about 90% reliable (and that's a generous estimate) even with everything in place there's still a 10% chance that a processing delay or a random glitch will spoil the effect. Oblivion characters are infamous for doing what they want, even when you want them to do something else.

The scene is the player is forced into a cage so I know exactly where they are. I was thinking, there are those meteor spells out there, so couldn't I just have that mesh go straight from the War machine to the city, then make a screen effect take over that makes everything go white, and then disable certain buildings and replace them in the city with other meshes?

Something along those lines could probably be done, it's a bit more information than you gave at first.

I hope I get a chance to have my own company and make some of these a reality. Be really nice to have no limits to what I can create. Speaking of 1st and 3rd person, can I force one or the other?

I'm sure you're on the right track to that future.

Not sure if you can force perspectives or not, I want to say I have heard of others doing so, but I'm not sure.

[Mysterious Mr. Bear]

I have a few more "realistic" suggestions for your amazing but very difficult ideas... dunno if any of these you would like the sound of...

1) The player is in a boat, goes to the back of the ship on the deck. The player loses controls and sees a girl with a sword do an animated scene where she kills off two other enemies and then points a sword right in the face of the player. Optional: The player begins talking to the girl while the sword is still pointed at him.

Go with the "one entrance" route, deffinatly. Have the girl fighting the two gents in normal oblivion combat, but script certain things- for example, for a quick fight, set one of them to have very low health so they die almost instantly, and script the other so that when he is first attacked, he is disarmed, and then when he is disarmed his max health is reduced to nearly nothing, so on the next hit he dies. If you position NPCs correctly this will give the apperence of one npc being cut down with ease, and the other having is sword flung from his hands and then finished off.

THEN, tell then npc to walk to a specific point infront of the player and then script in an animation (WITH PERMISSION! ) from a pose mod, so that the girl goes into a "point sword" pose. Im sure I've seen one. Have her scriptedly say one line of dialog then go into convosation, as you suggested...

2) Have a scene where something is chasing the player and his companion. During the chase, the enemy goes after the companion and the companion is pinned down by the enemy until the player goes over to the enemy and damages it.

I think the hardest part of this is getting it to chase you without attacking. For the "pinned bit" I have an idea that would look very good. At the moment you want it to happen, have a block of script that reduces the characters fatigue to 1, and have the creature with a "drain fatigue 10 points" on hit effect, or script the same result.

Visual, this will appear that the character falls, unmoving to the ground, and the creature will be attacking them on the floor. To stop it attacking player, I would advise increasing its disposition past its aggression (I think thats how it works with creatures anyway...)

3) Force a companion to stay on a high up ledge and shoot with a bow to the lower level where the player is stuck to offer support.

make sure they are using a long range combat package and put a low railing on the ledge (or collision box). that should work well, though if you stray to far from the ledge they may end up just running into it over and over. I dont know how they did it, but in the mod Better Cities there are archers on the walls of the cities that fire at you but dont move- you should take a look at their scripts and copy them

not quite sure what you mean about 4. If its what I'm thinking, you could instead have the much used "cave in" effect from vanilla dungeons, to go off as the player walks past.

5, yup, darkrider has that covered!

6) A scene where the player watches from the outside of city as a big rock is launched into the city, blowing up everything in the center and taking down a building with it.

I think you could do this quite easily actually. You would need to obtain permission to use the metorite animation from midas magic. if the city is in the same worldspace as the player, then simply have the metorite spell cast on the city by another npc, have the white flash of light (might have to get creative there, cant be that hard) then replace some buildings with wreckage. You probably wouldn't even need the wreckage to match with the orignal really- and theres lots of kvatch burnt buildings, that burnt out magic store around rumore lake, I swear I've seen some used in Unique landscapes, etc...

7, yeah, Darkriders Idea is the best again

8, that will take alot of moddeling (which is very hard, I hear) but very possible with darkriders plan!!!

I hope some of those will work well with what you had in mind. I think maybe you rely on animations too much- animating is hard, hard buisness, heck, even flash takes alot of time to learn, and frankly, even the best of the best animations made for oblivion tend to look pretty "out of place" if you catch my drift. Two person animations have almost never been pulled off, with an exception for Unnessery Violence where Hex made a Judo flip animation that worked with two people. That was outstanding work, and even then it looked a little... odd.

Good luck with your project, I've read alot of your topics about it, it seems very interesting and orignal! I love some of your boss fight ideas