[WIP] GOSH - Gecko's Oblivion Sound overHaul

[vaultguy]

Hello there. You may know me from such smash hits as Immersive Sounds for Skyrim and, well, nothing else really. Anyway, I've decided to focus my efforts on Oblivion now and create a comprehensive reimagining of the sound experience. I'm doing weapons, magic, monsters, footsteps, ambiance, doors, etc etc.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sn5uFFulzYI

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baCynszAy74

 

I'm putting an extra focus on creature sound this time. I thought they were mostly fine in Skyrim so I didn't really touch them, but for Oblivion there are several I'm not really happy with, and I think there could be a lot more life to them. The skeleton sounds in the second video are meant to be an optional choice (the original skeleton sounds are still being spruced up a bit, with better footsteps and audible bone sounds when you damage and kill them) modeled after the Daggerfall skeletons. I've also redone wraith, ghost and zombie sounds which aren't shown in the videos.

 

One of the issues I discovered is that the aggro/aware sounds don't really seem to play when monsters discover you and engage in combat (I think this is especially important to get that trademark shriek from the Daggerfall style skeletons). I was actually hoping I could get some help from seasoned Oblivion modders on that front, since I'm still very new to serious Oblivion modding and have no knowledge of scripting. I think these sounds could possibly triggered via rudimentary scripting somehow? There are some other sounds I would like to trigger as well like death sounds for wraiths and ghosts, which don't seem to actually play. I suspect these things shouldn't be too hard to accomplish. I managed to get someone to handwalk me through making a script in Skyrim that played unique swing sounds for power attacks, so I imagine this shouldn't be significantly different (nevermind the fact that Oblivion doesn't use Papyrus).

Edited June 18, 2014 by vaultguy

[donnato]

This sounds very interesting. I`ll be watching your progress.

[vaultguy]

Finally managed to get regional sound overhauls to work properly. I'm adding this via a separate .esp for the sake of compatibility (I am pretty sure that Natural Environments will conflict and need some extensive patching work)

 

Blackwood before and after (don't mind the sudden fog. Oblivion just likes to randomize weather each time you reload the game apparently)

 

Here's how it's going to work: Vanilla Oblivion just uses short generic wind loops universally across all regions (with some separate intermittent sounds that are region specific mostly) which is baked into the weather. What I've done here is create duplicate weather conditions that are specific to Blackwood and assigned them to all Blackwood subregions. So these Blackwood weathers use their own 1 minute long soundscapes. One for daytime, one for nighttime. I think what I'll do next is alter the default weather sounds and make that suited for the several temperate, open regions like the area surrounding the Imperial City, the Colovian Highlands, The West Weald and Nibenay Basin. Then I'll replace more specialized areas like the Jerall Mountains with their own soundscape.

 

I've also implemented a unique soundscape for the Deadlands. It sounds quite... hellish

[vaultguy]

Well, I finished the mod and put it on the Nexus. I've attempted to release it on TESA as well but I see we're still having upload problems for large files.

 

http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/45214/

[jamochawoke]

This is a fantastic mod vaultguy! Still messing around playing with how the new sounds interact with everything but definitely impressive!

[Gramblosh]

I will have nightmares! And I will blame YOU! Man, those Oblivion planes sound creepy! Well, honestly, this is really, really great. I never expected it to be that good.