Oblivion Experiment

A few screen shots of an experimental Oblivion race I put together after I was given the main files yesterday.

It gave me something to do after recovering from a virus that I thought started out as one of the migraine headaches I have on a regular basis.  I still feel like crap and I know I'm supposed to be answering emails among other things, but I'll get to that tomorrow or the next day.  I'm not ignoring anyone....just don't feel like talking at the moment, virtually or otherwise.  My apologies.

Anyway, the race is not much use except for screen shots as the eyes don't blink and there's very little facial expression although it is functional as far as game play goes I suppose.  Since screen shooting factors in as a very small percentage of my game play time, I doubt I will use the race except maybe for a few more pictures.

Hence...the experiment.     By the way, don't ask for it as the hair is private (separate mod files) and I imagine so are the rest of the race files although they could probably be found with some diligence.  I don't actually know where they came from myself, so I can't help there anyway.

You'll notice the lack of AA and some jaggies against the black background.  I forgot to enable it after some fiddling and indecision about Bloom and HDR.  I've gotten used to Bloom now and I prefer it to the eye jarring glare.  

As someone commented at Tesnexus a little while ago, (in a controversial hot topic), that screen shots with the jaggies are hideous and shouldn't be allowed as they are an offense to the eye,  among other things (slight paraphrasing as his words were even more offensive) ......enjoy and suck it up...   They weren't my screen shots he was talking about though as I don't have any at Tesnexus to be criticized, but I'm pretty sure it offended some people.  We commoners are treated so unjustly sometimes.  And that was sarcasm if no-one guessed.

Click to enlarge if so desired.

Ice Cream Sundae

Freckles

Porcelain Doll

Re-playing Gothic 3 - Again

The Gothic series of games are probably in the category of you "either hate them or love them" and not much in between.  I'm in the love it category.

One reason I keep replaying old games, especially ones with great replay value is because I get sick of the problems that come with new ones and I have several in various stages of play.  Even Oblivion pisses me off with it's many problems even after modders have fixed a lot of of them.   The hard coded ones remain though which is frustrating at times.

While Gothic 2 with Night of the Raven is my favourite I've played it to death and the only complaint I have about it is that playing a mage is severely hampered by the inability to find enough plants and potions to replenish mana, especially in the late stages.  You can sleep of course but that's not always feasible or convenient. The spells are awesome though and they are all one really needs as long as mana is plentiful.

This is about Gothic 3 though.  I know many Gothic fans didn't like it as much and it was buggy as hell at release, but that wouldn't have been so bad if it wasn't for the frame rate and hitching problems on loading new areas...and even at times, just moving in a different direction.

BUT, I've never actually finished the complete game, but got close a few times as it's absolutely huge.   I gave up on it for awhile until the Community Patch team started "fixing" the game and now it's actually a pleasure to play.

Besides that, and a reason I've started over a few times, there are addon packs and quest packs that change the game to more of a Gothic 2 style.  Last night I downloaded the latest packs and had to start over again which isn't a problem as the game has so many different ways to play.

I've been going on about how I like Two Worlds a lot, but Gothic 3 (and 2 of course) is so much more the type of open world rpg I think is actually worthy of the title.  One day I might write something about the disaster that Arcania Gothic 4 is, but it will pain me to even think about it.

Since I never played past the so called tutorial stage or the first island in Arcania because I could see the writing on the wall even then, people may say I didn't give it a fair chance.   However, the fact you could steal anything and kill anyone in front of others with no consequences, as the NPC's are so unbelievably stupid, and it's completely linear with invisible walls to keep you from going to places before you obtained a quest to do so, was quite enough for me.  Then there were absolutely NO features that made it a real rpg in the Gothic style.  I wish I could sell my copy of the game and forget I ever bought it..  Heck, I'd even give it away if anyone actually wanted it.  It has Securom protection though which is a pain in itself.

Just a quick mention about Gothic - Forsaken Gods.  This mess has also been overhauled by the Community team and is now playable and stable, if not a great game.  It's worth at least one play through now.

Back to Gothic 3... I do tend to get offtrack...

I'm not going into the ins and outs of the things that make this a great game, post community patching and especially with the addons I'm going to talk about.   Fans will know what I mean and anyone else who may be interested can look it up.

I did find this excellent review of Gothic 3 though and it also mentions Arcania and I agree totally with the author.  I don't actually agree with his comments about the controls as I've customized mine to work much better.
http://geekmontage.com/texts/review-gothic-3-with-the-community-patch-1-74/

The main addons for the game besides the Community Patch is the Content Mod 2.2.  It adds so much it's not possible to include it all here, but the whole game is retextured or most of it, including creatures, armour, landscape, buildings and NPC's and a there are also a few added locations. And Pirates!  They returned the Orcs from Gothic 2, added many new armours and weapons, new menus and HUD icons and much more.  Oh, and also returned many of the sounds from Gothic 2.

When installing you can choose to have everything, or just the textures and menus and HUD elements, so it's versatile, not all or nothing.

Read about it here.  Lots of screen shots as well.  It's in the English section of the forum.
http://forum.worldofplayers.de/forum/showthread.php?t=886288

The Community Patch 1.74 rebalances the whole game, has alternate AI and balancing choices, multiple bug fixes that read like a novel, added a version of HDR and a heap of other improvements.  It also removes the copy protection with permission from the developers and includes the previous Official patches.

Download and read about it here.  It's 914mb but worth every byte.
http://games.softpedia.com/get/Patch/Gothic-3-Community-International-14-Patch.shtml

The Content Mod, 229mb, requires the Community Patch 1.74 and Questpacket 4.2 which is another very large addition at 654mb.  It adds new quests, NPC's and a lot more.   It only comes in the German language, however there are English subtitles so obviously subtitles for speech need to be on, but are unobtrusive.  However, you won't have German voices in the background, assuming you need the English version of course.

Download it here.   The text is German but is easily translated via Google.  This page says version 4.1 but the download is the correct one, or it was for me.
http://www.worldofgothic.de/dl/download_399.htm

Both packs have support for other languages and are exe files so it's easy to install or remove if necessary.

I only started playing again last night and have been hooked all over again so I can see myself staying up until the very early hours, and in some cases as I've done before, see the sun come up because I've been so involved.

One screen shot so far, but more to follow.   This is a wolf and a scavenger fighting as creatures also have factions in the game and either get along or hate each other.   Both creatures are retextured from the originals.

I could only get this close because they were fighting.  Usually, potentially aggressive animals will give a warning if you get too close and they won't attack either just because you are in the same area.  Something which I find refreshing.  Boars are anti social though and hate everything and everybody.

The white dome in the background is the capital city which has been closed off behind a force field.  The only way in is via a hard to get teleport stone.

Click to enlarge is so desired.

Doing a screen shot tour of the animals...  If I can I'll get some screenshots of the creatures sleeping which they actually do at night with the correct animations as well.   It can be interesting when one runs into a Shadow Beast in the dark when it's asleep.  They are really grumpy when woken....and any other time...lol.

Dairy Cows.  You can milk the cows and use the milk in recipes at cooking pots.

Pigs on the farm.  Orcs have taken it over...or at least they had until I came along and evicted them forcefully and permanently.

Bandit Vs Wolf.   The bandit lost as I pinged him with arrows for amusement after killing his friends.  They were offensive after all and just didn't want to talk.  I then used a taming spell on the wolf so it would be a companion and fight with me.

Around the campfire.   You can sit at the fire and cook meat from animals you've hunted.  There's nothing like a nice haunch of roast meat and a glass of red to boost the health just when you need it.

Alice the Spider Mod

I updated my Along Came A Spider mod for Oblivion today with a few minor changes. It's also now at Tesnexus.
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=39666
NOTE: I do not use any other companions besides my own creatures so I will not be looking into compatibility with other companion mods. I mention this because of comments regarding a user's CM Partners fighting with Alice.

The problem is NOT with my mod, but either a faction or script issue with CM Partners and I am not going to look into it as I only make my mods compatible with the vanilla game. However, I do use overhaul mods and a number of others without any fighting issues, so I don't see it as my problem.

Edit: That's the reason for the screen shot in the IC Market.   Although it doesn't actually show other companions, it does show a peaceful existence with NPC's.

New Screen shots.  Click to enlarge if desired.


On the steps of the Chapel

Die Necromancer

Zapped

Victory

Peace in the City

Music Videos - Alice Cooper

I wonder about myself sometimes. 

I sit here watching music videos on Youtube and at least as far as my favourite artists go I have the DVD's of their concerts, especially the Pink Floyd Pulse tour and Alice Cooper's Brutal Planet DVD which is another of my favourites.

One reason is I can't or prefer not to play them on my stand alone DVD player and TV because unless I can turn them up LOUD it doesn't sound as good.  I have very close neighbours and I'm sure they wouldn't appreciate Alice or Black Sabbath blaring through the walls.  I could play them on the computer with headphones, and do sometimes, but it gives me a headache after awhile.  Not the music, the headphones as I also use them when I play games to stop the neighbours, one in particular, complaining about gunshots and the sounds of battle cries. 

I like a peaceful life, but I think I compromise too much at times.

Alice Cooper's No More Mister Nice Guy - Brutally Live featuring his daughter Calico. I so wish I was at that concert, but the DVD makes up for it. He may be 63 and the son of a protestant preacher, but he's still got it.



Brutal Planet - Brutally Live. The first track on the DVD



Along Came A Spider from the album of the same name featuring Slash and other well known rockers. It's a concept album about a psycho serial killer and released after Brutal Planet.

I named my Oblivion spider companion mod after this.

Alice the ultimate shock rocker. Forget Marilyn Manson and Rob Zombie. I like some of their music but it doesn't come close to Alice.

More Two Worlds Screen Shots

I'm still making my way through Two Worlds and enjoying it.   I'm at level 82 now and I'm finding since the last ten or so levels the game is quite unbalanced in some respects as I'm almost immortal and can dispatch even huge dragons albeit with the help of summoned creatures and overpowered weapons and a heavy reflect damage spell.  

I'm playing on medium which means being resurrected at shrines instead of dying which really takes the edge off and I'm thinking I really should have tried hard mode which I may just do when I finish this play through.  I'm close to the end except for mopping up a few small side quests and since there are are two endings I have to choose who to side with.

There is an old mod that does for Two Worlds what OOO does for Oblivion called Two Worlds Elite (I think) and I used it last time I played, but I didn't get as far into the game as I am now.  Plus it's for the 1.6 patched version and since I patched the game to the latest 1.7 I'm not sure if it will still work.  I can't find any info to say one way or the other, but I guess it won't hurt to try it.  As far as I see there are no easy to find working links, not that I looked very hard, but I do have it on a backup disc somewhere.

When I get through with this game I'll probably return to Oblivion and then again I might just try and finish Gothic 3....again.  I always seem to get to a point where I have to make a choice of endings and since I can't make myself side with slavers I'll probably never see at least one of them.  It's a pain because it locks me out of one of the best cities in the game, so I've read, but my conscience won't let me allow innocents to be enslaved by cruel masters even in a game.  But, that's a story for another game review.

Anyway, some more TW pics for the bored....lol.  Click to enlarge if desired.

This is part of the city of Cathelon, the capital, where some of the citizens and vendors gather to chat in the evening. 

Encounter with a stone dragon.  These dragons look like a pile of stones and boulders until you get close and then they reform into a monster that shoots fireballs.   Not that hard to kill if you stay close so it can't fire at you and you keep hitting hard with no letup.

Another stone dragon.

Sand dragon in the desert.  These are actually a bit harder in some ways as they don't have rocks or trees to block them and you can't hide behind cover.

Mummies.  And not the caring kind...lol.  Make sure to have poison antidotes otherwise if they get a hit in the poison is fast working even with very high hit points.

Ogre and Orcs.  This ogre is fighting for me as I resurrected it after initially dispatching it with the help of my summoned scorpions that are also in the melee.

Giant pentagram in the sky.   This happens at a point in the main quest and covers the entire sky so it's hard to get a complete image.  It can be destroyed, which I have since done.  The sky is green because I'm near the Dead Forest.

Taking the Element of Fire.  Main quest item and located in an Orc fortress.

A dilemma.  Which horse shall I take this time?

Comments Moderation Off

For the time being I've turned off comment moderation which I've been thinking about for awhile as I seem to have some anonymous regulars that I can see via a tracker.    At least there must be something of interest here I guess. 

I must admit I am curious to know who they are and why they keep coming back.  Not that that means they are likely to comment, but like me I feel it can be annoying to go through a few hoops just to comment on something you may or even may not like.

However, if I start getting spammers, abuse or other crap I'll just re-enable moderation and anything offensive will be deleted by me anyway.  

I have also deleted an early rant post and the one that caused me to start this blog in the first place.  It really serves no purpose here any more and I doubt anyone but myself really cares.   Most people follow rules like sheep even when these "Rules" are inconsistent and bent for certain people.   I also don't particularly like having my words twisted by someone who called themselves a friend because they were feeling defensive and put upon by the truth. 

It's all still relevant however and my feelings haven't changed, but every time I see it it just makes me angry and annoyed all over again which is counter productive to myself.  I have a copy of the text of course, but I've got over being angry at things I can't change....at least in this case as it's pointless.

Completionist Gaming - My Style

 Sunset over Stico Bay - Two Worlds

Click to enlarge view if desired

When I play PC games, particularly open world rpg's or other games that have secret areas or hidden content I can't help but be a little obsessive and have to find every one of them.  It's not for points or achievements or whatever, but since the developers went to the trouble of adding the extra stuff to add interest I try my hardest to find it.

Maybe it is a kind of achievement thing.  Who knows, but when I wander the wilderness and find a spot unmarked on the map and guarded by more than one massive troll, I know I've found something good.   Or when I comb the landscape and find that ultra rare herb I needed for a particular potion.  Woohoo!

I've even gone as far as making sure I cover every piece of the map and clear the Fog of War so I don't miss anything.....yes I am an ultra completionist. 

Taking it to extremes maybe, but I'm playing Two Worlds as I mentioned elsewhere, and it's a huge game.   I'm 80 hours in and level 76 with a long way to go.  I'm finding items I can't use until I hit level 102 but I doubt I'll get to that level.   The higher you go the longer it takes to level up as XP for common mods lessens and the best rewards are quest related.

The Grove - quest related which led me to having a village to myself with lots of storage since every container in the game is safe to use and doesn't recycle your hard won goods.   Note my two dual wielding Exotic Axes.

Anyway, in this game corpses don't disappear unless they have been fully looted and I read that leaving dead bodies everywhere can have an impact on game performance because it has to keep track of everything, including the dead, which is to be expected.  Although it doesn't seem to be a problem for me.  I'm doing clean up now though, but for a different reason.

So, a couple of nights ago every time I came across dead bandits and wolves, boars etc, etc, I made sure to loot them which I do anyway, but inventory space is sometimes at a premium and I have to leave stuff behind for another visit.  Plus, I don't need 500 pieces of wolf meat, a pile of boar tusks, a ton of Reaper meat, a haystack of herbs and many other things as I don't bother too much with alchemy except for Permanent Effect potions.  I started taking items from the corpses and dropping them on the ground, so when I leave the cell the game does the cleaning.

BUT,  I forgot something...  I'm at the highest level in all schools of magic and one of the great spells is the Resurrection spell.  It's supposed to be used to resurrect the dead, obviously, so they will fight for you, but this is virtually useless as they don't follow you from their original location.   However, mobs don't respawn in Two Worlds and there's really no need as there are more than enough to level up on, although if there are spawn points close to uncovered parts of the map some creatures will respawn....I think.

Last night I spent a few hours dragging my loot back to the cities to sell, and thank goodness I have a horse parked at the most used teleports, plus my personal teleport stones as running huge distances gets tiring.  Then I thought, why not resurrect  the dead...  so every time I came across a dead bandit, wolf or even skeletons in a cave that I hadn't totally looted, I resurrected them after taking anything I wanted from their bodies.  The resurrected don't remain hostile so I can repopulate the land with friendly wildlife, passive bandits and friendly monsters like Ogres and Cyclops, or at least the ones that still remain after looting.

Resurrected Orcs at the camp fire enjoying a drink.

Besides that, without too many spoilers if anyone cares, there's a large city that due to a quest becomes victim to the wrath of the god who they believe protects them and everyone dies by the hands of the Orcs.  There's nothing you can do to stop it and it's to do with the main quest.  Besides the inhabitants aren't the most welcoming I've ever met even before the destruction, and they really hate me now for taking their totem.  Their threats and insults wash over me now like water off a duck's back as they are powerless to carry them out.  I guess their souls came back passive and unable to act...that's resurrection for you...lol.

Anyway, I then go and kill the Orcs, loot everyone, liberate houses of their treasures, make a fortune (which doesn't last long) and then resurrect Orcs and citizens alike.  They all go about their business in peace thereafter and the city stays populated instead of empty.  AND, I get another massive storage area and my own city surrounded by attractive bamboo forests, but I don't really need it as such.

One thing to note...after resurrecting animals and humans keep their AI and script packages so you can still use vendors and talk to people normally.   In one case where I stuffed up a quest, I resurrected an NPC and he spawned an item in his inventory that I needed and couldn't get because I chose a different path and killed him too early.   Because of that he didn't have what I needed on his corpse.  I could complete the quest including dialogue this way. 

Also, once killed and resurrected animals or NPC's can't be killed again, so it's no use for power leveling which is boring anyway.   They are like ghosts if you try to "re-kill" them and weapons have no effect.  This is aside from the real ghosts of beasts that appear at night which can be sent on to their reward...after having previously given me my reward. 

My summoned scorpions.  The most useful summons in the game.

Another thing in the game are shoots of Taint, a corrupted substance or fungus that grows in graveyards.  The corruption of the Taint overshadows most of the theme of the game as far as the main quest goes.  There's also a minor quest related to them, but by the time I found them all, I already had the rewards from an alternate source.  The XP and gold was worth it though.

I have five Taint shoots left over at present after the quest.  There may be more to find, I don't know yet.  If one goes back to a graveyard and drops a shoot, around midnight undead will spawn and can be killed (again) for items and XP.   Ghoul brains are a good and very useful commodity. 

I read that you can use the Taint in towns and start mini wars, but I've tried it several times without result.   Maybe it's a random thing in towns or I didn't wait long enough.  I made the mistake of leaving one area with a Taint shoot on the ground.  Needless to say it was gone when I came back.  The shoots are reusable so it's worth a try.

The Taint raises the dead!  Midnight in the graveyard!

This is why I love games like this.  All the extra hidden stuff and entertaining things one can do to take a break from quests and the serious stuff.

I wish Oblivion had a fraction of this kind of thing.  The most I've found hidden in random areas are a few chests with a couple of gold coins and a rusty dagger and I've covered the map from one end to the other.  The same useless leveled loot as the rest of the game.  It would have been nice if some of the notes and letters actually led somewhere and well as the size of the world and potential was there but underused.

Anyway, back to it and another all night session.  I have a city of undead to conquer!