Armored Skeletons

Version 2.0

Download: http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=39784

1. Description

In vanilla Oblivion all skeletons look the same. With this mod they will wear different sets of armor depending on their rank (guardian, hero...) and combat specialization (melee or archery).

List of features:

1. The new skeletons (called 'Armored Skeletons') are all equipped with a cuirass, a pair of boots and a helmet. Melee-oriented skeletons favor heavy armor. Archers prefer light armor. The quality of such armor is determined by the rank of the skeleton, and it ranges from fur to elven and from iron to ebony.

2. The armor sets the skeletons wear have been retextured to look old and rusty. This has been achieved by using retextures that already had a nice rusty look and, specially, by applying a Sobel filter on the normal maps of such textures.

3. Skeletons using armor should be tougher than armor-less skeletons. To account for this fact, Armored Skeletons have a shield spell bonus applied to them. The shield spell is permanent, constantly active and offers as much protection as the armor the skeleton wears should. The mildest shield spell will absorve 14% of the damage dealt by your (non-magic) attacks. The strongest shield spell will absorve as much as 42% of the damage.

4. Armored Skeletons will NOT replace vanilla skeletons. Instead, they are added to leveled lists so that you can find both armored and unarmored skeletons in your journeys. Roughly speaking, 1 of every 2 skeletons will be armored.

5. Summoned skeletons are the only exception to the point above; with this mod, when you or a NPC summon a skeleton, it will always be an Armored Skeleton.

6. Last but not least, this mod adds a new type of skeleton called 'Mystic Skeleton'. Mystic skeletons come in two varieties: melee and archer. These guys are your typical bosses. They don't have much more health that a skeleton champion but they carry MUCH better equippment (weapons with custom enchantments) and possess special strenghts and resistances (their health slowly regenerates and magic is less effective against them). Furthermore, these guys are pure eyecandy: they wear retextured weapons and armor and have got burning eye sockets! You will start to see them when skeleton champions begin to appear. Don't expect to see lots of them though, they are supposed to be rare.

2. Future Plans

- Make the armor the skeletons wear lootable. This can be achieved by simply adding the relevant armor pieces in the skeletons' inventory. The problem with this approach is that removing the armor from the inventory will not cause it to get unequipped. I suspect I may need a special script for this. I will ask in the OBSE thread.


3. Installing/Upgrading

Installing: just copy the meshes folder, the textures folder and the Armored Skeletons (LL).esp file into your data falder. Then activate the .esp file,
If you are upgrading, you need to get rid of all the old files first. Please go to the readme for detailed instructions on how to do that properly

4. Acknowledgements and Credits

Ginnungagap for his 'Skeleton Helmet Resource'. Thanks to him, I only had to adapt the mesh of the fur helmet.

Jahmir0 for his very insightful comments on how to make skeletons wear a cuirass as well as the likely problems one could encounter when pursuing this goal. The irony is that these comments were not directed to me but to another user. This didn't make them less useful though.

LHammonds for his tutorial 'Blender import and export armor for Oblivion'

ReteroX for his 'Evil Skeletons' mod. From him I obtained the mesh that allowed me to have skeletons with burning eye sockets. My only modification was to edit to textures so that the flames didn't clip through the helmets. Thanks for specifying in the readme that we could use your amazing work!

Trollf for two excellent mods: 'Armamentarium' and 'Artifacts'. The retextured armors my skeletons wear are his work. Again, thank you so much for letting other modders use your work!

The tutorial 'Better Retextures: Detailed Guide for NifSkope and the GIMP'. This taught me the Sobel trick, which was THE trick to make the armors look really worn out and rusty.

5. Legal

If you want to use part or my whole mod for a project of yours, please contact me first. I'm at Tesnexus and at the official forums. Nick is 'Tiny Lampe'.

These look cool - I assume making a bashed patch will let them work in a FCOM setup?

Yeah, that’s a very nice mod. I never fought about it like that.
Just to point out a little visual bug, the following models have transparent insides.

- sk_chainmail_cuirass.nif
- sk_elven_cuirass_noPauldron.nif
- sk_fur_cuirass.nif
- sk_iron_cuirass_noPauldron.nif
- sk_legion_cuirass_noPauldrons.nif
- sk_mithril_cuirass_noPauldron.nif
- sk_orcish_cuirass_noPauldrons.nif

I noticed it in one of the screenshots so I had to look at the models up close.

You can fix this by setting the textures to apply on both sides of the model.
The only problem is I forgot how to do it in NifSkope.
Hopefully someone ells will point out how to set it up.

You need to add NiStencilProperty to the mesh branches, that's what Sjors is talking about.

Also, can I suggest making worn-down/beaten/rusted/rotting textures for the armors? Seems strange that for skeletons they are wearing armors that haven't aged as much as their bones... Nevermind, I should read more

Yeah, that’s it.

1- Just open the meshes with NifSkope
2- Select the model part with the transparent inside
3- Right click on it, select Node, Attach Property
4- Select the NiStencilProperty
5- Save the mesh

Don’t forget to upload a new version for us all to use.

Thank you so much Sjors_Boomscors and ziitch for reporting the bug and helping me to fix it!

I did as instructed and I think the invisible insides are gone.

Here a couple of screenies:

http://imageshack.us/f/43/beforewv.jpg
http://imageshack.us/f/508/afterq.jpg/

Here the edited files uploaded at Forshare: http://www.4shared.com/get/Yltqdkaw/sk_cuirasses_fixed.html

Could you guys check them out and confirm that everything is OK? If it is then I'll update the mod.

Thank you!

I did not check ingame, only in NifSkope, but you did it correctly.
It should be fixed now.

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=20120

Similiar mod, but yours looks more realistic and I love the option of having normal skeletons and armored ones.

I will disable Evil and use yours thanks

Could you please update tesnexus to 1.2 asap so I can download? Thankyou. I'll keep this bookamrked until then.

Maybe as a suggestion ... integrating aspects of these mods:

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=37700 - uses resources of Khajit and Argonian Skeletons.
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=30306 - better anatomical model.
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=28176 and its add on http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=29427 - but obviously with armor that wouldn't fit quite right for the armor parts to fall apart - maybe have the limbs fall out of the armor and jaws fall off on death.

Anyway - thanks - adding this in.

Ah Psymon,

I'm honored that one of the big names here comes to my humble thread ^^

The suggestions you propose are interesting, specially 'Skeleton Diversity'. I looket at the skulls of the Argonian and Kahjit and they look great. I also noticed that they look much older/dirtier than the vanilla skeleton body. Fortunately, I found this mod to compensate: http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=8876. This brings me to a question that perhaps you may be able to answer: It would be very useful for me at this point to lean how to add dirt/a rusty look to objects (skeleton bones, the armor skeletons wear...). Wouldn't you know where I could find or who could give me some insights on this topic?

The bloody skeleton texture used to create the bloody skeletons is a default Oblivion texture (skeletonmauled.dds).

Using Photoshop usually gives a nice effect to textures, try changing colors and overlaying textures.

http://qbrushes.net/?s=blood

http://qbrushes.net/?s=rust

http://qbrushes.net/?s=scratch

I have no idea it those brushes work, I have a very old version of Photoshop.

Hey man you still havn't updated this, any news on whats going on?

bump for update?

Resurrecting the thread just to inform that Armored Skeletons has been finally updated to version 2.0

Find it at Tesnexus.

Tiny Lampe.

Edit: first post updated to show the changes that have been made.

Nice, you finally got an upgrade of this fantastic mod.
Those armors look really good.
Downloading NOW!

I think you should consider making an un-dead version as well.
The un-dead will need to wear the not- or less-rusty versions of the armors.
There not dead for that long so no rust yet, there not really dead but you get the point.

Love everything about the new version. I thought you were just retexturing the armors. These have new meshes textures, even skeleton types. Excellent.e

Thanks for the update man, adding it now.