Yeah...so....this is one of those feel good threads...sappy, perhaps, but seriously....

I am an old fart by gaming standards. I have been playing computer games since the days when they came on 5 1/4 floppies. I have the box (or case, nowadays) for almost every game I have ever played...all on neatly arranged on shelves in my study/library...hundreds of games...multiplayer and single player...roleplaying, wargames, online games, strategy games, shooters, etc., etc.

Recently, I have been testing my forthcoming mod with numerous different configurations of popular (and some obscure) Oblivion mods...including vanilla Oblivion. The experience has reminded me, again, that the content added by the Oblivion modding community is simply amazing and unmatched, both in terms of volume and quality. Modded Oblivion, FOR ME AT LEAST, is hands down the best single-player computer game ever created (and still being created daily)...and I know I have only scratched the surface. The choices are virtually unlimited and the adventures unending and the scenery often breathtaking. Having authored just one humble little mod, I believe I now have some appreciation for the many thousands upon thousands of hours experienced and talented Oblivion modders have devoted to creating exceptional works of art for all of us to enjoy, as well as creating wonderful modding tools for other modders to employ in the creation process and tools to help us play with all of our favorite mods running together in one game.

So...I guess I just wanted to say, 'thanks.' Thank you to all the Oblivion modders past and present for this wonderful gift that is modded Oblivion. :foodndrink:

Regards,

Hem

P.S. And, of course, thank you to Bethesda for giving us the canvas upon which to work!

Yeah, Oblivion mods can make for one of the very best gaming experiences. It's just a shame that the world of Oblivion, one of the easiest to mod games, is so very dull. You get great gameplay but no-where interesting to experience it. That's my problem at least. I'm loving the UL project though and hopefully one day the world will be crammed full of great places to explore.

I couldn't have said it better, though I share your exact sentiments Hem!

All I'll say is - Cheers and kudos to all modders! :celebration:

I agree, many great works, which easily surpasses vanilla game in terms of quality and gameplay. If not mods, I dont think I would play Oblivion nowadays. Oblivion is a ultimate RPG/fantasy simulator game constructor with fully opened world - actually the best one currently.

I still have fond memory of Crowther and Woods Adventure (or Collosal caves as it was otherwise known), usually available from rare places you could get Public Domain software for the Amiga. And the development of more advanced text parsers which brought us the wit and ingenuity of Infocom text adventures, Enchanter, Spellbreaker, Infidel and the Zork series (at the time you could also get help calling by telephone in Liverpool UK someone known only as The Grue - No internet). Magnetic scrolls Guild of Thieves was another old favourite, and they I think were the first to introduce static pictures in the upper half of the screen depicting your current location. Mapping was a case of getting a pencil and paper. Newer graphical adventures like Monkey island with a point and click interface seemed to lose a lot of atmosphere, like reading a book can sometimes be better than the film because your imagination applies more detail/feeling and association with the characters.

I must say though I am glad they advanced to where they are today, absorbing yourself into a good 3 dimensional 3rd person perspective adventure throughout a world you would never be able to experience for real is marvellous, the time and effort applied by all concerned is very much appreciated.

For the record: I hated 5 1/4 floppies, one spec of dust spelled doom to that magnetic medium. And tape loaders AAAAGH!, 25 minutes later watching coloured static only to be rewarded with....

Syntax error!

I said something similar in the TES general board.

Bethesda made this world for me to experience. Modders add so much content that I keep playing it until the next one comes out, and sometimes even longer (I still pull out Morrowind.)

The forum community is probably the least hostile I've ever been a part of, and makes Tamriel an pleasant place to spend my time. So really, I want to thank bethesda, the modders, and all you guys.

Man I could remember the very first 2 gaming computers I had, the TI99-4A and the Commodore 64! Man how Gaming PCs have truely advanced from those early days of Gaming PCs back in the 1980's to the massive PCs we now have for playing games like TES-IV: Oblivion in the 2000's! My first PC games I've ever played were Passaic on the TI99-4A and Below the Root, Montezuma's Revenge, and Aztec Challenge on the Commodore 64! Man those were the early days of PC gaming! Now, of course, I have Modded Oblivion GOTY on a Windows PC, the best gaming experience I now have.

For some reason, I thought you were a teenager - maybe it was with your reference (in some other thread) to "your old man" helped setup the computer to allow you to do some tweaking...

Wait, are there 2 people using one account (father and son)? :shifty:

Remember when you could get a game on a cassette tape? For the Comodore 64, had the tape attachment (like audio tapes). Bought a game called B1 Bomber I think. Had some text, then noise when the plane flew. Those were the times, all imagination. Now, well, you all said it.

Cheers to a great game and a great community!

Heh, my first computer was a ZX Spectrum in 1982 or 1983. Amazing how much content and playability games had at that time, given the limitation of only being able to use about 40 kb of RAM. In many ways the people making commercial games back then are the same kind of people who make mods nowadays - either one person or a small group doing all the work. Nowadays making games have become more like making movies - it takes hundreds of people and solid financial backing to make most commercial games.

Heaviliy modded Oblivion is still my best and longest gaming experience, thanks to the wonderful modders of the Oblivion community.

My first gaming experience was Super Mario Bros. on a Nintendo-clone cartridge back circa 1992 at a friend's place. I saw that, and was instantly hooked - it was all magical.

I always wondered if Mario could go to the other castles in the background, and not save the princess... well, here we have a realistic (graphics wise) looking sandbox where the player can do almost as he pleases. We've come a long way baby!

Man, now I feel really old...I remember playing Spy Hunter, Dig Dug, and text adventures like Spy vs. Spy on my Apple ][C, and loving every minute of it.

I'm actually 34 years old, so yes, my pops is 60 and that makes him old! It just so happens that we both live in the same town.

And no, we don't use the same account!

The first games I played were on the VIC20. I still crave to play Amok occasionally. ^_^
I got bored with playing them and decided to hack at the code for them.
I've been modding and programming ever since

I have a feeling you liked Doom as well. :gun:

Goodness. Yeah, I had the 5 1/4 floppies, too, but most of my favorite games were on the much higher-tech 3.5s (which my current workplace used to backup actual necessary data up until about a year and a half ago, god help us)! I was allllll about Zork; but later, I fell in love with the Sierra adventure games. Laura Bow, King's Quest, on and on and on (and of course today, you can head over to the AGS site and download dozens of amazing player-made adventure games-- the genre is not dead!).

Mmm. Now I want to run off to OldGames and start poking around again....

I'm more of a Roald Dahl fan actually. :hubbahubba:


Edit: Nellspeed - I never was much of a fan of Sierra Adventures. As soon as I played The Secret of Monkey Island I was hooked on LucasArts.

anithinks use of the word "magical" to describe his first experience with a computer game, really echos my own. I'm reminded of Arthur C. Clark's statement "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

I mean............it all just astounds me!

What we're working with is just two things, ones & zeros, or ons & offs.

I'm a big time movie fan, and that's a technology I find it far easier to get my head around. Lots of little pictures..... zipping past a light source....... projected on a screen....... to provide the illusion we escape into for a few hours.

With Oblivion we have this three dimensional illusion we can inhabit for as long as we find it desirable. It's magic. We are not starting here with lots of little pictures. Just ones & zeros. I can stand in one spot in Cyrodiil where these ones & zeros have generated trees, castles, people, weather, AI, & a whole world............all in an instant. And then I can spin around in a circle as fast as I can..........and yet never catch those ones & zeros generating that tree that was behind my back a moment ago. Yes.......magical is what describes it for me.

As a geezer gamer, I got started on an Amiga, and although I remember the first game that hooked me, I can't remember the name of it for the life of me. :blush: Monkey Island and Doom were both early favorites.

And I would have to agree with PetrusOctavianus statement "Heaviliy modded Oblivion is still my best and longest gaming experience, thanks to the wonderful modders of the Oblivion community."

Trips down memory lane :wink_smile:

I remember the ZX81, the power pack heating up to warm an entire house, the 30-40 minute wait for a game to load, or crash if the cassette players volume was slightly wrong. Adventure games where you are typing in "look north" hoping that command would be recognized, but never sure, and a series of texts later you were a little further forward in the dungeon, or at least you imagined it to be that way as there were no graphics, just imagination and patience. Then came the Sinclair spectrum and color, and graphics, and manic miner, damn that game was addictive. There was even a game that came out at the time, where if you managed to work out the final clue you rang up and a chance to win THE prize.

I had played Dungeons and Dragons board game, or similar products, at the time there was a whole host of the genre, books like "Warlock of Firetop Mountain" a die, and navigating choices through page turning.

Then for me the real revolution came.. "Dungeon Master"... to me the grandfather of the modern era of RPG, that was the first game I sat there levelling on worms and these plant things that neatly left behind wedges of them for food, and respawned, so you could practice remembered spells (no hotkeys, a series of symbols) and melee with your party. Those Knights that dual wielded or Chaos himself, it was a world I felt I could go back to a play again in a different way, and still get enjoyment from.

Zooming to now and this game, when you think about it where will we be in another 25 years, with 3d now getting more and more development, what will the games be like. And that for me is just it...

Imagine

... that one word is for me why this game and the whole TES series is why it is where it is. And why all here continue to play and mod for it, it's a bug, an enjoyment, and a feeling. The passion modders show for their visions, the imagination used, and willing to share, these are things that unite people and keep this game fuelled in our imaginations. From the smallest mod to the largest each one some-one thought about downloading or did. Some of the teams of people that combine to produce some truly outstanding work, some of the long term projects, the commitment I sit and marvel at too.

I had a discussion on TESA about what I think is fundamental to human existence, and why as people we group together or fall apart (as history shows) ..that one word is "Progress".

I personally want to thank the whole community, while not all mod, the respect shown for each other is high and welcoming. And those that do mod, I can only bow, to the power of your imagination and commitment to progress.

Thank you

You've seen the Guywood Jedi thing, yes? Very awesome.

I spent a lot of time in Sierra games dying. Sometimes, after finishing a game, I'd go back and reload saves, deliberately do something dumb, and die-- just to see the in-game comments. I remember especially repeatedly falling off a mountain path & plunging to my doom; and in a Laura Bow game, falling down an unlighted staircase and plunging to-- you guessed it-- my doom.

First time I set foot in the Oblivion world, doing the save-Kvatch thing, I was crossing from one tower to the next, on that nice, high bridge. Something startled me, I over-corrected, and promptly plunged to my doom.

Man, I LOVE this game.

(And is it really a surprise that, while designing the only adventure game I've ever actually finished making, the first thing I did was go over the plot outline and figure out ways for the main character to die?)

Thats another old favourite of mine, along with the sequel Chaos Strikes Back, and later by another company - The Eye Of The Beholder

Forgot to mention this earlier too for those that have not seen it, in development http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=30951 Zork Mod for Oblivion.

+1

I also find it amazing, constantly. So much thought, care, work, talent - and with what reward (other than having made awesome things, natch)... appreciation? :huh:

Well, if so, I'll be sure to remember to mention how much I do appreciate it, more often.

Here's to y'all brilliant modders! :foodndrink: And seriously, if I was ever in the neighbourhood, I would - were you willing, that is - buy you one of your favourite drinks, at least. Seems a pretty minor thing, yeah, but hey. It would be a way of saying "Thanks!" in person.

The first computer game I ever saw was a fight between sailing ships programmed on a cathode ray tube at the Brown University computer center in 1967. I too played the text adventure games on the university computer, at a high tech company after hours, and then on my very own CPM 8-inch floppy disk machine. I've been hooked on computer games ever since on many generations of PCs.

But modded Oblivion amazes me. I keep trying other games, but I always go back to ever-changing, ever-improving modded Oblivion.

Modders, have my heartfelt appreciation!

And maybe you guys would be interested in http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=23633.