Most excellent suggestion......will do!




Well this is still a work in progress in need of tweaking, and this NPC was set up to be that good for that one movie shot, but some NPC will be almost "that good" if they are high level and have great stats. Personally I randomize Oblivion so I get a mix of NPC when I play.

And that is exactly what takes MORE energy to do, pivoting, elevating, and critical re-RE-adjustments all take more energy. You have to remember that the force of the spell flying forward is NOT all that much. The power of the spell ball is the SPELL not the ball. How an Aspirin and a Vicodin pill effects you is a world of difference. But an aspirin tossed in your mouth has the same kinetic force as the Vicodin.

But lets not get hung up on this micro issue, I promise you that in the game you will not notice this at all. The difference in consumed magicka is minuscule. You will be way too distracted by much bigger challenges in fighting with Combat Magic to be concerned about a few points of magicka when a Plasma ball is barreling down on your PC. :toughninja:




Edit: I changed my mind on this. If I make Block cost less than Deflection, there is no reason to use deflection because it is harder to do and you may mess up doing it and get hit by the spell. So a Deflection will cost LESS to do (-5 magicka) than blocking ( -10 magicka) to reward you for taking the chance and trying to do the more difficult counter to the incomming spell.

Basically you were right and I was wrong on this game concept. Difficultly to succeed needs to be in balance with the cost to try to perform the action.

Reflection no magicka cost but very difficult to do.
Block -10 but easy to do.
deflection is between a block and a reflection so will cost -5 to magicka.

Also it is misleading for me to say "try to deflect" because this is not something you "try to do" in this mod. This is something that may happen if you fail to reflect the spell. Kind of a poorly done but halfway successful reflection. The player and the NPC have the choice to either Dodge, Reflect or Block the spell. The results of those choices can be evading the spell, stopping the spell, bouncing the spell back at the opponent or into a random direction.

Duke, have you also checked out Fearsome Magicka?=
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=30973


He does a great job of making the spells scale with your casting skills (now if only I could remove the spells per day part), which would go great with the plasma ball etc.



I like the idea of just plain using the 1 spell in your mod instead of all the other Oblivion spells. I personally HATE the Oblivion spell system of always having to buy new spells as my skills go up and having to sort through dozens of spells in my spellbook. LAME and Supreme Magicka did help reduce the problem, but they didnt solve it. Honestly Fearsome Magicka looked like the perfect fix (with spell scalling) but the cast per day limitation (and level not skill requirements) of spells completely kills the mod for me. If the author fixed that issue it would be the perfect companion to your magic mod, as both would offer scaling spells and yours would add the very cool omni shield/hand to hand/ and spell puncher (now that was cool and unexpected!).



I have also found another mod that I have never seen advertised on these forums that has similar effects as this magic mod you are working on=
http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=23813
and a videos of it in action=
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IsXqcUlv_g&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XK5A1EiFEw&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHz7LcW2NRA


It doesnt appear that this mod is being maintained so hopefully the author may give you permision to use pieces of it if you like. His 1st and 2nd videos showcase magic "dodging" and the like, which are preety cool.



Either way I am eagerly watching this mod, I wouldnt even care if it was full of bugs, it looks to fun to pass up! Open Beta testing soon? =)

Thanks for the enthusiastic support but I am not interested in copying other peoples mods. I make mods to test my game mechanics ideas (some I have had rattling around in my mind for 30 years).

Magic dodging sounds interesting however, I may have to think about how that might work in "my perfect immersion game" and then see how close I can get with modding Oblivion.

The first thing that comes to mind is of course warping from one spot to another, but that is way too cliche for my taste. Maybe something to do with speed instead. Like taking my dodging game mechanics from my Bob and Weave mod and making them a heck of a lot faster. But if I do this it will be after a finish the mod as it is now.

I hope I havent delayed the mod with ideas of magic dodging. =)


Watched your video for like the 10th time, dang it looks like fun!

oops...to late...

Your suggestion of magic dodging captivate my thoughts all day to day.
What would be "cool" and logical but not not done already to death?

How about the albino ghost twins (from the move The Matrix) where the player would un-bond their atoms for a second as an attack pass through them?

I am sure I ca do a wispy smoke like ghost effect and all I have to do is set the player to "ghost" for a half second to prevent an attack from hitting them. There is a little more work to it than that but I already have done all the necessary homework in my Bob and Weave mod.

This will probably be the easiest feature of the entire mod to make if I can get the ghost effect to look the way I want it to. I have put in over 40 hours of work (over the last few years) on creating shaders so I am confident I will get close enough to what I want it to look like.

BUT....

What is the RISK? With bob and weave you took a big risk of tripping and falling. What is the risk here?

Maybe something like a chance to really screw up your characters atoms after condensing again when dodging, and a chance to avoid adverse effects if you have more willpower.

Anyways, there are some great ideas you've come up with so far and I'm really excited about it's release!

Leold

I think the risk is inherant. While the omni shield will 100% stop the spell with ease for a minor magic cost, a missed dodge will be a full magic slap in the face. That being said "dodging" magic would only be cool if you also sped up all default magic, as Oblivion spells are very slow and easy to sidestep as is.


I think instead of dodging the spell it should be reflected back at the caster. It makes more sense to me for a powerful mage to throw your spell right back in your face rather then duck and say "a ha! you missed!". Hehehe


What if (similar to dodging) you instead INVITE the enemies spell inside of you drawing it in (this should be very risky and have a chance at blasting you backward with massive damage if not done perfectly). Once the enemies spell is absorbed you lash out with a devastating shockwave of force all around you (or forward back at the caster), this to should also require precise timing. I like the idea of absorbing the harmfull magic cat at you and then somehow unleashing it 10 fold in an amazing display of power. This should be an incredibly risky act though and require precise timing or it will backfire worse then simply letting the spell hit you in the first place.


What do you think?

P.S. I just watched your video a few more times.... Gimme! :celebration:

This would be very cool for an arcade style game fight but that is not what I am going for in my mods. But you did say something helpful, not sure how to put it in words ye. I need to think more about it.

Also I am trying one more attempt with the new OBSE commands to try to get ALL the elemental spells to be as strong as the CM spells. If it works it will slowly worm thru the game finding spells and upgrading their magnitudes a little at a time until all the normal shock, health, fire or frost spells are upgraded. However this will not help the spells that use scripting (modav and modav2) to do damage. But this will help custom spells that are using the elemental magic system to do damage.

Sounds awesome, good luck Duke. Cleaning up your spell list, one attempt at a time?

Well there are mods that allready do this like Supreme Magicka and Lame, so those could just be loaded alongside your mod. I also liek Fearsome Magicka for giving NPCs some "Holy Crap!" spells. My plan with your mod would be to just run SM & fearsome magic alongside your mod. Supreme Magicka actually even comes with a .ini file that increases (or decreases) all magic damage across the board, that is probably the command you are looking for. Ask Strategy Master what it is.


P.S. Just watched your video 3 more times, I gotta have this mod. =)

It is (practicably speaking) impossible to "amp up" the damage in scripted spells unless you do it on a case by case bases. There is no mod in the world that can read the logic in a scripted spell, find all the "harmful" actions (such as : ModAV health by 2% for the duration of a sound effect that is playing when the spell is cast. ) and then scale the damage that might be applied per some INI file dynamically. Also there is a special issue with ZERO durations spells.

That mod may be amping up "many" of the spells in the game, but certainly not "all" of them. That is just not "reasonably" possible. You may be misunderstanding the readme file for those mods.

Then on top of that there are all the vanilla potions (lets not even talk about CUSTOM potions).
Magic is not in ONE standardized format in the same way melee weapons are. So doing this is just not as easy as you might like to think.

Good news, I was able to add a little "flash of light" effect at the point of contact when the player punches. This looks cool and will tell you that your magic enhanced hits are effected your target. The Magic Dodge looks very good (as close to the matrix ghost effect as I could get.) It will give you almost complete immunity to attacks but it will cost a lot! The magic drains fast as you trigger the ghost state. so you must learn to only enact it when absolutely needed and for a as short a burst as you can (to just avoid the attack). Also you cannot attack nor move around during your ghost state in the "magic dodge".

This will be interesting to see. Earlier you put the progress of this mod at 90%, now with these new features what are we looking at? =)


I am passing my time playing the new Overhaul nehrim while I wait for your mod. It does have a cool feature of increasing your spell effectiveness by +25% when wearing no armor, which is nice and encourages robed mageplay. I was running Galerions unarmored acrobatics before in my Oblivion games as I found recasting shield spells boring, but sadly I can no longer run that mod with Oblivion XP. I certainly hope your mod is compatible with Oblivion XP, I am not sure what it takes to be compatible, I think it just needs to be able to register that the scripted spell (by the PC) killed the NPC.

This sounds awesome. From the looks of it the shield takes up a large portion of the screen, could you maybe lower it a little? Or maybe not, since the normal shields do aswell. Your choice.

Back to page 1!

Curious if there are any updates Duke. :wink_smile:

If I do not add anything more and only finish what I have now I am BACK at at 50%. Sorry but this is a difficult mod for me, normally I can kick out a combat mod in weeks but magic is just so much more complicated than the melee combat. Magic has its tentacles all through the game code/mechanics so you have to be careful about the repercussions of anything you do. Plus this is a new set of scripting commands for me to work with so I am learning as I mod magic unlike the combat related commands were I understood the scripting so well that I could do almost anything I wanted.

Also this is the time of year I make 1/3 of my income over 2 months, so I must not allow this mod to cost me money like I have done in the past when I could afford to do so.

And the cherry on top is I have a computer virus or some root kit issue, all my internet related actions are working like I have a dial up. But I cannot afford to take the time to reformat my HD at this time of year. If the carbonite back up program I purchased last year did what the company insinuated the program would do when they sold it to me it would not be a problem. But after a test I ran I found out (months ago when my connection speed was outrageously fast) reloading "everything" from their server takes a WEEK ore more. That program turned out to be only a waste of my money and dangerous false sense of security!

This mod will not be ready for RELZ for months.

I "may" have something for alpha testers after Halloween however. Meanwhile I will try to put up another YouTube showing off the new stuff.







I really am not sure what you mean, but that is probably because I do not use Oblivion XP. If is is only a simple change to my scripts I will try to fix this if you find it is an issue. But we will have to cross that bridge when we come to it.

NEW!

Punch and magic dodge movie:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LLGoyUMX2I&feature=youtube_gdata

Looks awesome, would it be possible for there to be a penalty besides magicka cost for constantly spamming the shield?
Maybe a silence for a second or something for each unsuccessful omnishield cast?

Using the shield is ESSENTIAL to the mod concept. It is like asking if I could make a penalty for spamming your hammer button when fixing your armor.

The idea of Combat Magic is to use Range and Geometry for defense instead of high health points (or low damage attacks). Then Timing and counter Geometry to penetrate those defenses.

I know this is kind of a strange concept (not familiar in these types of games) but once you try it you will see what I mean. You may have to break some old (bad) habits but in the end if I make the mod right the combat should feel more intuitive to a real fight rather than a game of math, energy levels and menu trees.

Old time gamers may not like this because it goes against years of D&D PC game concepts. So I do not expect this mod to be popular. But than I never make mods to be popular. On the other hand I have been pleasantly surprised by how many players actually do like my POC projects. :shrug:

However I am a little concerned with players using a physical shield with the omni shield. Not that it hurts anything but it looks silly! Using the OS with a blocking weapon for some reason does not look silly. But I cannot think of an easy way to make NPC prefer the OS over their real shield so I cannot change this at this time. I could just prevent players and NPC from using the OS if they have a physical shield out, but I cannot think of a good logical reason to explain this for role playing.

Very nice! One thing though is that the magic seems to drop like a stone from the dodging (somewhat expected) but also from the magically enhanced punching. I will be interested to see how this is balanced, as I would like to regularly use the unarmed punching to beat down foes. I find the remove of both rings and gloves balancing enough without high magicka costs.


The mod looks great, and I am using Nehrim to to keep me busy while this mod is being worked on. From what I have seen so far there is no amount of bugs that would keep me from using this mod, it really looks THAT good. =)

I gotcha spooky, and I'll just trust in your capable hands that it's balanced

I wonder if the Omni-shield itself is 100% ready if that can be released, with all of the other effects added on when completed.


I just finished playing some Oblivion and really felt the need for the Omni shield. As much as I would love the hand to hand changes and dodging as well (I REALLY do, i love playing unarmed monks), I feel the shield (your original concept) is what is most missing from boring Oblivion play. Casters just go down to darn easy as they have no way to defend themselves due to not having an omni shield. I have beefed up their spells (via fearsome magicka) but now I want to beef up their defenses as well. =)


Any chance you can roll out just the shield portion a bit earlier then the rest spook? :foodndrink:

Dying for an update, though I know your really busy. =)