I did read it. Empty dungeons are one variation on the dungeon theme.

How do people feel about rerouting the load doors from the exterior dungeon entrances to entirely new interior cells, as JavaCroc mentioned? Would there be any advantage/disadvantage to doing this over making massive changes to existing cells without redirecting? ie. which is the lesser of two evils?

With a redirect, there won't be any problems resulting from moving around persistent references (eg. doors, traps) because they will be unique references. If you decide to disable the mod, the door will simply redirect back to the vanilla dungeon. This will mean that other mods making changes to vanilla dungeons will have no effect on those dungeons while this mod is installed, but it also means there will be no strange conflicts between them. Of course, it also means that there will be conflicts in those exterior cells where the load doors are located.

The problem is, as I develop ideas for particular dungeons, I keep running into problems with the layout of existing dungeon levels. In order to make the dungeons make more sense thematically and functionally, they need to be changed in ways that require more than just switching a wall tile to an exit tile, plopping down a load door, and adding a level. Part of the problem with the dungeons is that the feeling of 'sameness' arises in part from the similarity in design between dungeons. I'm getting the feeling that the only way to really make these dungeons distinctive and memorable is to completely renovate many of them to make them really different.

Also, I was wondering what people thought about the idea of evolving dungeons. By that, I mean dungeons that change if the player has cleaned them out and then left for a while. Like dungeons that repopulate with the same kind of occupants, but perhaps with better defenses (additional spawns or traps); or, dungeons that acquire different occupants once the original occupants have been eliminated (or stay unpopulated). Maybe even dungeons that evolve architecturally: a tunnel collapses, a new passage is discovered by explorers, a band of goblins tunnels into the dungeon, etc. Share your thoughts.

:wub:

That is all.

4/5 deep dungeons; long, immersive quests; darker dungeons; and Vilverin as the first dungeon overhauled

At the risk of repeating myself, just reroute the exterior load door and kick all that vanilla crap to the curb; it's beyond redemption. Yes, it won't be touched by overhauls, but that's probably not really what you want anyway. You want to create a customized experience and be in control of the encounters.

As for evolving dungeons, it might be cool, like if a bunch of bandits were slain on the player's first run through it could be teeming with corpse-devouring ghouls next time. I wouldn't make it a high priority though, unless the player was actually given a reason to go back. I almost never visit a dungeon twice.

Thanks for voting. I actually think Vilverin is one of the better dungeons. It could be expanded on, but it's pretty decent as far as vanilla dungeons go. Why did you pick this one, out of curiosity?



Thanks again for all of your input. I would like to be able to work without the restraints, but I'm sure others have differing views and legitimate reasons for holding them. I'm always interested in hearing other perspectives.

As far as the evolving dungeon part of the concept goes, I think it depends somewhat on your play style. I'm an immersionist, and I use mods to slow down my progress, make combat more difficult, etc. I often leave a dungeon after exploring only a part of it and return to it later. And I've cleared out dungeons entirely and gone back. Vanilla does its own limited evolution via scaling leveled lists, but I'd like something a little more immersive than a function which basically just phones it in. Evolving dungeons might give players a reason to go back and extend gameplay a bit. It might be even more interesting if it could be designed with a random element that allows for different types of 'evolutions'. It's probably not an important feature for most people, but it's something I'll probably play around with a bit to see what I can come up with.

I know at least one person likes the idea.

I didn't respond to your poll before now because I hate dungeon dives I'm a people person and prefer doing quests to clearing a dungeon. I only clear the dungeons I have to as part of a quest. Having said all that, after reading JavaCroc's posts, well you might just entice me into more dank dungeons. I must say, if you can pull this off, you can count me in So in my voting, I opted for quests to be associated with the dungeons. I don't care what changes you make to vanilla dungeons. I also don't really have any dungeons on my peeve list, although I do like the idea of actually adding an Outlaw Endre to his dungeon!

If you need some help with this beast, let me know!

I haven't completely read all replies but here's me:

NEW ARCHITECTURE - The Lost Spires introduced new textures, new looks for the dungeons it had and this was an awesome change of view. Dungeons, disregarding the different layouts, all look identical. If you've seen one Ayleid ruin, you've seen most of what there is to see. If you went into a cave, all other caves look the same. Stalagmites/tites could be used as a sort of wall so you can see the enemy but both of you have to get around the obstacles or shoot through the cracks. Forts don't have to be weirdly-planned tunnels. Ayleid ruin cities could be actual cities with roads and some ruined buildings. Maybe I'll talk more about that later...

MEMORABLE LOCATIONS/EYE CANDY - Remember in the Lost Spires when you went into that place, that was a memorable place. IRL, we have beautiful cave system, gigantic open spaces underground. If you've ever played, for example, Guild Wars, you fight your way through a place and then suddenly you walk up to this amazing view. A dark underground cave could, for example, have a small sidepassage that leads to a beautiful underground waterfall lit by fire atronachs or weird mushrooms. A fort underground could have a spot where for example, someone was buried and their graves are heavily ornamented with guardian spirits (you could then fight). When you talk about Unnamed cave, you could refer to it as "the one with the floor made out of skulls" or "the fort with the scary sounds (like a heartbeat or less annoying... random laughter from little kids)".
A vanilla example would be the place with the great welkynd stone. That's different. Sancre Tor, that's different.

NEW/OTHER COMBAT SITUATIONS - I just played a questmod where I got into a fight with some dudes and these dudes were pretty strong. In fact, everything I threw at them failed me. I just took damage myself. That was an entirely new situation. Normally it's point and click a few times. ... But for me, I use a geometry mod which makes hits in my back basically an instant kill, so I jump around a lot and work on positioning... but one could introduce new challenges in a dungeon mod by having for example, Diablo-style, a mob that is immune to normal weapons or weapons in general, or immune to fire. YOu'd need to think and change your strategy as the old stuff doesn't work anymore.

Now I'm also reminded of that one level in Halo 1 where you have to pass through a relatively open space while enemies are pouring in from all sides, and what's worse, there's annoying dudes on ledges, you can't reach them, at least not accurately, and they're just firing away at you. How do oyu handle this? Run in and fight? Sneak and take the snipers out first? Ayleid ruin and fort architecture seems good at that type of stuff.

USE THE BREAKY PLANKS! - I'd love to see a mod that (ab)uses the breaky planks and collapsing bridges. Suddenly, goblins! lots of them! and there's a breaky plank that would seperate you from them. Etc...


Other than that, I would just like... how do I say this... "MOAR"

Oh, and before I forget... Dungeons can be dangerous... especially if you make it so something spawns... after you've cleared the level. When you clear a dungeon, and go down in levels, the area you've cleared already, it seems quite safe, empty in fact, boring even. But if you clear level 1, then clear level 2, all the way to level 5.... then walk back out... what's more fun, the boring piles of corpses you've accumulated... or a creature that followed you around but didn't attack you earlier?
Clear a fort, and as you come back up (unless you portal out with some mod...), the bandits that were out in the field, they have returned, and have fresh loot!
Make it worth going back up!

simply put, dungeon environments that are very rarely seen in oblivion. there are already far too many generic fort/cave/ruin dungeons and i would like to see more diversity in the game



i don't have a specific name in mind, but preferably dungeons near bruma and blackwood. one of the big things oblivion lacks is environmentally themed dungeons. it's always the same generic ruins/forts/caves and special dungeons are few and far between

types of dungeons i'd like to see more of:

1. ice themed dungeons, by default oblivion only has 1, there are already tilesets and many resources for frozen caves. it wouldn't be hard to simply swap out a standard cave tileset for the ice cave tile set on tesnexus in an existing dungeon(to maintain compatibility) and then expand deeper



2. wooded dungeons, underground forests and hollows, and i'm not talking about the shivering isles type. the lost spires has a fantastic example of this. there are many ways to make this work thematically while barely touching an existing dungeon: add a load door on a cave opening into a vast underground cavern, using a mix of ceiling fissures/holes and large welkynd clusters growing on objects as light sources which in turn allows for an underground forest to grow

ideally for the forest you want the weirdest Darwin-theory based creatures you can think of that would evolve in such an isolated habitat



3. suspended dungeons, a vast underground void consisting of countless small bridges, platforms, floating islands and whatever else you can think of over a bottomless pit(with many traps and kill boxes naturally) a fairly good example can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tt87phicwZA&feature=related

something that puts acrobatics to extensive use is a rarity and makes for an interesting journey

theres also a decent(but extremely small) example in Vaermina's dream dungeon consisting of a platform over a void with many hanging corpses, thats a good example of the kind of atmosphere for that



4. completely submerged caverns, real lovecraftian abyss-dweller styled underwater city ruins. theres always a severe lack of anything at all to do underwater, this is fairly easy to tie into hackdirt or alter existing dungeons on remote sections of the map(blackwood region for example) give us some use for our water breathing spells lol



5. actual dwemer dungeons, large clockwork dungeons consisting of moving machinery(there are resources in clocks of cyrodill and numerous other mods/resources on Tesnexus that could be used as well for this), countless traps, machine enemies(midas magic has fantastic examples, as well as morrowind, obviously)

mr. siika's dwemer technology: http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=18203

and his dwemer skyship: http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=20799

are both perfect places to start



i would have added volcanic themed dungeons to the list, but i think we have already seen enough of those in oblivion gates

My first reaction was "please, not an Overhaul" as that implies that you want to make sweeping changes to the existing ones, and mod compatibility is always an issue. I'd prefer that no existing dungeons were touched, and a few new entrances added in the border areas to large dungeons with associated quests. I really don't have a preference between a unifying quest for them all, or individual ones for each dungeon, but I do think a decent sized dungeon needs a storyline to go with it.

I'd have no problem with clues to the new dungeons being strategically placed in the existing ones, but that's about all that's safe. Notes, odd artifacts that seem out-of-place, that sort of thing.

Of course, finding a place to put a cave/mine entrance, or new Ayleid ruin, that hasn't already been remodeled by UL may be a problem!

But, just to contradict myself, I've always wanted to see someone take over where the Hackdirt quest leaves off. Finding a well-hidden entrance to deeper levels from those tunnels could lead to an interesting dungeon!

don't worry about whether it's UL compatible or not, remember patches can always be made and it's less of a hassle to patch after the fact than to keep track of every single edit made by UL mods

Just an idea, but as far as evolving dungeons go, you could make doors that disappear and appear based on chance - and other things like chests and enemies do the same things. If y'were to get really involved in it, you could make entire variations of dungeons that have random chances of appearing (Diablo II style).

More quests that connect dungeons crawls together. Just plain dungeon crawls for looting purposes alone can get boring. If you want looting-only dungeon crawls, change the loot you receive. That'll make it interesting.

the oblivion gates themselves already do this, often with a randomly generated oblivion worldspace, random(usually) tower and random cave(s)

In other words, having quests associated with dungeons might make dungeon-diving more appealing to you; especially if you're doing it to help someone out. I'll keep you in mind once I get a handle on how I'm going to go about it.


I've already started on some new tiles, but it's just an expansion on an existing set (and just for testing atm). Creating entirely new tile sets is a huge job (I have tremendous respect for the artists who created the vanilla sets, which are sometimes unfortunately under-appreciated) but I do plan on doing some down the road. For now, I'm focusing on expanding the original assets.

For this project, I am more interested in taking the core concept behind a dungeon (or even just the hints and small surprises contained in many of them) and building on that. Most of the vanilla dungeons feel like 'unfinished' pieces. You can definitely feel the 'time-crunch' behind them. I don't think they fail owing to a lack of originality and creativity on the part of the developers (whom I have tremendous respect for) but owing to a lack of time and resources. I'm sure all of the interior designers gnashed their teeth at a lack of assets, time, and size restrictions and would have gone 'whole hog' creating better dungeons if they'd had the opportunity.

New combat situations, traps, puzzles and environmental hazards are all on the slate. These are definitely areas where the dungeons could be improved significantly. You will hopefully see spawns engaging in more intelligent (and dangerous) routines.

Thanks for the feedback. Let me know if you have more.


These are all great ideas, and I would love to work on them all. (In fact, I'm working on one right now that is similar to one of your ideas.) Asset creation, of course, requires a huge investment in time, so, atm, I am concentrating on enhancing existing assets and will be leaving the really wild tile resources for later. As I mentioned above, I'm interested in expanding on and enhancing the vanilla dungeons, which means that, for the most part, for now, they will use vanilla resources except where I need custom pieces to complete the effect I'm going for. Of course, as the project progresses, you may start to see some of these new environments.

I think every dungeon has it's own theme, a sort of personality that is only hinted at in the vanilla versions. (In this sense, I'm referring to something beyond the particular tile set used.) In some of the dungeons, the theme is very clear. For example: Sideways cave is justly famous for being an intriguing dungeon. The story it tells is very clear and distinctive. But even some of the less popular dungeons have a story behind them. For example: Fort Urasek seems like it was adopted and modified by its goblin inhabitants specifically for the purpose of luring in and capturing greedy adventurers and brigands. There is the kernel of a real story behind that dungeon even though it is relatively small and 'incomplete'.


Compatibility is a real issue, but some sort of compatibility problem is inevitable. If I restrict myself to expanding on interiors, I can avoid issues with UL and most conflicts with mods that make changes to existing dungeons, but then I'm not solving the problem of enhancing the existing dungeons. Your mention of Hackdirt is exactly the kind of reaction I have to every vanilla dungeon. I see so many lost opportunities, and so much great potential, just as the UL landscapers see the missed opportunities and potential in vanilla landscapes. I would like to preserve the kernel, or defining characteristic of the vanilla dungeons (as I see them, anyways) but I can't really enhance them without changing them. A lot of the lost opportunities exist because of the existing architecture and these sorts of problems can't be resolved without changing them dramatically.

Of course, I can release each dungeon overhaul individually, in which case, you can simply not install dungeons that present compatibility issues, or I can release it as a monster overhaul and provide an .ini to selectively mask out potentially troublesome dungeons. I haven't really settled on the exact form of the release, so I'd be happy to hear any suggestions you may have about solving the compatibility problems. Currently, I'm leaning toward redirecting load doors to completely new dungeons, which will only result in compatibility issues with UL (though it will also render mods that modify vanilla dungeons moot).


This is actually something I've already considered. Just imagine the look on the faces of those bored, complacent players when they get hit by a trap or an unexpected spawn that wasn't there the last time they visited the dungeon.


I think variety is the key, here, as in other things. I would like to connect some of the dungeons with some sort of overarching quest, and have smaller quests associated with other dungeons. I also want dungeons that are classic 'dungeon crawls': the player hears about how large, dangerous and rewarding a particular dungeon is and about how many other adventurers have met their fate there. That should be reason enough for some dungeons.

I wouldn't use "random" word so often here. Neither caves nor towers are random. Oblivion worldspaces aren't random either. The only thing random here is that when you click on Oblivion gate it will randomly choose and teleport you to one of the seven already predefined worldspaces.

I'd like to see existing Vanilla dungeons reworked so that each of them feels unique, more than anything else.

well aside from the dwemer ruins and http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=26319 for the ice caverns, everything i suggested can be done with vanilla and shivering isles tilesets, frostcrag reborn also made an amazing dungeon using the http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16560 tileset(updated version http://sites.google.com/site/speckledguar/telvannitilesetesp where the pieces would be perfect for #2, #4 and parts of #3

so you really wouldn't have to make that many new models yourself

Edit: additional sewer tunnel sections http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=22100

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=33033 tile set, perfect for fort ruins expansions

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=26192 tileset

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=30477 ayleid tiles,

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=20068 tiles, could be useful with a retexture

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=20241 tiles based on the orrey DLC, requires the textures or you can just use the models and make your own


theres quite a bit to work with already available



well short of getting into the scripting nightmare that making a system like diablo has, thats the best oblivion has available

anyone played nehrim and seen its dungeons? all were really special with unique features that related to the quests or the area, with trains to the underworld and massive shipwrecks in mines or people cursed in a room of treasure. They also made sense, with area specific monsters and items and almost all had a special item at the bottom that was good enough to actually use rather than an iron longsowrd or with ooo, an ebony longsword of flame. If you havent played nehrim, try to imagine camorans paradice and how it was unique with the torture areas and the alied palace at the hilltop, though this would probably be equivilent to the worst dungeon in nehrim. Still, if the oblivion dungeons were like nehrim, the game would be 1000x better. Plz, plz PLZ make them like this; if sure AI can do it, im sure you can have a good go too.

This is a very good topic.
The regular dungeons well most of them are so plain and boring there is nothing special about them.
They should be very dangerous and filled with traps or other vermin
The rewards should be or shouldn't be great but I don't want to be rewarded with everything I could possible need from one dungeon crawl
Also I would like to see more entrances and exits, faction wars withing probably?
Quests don't have to be log related but it would be nice to have any dungeon related quests
Yeah I have to agree Nehrim dungeons seem to be very original and realistic, I loved going into mines in nehrim and into small caverns or abandoned construction sites, a small cave proved to be a very beautiful hiding place, but there don't have to be some extreme rewards, I would also like to see other NPC's or whatever it is go into a dungeon and take stuff from it. I want more randomness I saw a lot of it in TIE but this requires the usage of AI processing ( not the low AI processing ) I don't know what kind of impact does it have but it makes things happen without the player.
Good luck with this its a very good idea
We need a few very big and deep dungeons, but they don't have to be deep you can make them "high"
You could even connect some dungeons well I'm just giving out comments I hope everyone thinks the same or similar way

luna_panshiel seems to have a good sense of it I like it

Agreed. The poll questions seem to be focused on bigger dungeons, but what I'd really like to see is overhauled, i.e., reworked, dungeons. They don't necessarily need to be bigger, just more distinct and more interesting.

I don't feel a need for "quests" in the "something that gets entered into your logbook and requires you to complete it by accomplishing this set of tasks" sense, but the dungeons should each have at least a few features that have a specific reason for being there, whether that reason is implicit or explicit. This is something I remember Morrowind having done very well, just occasionally leaving a note or an odd feature sitting in a cave or something which hints at a larger story, but doesn't tell you the whole thing, doesn't require you to go Do A Quest to find out more, and leaves the question open as to whether the rest of the story even exists at all aside from your own attempts to fill in the missing details. There was a little of this in Daggerfall also, although that mostly seemed to be conversation entries about local politics, which I never really bothered to pay much attention to.

Changes to existing dungeons is a tricky one, given that, on the one hand, I'm more interested in seeing them made over than expanded, but, on the other, that opens the door to all manner of compatibility issues. Sadly, it may be necessary to touch them as little as possible and put all the new goodness into additional cells.

For new features, I prefer darker dungeons, but, if you can easily provide a choice to players about light levels, that's obviously the best option. Custom leveled lists and maybe a small number of new creatures or items can go a long way towards giving a dungeon a unique feel, but I'm not that concerned about new art resources (meshes/textures). I don't know anything about CDEP (have to go look that up...), so no opinion on compatibility with it.

I do not see a problem with connecting some of these to each other. Just do not connect every single one. While that would create one extremely huge dungeon, it would also get extremely confusing. I had to stop using the one mod that I know for sure does this because of both the confusion and the constant game crashing it caused.

It might be easier for you to do one big overhaul with the ability to change which dungeons the player uses in the .ini file. Both Andalaybay and The Nice One have experience with releases that allow for changes to an .ini file. Examples would be OblivionXP, Enhanced Economy, Map Marker Overhaul.

Magician! I'm rootin' for yah!

Something that popped in my head that I thought would be interesting is some work on Oblivion... yes, I said it.. OBLIVION! The scary place with that undrinkable water!

No one ever seems to talk about it, or love going there, or even acknowledge its existence. Haha
I somewhat agree.. I don't usually enjoy going there too much, but it's only because of modders' neglect of it, imo.

I think it would be awesome to have some work done to it to make it comparable and as fun as other Oblivion areas/dungeons.


Just a thought!

I had started a http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Fort_Urasek overhaul but got bogged down modeling some custom extensions to the existing tilesets. I confess that the mere thought of all of the potential compatibility issues were a huge turn off for me since I don't use a lot of mods myself and compatibility issues are not something I have a lot of experience resolving. It's easier just to create a custom world and avoid the whole nightmare. bliviongate:

I do tend to work in cycles, however, so I expect to return to work on this project sometime in the not too distant future. Glad to see there is still some interest in it.

@Arfien: I have not yet taken the plunge and tried Nehrim, yet, though I certainly plan to. The problem with being a full time modder is you don't have a lot of time left over to play other people's mods!

@Dark Hound: Yes, traps, vermin, faction wars, etc., were all part of the plan.

@ndervish: The overhaul is directed at both expanding and improving the quality and originality of dungeons. I never intended to just make them all bigger, if it's any reassurance. Still, most of them are quite small and disappointing, imo. Most of them would have been expanded to some degree or other. As far as compatibility goes, my latest plan was to use redirected doors in exterior cells. This would cause conflicts with those cells with mods like UL, etc., but I figured that one conflict was better than a lot of conflicts and then I would have the freedom to change the interiors however I like. The quest features would have been more or less as you described to avoid additional conflicts.

@Ysne58: I would not connect all of the dungeons, though I might connect one or two. CDEP uses this to connect a couple. The dungeons were going to be released as standalone mods with shared resources. That way, you could pick and choose which dungeon you wanted to install.

@Leviathan1753: David Brasher has an Oblivion plane mod but I haven't had a chance to try it yet. It's a new Oblivion plane, not an Oblivion plane overhaul, though. I actually have considered doing an Oblivion plane overhaul myself as I think (along with many other people) that they are a bit tedious. One thing at a time! (Or in my case: < 10 things at a time!)

Going to chime in with some of my ideas. I like the approach of expanding and altering, however keep alteration small in order to maintain compatibility with many other mods. This discussion has taken me back to memories of when I first played the original Legend of Zelda. I remember when you can enter almost any dungeon at any point in time however some dungeons may halt your progress by not having a specific item, in that game a step latter, candle, bombs, whatever. Now think about this, what if you only alter dungeons in small ways setting up a potential new area do be explored but these areas may require an item or items from other dungeons. Take for instance one dungeon will lead you to what appears to be a large whole into an unknown abyss but there is a door on the other side, using a couple cryslals found in other dungeons and placing them on a couple pedestals creats a new walkway. Or perhaps finding 6 tiles each with a simple from 6 other dungeons, then using those tiles to solve a puzzle opening a huge door into a new area in a dungeon. The possibilities are endless, just a small edit to a current dungeon leading to a new path with a unique chamber of passage that would then lead into a much larger section.

Quest wise I like the idea of non logged quest. Books, scrolls, items, whatever could tie a story surround several dungeons together, these details leading you to each as well as giving you hints on how to find the items needed to gain passage into them. You could even get fancy and have a special sword with a written riddle on the blade that a player would need to lay down and read to get a clue, this same sword may later be needed to be placed in a stone that would cause something to rise from the floor or a new stairway to be revealed.

Last thoughts, unique rewards. One of the things that bother me most about vanilla oblivion was lack of real unique items, there were some artifacts to be gained specially dealing with daedra but usually a good treasure lead you to a randomly named weapon with a random enchantment. I mean I am sure everyone knows of finding a steel sword with 10 frost, a silver mace with 15 fire an iron claymore with 25 fire, then finding a daedric long sword that has a dispel 5 pts. One reason why I tend to add a lot of mods to my installs that add unique items to be found and I usually like some challenge to finding such items. That being said there are a lot of great weapons and armor out there that are created by people who just don't go to any efforts to challenge the player to finding them. They can literally be found laying on the street of the imperial city. If you could get some rights to use these in your unique dungeon areas you could have good rewards waiting the player who goes through the challenges. Think about this you go through one series of books and clues through a number of dungeons and find a unique sword of light or such, this sword then can be used in the secret area of a dungeon that is fully dark filled with dark enemies, normally you would have a hard time against these enemies but with the special sword you are able to make it through and find Disciple a sword made to destroy demons, that you can then take to that dungeon you found blocked by a demon door and use it against the demons inside. Just some ideas, I think most players want unique challenges that do require some thought but they also want a unique reward for these challenges, add to that a bit of paper, rock, scissors kind of play to the unique areas and you could have a dungeon overhaul unlike any other in oblivion.

Some great ideas in there, cyruscloud. I will consider them.