This sounds awesome. I definitely like the idea of more unique dungeons. And evolving dungeons, that's genius. But, especially more unique dungeons. There have been a lot of great suggestions here, and I think any suggestions I have would just be repeating someone else. I will emphatically agree with andalaybay's attitude toward dungeon crawling; I don't care for it unless there is a reason for it. But, if the dungeon told a story, without a quest, it would still be awesome. Really, that just seems like an informal quest to me.

TheMagician I think you should make new dungeons instead of altering the regular ones, it will only lead to conflict as you already know yourself. So I encourage you to make new dungeons however.. the question is.. where?
I honestly don't know what to say, but take a look at those dungeons from unique landscapes they are waiting to be altered well since the last time I saw them, they were just simple landscape and terrain they didn't do much about them but its not like they had to. I was thinking of the mountains there aren't many dungeons there, and in the waters too. I also think that you should see about them not interfering with Unique landscapes since I know many people use. Also you might want to make some dungeons within the cities.. or underneath them? A big haunted house maybe? I'm just shooting random things that I thought of , there is also the land near the borders which is mostly unused. A lot of people should still play FCOM/ OOO both of them have a lot of new dungeons, especially the OOO part. But you shouldn't worry about conflicts first you can just fix those problems later. Did you know that there is a abandoned house south-east of Skingrad near the southern border, its infested by bandits and its not even marked which is very strange. Like I said not every dungeon has to be underground, at least in my opinion. I got plenty of ideas flowing in I just don't know if I should let them out?

@dike_j: With each dungeon that I overhaul, I'm going to try to preserve what was unique or distinctive about it and build on that, elaborating on the vanilla dungeon to give it some character and history. Hopefully, when you explore an overhauled dungeon, you will say, "Hey, this dungeon is cooler than I remember it being". The objective is to make exploring vanilla dungeons more engaging, just as Unique Landscapes makes wandering around in the wilderness more engaging.

@Dark Hound: Well, the goal is to overhaul the vanilla dungeons, not add new ones (doesn't mean I won't add any but it won't be the focus of the mod). There are going to be conflicts either way. Hopefully the overhauled dungeons will be different enough from each other to make exploring them interesting again for jaded players.

I've been doing some concepting and coming up with lore extensions to better tie the dungeons into Tamriel's history and to provide some quest-like features. I say 'quest-like' because most of these features will be discovered during the course of exploration, not initiated by a conversation with an NPC (though there may be some of that as well). Basically, while exploring the dungeons, you will occasionally glean insights into the motivations and character of the dungeon's inhabitants, a bit of its history, and its relation to other dungeons. There will be narrative connections between certain dungeons. Also, these narrative subtexts can be used to form the basis of dungeon evolution as the story of the dungeon and its inhabitants 'unfolds'.

I'd like some help with two aspects of this mod which only requires that people share their knowledge:

• lore related to any dungeon, or any of the factions inhabiting any of the dungeons (bandits, marauders, goblins, etc.). Links would be useful.
  
• a list of mods that make changes to vanilla dungeons so that I can either avoid them or make changes/patches where necessary. Again, links will make my job easier. These can be mods that incorporate dungeons into quests, or change leveled lists, etc. (I don't use any of the big overhauls, so I don't know exactly how they change creature spawns in dungeons.)

I'm still interested in people's input and suggestions and any advice that people may have about dealing with compatibility issues so chime in if you have an opinion.

Edit: What do people think about custom crates, barrels, etc., that can be picked up and moved around for physics puzzles and such?

You could rename this thread UNIQUE DUNGEONS

- Vilverin seems to be a popular dungeon for mods to mess with. But, then, it's one of the few that already has a bit of a story within it, so it probably wouldn't be a high priority for this kind of treatment anyhow.

- The http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=27583 series of mods (link is to the latest in the series, which is a superset of the earlier entries, so you should only need to look at this one) adds potential "captive" spawns to a large number of dungeons.

- Although I no longer use it, I seem to recall that http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=5521 has an option to place "hidden" weapons in several dungeons.

And then there are all the miscellaneous weapon/clothing mods which pick a dungeon at random and add a chest/bag containing the mod's items instead of putting them into loot lists...

As stated above Vilverin... is a strange place inhabited by bandits its a dungeon that so far in my opinion doesn't need any changes. I guess I should put the next sentences in a spoiler [spoiler]In the first level of Vilverin the place is controlled by bandits who appear to have a leader, they also appear to go around collecting ayleid welkynd stones as shown in the ringleaders chamber, it is also shown that the ringleader wrote a letter? scroll? diary? whatever it is it contains names of some bandits and the goal of these bandits, not to mention that they wanted to sell the welkynd stones to the mages guild. They have food crates, clothing and some other items which makes me think they have setteled there for good. Upon going further into the dungeon in the next level there appears to be a man by himself who was supposed to be with another khajiit I think, after going further I discovered that the khajiit was dead and that the deeper parts of the ruin is infested with undead and where is undead there should be a necromancer or something worse. There is a locked gate which can be unlocked with a key that can be found within the ruin and there appears to be a few cells in a part of the ruin that were used by the necromancer as a prison. In the last level of the dungeon there is a room in which resides the necromancer, close to the exit yet far from the entrance. The necromancer's name is Gilbert I think and he also wrote a letter for someone. I have a feeling that this was meant to be something but was stopped.. By far the most interesting dungeon or ruin of them all.

I don't really know or remember much about other dungeons but most of them had something..whatever it was I gotta go trough all the dungeons again to see it all

I think wikipedia should have some good info about the dungeons
I think I would like to have movable crates and barrels sounds good to me
Regarding TIE Arthmoor should be able to provide you with info about conflicts
Edit: The Ayleid Steps would probably conflict with this if the rooms are moved or altered to be bigger or smaller depending on where the steps are placed, so it would probably be a good idea not to move the architecture too much

The only Ayleid Steps in that dungeon are in the room with the dead Khajiit.

We are not talking about one dungeon only...

Toured trough Fort Virtue and Fanacasecul they both seem to be tombs infested with undead and about Fanacasecul it was guarded by some bandits, no notes shown or anything but they were camping there waiting for something maybe they are supposed to be tomb raiders? Who knows checked out those two so far they are on the western side slightly south of the IC bridge and along the coastline.
They don't appear to be big, they appear to be one level dungeons..

I

I'm glad you clarified that. I believe there are steps in just about every cave/fort/dungeon in vanilla Oblivion. You can also find them in quite a few houses, ayleid wells.....

Ok lets be serious... you can find them absolutely anywhere! I even found them high up in the mountains, within castles, ..

@Dark Hound: I don't need descriptions of the dungeons, just the names of mods that make changes to dungeons and lore related to the dungeons and the factions inhabiting them. Wouldn't want you spoiling anyone's adventure, now would we? A lot of us modders have only played half the game.

@Ysne58: Thanks for the heads up. That could be a problem, but it should be easy to patch.

Dark Hound is right, those steps are all over the place. I would recommend pming Ervvyn and working with him on any patch, he has worked very, very hard to keep his mod as compatible as possible. I'm sure he would be happy to describe any steps you need to take with patching. His mod really does make my game more interesting.

Don't forget about that CDEP project as well. I did download the one that includes Fanascul, Haynote Cave and Cetatar to check it out, it looks interesting.

Ervvin has quit modding for a long time already, though I still see him hanging around on Nexus. You can refer to the http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16316 under the optional files for a list of all the steps, it's quite staggering how extensive they are.

Could you work on any dungeons that have ZERO inhabitants? I remember, somewhere out in western Cyrodiil, there was a dungeon that only had traps in it...with the occasional wild beast.

One overhaul option that would avoid incompatibility issues would be to expand the dungeons in a variety of ways:

Your movable crate idea uncovers a previously hidden door, hallway, hole in the wall.

The good old collapsing floor grate that takes you to a new area.

I'd really like to see the B movie cliche with the bookcase that operates as a door when the right switch is discovered.

Keys found in newly expanded areas could open quite visible but locked doors in other dungeons, and lead to new expansions there.

In any case, I am a big time dungeon crawling fan, so wish you well in this effort. :thumbsup:

Yes... When reinstalling Ayleid Steps recently after a couple years away from the game, I was a bit put off by how pervasive they've become. I thought they were supposed to be these utterly mysterious, unknown artifacts that nobody is able to study effectively - and yet there are a couple of them in plain view in the IC market district?!? At times, it seems like you can hardly walk two steps without tripping over five of these "mysterious" stones...

I'd like to see more colorful textures in some dungeons. For example, this is a real life cave texture I found in about 1 minute of searching.
http://www.nationalparkstraveler.com/2008/10/park-history-timpanogos-cave-national-monument
and a colorful salt mine cavern:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/karelman/3430678540/
Carlsbad Caverns National Park:
http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/places/photos/photo_carlsbad_carlsbad.html
Fire colored stalactite:
http://ca.water.usgs.gov/mercury/images/red7.jpg
I once saw a beautiful picture of a deep red/blood colored cave formation that was apparently caused by mineral deposits. I have also seen some charcoal and black colored stalactites and stalagmites in pictures as well as bright yellows and even blues. http://wasg.iinet.net.au/images/scan0002s.jpg
Unfortunately those were mined for sale and the cave probably stripped.

Then there are manmade additions. Often humans (and presumably other Oblivion humanoids would do this) make paintings, carvings, or other markings in caves and dungeons. In Oblivion we have conjurer dungeons. Those people are mages. I imagine they might use magic to decorate their homes. Here is what a famous Chinese cave looks like with artificial colored lighting:
http://www.china-tour.cn/China-Pictures/Reed_Flute_Cave.htm
I'm thinking mages might do something similar with magic.

I don't think we should worry about the textures first... well its TheMagician's call..

@TheMagician
Sorry about that I am already aware of what you said is true.. I forgot to put the spoiler window...
I'm just gonna check which factions inhabit which dungeon and if any quests are related to them?
Well OOO alters lets see Vilverin or at least puts something inside, OOO pretty much made the dungeons interesting again as it is but if people are really interested on the compability issues then.. we could integrate that too. I myself use TIE and Arthmoor said that there should be conflicts, hopefully you won't alter the spawn locations much or maybe we're just gonna have to plan this out carefully. I also use Cava Obscura which makes dungeons darker and I like that. We already mentioned the Ayleid steps.. I also use the old Real Lights.
I guess FCOM and MMM and OOO and Fran's would have conflicts with this mod altering regular dungeons tooooooooooo much..
There should be a lot of other mods but I don't know if many people play them. Possible conflicts with Thieves Arsenal, any mod that alter some of the Daedric quests, Mages guild and Fighters guild mods.
OOO did add a lot of new dungeons to the game and I don't remember OOO altering much of the existant dungeons with any architecture changes, the same should go for MMM and FCOM, however TIE I believe there were some small changes.
EDIT: Forgot to mention Oblivifall and Runeskulls

@Ysne58: I'll have to take a good look at this mod. I didn't realize how extensive it was. I have not forgotten about CDEP.

@omeletted: Thanks for the heads up. It seems that Ervvin is still supporting his mod, even though he has stopped modding, so hopefully he can give me some advice on the matter.

@richardrocket009: A dungeon with only traps? Sounds like a good idea to me.

@garx: I'm looking at different ways to overhaul the dungeons. I'm leaning toward a combination of techniques, depending on the dungeon: some dungeons will probably use door redirects when I want to completely change the layout; others will probably use one of the methods you've suggested or something similar and just add a door or hidden passage of some sort. I'd like this mod to be compatible when possible, but if I have to choose between compatibility and quality, I'm going to go for quality. Hopefully I can enhance your dungeon-delving experience!

@Telyn: I'd love to design a new cave tileset or two with realistic models and textures (real caves are quite beautiful and complex) but that's pretty low on the list of priorities atm. Retexes are possible, but that's something that will probably come later unless a good texture artist offers to help. I would like to make the spell-caster dungeons a little more magicky, though.

@Dark Hound: FCOM, MMM, and OOO spawns aren't high on my list of concerns. If all these mods are doing to a vanilla dungeon is adding or changing the spawns, I don't feel bad about overwriting those changes with my own spawns. The spawns are an important part of the dungeon and I don't want other mods messing with that. You will still get all those spawns with all the unaltered dungeons, so players will barely even notice the difference. Same goes for loot drops. If TIE is making architectural changes to the cells, that's something I'll have to look into. I'll have to look into the other mods as I'm not familiar with them.

As far as the lighting goes, it will probably be very similar to Cava Obscura.

I'm glad to hear that. I came up with something you might find amusing, maybe you already had an idea about this.. What if there was at least one dungeon that requires a way to cheat the limit of breathing ( high athletics , alteration and an item ), A dungeon that's flooded and its very deep? Its just an example but it would make great use of water breathing and such.
I'm hoping to see some dark dungeons because of the stealth players and immersion. Also I use a mod called Dungeon Actor carry torches ( which means that bandits, marauders, conjurers, necromancers,... except for vampires or what else..) and exterior actors carry torches these mods are very useful gives more immersion to the game when I'm inside a dark dungeon or when its dark outside. I'm just hoping that some dungeons like caves won't be lighted too much so that a thief can't do anything inside.
Also about compability I was thinking of making the mod itself first if your NPC's for example aren't hardcoe and/or leveled, you keep the mod then add some patches in which you make the mod require another mod as a master etc.
About the dungeons I'm hoping you're gonna make them as unique as possible, so they don't all have to be caves/ruins/forts . You could do underground facilities or anything that crosses your mind. I'm just throwing some ideas I hope you like them

That might be the case for MMM but definitely not for OOO. OOO adds new enemy factions to lots of dungeons so it will definitely be noticeable if, say, the Guardians of Oblivion or Amazons are swapped out to something else. In many cases it will "break OOO" as notes etc. points to certain dungeons, so if those suddenly have different enemies it will make no sense. Also, OOO adds containers to most if not all dungeons, so that is another compatibility issue if making changes to them. Not saying it should be highest of your priorities, just that OOO certainly does more than just adding/changing spawns - and the spawn changes is an important part of it.

It all depends on if the existant characters/NPC's will be altered or creatures and if that happens putting it before the desired overhaul like OOO shouldn't cause any problems I just wonder if the dungeons will go back to being themselves or will they be overwritten by vanilla dungeons yet again
Maybe by using the bashed patch we could make the desired cell modifier mod have a bigger priority over the other cell modifier mod?

@Arkngt: That's great information, thanks. I had no idea that OOO made so many changes. I guess that means FCOM incorporates those changes as well, correct? That presents a bit of a problem. Creature and loot spawns are an integral part of dungeon design (as I see it, anyway) so I'm not going to be able to make unique dungeons that are compatible with these big overhauls.

By using door redirects, I can avoid compatibility issues with these mods (it won't change any of the changes they make to vanilla dungeons) but the player will be faced with an either/or decision: if they install my mod, it will 'hide' any changes made by one of these overhauls (or any other mod, for that matter) for that specific dungeon, potentially 'breaking' it, as you mentioned. Fortunately, if they deactivate my mod, all of those changes will be restored.

I guess my mod is similar to these overhauls in a way, since I'd planned on extending creature and loot variety, boosting NPC AI, and generally making the dungeons more challenging as part of the overhaul. I think that players who use these mods to make dungeons more diverse and challenging will get an equal amount of diversity and challenge from using one of my dungeons, but the creature and loot spawns will be targeted specifically to that dungeon. You could think of these overhauls as great background platforms that change the general feel of the game and my own dungeons as little islands of additional immersive intensity within them. They might 'break' certain components, but won't break any of the overhauls as a whole (unless there are quests associated with the overhauls that depend on the vanilla dungeons; another issue that just occurred to me :ermm: ).

@Dark Hound: I had planned on changing the creature and the loot spawns, as well as the layout, so I don't think there's any hope for direct compatibility between these mods. The best solution I can see is to provide patches that accommodate the most important changes. The whole point of the dungeon overhaul is to make each dungeon unique and challenging in a way that makes sense and that is supported by lore; in other words, to extend the vanilla game in a way that it could, feasibly, have been extended had the developers had the time and resources to do so. I don't see any way to achieve this goal and 100% compatibility at the same time. The big overhauls try to address this problem by changing spawns and AI generally across the board but unless I'm mistaken they're not trying to make the dungeons themselves better in terms of design and interest.

There could be a solution to the loot compability. By abusing Item Interchange.