My understanding of scripted spells is that NPCs could use them, but it would have to be separately scripted for each NPC that used it...which would be a pain in the backside. But the short answer, I believe, is yes, technically.

Right now this accurately sums it up.

I finally will have more time to work on my mod this week (past few have been hectic) but I've been doing some MWSE research before I go any further -- there are some flaws in my design that I am interested in correcting, some scripts that can certainly be improved (for instance take Circle of Fire -- right now I place lots of fire plumes, but if I took the time to do some NifSkoping maybe I could create a single mesh out of sufficient copies of the particle effect. Placing one item rather than many is far less prone to crashing), and the issue of non-player casting to address.

With MWSE and access to references, I feel like I could figure out a way to make the spells universal (or at least easy to apply to NPCs individually), but I've just written my first MWSE test scripts and there is a lot I need to learn. I'm interested also in seeing how I can use MWSE stuff to replace my touch range ExplodeSpell tricks. And I can already see that I will be faced with global scripts sooner or later if I go this way, to cycle through cell references. Much to learn =).

No updates today. But watching Lord of the Rings again is giving me some ideas...

ok, there has been a couple of references to earth magic but nothing definate. I have a couple of suggestions to consider:

- How would someone do an earthquake spell? You make everyone fall to the ground (the effect that happens when you have negative fatigue)? Mebbe make the ground a nif (cell2nif, anyone?) and have it shake?
- Maybe take the various rocks that are statics, and use them as projectiles? mebbe somehow set a rock on your fist (replace the glove mesh) for hand to hand damage?
- perhaps the petrification/turn to stone would apply here

Too bad we cannot set the ground level dynamically in-game. Just a suggestion or two.

ST

I got an idea for new spell for Book of Lightning: Lightning Storm

Like Meteor Shower, in the certain area, there is a chance of being shocked (hit by lightning).

Here would be a good resource for it (of course you have to ask author for permission to use meshes and textures): http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=7582

Kalamestari_69

I posted a link to a boulder-launching spell a few posts back (or see the OP), but no, there is not much progress on earth spells yet. As you point out, a static ground level makes a lot of potentially interesting options hard or impossible.

Knocking people down within a certain area of effect is possible by temporarily draining fatigue below zero, basically the same method I used in the boulder spell, but I don't know how good it would look since the ground can't shake. Although, MGE does have a camera shake function...



I was hoping to reuse the Meteor Shower script in exactly that way when I started doing lightning spells, but I didn't have any good resource for the strikes... thanks for the link! I'll have to contact the author and see if they're open to the idea.

:bowdown:

looks great!

Woah, the spells you made so far are crazy!

I really like most of the fire spells, and I fancy frost nova effect. Keep up! :icecream:

Also, an idea:

for ground- summon couple of rock boulders that would spin around you, maybe you could add a few leaves or branches to the effect, and ashstorm (without the blight, there is a mesh with only the "wind", no red) and boulders would spin wider and wider until they would be finally lost. Of course, anyone colliding with boulder on the way gets hammered

Also- this would be a summon spell, but if you like it you might make it ground/fire/whatever, so technically, you use mesh of any creature, and stick any texture you want to it. For example, for ground spell, you make a smaller wolf with rock-only texture, and spell effect summons a small pack of those. Or take a bull netch, stick some lightning effect texture to them, make them partially transparent (or completely, and only some parts visible, or make them look like clouds, anything that falls on your mind) and have it shoot thunder bolts all around. Also, I suppose you don't plan that, but another suggestion is- I had this mod in the making that also changed the spells, use of magic and names of magic skills. Elemental skills had their own section, and aside from elemental damage and shield, skill also governed summoning of appropriate atronach. So summoning fire atronach was Elemental skill.

Another ground one could perhaps be- shot a seed ball on the enemy, and who gets hit, it grows some vines, roots, and poison ivy around him. You could also add poison effect.

Ground spell again when you cast the spell it "countdowns" or something, creating numerous rock spikes surrounding you in all directions, and then rapidly shoot them out. Minor version could be couple of spikes that would only appear in front of you and then be rapidly shot out.

I had more on my mind for my mod, but can't remember them right now. Of course I never made my ideas, since I will never be able to script such a thing, so I might as well share it with you.

Oh, and hey, when you finish this, any plans for other spell crafting, like necromancy spells? (like bone walls, and stuff )

I grant you permission to use and edit my lightning mesh and texture. There you go =)

Great ideas! I'll have to add them to the list... the ground spikes especially caught my eye (Alex Louis Armstrong, anyone?).




Well that was easy... thanks!


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Back to editing old scripts...


Edit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9EnISLy3wo. Courtesy of C_Mireneye =).

Added a compilation video showcasing a lot of the work to date, since there are now a fair number of spells with videos to sift through. I had a lot of fun taking down Fort Frostmoth with my headless, uber, test character: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvA4XB8UtjQ

Whoa that's awesome! Seriously I'm so happy I decided to play a mage =)

This may not be directly related to elemental magic, suffice to say some ideas inspired by Deus Ex:
*Drones, functions they can have is: Siphon health from other and give to you, in case of companions this should not cause them to attack you (IMO). Or drones that transform bodies into health. Or Drones that siphon magic (basically put's a drain on them and something that adds to you).

The lightning strikes look awesome! But are they deadly though? Seems like they don't hit anything. :confused:

More ideas always welcome =). And when Elemental Magicka is "finished," it might well become the base of a more ambitious project anyway... who knows :shrug:





No, indeed, the lightning is not very deadly right now. I've increased the spell radius slightly, and will probably increase the damage ultimately, but for now it's fine. The lightning can strike anywhere within a thousand units of where you cast the spell, so there's really no telling if it will be helpful or not. The mechanics might change but the randomness element will always remain (though I might create a version that just drops a single bolt in a known direction, perhaps).

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTP1qWu_OAk -- call spikes from the earth, and weaken your enemies to normal weapons for the duration.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2JvFd_Ules -- raise a column of stone from the earth, lifting opponent's into the air! Fall damage and knockdown likely to result.

I like these, but two comments. One, I think the stone spikes could use a better texture. Two, I think a non-aggressive version of Pillar of Stone could be really cool. You know, use it in place of a jump spell to get to high places.

1) I accept all resource donations . I'm no texturer, so I just pointed it to the first acceptably stone-ish texture that I found on the CS disk. So if you had something specific in mind or know of a good resource that has an open license for reuse, let me know!

2) Currently frost can do that (Ice Column spell) but rest assured, Earth will get there too =)

Glad to see you're considering MWSE. You'll be glad you converted.

There are some people (like me) with whom MWSE doesn't play nice with. I'll love you forever if you release a "lite" version or whatever that doesn't use MWSE.

This.

Somehow, MWSE always likes to destroy my saves when I'm halfway through them.

I'm not Westly or Connary or AOF, but I'll see what I can do. Also, glad to hear that Earth will get a nice column spell.

The lightning effect is what I've always dreamed of.

IS there a way to create a force lightning type spell with lightning randomly shooting out of your hands until the magicka runs out or you take your finger off attack or something?

Really loving the way this is developing. Another lightning idea: Chained Lightning - fire it an opponent and if there's another enemy within a distance of x then it leaps to them (if more than one then random check), then another distance check and leaps to another (ideally different) person. For balance I guess this should be quite a weak damage spell. Also the number of different opponents it'll leap to could be a function of a player's appropriate magic skill, or perhaps there're different versions with a greater magicka cost. Or something.

An idea for an earth spell would be a Stone Circle - a defensive spell that traps an opponent in an circle of stone for x amount of time.

What about Boulder Rain? Rocks come flying up out of the ground and into the air and then rain down on the local area, shattering into shards of stone as they hit the ground.

Or Quickstone (like quicksand) opponents sink a little way into the earth so they cannot move, but they can still fire marksman weapons and cast spells

Stonestorm (sandstorm) - opponent's vision is obscured so they can't see the player and wander aimlessly until the effect wears off

No idea how feasible any of these are. keep up the good work :thumbsup:

[Edit - Some texture resources:
http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=4994
http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=4392
http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=4412]

You may also want to try http://www.cgtextures.com/, particularly the http://www.cgtextures.com/textures.php?t=browse&q=355 and http://www.cgtextures.com/ sections.

Even with the approximative methods that I'd adopted in my scripts, it's too true, there are so many limitations that aren't easily overcome. MWSE does extend my reach a bit.






Due to concerns like these I had devised the following plan: release the final mod as an ESM, and have an add-on for the extra MWSE functionality. At this point the "extra" functionality that I've been testing is really something a lot of players would consider critical -- the ability of NPCs to recognize that they should enter combat with the player when hit by the scripted spells. Just can't do it without access to references, even large-area Frenzy spell effects haven't worked in testing (with the obvious downside, too, that they add an unwanted visual).

For those not wanting the MWSE addon, they'll be free to do without it, but will have to restrain themselves a bit (only cast a lot of the spells against NPCs that you're already in combat with, negating the issue).




Okay, looking forward to it . That's the thing with some of these -- I can get the script to do what I want, but the spell can still look mediocre at best when I don't think of a flashy enough resource.



Something like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ffh5qM4Ko5U spell? I could probably create a variant that will fire repeatedly or randomly or something, draining mana at each discharge. (thanks again for the mesh/texture, C_Mireneye)



Thanks for the ideas/resources! At a glance:

1) Chained Lightning: Something that I've been considering how to tackle. I could definitely create a variant of Boulder that would split upon collision and break off into fragments at random vectors, for instance, but lightning presents two different problems. First, it would be a bit complex (even with MWSE, without it, impossible) to find the next NPC for it to "jump" to. Second, the visual wouldn't look right the way I currently have an idea of how to do it. Although, if I elongated the mesh to the maximum "jump" distance and had the texture "scroll" across the lightning billboard... that could work...

2) Stone circle: Definitely on the horizon.

3) Boulder rain: Sure, why not ? This one has caused me to realize (with shame) that in Meteor Shower / Hail Storm I used piecewise Move functions rather than continuous, constant-acceleration Set functions for position. I'll have to fix the parametrization on those two, and then the boulder rain should be fairly straightforward.

4) Quicksand: Sadly, haven't been able to get anything like this to work yet. Too bad about the static ground level...

5) Stonestorm: I was actually thinking that if I could attach one instance of a rotated ash storm mesh (rather than filling the entire camera it would just follow a single reference around) to an NPC, along with some combination of blind and demoralize, that'd work decently. I'll have to see if that works or not...



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Somewhat open question: Can blender export particle effects into Morrowind .NIFs? I wanted to do a little bit of exploring :flamethrower:

No, only 3ds Max 4.2/5 with the TEsixporter plugin can export particles.