It would be cool to have a spell where shards of ice would rain down on the target or shoot out of the hands of the caster. Something like falling/projected ice cicles.

Man that spell looks awesome! Can't wait to see all the other spells you're about to do. But is it possible that the wave slows the target/'s a bit? In my opinion, frost spells should freeze or slow the target somehow... just came to my mind...

Anyway, keep up the great work! :tops:

Kalamestari_69

I agree that the wave should slow targets. Drain speed maybe? That would be useful.

I have to agree that the frost wave spell looks awesome. And, maybe another way to separate the encasing ice and binding circle spells would be whether or not the player can still attack the enemy. If it's in a huge chunk of ice, it should be impossible imo for the player to damage it. I'm not sure how you could do this, maybe a collision box around the ice so the player can't hit it? With the circle spell, the player would be able to attack the enemy. Personally I think this would be plenty to distinguish them, especially if you can't make the circle bigger like Cosmar suggested. Anyway, I think this mod looks great so far and I will definitely use it when it's finished.

Looks exciting so far, can't wait to see it finished.

There's been some good ideas tossed around, and I'm going to take a look at Drain Speed for slowing tomorrow. My worry is that the Destruction hit model will detract from the appearance of the Frost Wave, but I'll see how it goes =). And shards of ice... interesting! I'll have to do some thinking about how I might implement it effectively.


I spent most of the day tracking down two (or possibly only one) insidious, game-crashing problems with a script. But as far as I can tell, I've fixed it (can no longer duplicate the crash, which occurred when completely spamming Frost Wave).


It is by no means a finished rebalance (which is on the horizon but not an immediate priority), but I did make some changes to the Encasing Ice effect. No longer will it inflict frost damage to the victim. Rather, anyone trapped inside (and by adjusting the capture radius it should only snare one person usually) will be protected from physical damage (due to the collision of the mesh, which is a bit larger now that I'm not setting its scale below 1), and will be ridiculously resistant to fire, frost, shock, poison, and magicka. So now, no Encasing Ice so that you can attack them furiously or Frost Wave from far away... they are for all intents and purposes removed from combat for the duration. I thought about even restoring their health while inside, but that might be going a bit far, and have left that part out for now.

By the way. While iwas looking this mod's spells 'n scripts in CS, an error came when i opened activator called: NMZ_FrostWave:

"Meshes\NMZ\xfrost_plume.NIF" tex not found "textures\NMZ\frost_summon_glow.dds"!

after that:

"Meshes\NMZ\xfrost_plume.NIF" tex not found "textures\NMZ\frost_summon.dds"!

and another:

"Meshes\NMZ\xfrost_plume.NIF" tex not found "textures\NMZ\frost_summon_streak.dds"!

It seems that you've missed some textures in the .rar file. Just pointed this out.

Kalamestari_69

If this is the case, maybe you could make a version of the spell which freezes the player, protecting the player from all damage, but paralyzing them in a block of ice.

Really like that Frost Wave spell, looks awesome!

Restoring their health could be interesting, but it would have extremely limited uses. Only thing I can think of is to cast it on an ally that you don't want to get hurt or to get into a fight. Or maybe to use on a hostile npc who's too powerful for you to fight, so you encase them in ice to give you time to run away.

Thanks for catching that -- I am not sure why it didn't give me errors, because even I didn't have those textures in the right place, but they should be included in the archive now.



Thanks!

Creating a variant for the player is something that I could do, however the one drawback is that they might never be able to see it themselves. Due to the way the camera works, the third person camera will zoom itself in too far. And the first person camera often won't draw things that you're inside of (for example if you 'coc "Ald-Ruhn"', and end up inside the Emperor Crab shell). But still worth trying!




Actually, in suggesting Restore Health I meant that it would be used as a downside of the spell -- you could disable them from combat for a time, but during that time they would be getting back into fighting shape.


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Edit: Updated original post. After a quick test in-game, it turns out that I was wrong... the encasing ice mesh is large enough that the camera isn't an issue! "Snowfall - Shielding Ice" is born =)

"Snowfall - Frost Incarnate" is okay, but it lacks the flair of some of the other spells. I am thinking that perhaps in addition to being immune to Frost, the player will gain high resistance to normal weapons. Ideally they would become a Frost Atronach but that's a bit too daunting for me right now. Does anyone know of a good way that I could make the player's skin look "icy" during that spell?

New spell... Ice Column! Updated original post with a description.

this is amazing
will all the spells dependent on the blizzard still work when it's naturally snowing?

maybe you could make some sort of bound weapon for Ice damage

Yep, all frost spells will work if the weather is snow or blizzard, be it natural or called by Snowfall Invocation.

Well, I guess you could add a particle effect to the player, it'll have to take the place of a shirt or something similar though.
You can find some body covering particle effects here, though you might want to change the texture to something more icy.

http://miolnir.co.uk/amael/

The new spells look great. I really like the idea of frost incarnate. These new spells, especially ice column, remind me of waterbending from the show Avatar.

One thing I'm thinking of is the getting of the book of frost. Judging from its location it would be pretty tough to get, and because most players will already be quite powerful by the time they find it, I think that should influence the magnitude/duration of the frost spells, so that finding the book will make it worthwhile to the player. Maybe even having a custom made guardian type npc/creature who you have to fight/outwit to get to it might be an interesting idea.

Thanks for the link -- I believe that I'd downloaded either that or a similar resource, but haven't looked at it yet; might be just what I needed!



Some of it is definitely influenced by Avatar, which I greatly enjoyed watching. Especially Ice Column =)


Getting to the Book of Frost certainly would be a bit daunting for low level characters, but that won't be it's permanent home, eventually I'd like to have it all wound up in a few small quests. I like the idea of the spells scaling with the player, which could be accomplished with some tweaking script-side, but for now I'll make a note of it on my to-do list rather than tackling it right away.

--

I feel like I've done a decent amount of Frost work for now... after I see about using the particle effects for Frost Incarnate, I am going to maybe try my hand at some lightning spells, or else perhaps start getting a quest for the Book of Frost in order.

The spells look great! Magic in Morrowind always seemed... lacking in some respects, but you're on the way to remedy this (being to elemental magic what Blasphemous Revenants is to necromancy).

Still, I have some questions/suggestions.

1. Will the new spells work in interiors? Seeing that they require certain weather conditions etc.
2. A personal thing - perhaps rename the "Snowfall" part of the spells to "Cryomancy"? Somehow I can easier connect it with magic of any kind
3. Could you create a nova-type spell, exploding around the player?
4. Are you looking for any quest ideas etc?

1. To be honest I haven't done any indoors testing -- some, like Encasing Ice, might even run into issues when cast inside depending upon how small the room is. I could make the spells exterior-only with a GetWindSpeed check (allowing it to work in false exteriors as well, but not regular interiors),
2. I like Snowfall, but if you want, it's easy enough to rename the spells -- I could offer an alternative ESP for you when I'm done =)
3. Nova-type spells are easy enough, but it would probably only be a simple damage spell. Figuring out if/where actors get hit and applying additional effects to them is beyond me.
4. Glad to hear any ideas that you guys might have, especially quest ideas, since I'm really not sure where to start with that... and as always, thanks for everyone's input so far!

Nah, creating additional versions for such small details would be overkill


Wouldn't expect more (well, perhaps a small slowing\paralyzing effect, but nothing extraordinary)

• The most basic spells (the nova and the invocation) could be simply taught by a mage for whom you'd do a favor (they desparately need something for their research, but cannot be bothered to get it themselves )
  
• Perhaps a frost atronach would need you to recover something from a fire-themed dungeon (with a constant fire damage applied to the player when inside) - why he can't get it himself is quite obvious
  
• The player finds a large ice wall with a human inside. Using a powerful fire spell allows to melt it, freeing said mage (the imprisonment was an effect of trying to use/develop a variant of the "Shielding Ice" invocation, which would regenerate the mage's health. alas it went wrong and kept him alive for many years - but without a way to do anything) will result in his death, but before that he thanks the player (eternal immobilazation isn't a fun thing) and teach an unique spell, or...
  
• ...reveal the location of his tower, shielded by an invisibility spell (well, at least for as long as the mage had lived ). Inside the player will have to defeat some guardians and besides a place to live find either some notes leading him to other spells, or some device/artifact which will allow for the "creation" of these spells - akin to the http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHtgOmCJpBw (You could also place some notes leading the player to certain items connected with frost - an ice staff etc)

One thing I almost forgot - will the spells be dependant on the player's skill in any school of magicka, or are they set as "always succed"? Perhaps you could even make Elementalism as a semi-skill?

Or maybe have it governed by Intelligence and/or Willpower.

Karpik: Right now the spells depend upon Alteration, and don't have "Always Succeed" checked, so they certainly can fail. That much probably won't change. And thanks for the quest ideas!


Cosmar: If I modify the spells to scale with the player, I guess I'd have to use a combination of those two scores to do so... (Intelligence + Willpower )/2 would give me the average, and based on that I could determine which variant should be cast.



Oh, and updated original post -- added Frost Nova =)

Updated OP. I've been trying to work on some interiors as well as dialogue/quests, but that stuff doesn't come as naturally to me as scripting. Maybe the quests will be just a few short errands, maybe not, but today I did some scripting for the first time in what seems like a while.


I'm decently satisfied with my frost spells for now, and had a few ideas for fire that I'd like to try out. A video is now available in the original post for the "Four Point Flare" spell. Unlike frost, which is slow and rigid, fire/lightning spells should be fluid... active, alive, and unpredictable even. Be prepared to get burned!

Oooh, I really like the new fire spell. Looks very impressive and powerful.

I was thinking it'd be interesting to give a few of these spells to some powerful enemy caster npcs, like Carecalmo or Trebonius. Something unique that sets them apart from lesser practitioners...and it would give a feeling that the player isn't the only person capable of using magic like this. (which I think is a good thing).

Perhaps call the new spell "Xfire"

Both thunderstorms and blizzards can appear at night. The sun doesn't. So, will the fire spells work at night? On an unrelated note, a few wall spells (ice/fire/lightning) would be nice.

Any interiors needed? I could help a bit with that.

You pretty much hit the nail on the head -- both my naming convention and spellcasting checks sort of break down when the other elements are weather based. My initial thought was maybe to have fire spells split by day and night (sunlight and starlight), with the names reflecting this, but I'm not sure if that's the direction that I want to take. Currently... the esp file that I'm using does only a weather check, so as long as its clear or lightly cloudy, the spell cast succeeds. And I like CrossFire, I may use that =)

The interiors offer is certainly appreciated, perhaps I can take you up on that when I've gotten a bit further along with that side of things? It took me a while to get a really simple interior together for my in-game persona (Ahren Elessedil) and I'm still getting the hang of dialogue, but even with only a few quests for the Frost line I'll definitely need some more interiors.

Edit: And wall spells should certainly be something I get to, I always liked Wall of Fire in Scripted Spells. For Frost, it positively essential since you could "wall off" with other spells, but is still something I'd like to do; for Fire and Lightning however, defensive spells will be fewer and so a good wall spell should complement them nicely.

Edit2 -- Cosmar: Good suggestion, perhaps a few select NPCs like the Telvanni Councilors and those you mentioned could have the appropriate spells distributed between them. I'd love to see Gothren hiding behind his Shielding Ice, knowing all the while that I still stood ready to destroy him...