The Imperial Undercity


http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=33465

Update
=====
It was mentioned to me that the number of lights in the Undercity Market may be causing an undesirable drop in frame rate. If you've looked around the mod please do let me know your experience with this. I want to keep the ambient feel of the mod intact, but I also do want it playable by the average player. So let me know how it ran.


Change Log
==========

0.6
===

-QUEST FINISHED! (looking for feed back on this)
================
- The first Loaded Deck Imports quest is now finished! Now with 3 possible endings. This quest will take you into the Lost Hollow's, a massive murky cave system that runs under Lake Rumare are beyond. Speak to Cassius Castello to get started if you did not do so in 0.5

-Minor bugfixes
-Some items in merchant displays were unowned.

-Sam did not have accsess to his merchant chest, this may have caused some minor incompatibility with any mod that added things to his merchant list.

-Probably something else to...


0.5
===
-NEW QUEST (Well sorta) A New NPC has been added to the Undercity. Seek out Cassius to learn about Loaded Deck Imports and take a trip down into the Lost Hollows.

-Enforcer patrols added, they don't play nice.

-Intro Quest can now be finished. Find whoever wrote the note that started the quest in the first place.

0.4
===
-NEW QUEST!
A quest has been added to enter the undercity the first time. Look around the entrance to the Market District sewers to get started. (would love feedback on the quest, lame dialogue aside)

-bugfix
There was an error that triggered the not enough money dialogue when trying to buy the Apartment, this has been fixed.

0.3
===
-Minor fixes to AI, shops run by two NPCs should transition better with out the cell reloading.
-Added new section to Apartment Complex for future NPC additions
-Included Silent NPC voice files so there's more time to read dialogue.

0.2
===
-Minor bug fix with wall collision in apartment complex
-Changed entryway to be more dramatic


Under the streets of the Imperial City there is a vast network of tunnels. The sewer systems expand as the city above does, twisting and turn turning layers built on top of layers. Who can keep track of it all, who really remembers just how expansive those dark passages are? It it works who cares right? Ignored until there's a problem, the sewers became a haven for bandits and there ilk. But what if something bigger started to take shape? What if the dregs of the city, those shunned by the world above banded together to create a new home in that lost network. And thus the Undercity was born. A city that turns away no one, from less then honest merchants, to Mythic Dawn recruiters. Skooma Dealers, to Necromancers. Thieves, Murderers, even Vampires. All are welcome wayward children return home. But the enforcers are always watching, and those who wrong there fellow outlaw are seldom seen again.

So, that's the intro out of the way. This mod adds a new city to the sewers underneath the Imperial City. The prefect refuge for any character that laughs at the law. Merchants a plenty, with an Inn and buyable apartment. However this mod is far from done, I was not planning on releasing it in any form until everything was perfect, but recent events changed my mind.

Came back to Oblivion after a long break. All my mods were out of date so I decided to do a fresh install and start over. So I grabbed all my personal mods that I've worked on and moved them to a safe place, or at least I thought I did. Turns out I missed one, this one. Data recovery tools got it back, but it was corrupted and refused to load. Had to revert to a version almost 10 months old. Luckily most of what I had done since then was scripting which A: I had saved in text documents and B: Never worked in the first damn place. But it was a wake up call that I really do want this mod to see the light of day (That, and that I really need to back up my work more often). So here it is. I'm still working on it, but this version is more or less playable. The NPCs do there thing (most of the time), the shops are all functional, there's some basic dialogue, even got a tavern room rental and buyable house working. Its going to be buggy, thats just the way it is at this point but its enough to get an idea of what this is all about.

Thats about it, take a look around and let me know what you think.

Oh, and if anyone is interested in helping with this project let me know. I'm not that great with AI in particular, I'm muddling my way through it, but its a lot of slow trial and error. I'll do it all myself, but its going to be awhile =)

-Mike

Looks cool. Can't wait to try it out!

Shameless self bump for version 0.4

Wow, this is so TES.

It looks like Bethesda did it themselves.

This mod does look very good so far.

I found a couple problems though, the market district has too many light sources, causes a major frame rate hit. Try using larger lights and non light emitting candlesticks.
I had some trouble with the main entrance, there is no way I found to open the gate at the entrance. I consoled it open then went in, the guard you need to talk to to open the door is out of reach. And the entrance seems to only work one way, once you enter you can't get out.

I also think it could use a hidden back door outside the city.

Hmm, were you actually on the quest? It should flow as follows. Pick up the note from the dead highwayman and the quest starts, this triggers the sliding door in the market district to open revealing the load door to the undercity. Then as you head down the stairs and the sliding door to that cage room open (I think this goes off regardless of quest stage). Once you enter that it locks you in and 10 seconds later the gate keeper walks over to you. After you talk to him the doors on both side of the cage room open and you are free to proceed. All of these events are based on triggers that do quest stage checks so if your not on the quest none of this would function properly. If you were on the quest however I have no idea, that is most odd. I tested it quite a few times and had a friend do the same and everything seemed to flow fine...

As to the lighting for now at least I'm not going to change much. I did the lighting the way I did to ensure that the dark underground feel was properly intact. I found that using light sources much larger then what I choose tended to throw to much light onto the ceiling and walls that should remain dark. I knew it would hurt the frame rate, but as I don't intend there to ever be any real combat or similar in there I figured "Hey screw it I'ma make this look right or why bother?". After all is said and done I may make a low end version but for now unless there's a large outcry for it, ( and this is the first time anyone has raised the issue =/ ) its not really on my todo list I'm afraid.

Anyways, thanks for the feedback and hope to hear back from you on weather or not the quest was running when you encountered those bugs.

Sorry about the quest mix up :facepalm:
I didn't fully read the change log, should probably put it in the description.

Anyway good job so far. :goodjob:

I've got the same problem, I pick up the note and the quest starts but the door remains closed. Any help?

I didn't actually have a problem, I just didn't find the note because I wasn't looking for it.

That's odd I did in 0.5 change it so that you now have to read the note to get the quest rather then your character absorbing the knowledge by touching the paper as in the last version =P
I'm checking now from a clean save to make sure its function correctly.

Edit: Seems to be running smoothly, so I'm going to assume that it was a mix up on how you need to actually read the note for the time being. Heading out for the day but do let me know if that was it.

I've tried it a few times and even started a new save, I read the note and i get the quest starter/ update but afterwards nothing. The gate just doesn't open, it's most likely something obvious that is my fault but at the moment I can't fathom what it might be.

Keep expanding on this idea of yours...I love it! And the further down you go under the city, try to make it more creepier, darker, and dungeon like. Maybe the most mentally ill people and psychopaths live at the very bottom. Cannibals even? Definitely expand this to other districts, the rest of Imperial Isle, and even under Lake Rumare...Hell...you could even expand this huge underworld underneath the entire length and breadth of Cyrodiil...THE SKY IS THE LIMIT!

I managed to get in only by deleting the door through using CS, other than that problem I think this mod is truly incredible, I could see my character never wanting to leave. I always thought the original sewers were a waste, not anymore.

A thought occurs, by the door do you by chance mean the one right in front of the dead highwayman? Because if that's the case I never changed that one its vanilla, and its still manually opened by a turn wheel on the other side. You either have to come from another sewer area (Underneath the Blood Works comes to mind). Or by breaking into the basemant of the Best Defense or the Main Ingredient and using the sewer grates found there.

If that's not the problem then I really am stumped.

As a side note I want to move that note to be found in highwayman / bandit / marauder lootlists. But not knowing much about any of that, and wanting to make testing faster just put it on the dead guy for now.

I love this new city, and its a wonderful idea but I ran across some minor things that were slightly out of place, alot of the items on display, namely shady sam and the stall by him(there was no one there) said I could take them and it wouldn't be stealing, could be conflicts with something else though. Like said before the door in the market district was a problem,although it's from the vanilla game I would suggest deleting it in the mod for simplicity, breaking in through the main ingredient was a pain, and the door to outside the walls of the imperial city is also a very good idea. The lighting wasn't a huge problem for me I was probably running around 30-45 as opposed to about 55 but still playable definitely.

Great mod cant wait to see how the rest of it develops.

I think this mod is a great idea and it seems to be coming along well so far but there's a few things that seem out of place like the apartment complex because i would think they are not all that civilized as to PAY for an apartment in a place that is supposed to house the dregs of society seems more like they should be sleeping on mats or the like in whatever place they can find. But since you clearly put effort into designing that part I would understand if you didn't want to change it all that much also renting a bed is along the same lines, you would kind of expect to just find a mat somewhere and just sleep there or something. Other than that seems right on. hope you take this in to consideration and good luck.

The items are simply a case of priority, every time I'm testing I see them and think "I really need to fix that" but then when I go back into the editor I have some bigger goal and the just get pushed aside. As to the door since I don't plan to have the quest start right there I plan to leave it. I like the idea of having to really search for the undercity that first time. All you really know is its in the sewers somewhere, and then the hunt is on. But the nice thing about that door is once you find the undercity the wheel to open it is right there so it makes return access simple and fast.




The area you can go to right now I think of as the Upper City, after I finish the intro Lost Hollows quest I'm moving onto the Slums or "Lower City". I actually want parts of that to be in the Hollows themselves, but that will be more easily seen then described. Anyways the idea is the Upper City under the protection of the Enforcers is more or less safe. I'm working on a script to make the Enforcers a bit more... alert. So Stealing or Violence of any kind in the upper city is more or less suicide regardless of how sneaky your being. By contrast the lower city slums are largely ignored by the Enforcers, so crime runs wild. As a result very few shops, maybe one or two with some strong merc guards or similar. No Inns to sleep in, no real homes (any merchants would probably have something in the back of there shops). People wandering around strung out on skooma you get the picture.

Ok sounds cool and btw I think you're on to something with this mod because your essentially creating a whole new criminal underworld that's only limited to your imagination (and the game engine i guess lol) but if you pull it off i can see people start making their own addons to expand on it. So basicly what i'm saying is this could go big time and i personally hope it does.

New version out in the next few hours with the first Lost Hollows quest finished, 3 possible outcomes! Fairly exited as this is the first complicated quest I've done ( which is part of why it took me 3 bloody days >.> ) Just finishing up the complete / reward dialogue now.

Had to share my triumph with someone and its 5AM sooo it goes here :celebration: Be back in a bit.

Edit: Zipping / Uploading now

Will test it out shortly

Haven't downloaded it as of yet, but the idea is awesome!

I mean, think about it... The Imperial City is built on top of an older Ayleid city... It might well be that in the lower reaches of the sewers, you might somehow gain access to those ancient ruins. And vampires, definitely lots of those down in the sunless dark. Not to mention undead, crime gangs... Great idea for a mod, Mad Mike.

The vanilla sewers always felt like a bit of a wasted opportunity on Bethesda's part - they could have made it a lot cooler and more interesting, but it ended up being a pretty generic set of dungeons populated with some bandits and mud crabs. But it looks like with mods like these, that problem will soon be solved

Well I've explored the new areas and did the quest.

I liked the quest and ho wit was handled, the choices made it feel less linear and restrictive than other quests. :goodjob:

I do have a problem with the art direction, shivering isles assets are very distinctive, so while you did an excellent job putting it all together it broke immersion very badly.
The rest of this mod is top notch and I'm worried that this could ruin the incredible potential this mod has.
There are many modders resources that could be used instead to make an exotic but still emmersive environment.

Best regards - Speedy

What shivering isles resources? Are you talking about the cave tileset? It's a few rocks and some vines / roots. Nothing that's either particularly distinctive or immersion breaking.

The big thing is the weapons, all together with the rocks and roots its like it just switches from Imperial sewer to Shivering isles in an instant.

I was worried at first about using SI assets, but they were prefect for the job, the rocks had that wet look, and the green top surfaces worked well for the moss/mold/slimy look. Beyond that the shape of those rocks are also ideal for custom cave building (and I refuse to use the default cave tile set, not that I think anyone would argue for it). The only way I would be willing to change it is to swap them out for the Ordered Rock sets of the same shape, but there just dull grey. I guess it would be fast enough to do the swap with search and replace but I don't know, the dementia rocks felt perfect.

That's really the problem I guess, Dementia is this really dark, foggy, wet place. And my vision of the Fog Bank is a really dark, foggy, wet place. There's no more prefect set for the job. But as I said I'll see how the Ordered grey rocks do. Though, I have a feeling the Dementia theme is here to stay, atleast in the Fog Bank. Unless someone want's to do retextures of the 2 main rock pieces I use... And I'm not holding my breath on that.


Ah the weapons and the robes as well for that matter. That I actually had half a mind to change (with the exception of the curretly unenchanted enchanted dagger you can get (Forgot to set up the scripted effect on it to have a 10% chance to strike for triple damage >.>)) It just came down to a time thing, and I really wanted to get it out and get some feedback on the quest. But yeah I'll swap out the weapons for normal iron/steel at the least.

And as for the switch, yeah its rather abrupt in that area. But the new section I'm working on is the Slums and you should see quite the blend of the two. Its going to be all built around transition sections from sewer to hollows. I was playing with it a little while yesterday while taking a break from a tricky scripting bug and yeah... Its going to look great.

I may change the transition from the warehouse into the fog bank to be a bit more drawn out. I tend to do a lot of remakes of areas after I've made something else and came up with a new trick. Hell, boot up the ESP and you can see all the old versions of stuff. The Market area is on Version 3 right now. Apartment V2, Cats Eye Tavern V4 (though the older versions are all gone). Its just how I work at these things.