I've found Wrye Shivering Death does a damn fine job at death tracking. Which is to say, COBL does a damn fine job at death tracking.
I've more or less figured out that it sets the player to be a essential character, then when you get knocked out, it knows that you are via some OBSE scripting(IIRC), then allows the mod using the script to move the player to the right place(in this case, a different worldspace called Waters of Oblivion).

I remember them asking for something along the lines of a OBSE script called GetEssentialActorUnconscious, which would allow them to know without fail if the PC has been knocked out. I don't remember if the command was added, but I'm guessing it was.

That´s very interesting! I had no idea the player could safely be set to essential!


I mean if that works THAT easily, I´ll substitute my system for it instantly, I can´t imagine a better solution than that.


EDIT: Yup, works. Well that just made things perfect!

EDIT2: No, wait...there´s the old camera problem...I thought there was something in every one of these intuitive approaches. Probably fixable, but then I don´t know if there´s a 100% reliable method. In any case this is exactly the kind of hassle I´m aiming to avoid.

Great! I've been looking for a mod that does just this for a Race/Character I recently created.

http://img138.imageshack.us/img138/6816/screenshot210.png

Sounds like a great idea, i'll definatly check it out

Though in some places it could be more irritating

I can imagine crawling to the end of a dungeon and respawning in a house having to do it all over again could get annoying - but then, why should dying be pleasant. [img]http://static.zenimax.com/forums/images/public/style_emoticons/default/happy.gif[/img]

Wow, what race is that? I?ll try to post a beta tonight, if you want you can test it out.

I never actually new anything about Cobl having a death handling system, never really looked into this type of mods. Now that I know it has one, I feel I should use it, I have to assume it?s bug free if it has been in Cobl all this time.

So I?ll probably still have to do that, I realised there?s a slight chance for my min-health forcing system clashing with for example Simple Essentials, which caps the maximum health via similar script if the player has not been eating. While it would take a long time not eating for the conflict to occur, it?s still a conflict and it would be silly to make two mods that conflict together.



Well if you "died" fighting the last Boss, he would be waiting there - ALONE - for your revenge. You don?t lose the progress from getting to the point you "died" at.

Well, now my system uses Cobl?s death handling - I?m always for this kind of common handling systems, and I must I admire the way it?s set to even handle conficts between two mods trying to utilize at the same time.


I tought of one last possible option to add to this mod. This gives an option to have extra motivation for the soul beacon, and serves as an alternative default with the "last place you slept in" system.

If you die, and you didn?t buy the beacon and use it, your mortal butt is not saved and you end up in a random Oblivion plane. Of course, as normal some of your stuff (if you configured it so) will be looted as normal, so good luck coming back to get your revenge.


Now I don?t even know if I can do this, but I?ll look into it. If you exit the plane, THEN you end up where you last slept. But this will be purely optional.

I'm really digging the Diablo style deaths. Get sent back to town and find your corpse to retrieve stuff. Do want.

I'd love to put it in my vampire mod Unholy Darkness so as long as your master is alive, they sense you are in danger and come to save you. Since vampires regenerate back from negative hit point situations, as long as they are not beheaded & staked... you would merely be unconscious while I bring in the lightning speed elder vampire to clean up the mess you got in.

Or the bad guys wander off thinking you are dead and go about their business. Then you wake up after your regeneration brings you back to 1 health.

I can do all the stuff I'm talking about, I just need your secret anti actual death code and the new fake health bar.

Its funny because I thought of that the other day then I see this thread. just had no idea how to keep the player's health at 25% no matter what.

I?m not actually using it anymore, using Cobl?s death handling now.

I think I?m content with the features now, especially since they are all configurable, and play together nicely.


I implemented the Oblivion plain option. This means that if you use the option, without Soul Beacon bought and left somewhere to save you when you need it, the Javs of Oblivion will grab your dying carcass. bliviongate:

You wake up all hazy on a random Oblivion plane, and we all know what?s the only way to get out. If you die while on the plain, you end up where you started on the plain. There?s only one way to get out, as stated.


Now if you selected to lose equipment in the INI (to hunt it down later), it may add *some* extra difficulty if it happened that your killers took your best weapon. It?s totally random, so it?s quite a thrill to check with what equipment you are left with, considering you have to fight your way out. :toughninja:

Then also with every death on the plain some of your equipment may get left to where you "died" on the plain. So it gets harder before it gets easier.


When you get out of the plain, you appear in the last exterior cell in Tamriel you had visited. "Now, time to take care of those goblins who had my sword all this time..."



If you don?t choose to use the Oblivion plain option, then without a soul beacon death will mean ending up in the last place you slept in.

It?s really all so fluid, I?m very happy with how this went.

I've got to see this. I made a terribly buggy death/corpse retrieval mod a couple of years ago with cobl. Just got back into oblivion a few weeks ago and rebuilt it from scratch such that it works, and I've been testing it with FCOM to decide if it's worth releasing. There are some things I want to bring up, because I never get a chance to discuss this with anyone who will know what I'm talking about:

1. Nobody has figured out how to fix the camera issue in 3 years since cobl got a death handler.

2. Additionally I would like to find out if Wrye ever fixed the issue where the player would regain health after a killing blow before the handler noticed he was dead. I fixed this by setting fEssentialHealthPercentRegain to 0 and checking to see if the player's knockedstate was equal to 1 && his fatigue was > 0 (sorry for speaking in pseudo code). Of course, this approach is not without its caveats - notably your companions getting back up from unconscious with like 1 health instead of the default 25%

3. I also want to see how you're placing the death chest. In the death mod I'm currently testing the method is to pick the first available of 28 premade "corpse actors" from a dummy cell and move them to the player's death location (this is how reznod mannequins works too). I had to make them actors because I couldn't get any other object type to respond to 'moveTo' multiple times.

PS: If you're going to seriously playtest this I suggest you get the fabulous "Gold Coin Bagger" http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=7452 so that you can stash your gold in a lair of some sort.

PPS: If you've read this far and you're not SkyCaptain, please post some examples of POSITIVE experiences you've actually had with a death mod, because mine are limited to things like "you open a trapped chest and die" and "you leave 10 corpses in Fort Blueblood before giving up entirely on the mages guild." After playing with death penalties for a couple of weeks now I'm starting to feel like having to load from your last save is penalty enough.

PPPS: If you're reading this far and you are SkyCaptain, I would like to take this time to thank you for making DR because it is the only mod I absolutely could not play the game without. My girlfriend who is not a gamer was watching me the other day and actually commented on how dynamic and exciting the combat is to watch compared to other games she's seen me play.

1. Hmm, I don´t really know the history about this, but at least in my testing I never get any camera problems with Cobl´s system. I figured if using DR6´s 3rd person anims in 1st person had something to do with it - after reading your post - but switching back to normal 1st person anims I still had no issues.

2. Meh, just drain the fatigue for the duration you need to keep the player down, then restore it to the original value.

3. Hint: Obse has deletereference nowadays.


And thanks for the DR compliment, I mean that kinda comments are wonderful to hear. DR6 is genuinely around the corner, I just figured I need a small (few days) side project before I need to do all the final debugging that comes from testing, write the readme and so on. It has been a big project, and I have small switches all over the code to force certain features for easier testing, so there´s some "proof reading" to be done as well. But really that´s it.



EDIT: BTW, for those that are interested, I´ll be releasing this mod now (in a couple of hours).

I was hoping to find a nice modders resource for the Soul Beacon, but can?t seem to find anything more suitable than the Varla stone.

I wonder if anyone has any good suggestions? Writing the readme now.

Black soulgems for stealing souls. Maybe a white soulgem something like these: http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/images/19447-1-1219897744.jpg

IIRC, scanner did that quite brilliantly in COBL. There are a few instances when the handler can miss catching the PC's death but nothing deal-breaking.

Nah, scanner used a combination of setrestrained and pushactoraway to prevent camera drop in most cases, but every once in a while it misses and you begin viewing the world from your kneecaps. What I meant to say is that once the camera drops there is no way to put it back, short of quitting the game and then restarting.

Hmm, maybe, that looks promising...but could you post a link to this mod?



Well, so far 0 misses for me and I have been killed with the system active dozens of times. I would say that?s adequate enough track record.

Well, the mod in question is not really a modder's resource. I only posted the image as an example of the concept.

Here it is though: http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=19447

Ah, well I added some "cutscene" type visuals to the Soul Beacon "charging", and in that context something like Varla stone looks quite good.

So I guess I need a custom model anyways to replace it with a better one, if something. :shrug:

Have you tried a great weklind stone? Those look pretty sweet, even more so if one can make it rotate.

I don?t actually even know what those are...or maybe I have forgotten. Are they Vanilla?

I?m not sure about those though...I know Varla is also Ayleid, but somehow more believable as non-Ayleid. But I dunno, I guess I would have to see.

The Great Welkynd stone was the big welkynd stone you had to retrieve for that Main Quest or whatever it was called that we only ever did at most once

Yeah...that...uhm...I haven?t completed the main quest yet. :blush:

Good Lord, man! What did you do for the two hours you had the game before all the mods came out?!?! XD

Tried to get it running with ATI 9550...


Then I played with some of the first mods, it was fun, but I got tired of the game being too easy and the endless Oblivion gates took all my time.

Then I have had a couple of good attempts with 200 mods, FCOM setup, but annoying performance no matter how many times I upgraded (partly because I kepts adding more load) ate part of the joy, and then of course there was DR...I?m again in a situation where I need to get the new version done in order to be able to focus on the playing.