If you've played Fallout 3, you'll understand the whole random encounter system. The idea is that there are many pre determined "encounter" areas, that is that when you go into one of these areas, you'll get some kind of random encounter. This could be enemies, a merchant there, or some kind of situation that needs resolving. This is my attempt at bringing these encounters to Oblivion.

Obviously due to scripting differences (mainly Oblivion's lack of "linked references"), the way they did the whole system in Fallout isn't possible in Oblivion. However I've found a way to script this system into Oblivion, without having a thousand CPU intensive scripts.

So what does this do? Basically, there will be hundreds of pre-determined "points" throughout the exterior cells. These points are set in the mod and so are the same in every install. However once you approach these points, the system does a few dice rolls, and chooses a specific category of events. These are currently Repeatable Encounters, Quest Specific Repeatable Encounters and Un-repeatable Encounters.

Once it's selected a group of events, it will then do a further dice roll in order to choose an event from that group. Some will always be able to happen, some will have requirements in order to happen. It will choose an event, and then that sequence will play out. Be it something simple like a small fight between bandits, or a few friends around a campfire. Obviously throughout this, there will be a chance that nothing will happen, and no event will be created.

The way I'm currently achieving this has these advantages:

• Only one "loader" script and one quest script, only running for a second each time
  
• It's not location specific. The same activator, and therefore the same script is used in every location. It places the determined events automatically.
  
• Everything is simply moved about, no save game bloat is created.
  
• Once an event is determined, the loader disables itself. So that event will stay there for the remainder of the game (or excess like corpses cleared out on cell reset, like normal).
  
• Events can easily be added by simply changing one value in the script, and adding the event to the possible outcomes.

Tell me what you think of this.

This sounds like a brilliant idea. Makes my Cyrodiil a more alive place. I never played FO, so don't know how that system worked there. I sure wish you all the best to pull this off, and given your previous work in your famous "other" mod, I am sure you can do it well too.

PS: You might want to select the random encounter areas to avoid conflicts with FCOM-esque mods that add new spawn points all over. Otherwise every random encounter would run into a pack of wolves/minotaur making it a mad mob fight...

Thanks
Whilst of course mod compatibility is a high priority, not all of the encounters will be combat related. By "encounter" I simply mean you, well, encounter something. An enemy, a group of enemies, a kind of mini cutscene (so like a merchant being robbed by bandits), or even just a friendly campsite set up by some travellers. The possibilities are kind of endless (cliché, I know), and as the scripting I've got lets me move anything and everything dynamically to these areas, you can say have a full campsite appear in one game, with just a mob of bandits in another, and then absolutely no encounter in another.

I understand. I just meant that you might have a campfire going on, but creatures added by FCOM might spoil that party and make every encounter a NPC combat encounter (not necessarily with the PC).

But it sounds really cool - especially about the part with the campsites being dynamic (that is, not a static campsite that will appear, irrespective of the type of encounter). Good luck :goodjob:

Thanks a lot. I'd love to know other peoples opinions on this too

Fallout is one of the greatest series of all time, with the elderscrolls following. Random encounters, in both the old fallouts and Fallout 3, haven't really played NV enough to say that there are any, random encounters were really cool. Such as the crashed nuka truck with thousands of caps or the Firelance, and random fridge. It sure did make the wasteland more exciting and that much more unpredictable. I think this would be really cool in Cyrodill.

This concept sounds fantastic and would eagerly await the mod!

A question though: would it be possible to have in some circumstances encounter placements that do not persist the remainder of the game but, say, have a chance to disappear each game day. This could lead to situations where you activate one encounter and it is perhaps a group of named adventurers camped out, a few days later and they appear to have left, then across the map, you activate the same encounter again, giving the illusion of other adventurers traveling around the worldspace.

Anyway, great idea to bring over from FO, and looking forward to it!

All it took was your user name and the word random in the thread title to get me on board.

I'm in favor of anything that brings more unpredictable events to my game.

Bring on the encounters. Please.

Terrific overall concept and I look forward to seeing it in my game!



This point is my one concern with it, though. If I'm understanding you correctly, it sounds like, once an encounter occurs in a certain location, there will never be another encounter in that place (for the same character) again. I'd like to see a much more "alive" world, where there can be a merchant getting robbed here today, then I come back next week and find some adventurers camping out, then nothing the week after that, then a circus set up a couple weeks later, etc. rather than "a merchant got robbed here two months ago, so this location is now dead."

Previous comments about OOO/MMM/FCOM/etc. causing problems by constantly spawning monsters on top of your encounters have a good point, but I don't think it should actually be all that bad of an issue. I've never played with OOO, but MMM seems to have a large enough "no spawn" chance on its added spawnpoints that you don't get a constant barrage of monsters everywhere you go.

One thing to add, if you weren't already planning on it, is to randomize the location of the encounters. Instead of spawning the encounter exactly at the activator, choose a random point within, say, 10000 units of the activator and center the encounter there. (Although this would obviously complicate things a bit, what with terrain suitability, making sure it doesn't spawn too close to the player or in an area they just walked through ("Hmm... That circus wasn't there five seconds ago..."), etc., but it should be doable.)

Thanks for the support guys.

What two of you have mentioned about re-occurring spawns, yeah, I think I can do. It's pretty difficult because I haven't physically got the IDs of the encounters in the script because it finds them automatically, but I think I can pull it off. I think maybe a chance system, so for example you might have 3/4 chance of it re-spawning a new encounter (or a "chance" of a new encounter), and then a 1/4 chance of the previous encounter just staying there. I'll see what I can do.

Sounds great, would those probabilities be per cell respawn? And lastly, are you open to encounter suggestions?

Yeah. The only way I can do it is to have a chance to "rotate" at cell reset. Could be an issue if you have a really long reset time set, but that's the only way I can really get everything to smoothly change.

And of course! Encounter suggestions are very much appreciated

Sounds great, I love that feature in FO3 and I'd love having it in Oblivion. If it can be of any help, there's already something like that in the game, that is the Orc adventurer [can't remember the name] you happen to randomly encounter in the ayleid ruins and in the old forts scattered around the land. Maybe there's some way to reuse the code that triggers the event.

Thanks
And the orc adventurer is just a levelled creature list with a 10/25% chance of spawning