Current version: 0.93c
http://www.brettsaltzer.com/oblivion/

NOTE: This is a beta version. This means I THINK it works, and testing has shown that it SEEMS to work, but there has not been enough testing to guarantee the whole thing won't fall apart after 40+ hours of play time.


Description
===========
The purpose of this mod is to make the game of Oblivion much more engaging and interesting by way of increased realism and variety... in other words it increases the INTENSITY of the game. It does this in two main ways. First, it completely removes any feeling that the world is revolving around the level of the player. Second, it increases the variety of creatures and items found in the game. While these are the two main accomplishments, there are also a number of other changes as well.
An aspect of this overhaul that was very important to me is the simplicity of the installation despite the amount it accomplishes. There is only one esp file, along with the meshes, sounds, and textures folders, so installation couldn't be any easier.


Details
=======
*SEE WEBSITE FOR COMPLETE DETAILED LIST OF CHANGES THIS MOD MAKES
What this mod does (some quick and dirty stats):
- dozens of changes to individual gameplay settings
- dozens of tweaks and enhancements to various gameplay elements
- massive sweeping changes to the entire leveled list systems for both creatures and items
- scripting added to all creatures to make them more intelligent and dynamic
- scripting that dynamically generates creature spawn points around the player when in the wild or in Oblivion realms
- 28 new sets of armor
- around 300 new weapons (very rough estimate)
- approx 200 new creatures and/or variations of existing creatures (AND hundreds of new wisps & particle/fog based creatures added by VASE)

What this mod does NOT do:
- change any story lines (didn't seem necessary to me)
- introduce any new dungeons or quests (plenty of other excellent mods already cover that)
- change any landscape (Unique Landscapes already covers that)
- change any towns/architecture (Better Cities or Open Cities Reborn already cover that)

Requirements:
- Oblivion Patch 1.2.0.416,
- Shivering Isles
- Exnem female body replacer (or HGEC female body replacer)
- Robert's male body replacer

Hints/Tips:
- Encounters are based on location and time now, as opposed to player level. If you are at a low level, you should only travel during the daylight hours, and you should stick to roads, farmlands, and near cities. If you are at a higher level and looking for a challenge, visit swamps at night, or visit an Oblivion realm.
- If you try to tackle the main quest at level 1, there is no doubt that you will die.
- Oblivion realms are THE most dangerous place in the game. If you want to tackle them by yourself, I recommend being at least level 30. Otherwise, I recommend an army of companions.
- Mehrunes Dagon is not dumb enough to just let someone invade one of his realms and run around as much as they want. He will continue to summon new daedra to attack you as long as you are in an Oblivion realm. The longer you stay, the more daedra will come looking for you, so try to get in and out as fast as possible!
- There are various animals which do not get along with each other, and you can use that to your advantage. For example, if you stumble upon a wolf and a cougar fighting, it is best to let them finish before approaching - that way you only have to fight one instead of both of them.

okay, this would be a big mod... So from what I gather, this would replace
Bob's Armory
Sin's Expanded Light Armor
Axeface's armors
Real Swords
WEPON
Safer Roads
...
and a more TIE like scaling system (but even more unscaled).
Are there any other mods this would replace?

It sounds like you've put a lot of work into this. I like that it has a realistic swimming feature as I've only seen 1 other mod with something like that.

Here's a list of mods which OI either incorporates or replicates features of:
Attack & Hide
At Home Alchemy
AxeFace's Archmage Battle Armour
AxeFace's Blades Cermonial Armour
Bedrolls
Better Beggars
Better Potions and Poisons
Bob's Armory
Cliff's Better Letters
Creature Continuum (in part)
Deadlier Traps
Friendlier Summons
Higher Independent Thievery Requirements
Kal's Armor Rebalance
Landmarks with Wells
LG's Unscaled Enemies
Lighter Alchemy Ingredients
Little Baron's Undead Additions
Little Baron's Vermin Additions
Little Baron's Water Beasts
Lore Creature Expansion (but just the spiders, herne, morphoid, gargoyle, and hungers which have been turned into vermai)
Medieval Oblivion Balancing System (MOBS) 2.0
Modular Oblivion Enhanced - Undermined Leveled Gameplay - Item Edition
More Books Teach
More Dangerous Creatures
More Dangerous Weapons
Mr. Siika's Farm Animals (along with bats, foxes, rabbits, and durzogs)
Natural Wildlife
Nirnroot value tweak
No Psychic Guards
No Encumbered Swimming
Oblivion Gate Map Marker Remover
Phitt's Helmet Collection
Realistic Merchant Storage
RealSwords (but just the weapons – not the places, NPCs, or quests)
Shady Sam Enhanced Fence
Sin's Expanded Light Armor Kit
Sub-Species Variety Pack - Wolves
The Arsenal
Vacuity's Spirits & Ephemerals (VASE)
Weapon Expansion Pack for Oblivion Nthusiasts (WEPON) – MOBs version

Wow, that's quite the list. I love the idea of having all those features in 1 esp (new to Oblivion, and finding that it uses a billion esps....). I'll keep my eye on this and wait for other people to chime. I'm new to OB modding, and I'd like to see how it conflicts with other mods since I'm not great at troubleshooting :S Though it sounds like it's an overhaul I'd like (challenging!).

I've tried to make sure that list above is as complete as possible, but it's hard because there are a few where bits and pieces were incorporated but not the whole thing. Anyway I'm finally getting my gaming PC back up and running, but I need to get some sleep, so hopefully I'll be able to get some screenshots taken tomorrow (today) after work...

Also of note: All of the armor in the overhaul is meant to go with Robert's male body and Exnem's female body.

wow this is a very good idea, just out of curiosity is it bigger than FCOM?

How well would this work with Dynamic Leveled Lists? (http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1293440-relz-dll-dynamic-leveled-lists-thread-7/)

I'd really like to try this, but do you plan on making a version which doesn't require body mods?

This looks interesting. I have a full install at the moment, but I like the changes you have made. A more realistic world with elements of both OOO and TIE, from what I can tell. Will definitely check this out on my next installation of oblivion.

Out of curiosity, could you expand a bit on this?:
- NPCs are smarter
- Animals have more realistic AI and interactions with each other

He posted a link of his website... http://brettsaltzer.com/oblivion/info.html full information

I think a combination of this + CUO compatible modules + Creature Diversity will make a great world...

And I was about to install the game with CUO + WAC for a change from my usual OOO setup. Now this comes out... Cryonaut, I hate you

Is Shivering Isles affected, anyway? I forgot to ask before.

Congrats on releasing something that took that much effort.

There is always space for a new overhaul - most of us get tired of the same thing pretty soon

Looking good, congratulations. =]

No, it does not have as much in the quantity department as FCOM. I am not sure what the end size is for FCOM, but Oblivion Intensity is 700mb compressed and 2gb uncompressed.

Hard to say... I've never worked with DLL so I'm not sure, but I spent years tweaking the leveled lists to get them perfect as possible for the experience I wanted them to provide, so it seems like DLL would possibly just throw that out the window... but I do like the idea of it being able to do things like ensure only one boss NPC is in a dungeon, or get rid of all the spiders for the arachnophobes (I love spiders so there's a lot in this overhaul).

Nope... I sure don't. It took a lot of effort to make sure every piece of armor in the overhaul was compatible with those body mods that I use, so I have no plans to backtrack. If someone else was a big enough glutton for punishment to make a vanilla-body version of the overhaul though I would not mind at all.

It uses the same scripting from Creature Continuum that Martigen's Monster Mod adopted for the NPCs, so they can do things like fake death now, as well as run away, hide, wait for you to turn your back, and then come back to attack you. Animals use the AI scripting from Natural Wildlife as well as the dynamic size/stat adjustment scripting from Creature Continuum, so they aren't all suicidal rabid maniacs now. Their aggression is based on how close you get to them now, and many smaller animals will run away instead of trying to attack you. Also five new creature factions have been added to make interactions between different types of creatures more dynamic. Canines and felines are natural enemies now, insects and arachnids are natural enemies now, etc...

Definitely don't try to combine Oblivion Intensity with the CUO base mod... the creature changes and leveled list changes would conflict badly with each other. Other pieces though like Temple of the One and Origin of the Mages Guild I would imagine would work fine, although I haven't tested them together yet. And regarding Creature Diversity... a lot of the same things used in Creature Diversity are actually already used in Oblivion Intensity, such as armored skeletons, argonian zombies, orc zombies, severed zombie arms, foxes, rabbits, bats, new rats, new dogs, new wolves, hairy spiders, oozes, blood wasps (though mine have been retextured into a dark red varity), spiders, bugs (although mine have been turned into giant roaches instead of shalks, because shalks are only native to Morrowind), mummies, banshees, ghouls (although mine have been retextured to be a little more gruesome), and possibly more. A few I purposely excluded because I didn't care for them, such as golems and elementals, which always seemed more geared towards quantity instead of quality to me. A few others I do plan on adding eventually though, such as durzogs and new varieties of boars.

Sorry about that... I am planning on creating a patch to integrate WAC and Oblivion Intensity with each other eventually, but there's no telling how long that will take.

Not as hugely as Cyrodiil. I haven't focused much attention on it. The creature leveled lists are a little unleveled, but there are still a lot which customize themselves to the player level. Since it is a magical realm I didn't have as much of a problem with that as I did in Cyrodiil. All of the merchants though have had their inventories moved into their shops so you can steal from them just like the merchants in Cyrodiil though.

Thanks for the reply
I'll eventually try to use this and body mods hoping for compatibility.
You're right, it would be a huge work to backtrack.

I'll combine with compatible modules only as i said (I'm not so noob ). The core is obviously not compatible, but the "SAFE" esps and the "Dwemer" esp should be. The final result is worth a try.
So the creatures you added are more than it was written. CD is not necessary anymore, then.

Don't care too much for now... WAC project future is somehow uncertain at the moment...
(And I was just telling that you made me unsure about the new setup I'll install this time. This is worth attention, man, keep it up )

Good, then... It has some really interesting features others lack.As I understand, you are planning some updates in the near future. I'll see how this overhaul evolves in time, then I'll try it out, then.

Thanks again for the reply

I am definitely gonna give this mod a go. Looks like you have put a ton of work into it. Thanks for sharing with us!

Thanks for your work on this, it sounds excellent. I will be giving it a try as well. Just working on creating my final(ish) BAIN packages now.

I've got a ways to go with my current overhaul set up, but look forward to trying this one out eventually. It appears you have put a lot of thought as well as work into this project.

Obsessive compulsive mod makers are a favorite of this obsessive compulsive mod user.

Thanks to everyone for the kind words. I've gotten some screen shots uploaded to the gallery on the site which show off a lot of the creatures in the mod. Hopefully over the next few days I'll start adding pictures of the equipment as well, and try to capture some examples of what I mean about bandits, marauders, and vampires each having their own unique styles as well.

http://brettsaltzer.com/oblivion/gallery.html

It's fantastic to see this come to fruition, Cryonaut. Definitely glad we were able to secure the other authors' permissions on WEPON. Now if I could just persuade you to include BEAR as well

Edit: Any interest in including Slof's Horses? Seems like they'd be a good fit since you're including Mr. Silka's Farm Animals.

Although I'm still debating whether I should try this, since I much prefer TGND over HGEC females, I would support adding BEAR to the list

I think BEAR is great, but I don't think there is any need to integrate it into Oblivion Intensity. It's one of those really good stand-alone mods like Enhanced Economy or nGCD that's best left as it's own thing I think.

Slof's horses are already integrated into Oblivion Intensity.

In running around testing things out and taking screenshots tonight, I noticed a somewhat annoying thing about the wildlife generator scripting... If you are standing at the edge of a cliff admiring the view, you may see wild animals spontaneously appearing a few hundred feet in front of you and then falling to their death... hm... :T

BFG99 is also planning on rewriting BEAR to take advantage of newer OBSE versions, so best left alone.

PS: Just saw that it was BFg99 who brought up that idea!

Added a bunch of new screenshots (http://brettsaltzer.com/oblivion/gallery.html) showing off new sets of armor (still have about 12 more sets to post screens of though), as well as new shots of the poison atronach, clannterror, daedric hound, and giant roaches.

Also added a new file for download (http://brettsaltzer.com/oblivion/download.html) that patches Oblivion Intensity up to 0.92b. Here are the changes:
- Fix: poison atronachs shader effect actually works now
- Fix: the leveled list for daedric giants (had two incorrect items in it)
- Fix: male elven winter cuirass (wasn't using the correct mesh file before)
- Update: barghest death handled the same way as spectres now (disappears and leaves ectoplasm in it's place)
- Update: Greater Wraith shader effect gives a slight transparency now because it makes sense to me for an ethereal creature

To-do list for the next couple of weeks:
- Implement Little Baron's water creatures
- Implement CorePC's different colors of boar
- Implement new ayleid skeletons and ayleid liches
- Add armored circlets
- Improve on the mummy textures
- Make a custom set of adamantium armor
- Convert a few remaining male armor sets into Robert male body versions (ones that slipped thru the cracks)

This sounds like a very good and I think when I play Oblivion again that I will go with this over FCOM so that I can have more room in my load order for quest mods. I was wondering how difficult it would be to add new creatures in? Would it be like adding creatures to OOO or is there something special I would need to do?

PS. I really want some of the creatures from MMM like Balrogs and Gazers (at least I think those were from MMM) but since MMM isn't compatible I was thinking of adding them in myself.

Could someone explain what BEAR is?
I didn't hear about it (or maybe I just can't tell the abbreviation)