I'm in no way offended by the comparison to a jellyfish, just bemused that two completely unrelated people made the same observation when presented with the picture when I had never even thought of it.

Here's another preview of the new-look varfurlogi: http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/Revanchism/WilloftheWisps/VafurlogiColor0.jpg, http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/Revanchism/WilloftheWisps/VafurlogiColor1.jpg, http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/Revanchism/WilloftheWisps/VafurlogiColor2.jpg, http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/Revanchism/WilloftheWisps/VafurlogiColor3.jpg. As a comparison, this is http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/Revanchism/WilloftheWisps/ScreenShot277.jpg. You can see it looks far, far less like a vanilla wisp now. When you see the way the particle systems are animated I think you'll agree the only real similarities are that it moves, glows and is pretty.

I've approximately finished all the wisp designs and animations (just one attack animation to tweak a little more), drawn up the wisp stats and am currently working on retextured meshes for the ingredients they'll drop. Take a look: http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/Revanchism/WilloftheWisps/ChargedParticles.jpg and http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/Revanchism/WilloftheWisps/HaemCrystals.jpg.

Once I'm happy with these last details (not too much more to do) I'll continue mass production of the wisps. That's a few days work in itself, and I mean days of *work*, so as I have a job and other things to do it will take a *while* still, I guess. Nevertheless, this complete re-make is nearing completion with an estimated 2200+ wisp varieties of nine species not far from release on an unsuspecting world. I have no idea whether Corepc will incorporate all the models into MMM; they're quite remarkably compact (no huge amounts of polyons and collision data, I guess), so I'd guess it's possible, but it's his call regardless.

Vac

Alright, some shameless self-promotion here. There's now http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqqEYpMIYFQ giving teeny previews of three of the new wisps: the vatte-lys; the vafurlogi and the small god.

Feedback? Opinions? Life? Anyone?

Assuming anyone has any interest I'll try and make some more videos in future while I am testing these things out, probably one video per wisp type. I'll see if I can get better quality on future videos... that's pretty awful. :facepalm:

Vac

Those look cool - neat ones are the ones that look like orbits.

So when do we get to kill them - er uh - I mean discover the quest to learn why they are invading Tamriel ... then kill them?

The "orbits" one is the new look vafurlogi.
Release time? Good question. My testers are all very busy people it seems, so I've heard almost nothing back from them in a wee while. That means I have to spend more time testing myself. As things stand I'm still touching up the vafurlogi's attack system and animation, but that is nearly finished. Assuming I can't find any more things that aren't working quite right all that remains is the mass production. That's time consuming and tedious :brokencomputer: and I'd rather only do it once for each wisp, so I'm trying very hard to make sure everything works right before I do that. Realistically though, this is pretty close to completion. I wouldn't be looking at making videos of these if they weren't "finished". :twirl:

There's no quest in this though. It really is primarily a resource (for MMM in particular), so making a quest or anything else wouldn't make a lot of sense. I do have ideas for a couple of quest mods though, and you can be sure that if I ever get around to making them I'll be sure to be using wisps for the custom monsters.

Vac

With such excitement being generated in this thread I felt I had to add a little more to the mix. :rolleyes:

As part of my testing program (oh, ok, just for evil fun) I went to the market district and then used the console to drop ten higgs in the district. Cue http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/Revanchism/WilloftheWisps/ScreenShot358.jpg http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/Revanchism/WilloftheWisps/ScreenShot363.jpg http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/Revanchism/WilloftheWisps/ScreenShot371.jpg. The guards put up a valiant fight, but these things are aimed at about level 28, so they just ate everyone within reach. Hah! This made me laugh in an evil kind of way. I actually started off at ground level, but retreated out the way within about 30 seconds when I realised at least three of the buggers were heading straight for me.

Even funnier was when someone accidentally hit a cat and bg2408's cat script caused all combat to cease for a few moments. Wonderful! There's half the population lying around dead and dying and people suddenly start chatting about the latest news from the Summerset Isles.

Vac

It's been a long time since I visited this thread and man you've come a long way, vac. I like those the best which are the farthest from the vanilla version.

They're all unique, though many of them follow the general principle of "cloud+sparkles". There's a few design reasons for that: trying to work with two different clouds on a single wisp really doesn't tend to look that good in general, though it's useful for a few effects (and I have used it in a few places). Wisps that don't have some kind of cloud also tend to look very ephemeral, for wont of a better word. Without the mist, there's no substance to them. Wait... there *IS* no substance to any of them! Anyway, in terms of visual effect, the mist+glow works very well, and although I have one all-mist, and one all-glow wisp, the others are all essentially variations on this theme. I'd like to think that each type is a fairly unique variation, mind.
Even the ones that might look kind of like a regular wisp in a still simply doesn't look the same when they're moving, chasing you, fighting and even just floating in place, as their animations are all unique and the component systems do different things.
Err, except for the retextures of the vanilla wisp. They are identical to the vanilla wisp except for their colours. The dark wisps have altered stats and spells too: they hit a little harder, and die a little easier.

I'm partway through generating the next batch of 400 wisps and my to-do list on this project has shrunk to almost nothing in the course of this week. Just that mass-wisp-generating that I talked about.

Getting there...

Vac

The three wisps you focus on in the vid all look very good... especially the second, with the multiple orbiting particle paths. The bubble-like particles of the third are interesting and look great! Looks like it might be disorienting to fight the big misty critter? :cold:

Question: I'm using FCOM (MMM 3.7b1) and am holding off updating MMM, till an FCOM update (which I recently read may be soon, courtesy of Corepc), because doing so requires reinstalling FCOM etc. I see that Corepc's plugin has been pulled... am I out of luck re trying out the Diverse Wisps 1.0 until I update MMM? Also, do you plan on releasing 2.0 as separate from MMM (not being sure if all the wisps would be incorporated)? After watching your vid I'm eager to see them in-game!

Thanks, and yes, the big cloud is quite intimidating, particularly as you end up having to really be *inside it* to fight it in melee. It's more than a little intimidating. At least until you get a little used to it. It's still quite easy to identify the centre of the cloud though, for as long as you keep your wits about you.

Yes, the MMM plugin is pulled to try and stop people messing up their installations (which people will merrily do given half a chance). As far as I know, you will have no issues using the latest MMM beta with FCOM, it's simply that some of the materials won't show up properly. As the latest MMM beta has quite a lot of improvements I'd highly recommend upgrading regardless, particularly as the new BSA format makes installation a doddle. Hopefully Core will get the latest version(s) released before he dissapears for his vacation. I won't make the old plugin available again in any case now the wisps are built into MMM.

In terms of v2, well, it's almost done. I might hold it in testing for a little while before release in the hopes that any problems will get caught before release. It's possible that we'll arrange for it to go straight into MMM at about the same time it gets a public release, in which case there probably won't be a separate plugin provided for use with MMM. I haven't yet discussed with Corepc about that. Thing is, v2 is *big*. The last set of test resources was 138 megs uncompressed, and that's for 800+ wisps, when the expected final count will be more like 2200+. That's going to be a really big chunk of extra resources to squeeze into MMM, so we may have to discuss what to do. Or maybe Corepc already has a plan...

Vac

oo: ! OB could have a Wisp-only population- without any repetition!

I dislike reinstalling stuff more than necessary so will wait a bit and see how things develop.

To a fair extent that's the point! I'd like players to be able to play a long time and see little or no repetition, and even then probably only on the wisps with the fewest variants, like the vatte-lys. For the ones with 400 variants (five kinds), by my very rough estimates, by the time you've seen one hundred of them, you're still sitting at an over 78% chance of them all having been unique. [EDIT: My apologies, that's the odds of having never seen that *first* wisp a further time, I forgot to factor in the fact that you might have seen the second wisp again, or the third wisp, and so forth, and I'm too tired to work that out right at the moment. The kind of work involved in making and adding 400 creatures does kind of fatigue the brain...] I very much doubt you're going to remember each wisp as well as that.

Every person (and modder) has their own ethic and system for their design, work and execution. I obviously believe most mods could be better if they were made with this kind of "do everything" attitude, but if you look at the amount of work I've put in to the number of mods I've released, we can be sure that if every mod was made this way there'd be far fewer mods available!

Vac (will get back to putting those 400 skeletons into the game shortly)

And they're done. Another 400 wisps finished and (apparently working).

Further to the last couple of posts I think it's mildly amusing to relate what happened when I went to my test cell after finishing setting these up. With 400 of these new wisps available I went to my test cell which had two spawns of the new wisp type and realised that both of them looked... awfully similar. With a bit of nudging and bumping I got them close enough to each other to work out that... they were indeed identical! :shocking: 400 wisps, and on the first go I get two identical ones. Something must be wrong... So I quit, and checked the lists and the bashed patch and the placements in the cell and, sure enough, everything seemed right. So I went back into the cell and got, two completely different ones. Reloaded again and got two more completely different ones PHEW! B)

That kind of spawning luck really makes me wonder about the "randomness" of spawns in this game.

Vac

P.S. Do I need to mention that these are completely gorgeous? I really need videos of them though: they have a "pulse" which clearly doesn't show in still shots. I should probably make these available to my testers in the hopes that one or more of them will have time to look at them.

P.P.S. I think my very rough estimate above were fundamentally flawed. I should probably edit them before someone with less rusty math skills than mine comes along and publicly ridicules me.

Edit: I pretty much refuse to triple post if I can help it, but the result is I guess hardly anyone's going to see these. I've just wrapped up making the last wisps. Here's a few pictures of how they look en masse: http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/Revanchism/WilloftheWisps/MassVirvatulis.jpg,http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/Revanchism/WilloftheWisps/MassVirvatulis2.jpg,http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/Revanchism/WilloftheWisps/MassVirvatulis3.jpg,http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/Revanchism/WilloftheWisps/MassVirvatulis4.jpg. Pretty!

Edit: And one of http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/Revanchism/WilloftheWisps/ScalonCombat.jpg I've ever managed to take... The poor scalon looks like it's trying to wrestle, but just getting diced up. :violin:

they're A-MA-ZA-ZING
do your wisps give off any actual light or is all just glow maps?
keep up the great work! :goodjob:

Thanks for the appreciation.
The virvatuli genuinely glow (i.e. act as a light source), the others do not actually act as lights, just the game engine's "glow" that doesn't add any light.

Here's a few more shots taken from mania and dementia:
The higgs in mania: http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/Revanchism/WilloftheWisps/NaturalHiggs3.jpg,http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/Revanchism/WilloftheWisps/NaturalHiggs2.jpg,http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/Revanchism/WilloftheWisps/NaturalHiggs.jpg,http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/Revanchism/WilloftheWisps/ScalonCombat3.jpg,http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/Revanchism/WilloftheWisps/DeadScalon.jpg.
The eidolon in Dementia: http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/Revanchism/WilloftheWisps/EidolonHowlingHalls.jpg.
The small god in Dementia: http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/Revanchism/WilloftheWisps/GoldenGod2.jpg,http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/Revanchism/WilloftheWisps/GoldenGod.jpg,http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/Revanchism/WilloftheWisps/GodAndOrder.jpg,http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/Revanchism/WilloftheWisps/StakedOutObelisk.jpg,http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/Revanchism/WilloftheWisps/GodontheRoad.jpg.

I'm in the process of finishing up reinstalling everything in a new Win7 installation, so both testing and release are being held up a little by that. On the other hand discussion is already ongoing on how to incorporate the new material into MMM. It looks like all 2180+ wisps will go in. Woo-hoo! :celebration: Not *too* sure just when, though...

Vac

Team Diverse Wisps is pleased to announce a new updated version of our first article on the vatte-lys. Please take a look at this updated article http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?s=&showtopic=1000393&view=findpost&p=14730483.

In addition:

Team Diverse Wisps is pleased to bring you the second in a series of special features on the more gaseous fauna of Tamriel.

Today, the second show in the series will focus on the vafurlogi.

Widely regarded as one of thehttp://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/Revanchism/WilloftheWisps/VafurlogiWell.jpg of Cyrodiil's inhabitants, little is known of http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/Revanchism/WilloftheWisps/VafurlogiPair.jpg. We suspect that this is mainly because of the sheer hazard of approaching it. Even http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/Revanchism/WilloftheWisps/VafurlogiSlaughter.jpg can be slain by a single instance of the creature.

This creature is believed to be found in http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/Revanchism/WilloftheWisps/VafurlogiWildGreen.jpg http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/Revanchism/WilloftheWisps/VafurlogiWild2.jpg http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/Revanchism/WilloftheWisps/VafurlogiColor2.jpg, estimates by experts at the Arcane University place the http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/Revanchism/WilloftheWisps/VafurlogiWild4.jpg at around eight-score, but verification of this figure remains exceedingly challenging due to the exceedingly hostile nature and raw power of the creature. It is found most commonly in http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/Revanchism/WilloftheWisps/VafurlogiWild6.jpg, though can also be found in caves and other http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/Revanchism/WilloftheWisps/VafurlogiFort.jpg.

When resting, the vafurlogi resembles http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/Revanchism/WilloftheWisps/VafurlogiWild3.jpg of extraneous material. The crystalline cloud tends to coalesce on death to form the exceedingly valuable vafurlogi essence. This material sells for a high price at alchemy shops due to it's rarity and the great challenge of obtaining samples. At death http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/Revanchism/WilloftheWisps/VafurlogiDeath.jpg, the function of which remains unknown at this time, but may serve either to warn or even attract other vafurlogi in the area.

When moving the vafurlogi's orbits tend to http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/Revanchism/WilloftheWisps/VafurlogiPair2.jpg and http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/Revanchism/WilloftheWisps/VafurlogiMoving.jpg in a broader and more chaotic radius http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/Revanchism/WilloftheWisps/VafurlogiBlue.jpg. When hunting the crystalline cloud becomes diffuse to the http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/Revanchism/WilloftheWisps/VagurlogiHunting1.jpg, but the outer orbits are http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/Revanchism/WilloftheWisps/VafurlogiHunting2.jpg. If you see anything like this approaching you in the wilds of Blackwood we can offer you no better advice than to http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/Revanchism/WilloftheWisps/VafurlogiFlee.jpg. http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/Revanchism/WilloftheWisps/VafurlogiCombat.jpg against this creature, and as it is quite as fleet as most humanoids you may find the burden of heavy armour will get you killed. The creature is http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/Revanchism/WilloftheWisps/VafurlogiRuinExt.jpg and is often found in http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/Revanchism/WilloftheWisps/VafurlogiInFoliage.jpg, making it particularly important that you pay attention to your surroundings.

In combat, the vafurlogi presents http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/Revanchism/WilloftheWisps/VafurlogiCombat3.jpg to even the most powerful adventurers. Like most creatures of this kind, it is gifted with powers that http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/Revanchism/WilloftheWisps/VafurlogiCombat2.jpg. The vafurlogi has a couple of additional stings in its arsenal, with some of its attacks weakening its victims resistance to magic, thus exacerbating the vafurlogi's attacks still further, and also absorbing its foes' fatigue. By absorbing enough fatigue the vafurlogi can causehttp://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/Revanchism/WilloftheWisps/VafurlogiSlaughter3.jpg from exhaustion, allowing the creature to either deal with other threats or http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/Revanchism/WilloftheWisps/VafurlogiSlaughter5.jpg at leisure. These creatures are merciless and without apparent emotion: any creature, man or mer that http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/Revanchism/WilloftheWisps/VafurlogiSlaughter4.jpg sufficiently simply http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/Revanchism/WilloftheWisps/VafurlogiSlaughter7.jpg an encounter with a creature this voracious and powerful.

The few survivors of attacks by vafurlogi have claimed the creature appears least resistant to attacks using fire, but is by no means weak to the element. Like so many of the gaseous creatures, it appears to be completely immune to poisons, paralysis and most unenchanted weapons. There is no truly safe way to engage http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/Revanchism/WilloftheWisps/VafurlogiScenic3.jpg. That's not to say the vafurlogi is http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/Revanchism/WilloftheWisps/VafurlogiOutmatched.jpg, and while it's clearly fearless (we suspect simply incapable of fear), it can be dealt with by http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/Revanchism/WilloftheWisps/VafurlogiObliterated.jpg.

Team Diverse Wisps for the vafurlogi consists of
Creature concepts: Vac
System design and custom skeletons: Vac
Custom textures: Vac
CS work: Vac
Screenshots: Vac

Only a few vafurlogi were seriously harmed in the making of this program.
Special thanks go to the Imperial Legion for "donating" numerous bandit prisoners for assistance in the making of this program.

STOP TEASING! It's just not fair

You truly are a team of one! :intergalactic: Many beautiful screens... especially:

Can't wait to see all these critters in my game... luminous, ethereal and dangerous!

Sorry, but I'm wanting a few of these "articles" written before releasing the mod. I have pretty well-defined ideas for what these creatures are and I'd like at least some of that information available at the point of release. Besides, it helps put the creatures through their paces a little more this way. I'll try and do the higgs later.

They're coming soon, I swear!

Vac

Thanks for your work on this mod.
Using it with the last MMM I can argue this trully an addition to oblivion. Some of them are really challenging.

Glad you like(d) it. Now try VASE! The creature balancing remains much the same, but the graphics! OHH! The graphics! They're *sooooo* much more beautiful!

Vac

Holy smoking metal, Batman!

The last post in this thread was almost a year ago! I'm lucky it hasn't been culled yet.

These resources are nothing like as sophisticated as the stuff in VASE, but some of the creatures are quite cool, and the regular wisp retextures in here are http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/Revanchism/WilloftheWisps/ScreenShot242.jpg than the ones http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/Revanchism/WilloftheWisps/RetexNew6.jpg http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/Revanchism/WilloftheWisps/RetexNew2.jpg http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/Revanchism/WilloftheWisps/RetexNew3.jpg http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/Revanchism/WilloftheWisps/RetexNew9.jpg (which were brighter). The only stuff I wouldn't really recommend using in here are the Vatte-lys models: it never worked how I wanted it to (which was one of the principle reasons I went back and did VASE). Everything else is decent.

Vac