Balzu is a new world. The AI changes will only affect NPCs in Balzu. I have toyed with the idea of making a version of the AI overhaul for vanilla OB, though, but that might lead to some pretty significant compatibility issues.

Oh, good. That puts my mind at ease, as I really do like the idea.

A few ideas?

One, the Rake and Coquette perks seem to rely on the idea that Everyone of Straight. There are some gay folks on Tamriel (Viranus Donton, anyone?) so maybe there should be a small chance the perks will work on the same gender?

also, please, some Lovecraft inspired quests! Maybe a questline involving a cult you can join?

Yes, I haven't decided how to handle this particular point, especially since Seduction is one of the persuasion techniques. I may make an option in the .ini to set how this should be handled.


Lovecraftian quests and creatures are high on my list of priorities, don't worry! There are, in fact, numerous cults, any of which the player may join.

What's the overall cultural mood of Balzu? The whole concept of sixual orientation is a very young one. For most of history, nobody cared except perhaps some cultish puritanical pockets here and there. Of course, it sounds like the kind of setting which could easily host, or even be dominated by, cultish puritans; such folks have run their fair share of empires. But usually their doctrines are only accepted by the general public because they've got some variety of goon squad for enforcement. Near as I can tell, the modern fascination with sixual roles is an artifact of our deliberate deconstruction of gender roles in other contexts.

This isn't to say that everyone was even-handedly bisixual, of course; just that there should be no restrictions on who can attempt seduction of whom. Of course if it's only the player who ever tries to seduce anyone, open-field bisixuality is probably fine; Rake and Coquette are perfectly appropriate gender-specific titles, reflecting the wider gender roles which were plenty common everywhere, but they would give a boost to all seduction rather than only the opposite six.

If NPCs also get these traits and your expanded AI behavior might extend to hook-ups, or if you just want a more complex model, I'd suggest a system which gives each character masculinity and femininity ratings, which are based on actual gender but can be modified by traits. In general, masculinity is attracted to femininity and vice versa: before personality and speechcraft enter the equation, base attraction between two people would be (M1*F2)+(M2*F1).

Let's say by default a man is Masculine 5, Feminine 1; a woman is Masculine 1, Feminine 5. Each of them has attraction (5*5)+(1*1) = 26 toward the other; two members of the same gender have attraction (5*1)+(1*5) = 10. (That's almost exactly one natural order of magnitude, which makes these nice starting numbers IMO.)

The Coquette trait could give +2 Femininity, but -50% attraction to femininity. Attraction between an average man and a coquette is 36 (edit: 35.5 on the coquette's side), and the attraction an average woman has toward her is 12; but her own attraction to other women is only 6. Attraction here is who you fall for, not necessarily who you seduce: a coquette is actually a little better at getting the average woman into bed, should she so wish, but far more likely to rebuff advances from other women. (This is quite appropriate: the other girls are star-struck, but the coquette knows she can get what she wants any time.)

Personality would affect this based on difference: two people with Per 30 have no modifier toward each other, nor do two people with Per 80. But when a Per 30 tries to seduce a Per 80, they've got a -50 penalty; and if it's the other way around, a +50 bonus. Probably some multipliers here, but you get the idea. Speechcraft should probably be a flat bonus, smooth talkers are attractive even when you're a smooth talker too.

Thanks for the suggestions. That's actually a little more thought than I've even put into it yet.

The male/female scale model is intriguing. I already have something called Preferences which are 'types' of players that NPCs find attractive, either as friends or romantic partners. (Eg. burly warriors that will only be friends with other tough guys and girls that prefer brains over brawn, that sort of thing.) My initial thought was to leave the playing field open by default, but allow the player to activate more realistic gender preferences in the .ini if they desired them for whatever reason. The NPCs would probably be 'hard-coded' with a preference as opposed to randomly selected owing to the effects that having a strong preference might have on their personality, schedule, relations, and dialogue. In the case of activating the built-in preferences in the .ini I may use something like your model, if that's ok.

The cultural mood of Balzu leans a little more toward the 'classical' scale than the 'puritan' scale, though there are certainly elements of that as well.

Wouldn't have shared if I didn't mean to share!

A simple way to handle the secondary preferences is to give each NPC a "masculine ideal" and "feminine ideal" which are each one of Strength, Intelligence, Willpower, Dexterity, Speed, Endurance. That attribute would act as a second Personality score when interacting with that NPC, affecting both initial disposition and Speechcraft results. (Normal Personality still applies, of course.) Wherever it makes sense, IMO this should be a difference effect rather than an absolute modifier -- so an extremely strong man for whom strength is a masculine ideal will generally be unimpressed with other men, except just a few who he considers peers; but a very weak man who idealizes strength will idolize the strong man, and not really think poorly of others who are similarly undermuscled.

Good to see you're still on this and that you've made progress! Good luck!

Stratman1 has recently joined my team and is working on designing the soundscape for Balzu: ambient environments based on regions, custom battle music based on factions, and the main title theme are currently in the works. Look forward to samples in the not-too-distant future. I'm hoping to make Balzu's custom music compatible with vanilla, Sound Commands, Enhanced Music & Control, and Better Music System platforms. Partial support for BMS has been implemented which supports custom music for each region.

I've also begun writing the code for Balzu's custom companions. Companions in Balzu are not like other companions: they are much more fully developed than vanilla companions, and much more independent than CM companions or companions acquired through Companion Share & Recruit. Although all of the robust commands/mechanics that you may be used to from other companion mods will be included in Balzu's companions, they will not be the 'magic bullet' that traditional companions tend to turn into: companions will have realistic abilities and limitations, will attempt to preserve themselves, and may refuse your suggestions if you have not earned their trust and respect. They might even get fed up with your behavior and leave. They will demand food and sleep, and, depending on the nature of your relationship, payment for their services. Although they are quite hardy, they may suffer serious injuries requiring medical attention and may even die of their wounds if not treated quickly. In short: they will no longer unbalance gameplay and instead will provide the interest and companionship that they are meant to.

I've also worked out some defensive coding for the custom chargen, which was being thrashed by other mods that use quest scripts to initialize themselves. Balzu will now detect when the custom chargen process has been derailed and get it back on track so that you don't have to disable other mods or restart until you get all the way through the chargen setup.

Sorry about the lack of screenies and videos lately, but most of the work on Balzu has been on the scripting side, and the scripts are still in an incomplete state. I hope to get a video up showing some of the new persuasion mechanic and acquiring a companion in the near future. I'd also like to post some of Stratman1's tracks (when he feels they're ready to be heard).

Thanks to Asterai for the vote of confidence.

I can't wait untill this mod comes out, bu since it's not very nice of me to whine and do nothing, if you ever need any new textures or meshes, I'm your gal.

Been spending time making new weapons from bits and pieces of vaninilla Oblivion, but if you need armor, clothing or even architecture (I figure, never tried it before) remeshed or retextured, I'd be happy to help.

Can even show you a sample, if you like!

I can use all the help I can get.

I'll send you a pm.

If anyone else wants to help out, don't hesitate to chime in. Looking for texture artists, concept artists, modelers, animators, particle effects specialists, sound fx specialists, and shader programmers (for OBGE effects). You know, pretty much anybody with a specialized skill. I'll update the main post with a job breakdown to give people an idea what needs to be done first.

About the only things I don't need atm (and this will change eventually) are writers, voice actors, quest-builders, and landscape artists. I'm keeping the landscape intentionally small for the first release for quality control reasons. I'm also still developing the lore, so I writers are going to be SOL. Quests depend on the NPC AI to a great extent, which is incomplete. I would love to have full voice acting eventually, but that's not until much later in development. Dialogue info counts will be about on par with Vilja for major companions, to give you some idea of the amount of dialogue I'm writing for the NPCs. hmy: I could use another scripter, even just for consultation, but I've been managing okay so far.

Any help at all is always appreciated.

You've already got me on speed-dial, right?

Don't worry. I'm sure you'll be screening your calls soon enough.

Just wanted to let interested people know that I've created a http://balzu.freeforums.org/index.php and http://bleakworld.wikidot.com/ for Balzu. That might seem a little bit like putting the cart before the horse to some people, but I've decided that Balzu is at a stage now where accessible documentation and open communication is required. The wiki is read-only, atm, and serves primarily to clear my own head so that it has room for other things; it should also serve as a good resource for Balzu developers present and future so that they don't have to ask me so many questions. Some of the information is a little out of date, however. The forum is primarily aimed at devs to make communication easier among team members.

I haven't had a lot of time to work on the mod itself, but hopefully I'll be able to get back into the swing of things over the next couple of days.

Thanks for the update, I'll check it out. Can't wait to see what you can do.

Well, I'm getting closer to my first closed beta release. This will be 100 more or less complete exterior cells and about 10 domestic interiors. Basic NPCs will be in place, but they won't have much interactivity yet. (The innkeeper at the Shining Shingle will have a little.) There are a few wild animals in wilderness spawns and a very incomplete dungeon level. This release is primarily to make sure that all of the art assets, LOD, etc., are included in the .bsa and that the framerates are decent (Balzu has some pretty heavy exterior cells.) The bare bones custom chargen can also be tested, though not all of the features have been implemented. It's still missing most of the AI scripts that have to be re-integrated into the new persuasion platform but I've been working on content lately, not scripting.

I've also been fooling around with the weather and climate for a new worldspace called http://www.truancyfactory.com/projects/balzu/images/ArzuthMorning01.png.

This is very much a WIP as there are literally dozens of color settings for day/night/evening/dawn and I'm still trying to get a feel for the place. (The sky textures are custom, also WIP.)

Balzu uses a slightly different form of fast travel inspired by Jordan's Wheel of Time and Erikson's Malazan chronicles: players must use dimensional gates to cross from one area of the map to another. Numerous gates exist, some leading to one 'crossworld' and others to other crossworlds. The gates are well known to mages and adventurers, although they are quite dangerous. (Masters of alteration magic will be able to open these portals at will.) If you stay on the 'beaten path' you should be safe. If you stray from it, you may quickly lose yourself in the alternate dimension and fall prey to its inhabitants.

Arzuth is one of these alternate planes, a common 'crossing point' between worlds, the shattered remains of a once great world that dabbled with 'incredible cosmic forces'. Although it appears to be a vast wasteland of shallow green oceans and island ruins, the twisted descendants of Arzuth's great empire still lurk here in remote areas....

A word to the wise: stay on the main paths.

Well, I guess it's time for another update!

There is now an http://balzu.freeforums.org/developers-f4.html version of the mod available for dl at the Balzu forum. This is not a release. The mod is still under heavy development and is very incomplete. The alpha was made available primarily so that other team members could start testing it, but if you're curious you're welcome to give it a go. This is for experienced mod users only. There are a lot of requirements and I don't have time to hold anyone's hand getting it up and running or providing support for it. It should work fine as is (it has for two people already) but most of the features haven't been implemented yet, and the persuasion mechanic is currently being redesigned (again). I am, however, interested in bug reports and framerates. (Balzu cells are quite heavy from a reference count perspective.) Download and install at your own risk, people! I am not taking responsibility for screwing up your game, your load order, your computer, or your relationships. Experienced users only!

If you go to the forum, you can also dl Strat's compositions. They're still WIP but the guy's a talented composer, so check them out.