I keep thinking about getting lots of these effects into the vanilla game world, and thinking that hopefully some time in the future I'll be up to the task of tediously placing them everywhere. So, in a couple months, assuming you're not at the point where you never want to see another particle emitter in your life, and depending on how things go with my idea to make a real light add-on for AWLS (my other tedious dream), I might come at you with a list of ridiculously subtle effects I want to try to implement. Right now I've just got that crumbling rock idea, which is similar to what TurboKnight suggested earlier in the thread with a collapsing structure, but much more subtle and sparingly placed of course. But I'm pretty sure I'll think of more, and very quickly it could turn into a serious, and seriously awesome, overhaul. Just a dream for now, but I'm giving you advance warning of possible nagging in the future, hehe. Of course knowing you want to work on stuff that has a plan to be implemented, I won't make any requests unless I know I'm really up for it. But uh, am I the only one who sees this kind of potential, at least in the abstract?

You're not the only person who sees the potential impact of these kinds of effects, that's why there's a long list of requests both in the thread and in my PM inbox.

The major problem is not so much in imagining the effects; it's implementing them. Time is limited and these systems are not that easy to work with; full of strange and annoying inconsistencies as I've been discovering while working on the shrub leaf boxes. That's basically why I would like to be fairly sure that anything I make is really going to get used. If something new can be made by making a few tweaks to something I've already made then that's easy enough, but where it has to be made from scratch, that can be a lot of work with no guarantee of a desirable result.

The end result is that stuff that I can do easily is likely to be done earlier. Stuff that I have a desire to try and challenge myself with gets attempted earlier. Stuff that is intended for use by mods I'd like to use myself get higher priorities. It's not hugely fair, but at least the one person it *is* fair on is myself, which I think is reasonable. I wouldn't recommend relying on me for resources more than you have to though; I won't appreciate the pressure and you won't appreciate the waiting. After all, if I feel the desire to work on something http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/Revanchism/Working/test18-1.png, that's exactly what I'm going to do.

At the end of all that, suggestions are always welcome.

Vac

P.S. May as well mention the progress on the falling leaf boxes. I spent a *long* time trying to find either a fix or a workaround for a rather wierd bug in the particle system mechanics. For any particle system, there's a float value that is used to determine the rate at which particle systems generate particles. I was already aware that this float did *not* have a linear relationship with the rate of particle system spawns (i.e. changing it from 1000 to 2000 didn't quite double the number of particles spawning, nor does changing it from 1000 to 500 half the spawn rate), but it turns out that there's a threshold somewhere just over 0.4 where the system will simply cut off and spawn nothing at all. For the trees that's not such a big deal as I gave them fairly high spawn rates due to their leaf-space volume, but for a lot of the shrubs this is a major issue: the 0.4x value is still quite high when you're dealing with large leaves from a small shrub. The more annoying thing yet is that this cutoff value is *not* consistent from box to box: even simply changing the texture the particle system's using can be enough to nudge it from "functional" to "non-functional", or the other way (i.e. nothing in the system's mechanics has changed at all), and also from *computer system* to computer system. I had reports from Hanaisse that some boxes worked that when I checked actually didn't for me, and reports of boxes that didn't work on her/his system that did on mine. Go figure.

I did find what I thought was a workaround, by assigning float data to the float and changing it over time so that it fluctuated above and below the threshold. If it spent half the time above and half the time below then that'd be half the number of particles spawned, right? Well it turned out, no. Comparing two systems where one had the float set to 0.6666 permanently and one where the float spent about 1/3rd of the time at 0.6666 and 2/3rds of the time at 0, I discovered that the second system spawned quite a lot more particles than the first. Huh!?!

So I've wasted a lot of time trying to find a sensible solution and at this point I've pretty much given up: shrubs are either going to have quite a lot of leaves or none at all and while I'm sure it's quite possible to find values for the float data that will give lower spawn rates, I simply don't have the time or desire to continue working on that right now: far too much time necessary. Progress on new boxes is once again being made though, and is continuing much apace.

I finished making and tweaking my falling leaf boxes a little earlier today. The files have been sent to the three kind volunteers and I'm now awaiting feedback. The current count of effect meshes for the next version currently sits at 331. That's no small number.

I'm currently playing with Fraps and Youtube and seeing if I can get a decent video or two of VaPER effects to show off. Right now I'm trying to do something with a clip of some ginkgo leaves falling against some godrays. I'm not too sure how well it'll work out however, and I'm no genius with video making, so there's no point anyone getting too excited about it just yet (particularly myself).

I think I'll take a few days break from the leaves as I'm a little sick of them and I'm as well getting the feedback first, so I'll work on something else in the meantime.

Vac

Does this mean you won't do recolored leaves for http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/images/26899-2-1296740137.jpg for me?

...Just kidding. If I really wanted them I could just recolor them myself.

I am trying to become the reigning champion of http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=36843 http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=36953 rextextures, though.

Probably not, no...

For retextures I'd be happier if people could do them themselves: I've already got two texture versions of most of the boxes (green and brown). If someone needs a box for a different size/shape tree altogether then I understand they may need help getting the box to fit and other various details that can change between effect boxes; I don't mind helping with that.

Vac

Not fabulous, but not as terrible as I suspected it might be. Anyway, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51Jba4ua09I. Obviously, best to watch on the highest definition offered.

Vac

Ha, my request was a bad little joke based on making light of the incredible amount of work you've already put into this. Funny, I know...

Anyway, for something that doesn't really translate that well to [low-resolution] video, that's pretty good. I imagine you had to capture a lot just to get a decent length clip that had the leaves fairly prominent for the camera like that.

Well, the effect is at least clearly visible and people can see what it does, which is more than still screenshots tend to provide. And actually, it didn't require too much excess video capture; this being an advantage of being in complete control of the systems myself. The bigger issue was setting it up for with the Godrays to try and get the leaves falling across the godrays and shadowing them.

Looking at it again, watching on the highest resolution setting, it's not too shabby. I think maybe I made a mistake trying to show off how gorgeous the effect is with the godrays though; the resolution's not up to that level of detail, though the effect in-game is just fabulous.

Vac

Thought of another subtle effect to be used sparingly all over the game world, just writing it down for the sake of recording it...

Leaves, pieces of grass and twigs and dirt, various "organic debris" close the the ground blown by the wind that would be placed over/around roads and other paths (since it wouldn't be seen through grass). I suppose there could be a variant placed all over (but used even more sparingly) that would have the debris swept up higher too. And a "dustier" variant for the sand by water, or dry places.

Just another thing that would have to be tediously placed everywhere. It may have even been suggested already, I can't remember and I don't really want to read through the entire thread again, hehe.

Anyway, should I ever have the ambition for the insanely time-consuming and tedious project that would be placing all the subtle effects in the world, perhaps my idea will turn into nagging. Chances are slim though!!

Remembering that particle systems have no means of interacting with the worldspace (i.e. no collision), how is the detritus supposed to sweep along the ground? If the ground was perfectly flat, yes, if the ground came in a small assortment of shapes, also feasible, but with the complicated landscaping in Oblivion?
I think you're forgetting or not paying attention to how particle systems work...

Vac

Well, I don't see it as being placed directly on the ground. The box for the particles would be placed across a relatively flat part of a road, for example, just slightly above the highest point of ground it's covering (which shouldn't be too far above the lowest point, it being a relatively flat part of the road). Of course you couldn't put it just anywhere, but I think there are enough stretches of terrain that are uniform enough, and having the stuff "blown by the wind" slightly above the ground itself would look fine from nearly all perspectives.

I originally thought about this aware that particle systems don't interact with the worldspace. But I could be failing to understand how particle systems are implemented otherwise.

It would be perfectly feasible to have such an effect in the cities, I think. There's plenty of flat ground there.

And also probably a good bit more detritus than in the open countryside, too. I don't see too many street-sweepers in Cyrodiil after all. Point taken.

The difficulty to a large extent is giving the stuff chaotic movement but keeping close to the ground; not too far above and definitely not below. That problem remains and collision modifiers are pretty crude for that kind of thing...

Vac

Another idea, but this time not falling under the category of "subtle effects placed all over the game world to increase immersion."

I was looking at thttp://img29.imageshack.us/img29/672/battleroyale34.jpg, and thinking about how whatever permutation I have of the Get Wet mod does a pretty good job considering the limitations. But then I started wondering, to expand on that sort of, how feasible it would be to have drops of water splash off of a character/weapon/object(?) when struck. Like, I'm picturing a fight going on in the rain, with the combatants beating on each other while drops of water are being expelled from each of them from the force of each hit. Hopefully you know what I'm talking about. I know there's a blood spray mod, which is a similar effect, but also quite different in that I think being able to pull off the water effects and have them look good would be quite difficult, as it requires a lot more subtly. I mean, even if it's technically possible to implement such a thing, and I'm guessing it might be possible considering the blood spray mod and stuff like Scathe, I think getting it to look right would probably be maddening, if it can even be accomplished.

Anyway, this doesn't really apply to VaPER (or does it?), but I figure this is the best place to ask about the feasibility of such an idea. Just imagining the chaos of fights in the rain with this kind of effect implemented decently--it would be quite a sight!

I don't doubt I could create the water splash effect, but how anyone would get them dynamically placed over the surface of any given mesh in the game during rain, and only on the *upper* surface of each mesh at that, and then remove them as the rain fades out,I have no clue.

Vac

With apologies for the extreme delay in formal release...

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=35590

v2 Fixed the issue with the systems not starting up immediately upon loading into the game. Thanks to SaidenStorm for identifying the issue and solution, and to trollf for providing me with a working solution. Improved the gravity settings a lot. Tweaked various things in the original meshes. Added tons of new meshes and textures to cover most of the Tree and Shrub records in the vanilla game.