DIVERSE ECOSYSTEMS- PRE-ALPHA

Diverse Ecosystems is a work-in-progress creature mod for Oblivion. Unlike other mods, whose main focus is creating challenges for the player, or just shoehorning in as many creatures as possible, the idea behind this mod is to create an intelligent and diverse network of fauna across Cyrodiil, with an eye for lore-friendliness. With DE, there will be a more noticeable distinction between Nibenay and Colovia, as well as between swamps, mountains, forests, and everything in between. It also edits the spawns in Ayleid ruins and Imperial forts, so that you can actually tell the difference between the two when crawling in these dungeons is called for.

The scope of this mod will be much smaller than some of the other overhaul mods; it mainly affects creatures and leveled lists, and makes some direct edits to the terrain around some of the non-quest related Ayleid ruins, and that's it. It should be compatible with hopefully 90% of other mods, with the exception of other overhauls (and Wrye Bash should take care of even that).

So, with all that said, here's my bestiary so far. I'll update it as I go.


http://i.imgur.com/ZlpTx.png
http://i.imgur.com/6Zo8E.png
http://i.imgur.com/Aj1P7.png
http://i.imgur.com/uU5tP.png

http://i.imgur.com/qZ4Ry.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/PPPNE.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/2rDX2.jpg


Thoughts, ideas, critiques, etc. are all appreciated at this point. As the mod gets further along, testers will also be greatly appreciated as well.

I like this idea very much; I've always appreciated fictitious worlds that try to give thought to small, "real world" details like biodiversity, and organisms' ranges, et cetera.

One thing you should consider (if you haven't already) is that almost nobody plays vanilla Oblivion anymore. So, if you want your mod to be widely adopted, it needs to be compatible with the most popular mods. If you're going to force people to choose between your mod and the well-established Mod X, you'd better give them a very compelling reason do so so. For example, are the landscape edits you mention going to be compatible with the incredibly popular Unique Landscapes series? Et cetera, et cetera. Obviously - as you mentioned - Wrye Bash can be used to make a lot of otherwise mutually exclusive mods play nice together, but it seems to me that the less monkeying around your end users have to do to utilize your product, the more likely they are to adopt it. (And, too, there are a lot of people who either can't or won't learn how to use WB to its full potential.)

Forgive me if I'm telling you things you've already considered; I don't mean to insult your intelligence. I'm just enthusiastic about your project, and I'd hate to see avoidable issue prevent it from being widely adopted. Any idea when you'll be releasing the first playable beta?