Ive got only OBse. Is it enough for SDR, or do I need sound command and the other file you pointed in tes nexus's page?

The only prerequisite you need is OBSE. v20+, v21 recommended.

Everything else is included in the installer package. That's what "bundled" refers to, but I included links to the originals so that folks know where they come from and can endorse the mods when they get a chance.

http://www.saebel.net/SDR/sdrInstall.php

I've updated the Nexus page with language that will hopefully help clarify that. Sorry about the confusion.

Ow yes. Thanks.

So here is a question I have had brewing in the back of my mind.

Do you folks like the current documentation in which the .ini reference guide is a separate file from the Player's Handbook?

There is a lot of overlap of information between the two. If converted into a word document, the ini reference guide ends up being around 58 pages (but would probably be smaller if I stripped out all the weird formatting). The Player's Handbook is around 51 pages.

In my opinion, the pdf file is easier to navigate, because it has a table of contents and a navigation pane with collapsible sections.

The ini reference guide is smaller in side, and can be navigated, but requires installing notepad ++ and an "ini language."

The main reason I have kept the two separate has been primarily due to file size / maintenance. If I only change the default settings values, I only have to change the ini reference guide. But if I add new settings, change the names of settings, or remove settings, I have to update both.

Updating the .ini reference guide for me has been very easy, since all I have had to do is just cut and paste the contents of my "default .ini" script into the guide and strip out the begin / end headers.

However, at this point, I don't think there are going to be many more changes. So my temptation is to merge everything into one support document for the player. And then my ini defaults script would be trimmed down to not have all the extraneous data, which would significantly improve load times.

What are your thoughts?

I think one document is fine.

I really appreciate your thoroughness, by the way.

one document is enough.

Okay. I have an idea for how I want to approachieve this.

I think I also figured out a way to speed up save game loading / initialization. Currently it's constantly recalculating everything. But unless there has been a version change or reboot, the default settings (once set) won't need to be recompiled every time, just the tweaks.

So I'm going to look at how to optimize the initial load sequence and see if I can't get some improvement out of it after the very first time the settings are established.

good

This just keeps getting better and better!

I just tried it. I didn't run into any crashes, but I don't think the mod was functioning as it was intended. It felt glitchy.

P.S. Found a very big bug in the base detection amount. It's flipping the factor around. So instead of starting at -65 and increasing to 0, it's starting at 0 and decreasing to -65. So if you've been getting people detecting you at long range and then losing you at close range, that's probably why.

Whoops.

Fix will be in the next release.

That might explain the inappropriate detection (like through walls) that I mentioned previously. Fixing it probably means retesting the base detection level to make sure everything is working as intended.

I've uploaded a hotfix on the Nexus in the update section that should fix the base detection error I mentioned earlier. It also has improved performance when restarting and loading game saves once the default settings have been stored (about 40% faster load times). It only includes SDR.esm and the sdr.dll OBSE plug-in. Just install it directly over the old one. I was hoping to have the merged documentation done, but it's taking me longer than I thought.

I've stumbled across something else, and I honestly don't recall what I was thinking at the time.

As I was going through and updating the documentation, I got to the Detect Life section. In the description, it talks about how Invisibility and Chameleon do not prevent the Detect Life bonus from being applied. But when I looked at the formula, that's not what is going on at all. In fact, for some reason, the detect life bump is being applied to the overall lighting adjustment (which doesn't make any sense). I must have cut and paste the code into the wrong section and didn't double check my work thoroughly.

Detect Life works against Invisibility in the default Oblivion game, but only for the player.

So, now the question is, how do I handle Detect Life vs. Invisibility/Chameleon? I've actually always been on the fence about this, since there are many ways to look at it.

Various options are:

1. Invisibility protects the target from the Detect Life spell.

2. Chameleon protects the target from the Detect Life spell.

3. Invisibility/Chameleon do not protect the target from the Detect Life spell (and thus bonuses) but do protect you from the light that is hitting you.

4. Invisibility/Chameleon affects are totally nullified by the Detect Life spell.

This will be a fairly significant change to the formula (or at least that portion of it), so I need to tread carefully here.

Some thoughts.

Detect Life is a Mysticism spell.

Invisibility and Chameleon are Illusion spells.

I guess it comes down to perspective of how these magics work. Illusion spells, in general, tend to affect the mind. For example, Illusion spells include paralyze and charm, along with calm, command, frenzy, silence, rally, etc. But it also includes light and night-eye. The former generates an actual working light source and the latter alters your vision to be able to see in the dark. (I'm not really sure why Night Eye is not an Alteration spell). So the question becomes, what is the interpretation of what Invisibility / Chameleon is actually doing.

One thing I was surprised to learn is that according to the http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Chameleon Chameleon doesn't actually affect your chance of being noticed, but rather the range at which you can be noticed. This goes completely contradictory to what I've been told about how the http://cs.elderscrolls.com/index.php?title=Category:Detection. I also question whether or not that's actually correct. But I suppose I can try to double check it somehow.

Off tangent, back on track. So one way to look at Invisibility / Chameleon is that they are not actually making you transparent/bending light itself, they are affecting the minds of the observers. That would fall in line with all the rest of the Illusion spells. So now it becomes a question of interpretation.

Using night-eye does not allow you to see invisible things, but Detect Life does. Detect life reveals the life sources of creatures around you. However, you could also make the argument that the invisibility spell affects the mind of the observer using detect life. In which case, even if the effect "works", the observer still doesn't see the Invisible/Chameleon person because they have been Jedi Mind tricked into Not seeing them (or at least partially not seeing them in the case of Chameleon).

anyway, I have much to ponder

If anyone else has any thoughts about it, I'm open to new ideas.

From my point of view:

- Chameleon simply replicate the chameleon (animal) mimetics ability. It makes no sense as a "jedi mind" control because of the magnitude: what does it means if an enemy is 35% mind tricked?!?

- Invisibility is like Harry Potter's "cloak of invisibility", but it could also be a "jedi trick", which require concentration. If you do any action you loose the concentration and the trick wore off. But still it makes no sense: when I cast the spell, nobody can see me. How can I mind-control all people of the world for those 15-60 seconds? Even Darth Vader has not that much power!

I think Detect Life should counter both effects (but it's less effective against Invisibility)

Also, I think some magic creatures should be able to naturally see invisible enemies, without the need for Detect Life (example: Dragons, in some fantasy worlds), but they won't necessary see enemies with chameleon (which are "camouflaged", not cloaked). This makes chameleon a bit more useful and a valid alternative to Invisibility.

So I think that:

- chameleon gives a weaker but stable protection, it works against everyone but is totally ineffective if standing in the light or if the detector uses Detect Life

- invisibility gives a stronger but unstable protection, it works even if standing in the light, gives partial resistance against Detect Life, but is totally ineffective against some magic creatures

This seems right to me. Light wouldn't reveal a cloaked or invisible being, but a Detect Life spell, especially from another school of magic, should be able to counter it.

I'd like to report that newest beta update (8.1.2b0) made my character unable to acquire sneak skill points (first beta was fine for me). I installed it directly over previous but I was in the guild hall with some guildmates. Is that a problem? Should we install it only when we are at home with no one near us? Even when it doesn't require a clean save technique?

That's very odd. I didn't change the skill up system. But I did change the initialization process.

Can you check to see if the alternate skill up quest is running at all?

I turned on the debug and it works indeed. I'm at sneak skill level 54. It took me literally more than 15 minutes of constant sneaking inside the guild to raise sneak skill percent from 81 to 82 of my 54 sneak-skill-level. So I don't belive that to be intended, as it's like a hundred times more difficult to raise sneak now. I received from 0.007 to 0.011 every now and then. It adds it more likely when I stand up for a second and start sneaking again immediately but that might be just impression. So, everything seems to be running but very very very slowly.

Good points. That would make Invisibility/Chameleon a massive area of effect spell. The other spells that do affect the mind are targeted towards individuals, not large groups of people.

So that would indicate that invisibility/chameleon bend light around/through the target of the spell.

The problem with tweaking detect life is that it is either on or off. There is no "partial" detect life. So I'm not sure how it would be less effective against Invisibility. One possibility is to make the effectiveness an intelligence battle. So if the intelligence of the Detect Life caster is greater than the intelligence of the Invisibility caster, then detect life works. It would have to be an optional setting for sure.

Chameleon could work similarly, however the effectiveness of the Chameleon effect would be proportional. So it would be the Detect Life caster's intelligence vs. the Chameleon caster's intelligence modified by the Chameleon's effectiveness. So someone with 10% chameleon and 50 intelligence would make the check as if they had 5 intelligence: (Cham/100) * Intelligence.

However, this assumes that on a purely magical basis, invisibility / chameleon can actually interfere with Detect Life. As I think about it more, the fact that Detect Life can work through walls indicates that line of sight, and therefore light, is not a factor. And invisibility/chameleon bend light. Detect Life is seeing things on a metaphysical level.

Invisibility/Chameleon does work against night-eye, but then night-eye alters the eyes to adjust to lighting conditions. If Inv/Cham can work against night-eye, why not against Detect Life? If Invisibility affected the observer's mind directly, I think you could make a case for it preventing the observer from registering the detect life. But if Inv/Cham is only bending light, I think it becomes more difficult to justify how Detect Life wouldn't work on Inv/Cham.

I'm not sure about chameleon being totally ineffective when standing in the light. Although in general that will be true already. Low powered chameleon effects won't make much difference in bright settings. You'd have to stack multiple chameleon effects to be able to pass through brightly lit areas and be able to counter the detection sight factor.

That's a very interesting idea. And one that wouldn't be too difficult to implement. Perhaps that's where the intellectual battle kicks in? For example, right now the SDR system has a Vision Quality (VQ) stat which indicates how good their eyesight is. Right now it only goes from 0-4. I could add a "5" category, which is the same as 4, except it gives the observer the chance to see through Inv/Cham with an intelligence battle as described above.

I looked through the traits list and grabbed some possible candidates by category based on whether or not at least one had already been assigned a VQ of 4 and were "magical" enough to qualify:

I'm leaning towards Balrogs, Liches, Mehrunes Dagaon for sure, and possibly boost Jyggylag and Sheogorath up to 5 as well.
In the Dragons category:
Dragon: yes
Wyverns: no (I think they are inferior and less intelligent than Dragons.
FlyingDragon: no. I *think* the flying dragon is Saiden Storm's Akatosh dragon mount, which is more of a dragon/wyvern cross-breed, which I think is why it's stats fall between the Wyvern and the Dragon. You can't encounter it randomly, since it is only summonable by the player. So I'm leaning towards leaving it alone.
Werewolves I'm on the fence about, but inclined to say no unless there is some sort of precedence. I think of them to be too animalistic to pierce through the veil of illusion.

The only other critters out there that have VQs of 4 are bears, dogs/wolves, and Khajiit/Cats. But since they aren't uber magical, I don't think they would qualify.

After going through the logic above, I'm inclined to agree. Which means I will need to tweak the formula for sure on that account.

I've had a quick run through my testing scenarios and detection seems to be working fine. This new version solves a problem I had with certain CG Assassins never attacking - probably because they were too close for detection to work properly. I've been tearing my hair out trying to figure out what was causing that!

Nice work as always!

The reason why you were earning points in the previous version was because of the bug that flipped around the base detection level. Once that was fixed, things went back to "normal".

However, "normal" is very difficult, probably too difficult with all the latest changes. It used to be way too easy to improve in sneak, so I dropped the sneak skill max range by 200 units. That was very early on in the development of SDR. Now that SDR has become more complex, it's a lot harder to remain undetected in that range. Try pushing the max sneak skill range from 800 to 1000 and see how that flies.

That also means you can *maybe* try experimenting with the maximum detection ranges again, if you felt like it. Although I think that regardless of what you find, I will probably keep the defaults as is. But if you make any discoveries, I'll mention the results of your experiments in the documentation so that people can make informed decisions.

Hm, but I was undetected almost all the time. I used invisibility to make sure. I already have max sneak skill range at 1200. I made so to be able to earn a bit while attacking from some distance which I do a lot in dungeons.

Hmm 2. Well, you have to be moving, and you have to be moving at a minimum movement rate. Maybe it's the movement rate that's the issue? It's been a long time since I've dealt with it, and I may have mucked it up in the transition. I'm going to take another look at it.

Try this in your tweaks settings:
SetNumericGameSetting iSDRsAltMinMoveRate 0; {30}
This will remove the minimum velocity requirement. But the system will still require you to be walking/running. Give that a shot and let me know if it helps while I look under the hood.

EDIT:
Looked under the hood, and yeah, I think I goofed when it came to the movement rate.
The next release should now accurately track velocities (at units per second) and correctly determine if the player is moving at the minimum units / second before awarding sneak skill xp.

However, I am going to change the minimum units/second to be dynamic based on two game settings:
fMoveCharWalkMin (which is the slowest movement rate in units per second possible when walking)
fMoveSneakMult (which is the multiplier to movement rates when sneaking).
So at SDR defaults, fMoveCharWalkMin (80) * fMoveSneakMult (.5) = 40 units per second. If you are going slower than that, you are probably walking into a corner or something.

This will allow me to remove the min unit game setting entirely. (Yay, one less setting)

Also, the odds of ever moving that slow are really slim, since you couldn't even get that low with a 0 speed and 0 athletics.

Edit 2:
Because I've made skilling up harder, I'm changing the min/max range to 220 and 1100 respectively = 10 to 50 feet.