So, I don't know how many people remember TES shadowkey, but in it was a rather interesting type of magic called shadow magic which dealt with the manipulation of shadows (imagine that). Here is a quote about it from the imperial library "There is also the matter of the secretive school of Shadow Magic; one has to wonder what would be the magical opposition to the manipulation of shadows? The main theoretical stance is that it is perhaps the one neutral magic, the ?shade of grey? between the seemingly black and white structures of the schools of magic. As the name implies, it is created by the conflict of light and dark, and indeed Shadow Magic by its very principle nature is that of manipulating the effects of such conflicts of existence. Following the stance that Shadow Magic is between two other forms of magic, the scholar holds the belief that these would probably be the opposing magicks of Oblivion and Aetherius. Considering this, crystals descended from Aetherius have been known to be effective against creations of Shadow Magic (for instance, the weakening effect of the seven "Star Teeth" on the great shadow demon, Umbra-Keth, during the war of Bend'r-mahk), however until more research is done, it is yet to be known what effect sigil stones of Oblivion would have on creations of Shadow Magic." It seems that the main purpose of it is to bend shadows into beings to obey the creators will, the main one in the game being the Umbra-keth. So I was wondering if anyone could possibly make a mod that adds these kinds of spells to morrowind?

I'm certainly no expert in the field of what can or cannot be added.


I'm actually amazed that I -might- have gotten the Grumpy's companion script tutorial thing understood!

However, if this -is- at all possible... I think it would be very interesting to see what someone might do with this particular request. An entire branch of magic, perhaps -scripted- magic, for usage with MWSE or the like, is always the kind of thing that piques my curiosity.

I'll definitely keep an eye on this thread to see what anyone might have to say about this.

The base spell effects are hard coded into the game and cannot be altered or added to. A lot of unique things can be done with scripted spells, but they still use the base effects.

A creature could easily be made to resemble a "shadow creature" by anyone with the modeling and texturing skills (not me by a long shot). I doubt that shadows could be manipulated in the game though.



KF

Actually manipulating shadows would be difficult, at best, without some trickery. With a proper shadow generation system, you could make visibly-transparent meshes that still cast shadows (alpha of 1 or 2, enough to exist but not be seen). That would take a lot of hacking and whatnot into the engine and DirectX.

To make shadow creatures, an interesting idea would be to make chains of circular billboards that fade to transparent along the edges. Make them centered around the creature's skeleton/bones, and you'll get a shadowy figure from any angle. For the death animation, have them shrink or fade). It would need a sunlight damage spell effect, though...