Well, you didn't directly respond to this chameleon issue I brought up. Am I supposed to take the excursion about your goals as an indirect statement that the bump not being affected by chameleon is intentional? If that's the case, I can say you needn't worry. With SDRs way of handling light, chameleon is not overpowered at all. The rule of thump now is, that when you can see yourself, enemies can, too. chameleon does nothing more than shift the line a bit. But when it's pitch black so that I can't see myself and I have 80% chameleon, I shouldn't be noticed in most cases, even if they come very close.

Regarding your sound goals, yes the ini currently needs to be tweaked, quite a bit actually. My settings more than double overall sound penalties, but as master even in full heavy armor only those with sneak skill 90+ still have a chance to hear me, when I run right past them. At some point detection comes mostly down to whether you are seen or not. I am unsure yet whether I will leave it that way or try to make it more difficult, and if so, in which way. My impression was, that the sneak skill itself contributes the most to making it easier at high levels, so the best might be to try making it less important in the formula. This should leave low levels mostly unaffected, while higher levels should become more challenging. Am I right on that?

And something related I wanted to ask: The sight penalty seems to always be flat, only depending on how much light is shining on you, but sound penalty gradually decreases with the sneak skill, even between mastery levels where the offsets kick in. Why that? I thought sight, sound and skill were three independent parts of the formula? Or did I not observe that correctly?

You are basically on the right track. If you want to give more weight to Sneak over the other skills when it comes to offsetting gear penalties, you can tweak the effectiveness settings.

Having a high Sneak skill absolutely helps when it comes to reducing noise - there is a technique to knowing how to step, where to step, and when to step. When it comes to sight however, being "Sneakier" can't make you less visible than the person next to you, all things being the same. But that's where lighting and chameleon effects kick in.

However, the Sneak skill does play a more major role in the third category, which is more of a spiritual awareness. A sense that something is off in the case of the detector, or in the case of the sneaker giving the illusion that there is nothing off at all. That's why a pick-pocket can actually pick your pocket face to face and you not even realize it. But something like that would require a serious gap in skill. With SDR, it's nearly impossible to pull something like that off face to face without being caught.

There are many different ways to look at it, and everyone is going to have their own logic. Hopefully SDR is flexible enough to allow folks to create a detection system that meets their logic.

In fact, when you have a high Sneak skill, and your opponent does not, that may be what is accounting for them not detecting you. Sight and sound penalties/bonuses can never go below 0. However the skill difference can, and that could significantly offset any sound penalties. The best way to check is to see what happens when you walk up behind someone in full armor, first in Sneak mode, and then not.

Ah, now I understand. I originally thought both sound and sight penalties were flat without the offsets and the skill category was supposed to represent things like knowing how to step to avoid noise for the sneaker and attention and ability to spot things for the detector.
That probably means that the skill of the detector and that of the sneaker are weighed equally in the formula, rather than what my assumption was that the sneakers skill has a higher impact. In this case making sneak skill less important in the formula is probably not going to do that much, because when both sides have equal sneak skill, it won't make any difference.
But if it works like this I wonder why you implemented addtitional offsets of sound penalties based on sneak skill at all. To me that seems redunant, so I will try how it works when I turn them off.

Well, it's sort of a more realistic interpretation of the original bethesda design. First you had penalties depending on the weight of your boots and if you were running or not, then eventually as you reached higher Sneak mastery levels the weight of the boots was negated and so were the running penalties. SDR calculates all gear, not just boots, and the noise levels are off-set as your skills improve, but never entirely negated as they are in vanilla (unless you tweak the off-set effectiveness high enough to do so).

But my feeling was having sneak skill be the only offset factor made it too much of an "all in one" solution, since it would significantly impact two out of three categories. By reducing its effectiveness and balancing it out by introducing other related skills to help off set noise penalties, it not only balances the power of the Sneak skill, but requires you to excel in the other related skills in order to maximize the reduction of noise. As for what's the "mixture" ratio, that's going to be different for each player. I know one player who negates all sound penalties entirely, no matter what he is wearing, how he is moving, or his Sneak skill level.

Well, I've finally gotten around to implementing that 'NPC cast detect life and similar' idea I had. I've done it in a very light fashion, so it only uses detect life and night eye spells. Light spells on self are not a very bright (lol) idea when enemies are around, I thought about making the NPCs casting them on the player to mark him, but my guess is that it would take precious combat time for them and casting other offensive spells will generally be better in the short run.

So, I add tokens to actors, only NPCs, no creatures since not all of them can cast and I'd prefer not to deal with such problems (I simply added detect life and night eye abilities to creatures i feel should have them in another mod). If the actor is under a certain light threshold, he will roll to cast a night eye spell. Khajiits and khajiit-like races can be set to equip the token instead, which has a night eye enchantment. If the actor has a detection level on the player above 0 (he has heard or noticed you in some way), he will roll to cast a detect life spell. Vampire actors can be set to cast their Hunter's Sight power in any of these situations.
The rolls are done with settings set in an ini. You can set the chance that vampires and khajiits will use their powers, the minimum light required before casting night eye, the minimum base skill required in the detect life and night eye's magic schools to cast spells, whether to use these skill values as chance numbers and the multiplier for that, the base chance to cast the spells, an additional chance if the actor has the magic effect's school as a major skill and idem if he is specialized in magic.
I haven't tested it much, in fact I haven't even tested it with SDR active as it can work without it, but of course it will only be useful if a mod is doing something to NPCs with those effects active, like SDR. If you are interested in looking at it and/or testing it under your set up, or have any ideas, let me know. Heck, you can even develop it and distribute it yourself if you like, after all it is intended to be an addon to SDR.

That is seriously sweet. If I was to repackage it, it would be under a new .esp "SDR NPC AI Behavior" or something like that. My game is totally busted at the moment (weird install issues), but when I get it sorted out, I definitely want to check it out.

I've thought about folding in other AI mods, or features that they provide such as SM Combat Hide, RGO and PIIP to cover a wide range of things, but consolidated into one esp with lots of ini options. Everyone keeps asking for it anyway. However, I don't have a lot of time right now.

What you've created is awesome, and if you want me to distribute it as part of SDR, I'd be honored.

Super awesome man! Release it soon!

Would you consider compatibility with Basic Primary Needs? http://tes.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=37088

I'm not familiar with it. I would need to know how it functions, what elements would impact SDR, how to capture the data and apply it. Give me a run down on what it does and what effects it should have and I'll consider it.

By default it should already be "compatible", they just don't "talk" to each other.

The same as what you have done to be compatible with Real Sleep Extend, I guess. As I've thought about this before.
So, that would be

Something that might be informative when using SDR with darkness mods: It seems like Oblivion does not give the light level very accuratly. When I am about leaving the shadows and can already clearly see my character my visibility measured by SDR is still 0. I don't think it's SDRs fault, nor can it easily be corrected with the lighting curve since it can only kick in when there actually is light on the character. There is just a discepancy between what you see on screen and what the game sees. The shadows range a bit further than they visually do. Maybe thats the reason some people felt like increasing the lighting settings was necessary, but actually the default settings work very well, only with a little delay.

You are absolutely correct, what you see on the screen and the light level on the character is not always going to "match up" to your expectations, regardless of what mods you have installed oe even in vanilla. For example, in the Brotherhood Sanctuary, there is a spot that has a light level of 0 where Ocheeva practices stabbing at a target, and yet she is 100% visible. Accurate lighting representation has never been Oblivion's strong suit, so you'll have to take what you see with a grain of salt.

Note that there are video settings that can alter this experience that are based on the monitor settings and video settings within the game (if I recall).

That's where things light HUD status bars become invaluable. Replacing the default sneak icon with one that shows how much light is hitting your character helps a lot, and makes things more immersive.

Hello,


Which mod makes that possible? Thank you.

http://tes.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=34905 is probably what you want.

I discovered a bug in the new version. Nether lichs, and probably also the real lichs become invisible after dying.

Hmm. Bugger. Could you give me the location where you found them so I can check it out?

Oh, that's what's doing that! I thought I was missing textures. To add to the report: it's also occurring with golems and storm atronachs. I think it was in Fort Sejanus; I haven't played in awhile due to issues with my game (I'm also using 4.1.0).

Wasn't that an issue with an earlier version if you used the SDR lightweight option 0? I reported this earlier, and I believe the issue has been fixed in the latest version that saebel released?

@ Kobal, are you using the beta 4.2, right? Weird that it's only applying to liches.

@ Walker - 4.2 beta fixed a lot of the disappearing issues on death if using detection package 0 (I think).

The problem stems from two requested features:
"Actors fade while sneaking" and "No Chameleon Refraction" which changes the alpha value (transparency) of the actors.

I've had all kinds of problems getting this to work properly, due to all kinds of "exceptions". For instance, no creatures start off transparent until they are spawned and scripts are run on them. Usually this occurs before my SDR token is assigned. When the token is assigned, it is supposed to capture that base alpha value, so that if the character is not sneaking and there are no chameleon effects, that's the alpha value it is supposed to have. This was especially important with things like ghost people, characters like "The Night Watchman" and such who were becoming 100% solid in older versions of SDR when they shouldn't have.

However, the scripts to retain/restore the alpha values has always been tricky for me, especially when working with the undead. Each version gets better and I manage to squish a bug, but it's a real pain. I'll get it right eventually, but keep reporting them.

As a reminder (to anyone reading this), please include which version you are using, and the location and circumstances you were in when it happened. Posting the SDR .ini settings will be helpful as well.

I suppose I could just set any creature to an alpha value of 1 upon death, or maybe everyone. I'd have to test it against things like the shrike and night watchmen and such.

Yes, I am using the 4.2 beta and it happened always whenever I encountered them since.

Okay. I'll check it out.

In related news, I've decided to add an optional patch in the perks and privileges for Oblivion. It's always annoyed me how the script for the Udershyke Matron has been spotty at best. Sometimes it's invisible, sometimes it's 100% solid. I'm going to dig into the script that's on it and see if I can fix it.

The thing with the Udyrfrykte has to do with http://cs.elderscrolls.com/index.php/SetActorRefraction, the UOP does fix the script on the matron to in theory prevent this, by applying the effects on every load and reset of the creature.

Hmm. That might explain it. I *might* have been testing without the UOP installed. It seems to be showing up now, with the UOP installed, with or without SDR. So I'm just going to let it ride for now.