Wits: don't need to hurry. I am still a long way from a playable mod. Thanks for the interest.

Kyoma: yes, I have been working on it every single day since December and will continue as planned. Glad you liked it

I just hope the community gives a little more feedback to 'guide' my development (so far, only you two guys here and raggidman at the Wormhole)

Whew... The back of my head was beginning to tell me this had been abandoned. No time to playtest right now, but maybe next week.

I imagine this may have an influence on future TES games. Some oblivion mods seemed to have had an influence on Fallout 3.

Deadly Reflex- gore, decapitations...

Tamriel Travelers- traveling merchants...

The immense amount of complaining about the horrible level scaling has let them know they need to make a better system, which they did, etc. etc.

Maybe we'll see a village kinda like this in the next TES game.

just a little bump for this awesomely compelling undertaking
hope all is well! :goodjob:

I hope this is still alive...it sounds really EPIC...

Thanks. . . it was about time for a progress report:

The main engine in on hold (for a few more days), waiting for the new OBSE (a lot of arrays to convert)

Meanwhile I am working on a couple of building blocks:

1) An idea that occurred to me while developing the Prototype (and I couldn't resist): If all goes as planned, the player will be able to build a town that looks the way he likes it. Meaning: the player will have complete freedom on where to place the buildings, as well as the building styles. In other words: the town is too Bravil'ish? Want to make it look Anvil'ish? No problem! Just replace the Bravil buildings with new Anvil buildings. The Foundry is too close to the inn? The guests are complaining? No Problem! Demolish the Foundry and rebuild it elsewhere. Or you need to make room for your own little Central Park? Or . . .
Everything for a price, of course.


2) A way to give some 'color' to one of the last planned advancements: constructing ships and the establishing a trade route with mainland. The idea is to have actually moving ships arriving and leaving the docks. An early stage of this can be seen in this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnazYdsRgWc. You may notice that the ships do carry some cargo, so it will be possible to make the ships leave loaded with crates and return with a cargo of barrels (or whatever).

Lots of fun, as always. ( Although the lack of feedback on the prototype is kind of frustrating (but not discouraging/ dis-motivating (sp?)))

No! Do not frustraticate! I'll do you a happy dance! :dance:

I still haven't gotten around to reinstalling Oblivion, so my feedback capacity is limited. I am, however, eagerly looking forward to your mod. Sorry I can't offer more

One day, the masses (me included) come to witness thy modding genius. The wholesome glory of modding ... glory? ... shall be thine!

Hi, all. Has been a while . . . As a quick and dirty progress report, I will reproduce a Q&A from the http://thenexusforums.com/index.php?showtopic=83048:


Hi, juderodney.

The answer would be: YES and NO.

The NO part is because I have not worked on the main engine of the mod during this period.
But there is a good reason: the OBSE team released a revolutionary version in June (v17 with array support) and is about to release another revolutionary one (v18 with User Functions). They were also kind enough to include functions to move load doors, so I can move the buildings in this mod.
So, I was waiting for these awesome new functions in order to review/recode the main scripts.

And YES, because I am exercising my hand with the new functions, on things that will be part of the mod:
1-A ship schedule 'engine' - 75% done, still have to add backward movement
2-A customized AI for the NPCs - 33% done. Working on it
3-The mechanics for the player to choose the building style - 50% done
All heavy stuff, and I kind of cycle thru them so I don't burn my brain. As soon as I finish one of them, I will resume working in the main engine.

So, the general answer is YES, as most of what I do is, directly or indirectly, moving this mod forward.

Thanks for the interest. And for asking. (it sure gives me a warm feeling)

This mod sounds awesome, I've always loved those settler strategy games they were the only thing my old laptop had the power to play.

Ideas-

In the beginning I think you should keep it a simple NPC asks your to find blah.

For example you're exploring the beach and come across a dock, an NPC comes up to you and asks if you'd be willing to go with them. They've heard a rumour that the parent they thought was dead is living on an sparse island settlement. You agree (or not) and clicking onto their boat transports you to the island. After exploring for a while you find a village and you and the NPC split up to question the residence. The NPC comes back angry and declares they know where to find their parent. Following a map marker you fall into deep ditch where bad parent is dying. NPC runs back to the village for help. With their last gasp parent asks about the NPC you wither tell them that's their child or lie. They die wishing they could explain or with a look of sadness.

By their side is a goblin's staff you pick it up to cue NPC's return.

The villagers help you out the ditch and ask about the staff. Bad parent was their leader until he/she came along the village was terrorised by goblins but bad parent stole the staff and drove the goblins away thus become the leader. The villagers then ask you if bad parent passed the staff onto you. Big decision you can either keep the staff and become temporary leader until the village has developed into a town and holds elections or say you were told to give the staff to the son/daughter thereby making them leader and you their gofer (go for this go for that).

Each choice has it's advantages and disadvantages-

If you're leader you get to choose what goes where and control the money but there's a higher chance of things being planted in the wrong place, people starving and running out of money. If you kill everyone off you have to go back to the mainland and try to convince people to settle on your island of bad choices.

Not the leader you get told what goes where so no one starves and can recruit others to do the labour, you get paid a set wage instead of reaping the profits and frankly the new leader is demanding and pops up for no other reason than to demand to know your progress.

-

It's the first harvest but the party plans aren't going well, a tribe of goblins have been spotted on the beach and someone has stolen all the booze for the celebration. You have to deal with one or the other. Sealing the goblins in their cave will encourage more settlers but not doing B will encourage thievery. You can delegate one task but the one you don't do causes problems later.

-

A former couple approach you asking you to settle a dispute over who gets the betrothal axe. It was an arranged match but they've have been friends forever and this axe is a way to stay connected. He's a logger while she is a trainee blacksmith and it would look good in her workshop one day. They made the axe together and it means a lot to them both. You make your decision and then they add his grandmother tired of their arguing has hidden the axe somewhere. You have to convince grumpy Granny to tell you the location of the axe.
Get the couple back together=more settlers, don't and the blacksmith give you a nice weapon.

I would add this mod to my very short list of mods when it was finished.

I really look forward to seeing this in completion, I love these kinds of games, and having the ability to do this in oblivion would be wonderful.

J592 and Fluffy Knight, thanks for the encouraging words

J592, thanks also for the ideas, they will surely be considered when the time comes.

As far as getting raw materials, what if the player had a little bit of a helping hand to start with?
In Morrowind, there was the lost eggmine you could find and then sell the information; what about a local legend where there is a lost mine? You get the mine without having to pay for it, it's then a quest, and it's a nice gentle start in. Or there's something like the eggmine with the sick queen: the place exists, but is unusable for some reason. Haunted? Cave in? Either way.
Or there's the completely opposite view. Did anyone play Skies of Arcadia? The part where you're stranded on Crescent Isle and build your way up from there. Starting with nothing then going from primitive to more civilized (primitive setups could be a separate building tree that disappears after you're established to a degree).
Or, third, if you already have a plan for how to start, what is it? Everything else so far has been gold, don't see why that wouldn't be.

Thanks for the ideas, theeq.

I am not familiar with Skies of Arcadia, but it seems to be the kind of game that inspired me in the first place: strategy games.

I still don't have a plan for how to start, or anything related to the storyline and quests.
This is intentional, as I am still working on the technical building blocks for the mod (scripts, mostly).
Only when this part is done, I will compile / merge / select / discuss the ideas presented here and (hopefully) have a great storyline for the mod.

Until then, you and anybody willing to present suggestions, please do. They are all welcome.

omg you're still alive. i thought this was loooonng dead

Oh, wow. This will be a mod well worth the wait. If you ever need some storyline ideas I'm always here to help.

Yes, Jaden, quite alive.

After experimenting with several 'systems' of getting a better control over the NPCs, I converged to three systems that work fine. I will release them within a non-related mod in a few weeks.

Then, I plan to return to the main engine of this mod. Actually, I will have to start it from scratch, as the prototype was developed with OBSE v16, before OBSE v17 and v18 introduced the power of Arrays and User Functions.

Koddiak, feel free to add any ideas you may have. They certainly are welcome and will be considered and discussed when the time comes.

Sooooooooooooo have you decided to take my idea form last year

I have not decided on any particular idea/suggestion yet. Too soon.

One might say that I am just collecting them, but the fact is that many ideas provided the basis for several features that will be implemented in the engine and others that are in a if-time-permits' list.

A good example is your suggestion about choosing the armor of the guards. Since you mentioned it, I kept the concept in the back of my mind and, now, one of the things I have in my 'NPC Control System' (!?) is the capability of the NPC to choose the clothes/armor they will wear.
With this system, one possibility for the mod is to create an armory where the player deposits all sorts of armor and weapon he can find/buy/create and the guards will take the best ones available at the beginning of each day.

I, personally, prefer starting from an empty island, but many things may lead to starting with pre-existing inhabitants, so your suggestion of replacing a pre-existing leader is not ruled out. We will see how things go, when we start discussing the storyline.

As for MooCow islands, they are beautiful, but even his/her small island is still too big for this mod. I am thinking about an island two to four times the IC Island. Something around 15x15 cells. Ideally, tropical, with just one good spot to start the main settlement (a bay would be great . . . easier to defend).

If you or any reader could suggest an existing island like this, I would contact the author asking for permission. My main concern with the future of this mod is exactly the landscape. I don't think I will have the talent and patience to create a nice island. It would either come out quite crude of stall the mod for a long time (most likely, both). Adjusting an already made island would be much less work and the result would be much better, I am sure.

It seem's you and I are on parallel paths only mine is geared more for companions then npc's.but what is the difference really I could just as easily use npc's. are you using tokens for your engine? have you had much luck with the package comands in OBSE ? currently I'm useing a persistent object and moving it around.I'm starting to work on the AI so eventually I can have companion's with jobs and that sort of thing. I doubt if I'm going to be as nice to them as you would be. I have a bit of a dark side.

well for the beginning i think it would be fun as well as unique if the player would be heading lets to morrowind by ship and a lightning storm comes/ a sea monster attacks the vessel and you and a big part of the crew get stranded. Since you are/look the most fitting to be a leader you start to build your settlement. after a while you have a vilage and then your people build a ship or your town magician finds a way to teleport to cyrodil or a nearby ship spots you. And so you start trading with the outside world.
ps. those places where i mentioned with several possibilities could depend on the type of your character and his actions. lets say you get in a fight when in the ship. you throw a man out of the ship and it attracts *insert wickedly awesome sea monster here*. or if you are lazy controlling your town you will have to wait longer for the economics phase to occur because you didn't invest in research
pps. it would be even more awesome if the island would be an exotic one. palm trees and stuff like that
ppps. fallout 3 has a similar mod which lets you too create your own settlement and do economics with the bigger cities

The NPC 'engine' I am working on has all decisions and controls in scripts and arrays. It is pretty much independent of the NPC itself. Meaning: the NPCs have a virtual life that happens even if the NPC is not loaded. Only if the NPC gets loaded (player gets close), the engine will take actions to actually make the NPC perform what he is supposed to do. This is done mostly with AddScriptPackage adding the proper AI package from a multitude of predefined AI packages.

For example, using the aforementioned armory, the guard will [virtually] go to the armory when he goes on duty and select the best armor he can find there. This will happen even if the player is at the other side of the map and the NPC is never loaded. When the player goes back to town and meets him, the guard will be wearing the chosen armor. Same thing if he buys things or interacts with other NPCs.

I do use a few tokens in a few situations where I need a frame-by-frame control over the NPC (e.g. a dancer on stage). But I am trying to avoid tokens because, in this particular development, I am trying to avoid GameMode blocks as much as I can (mostly as a self imposed academic challenge that anything else). The whole mod has just one [very light] gamemode block running all the time. Except a few very specific situations, everything else is event driven.

I intend to release this engine (within a side-mod created for this development) before the end of the year with a full description of the concepts used. Meanwhile, feel free to ask for any particular elaboration you may be interested in.

I did use OBSE's SetPackageTarget for a while and it seemed to work fine, but later I changed my approach and I am not using this function anymore.



Yes, I do like the Shipwreck + Desert Island start, but we would have to have a way to increase population way before we get the ability to build ships, or even boats. One possibility, as you say, are passing-by ships with crew that could be hired/recruited.

Other types of start, where the player goes to the island on purpose, will also have to have an explanation for the required steady flow of recruits.


This would be my preference, too.


So I've heard. But I don't have FO3.

I'd love to help but I'm currently trying to transcribe the entire Lord of the Rings quest into Oblivion. :banghead:

I know the feeling . . . on several occasions I considered offering some scripting help to the MERP team.
Never did because I really can't. I must keep focus on this project or I will never finish it.
Thanks for the encouragement.

I've thought of some Ideas

1.You can get people from towns and cities to join your settlement, this may require making some new NPCs to fill towns a bit more so the don't become fully empty
2.You can make some decisions on whether the settlement becomes a equal place or more of a hierarchy where people do as their told and you are the ruler
3.Talk to Ocato for help when building the settlement

That's all I can currently think of as I am tired and cannot sleep

for more people you could live in the island for some time, then lets say you build your first raft, then after getting back to cyrodil you might hire a ship, more people (maybe promising them land or work in the new province) and go back to your island

I've been ignoring this thread for a year. Looks like it was my loss. I really hope you can keep going with the development.

As regards populating the island, why not build the whole thing into a series of quests. Insert a bunch of NPCs into Cyrodiil, dot a few of them around the less populated inns, add some extra residents to some of the larger one occupant houses in the IC and elsewhere, have others travelling on the roads. Each has a problem, the solution/resolution would see them emigrating to start a new life.

Doing it this way means, quests for the player, an immersive way of populating the island, and would give some much needed life to cities and roads.

Some ideas for these mini quests.

-A guy in one of the gaols, bribe the jailor to free him on condition that he leaves Cyrodiil.
-A destitute farming family, thier crops have failed that wander the roads. Raise their disposition high enough, give them some money for the boat fare, some food, some farming utensils (using the generally useless in game clutter) and off they go.
- A young lad looking for adventure (make hom a merchant's son living in one of the IC shops), invite him to the island with you to clear out a goblin cave together. When the cave is cleared he is appointed the first island guard.

hope these ideas are the type of thing you are looking for.