this is going great man love what i'm seeing i was afraid this project had died

Oooh, I'm excited. Madmole, everything you said about other vampire mods is so true! There are a bunch of good ones, but nothing's really the "complete package." Needless to say (but I will anyway ) I am waiting for this with bated breath. Over six months away from the game, and I come back to this WIP... :drool:

I really wanna play as a vampire but can't...


until this is released

Hey MM, just thought I'd chime in, "however" you end up finalizing the "donation", "pay for extras" etc, etc, etc... whatever you decide...as long as it is something "reasonable" for the masses. I too will GLADLY give up some hard earned cash to help stave off your financial ruin and worldly woes Seems to be quite a LOT of that going around these days...LMAO MM. Seriously though, NO PROBLEM... if someone can pay 5 bucks ( or whatever it was ) for some lame [censored] horse armor ( which IMO was a total joke )...when this immense work of yours has SO VERY MUCH MORE going for it...that it shouldn't even be an issue. Just figure out how to do it legally, with no possible ill effects too you from the Beth people and let us fans know what / how we can do what is needed. I'll check back in a few weeks...and see what you've been up to by then !

Best wishes MM, and keep burning the Midnight oil...

Fal

First of all, thanks everyone for the continued support and compliments, enthusiasm, and dedication to cheer me on, provide me with good lore references and ideas, and critique.

Hey Fal. Thanks for everything. As far as I'm concerned, and I've been around the block with many many contracts, EULA's and I've shared many a meetings with big lawyer gurus.... that the only thing you cannot sell via mods are files generated with the CS, and of course their IP, such as models/textures/sounds that shipped with the game. That is a no brainer. So I'm about 99.9% sure I can sell my voice files I made using sound forge and my own microphone for $4.99 without a hitch. I could go on and sell model files and textures, sound effects, etc... but I'm not going to. The way I see it, the voiceovers provide a LOT of value (even if a few don't like them) and create an honor system for my fans to pay and help support my efforts, yet get some value in return legally (my voice files). THe mod will be fully featured without paying, but no voice overs. I don't consider myself a professional voice actor, but I have voice over credits on IMDB.com and my voices have appeared in 3 games. So thats good enough I'd say.

So essentially my plans are to just sell my voice files and hope that my fans like my work enough to pay for the voices. I can't see crippling the mod via art work and other means. Frankly I think the voice work is cool but i'm partial to it. I will provide SOME voice work for free just so they know what they are missing out on, but I won't force anyone to pay or buy.

I think that this mod has probably more work put into than nearly any DLC. Nothing like shivering isles, thats an expansion not a dlc... but I'd say its tough to compare it to any DLC. Its like six house mods, an incredible amount of new powers and shaders, a fair bit of voiced questing, lots of contributing things from sinblood and other modders resources, new sound effects, and probably a ton of things I forgot about all wrapped into one mod. The file size is enormous when I create a BSA I know that. I'll probably be the only one hosting it, but fear not my server has unlimited bandwidth and I get 600k a second from them.

I'm stoked to see what people do think of it though. I'm just glad to be back modding on it. I was under too much stress the later part of this year, and I did have some time I could have been modding but I didn't. After a while I felt kind of empty with that spare time, and then once I got started again, now its like that void is filled again. I just hope things can hold together long enough for me to get it done and make everyone as happy as possible, so the waiting was worth it. I feel that it is by far my best work, so those of you who have enjoyed my other mods, your in for a real treat.

Well tonight was tough. I'd forgotten a few key elements in scripting packages and struggled all night over a simple evp command. Finally I got that going and started making http://downloads.4drulers.com/Oblivion_Mods/unholydarkness/FaithfulServant.jpg. I've got Cliftius, the butler at the Rosethorn Vampire Lords manor to go to the dungeon and open the gate. After that I plan on him saying something to the thrall, like "My lady has need of your ... services hahahaha" then the thrall will be like "no, no, noooooo" and then Cliftius will bring the thrall to you. Your not really supposed to watch, but I figure if you do... it would be cool. Once he brings the thrall to you, you can feed on it and he'll take it back to the cage. No promises here, but I have an idea on how to make him drag back an unconscious thrall. If it works it will be the coolest thing ever seeing him drag a rag doll back to the dungeon.

I lol'd Having nothing to contribute since my recent post, 10character bump

This sounds like it will be an interesting replacement to the default Vampire, which didn't seem to have a lot offered.

The idea of dragging a thrall off, to me sounds funny, but the game has no exposed methods to the "grab" player method, plus it isn't effective on location changes. Though, if you wanted something funny, you could have Cliftius kick it to the nearest door, and then he could walk to it, they'd both vanish and he'd repeatly kick it down the hallways, etc, to the dungeon. Then maybe he'd grumble about getting soiled by it and go wash up. Now that would be fantastic to watch! As for keeping the thrall Out while he does this, merely ModAVing the fatigue of it to like -5000 and once the thrall is back in the dungeon, and kicked to where it belongs, +5000 it back, then let it sleep it off.

One thing about the turned NPC's, those who own homes, will they let the player vampire in them for the day time? And will Vampires robbing Vampires cause a bounty?

I would assume that even though they are your thrall that you wouldn't own everything they did. That would require alot of work to figure out how to make individual houses as if they are yours. You can buy a house in each city anyway so the need isn't even there, and if you can't afford one at that moment sleep in an inn

I already knock people out when you feed on them, so I was going to see about moving the position of the unconsious thrall to Cliftius. I've never used a moveto command so I don't know how it would look in real time and updated every frame. The other thing to try would be to position the unconscious thrall over Cliftius shoulder. Its probably not going to work and I'll end up having a simple escort package as my fall back plan, but I will try some ideas and see what I can come up with.

As for turned NPC's no their stuff is their stuff. If I did do that, then surely I'd have to make it so your own maker can come loot your belongings any time he or she desires, taking your best treasured things from you Doesn't sound so cool that way does it?

an over the shoulder carry animation would be awesome, the only thing I could think of was using some sort of spell that would essentially work just like telekinesis but with the body. somewhat similar to what reneer's guard overhaul uses to hide bodies

Well I think I'm going to have to pass on that. I've had difficulties getting the butler to bring her to the player but I finally got it working, but there is still much to do to polish it up, and I've already spent too much time on it. Anyhow, its still pretty cool, the butler fetches you someone using his quick vampire speed. He zips off and is back in just a few seconds, which is cool. I don't want to wait like 5 minutes of real time for him to walk down there and bring her back. So he takes off and then as soon as he leaves the room he and the thrall appear in a flash. I like it.

Anyhow, This is good enough for now. I'm going to prepare a build for my private donation testers tomorrow night so they can get me some feedback. I hope its everything they have thought and then some. It isn't finished or polished, but totally playable and enjoyable I hope. For the public beta, expect another month or so. I need to polish up a lot of loose ends and record some more voices, finish up some quests, etc. Then I can start on the rogue/covenant stuff. Wow what a lot of work!

sounds good. Can't wait to start playing. Everything around where I am is closed down due to the snow so I've got nothing but time

Well I'll probably have the private beta ready late this evening.

massive respect for such an endurance during months of work. It seems to me youre not lying when you say, modding is everything you want to do.
Just me being curious: You said something about doing jobs from time to time... why dont you have a permanent job? Sry, i just cant image how you manage that much modding

Then I'll try to stay up lol

Wow! This looks awesome! So you say that this will be compatible with mods as long as it doesn't change anything related to vampires? What about the UOP?

I gotta go read through the read me for OOO, does it change stuff relating to vamps?

those mods should be fine, I believe madmole uses OOO, and to use OOO I'm pretty sure you need UOP

Lots of progress recently, maybe ill be able to be a vampire sometime in febuary. Keep up the good work and remember nobody is rushing you to release it until your ready.

Up until August of 2008 I was a professional game developer. I grew tired of publisher's BS, so I started buying rental properties and improving them to rent out. Getting loans for more houses is getting hard, and the loans were what was funding my salary. So things have been a little tough lately. I also have a computer repair business but it doesn't even make enough to cover the building rent and utilities, so its a loss. I do a bit of odd job contracting too, like I put new tile in a friends house. I won't ever work for anyone as an employee. I've been self employed for 20 years and I'd rather have ups and downs in monthly income than work a crappy steady job. Even slow/down months are probably better than what a steady job would pay.

I think I'm probably only a year away from being self sufficient on my rental income should I stop working all together. Ultimately I'd rather be a game developer than real estate developer, but finding paying game work is a lot harder than the rental business. Real estate is incredibly easy to succeed at if you have hands on skills like I do (I can fix anything, did 10 years of auto body before getting into computer games, so houses are easy for me to fix).

I don't think there are any issues, OOO adds their own vampires. Compatibility should be fine unless you try other mods that change player vampire powers.

Wow, just to give you guys an idea of how much new content is in Unholy Darkness, I built a BSA and its over 300 megs! That's a big ass DLC! Private beta testers, check your PM box shortly...

Wohoo! :celebration: :woot: :rock:

That means that this is soon to be released! (i hope oo: )

Well its getting closer. I have some people testing it out, but I'm still adding some features yet and then those will have to be tested. I'd say another 3-4 weeks and it could be done, barring any huge bugs that would be showstoppers. But so far testing has gone pretty good with only a few little bugs I've already cleaned up, so I'm optimistic.

Also bear in mind that the first release will not have the covenant or rogue quests, but all the player homes, all the vampire powers and some quests you do for Silian and LLordril. It all leads up to the Covenant & Rogues though so it should have quite a bit of fun stuff to do. Then the next phase of the mod will come later. It won't take as long as this first part though, that I promise.

Last night I got quite a bit done. I've already fixed a number of small bugs my testers have come up with and then I went on to add creature flee. If you show your fangs near creatures they might flee just like horses do. It was pretty cool watching a flock of sheep flee from me and then a pack of wolves took off. They have to be low HP creatures for it to work. I might add some more math later so perhaps as you grow in power the chance for them to flee increases, so when you are an ancient and powerful vampire even larger creatures will know not to mess with you.

I also added the ability to buy some of the vampire home upgrades from the vendor. In that process I realized I haven't even done a few cities yet, so now I have to do some more vampire player home stuff. I was hoping to be done with it so I could move on to polishing the quests & stuff I have roughly working, because once that is all done we're ready for public beta.

:celebrate: <-- All i can say