I thought I'd give the community a heads-up that I'll be writing a blog and producing videos about my experiences with various mods for Oblivion. This may seem like blatant advertising, and I suppose it pretty much is, but I thought it might at least be of some interest to newcomers of the forums. Hopefully I'll be able to contribute some useful reviews. Thanks for your time.

http://matthewkaine.blogspot.com/

BUMP

So far I've posted descriptions and videos for QTP 3 Redimized and Cava Obscura. Does nobody have any interest?

That's pretty neat. The videos, especially. If you keep it up up, and happen to be trying the mods I'm including in my massive aesthetic/immersion mod compendium site (http://obliv.ion.is/oblivion.txt), it would be super cool if I could link to your blog for examples. It seems like the sensibility might be similar. I still have to finish it, though.

Sorry, I meant to reply earlier, but needed to run errands.

I've already visited the site and bookmarked it. Enjoyed what I saw. I'll look again later for the Cava Obscura article, which wasn't up when I visited. Assuming it sees frequent updates I'll for sure make it a regular stopover.

-Decrepit-

This is just a suggestion, but I would love to see someone do this: mod comparisons. For example, you already have a post about QTP3R. What if you wrote a post comparing QTP3R with Vibrant Textures (and whatever other notable texture replacers that are available)? Or what if you compared Cava Obscura with Darker Dungeons and Let There Be Darkness? Then your videos can be used to compare vanilla versus the different mods. If you're up to it, you can create animated GIFs of screenshots with different mods enabled. You can add info like how much FPS you get with each mods versus vanilla. Basically, you give the user/reader all the info they need to choose, but you can still give your recommendation as to what you would choose and for what reasons.

You don't have to do this. Just a suggestion

@palidoo: I have a pretty good idea of which mods I'll be installing, and I know some fall on that list. As long as you give me the necessary credit, feel free to link to my blog as a resource. That's one of the main reasons I'm doing this.

@Decrepit: Thanks!

@poison741: As nice as the idea sounds, I only have enough time to install mods that I actually intend on keeping for my game. For now, I'll probably stick with just comparing to Oblivion. I'll talk more about comparisons to other mods in what I write in the blog.

EDIT: Anybody that has a Google account can follow my blog. Look for the link on the right of the page. Although I really have no idea what it means to be a follower, it would be most appreciated to know people like what they see. I believe having a Google account allows you to easily make comments on my posts as well.

I subscribed to your RSS feed. I look forward to seeing what you add.

Subscribed to RSS too. Keep the posts coming

Yep it looks good so far. I think there will be more interest as the content grows.

Checked out the Cava Obscura feature. I've not yet felt a burning desire for a cave darker, but that one looks tempting. For me, it was Cyrodiil's night skies that were obviously too light. That bugged me from the get-go. I solved it with that old standby OC_DarkerNights, which I've stuck with all this time. Just recently I was sort of tempted to "upgrade" to Weather - All Natural which includes a night-darkening option. As luck would have it, the "one" mod All Natural recommends not using for compatibility reasons is the very mod I consider the core of my installation, play-style wise. Such is life. In any case, I'm enjoying your site and look forward to seeing it grow. I too might well add its feed to my homepage.

-Decrepit-

I found the font a little hard to read, the rest is nice.

Very interesting; I'll have to sit down and read what you have so far in a bit when I have some time.

The font choice is slightly difficult to read, I agree, but not too bad. It may well just be how IE9 RC is rendering it, or could be the font itself. I do like the style of the font, though, so I'm split on whether you ought to think about changing it, though (besides, it *is* your blog! ). Other than that, I think you did a bang-up job! I'll be interested in seeing what else you post.

And as a long-time QTP3R user and more recently a Cava Obscura user, I've found both of them to be must-haves in my Oblivion installs these days.

I have no issues with font readability. Then again I browse with Firefox. Don't know that that makes any difference, but another poster specifically mentioned using MSIE.

Thanks for the support everyone! If more people continue to complain about the font, I'll be sure to do something about it.

@Decrepit: I have a feeling you'll appreciate my latest post. Let me know whether you found it useful.

This is something I've been thinking about doing for a while. Great resource and can't wait for new updates. Good job.

Looking good

If you have any compliments, insults, suggestions, or offenses, be sure leave a comment on the blog post! Thanks for the all the continued support over here, though.

I've now added posts for Weather - All Natural and Enhanced Water. Be sure to let me know if you have any requests.

Slightly off-topic, but I wanted to ask: what settings are you using to have your water reflections look so good? I use Enhanced Water HDMI (same thing as the high-quality original except with SI compatibility included and longer underwater view distanced than the original Enhanced Water). My reflections always look a bit blocky, so I'm thinking I turned off a setting in the INI somewhere.

Just another BUMP for those that haven't seen it.

The most recent posts are about Subtle Sunshine and Enhanced Economy.

Good stuff there. Always nice to see more outside interest in TES stuff.

I too have a bit of difficulty with the font, it's almost as though your site is trying to use one my system doesn't have and so Firefox is reverting to a default.

Fonts look good for me. Seems like a fitting theme for the game. Using Chrome.

I was a bit surprised by your description of the unfair distribution of wealth in the game in your entry about EE. I have the exact opposite view of it - the odd thing is that a Lvl 10 player char can be richest in Cyrodiil and not the other way around. I've never heard that it's an issue with PC's being poor with vanilla economics before. Anyway, EE is very customisable so one size fits all in this case I guess.

Yes, according to web developer (a Firefox plugin), you have a CSS error "Unknown property 'font-face'. Declaration dropped." Also in Firefox the right panel is quite squished - probably due to the font problem (so my default is rather large and is not leaving enough space for the right panel).

That right panel appears "squished" in Firefox, Opera and Internet Explorer.

The Blog looks good so far.

Odd, the font appears fine for me (obviously, otherwise I would have changed it before). I chose to make the right panel squished because I thought making the center text as readable as possible was more important. I'll try to look at my blog on different computers and see what all of you are describing, but would someone be kind enough to post a screenshot of what the blog looks like to them?

@Arkngt: I was referring to the beginning of the game. Once you increase in level, selling expensive items is a piece of cake when all the merchants have limitless gold. The problem with vanilla that I was describing always happens for me until I level up enough to start finding more pricey loot.

Thanks for the support, everyone; I'm glad you like it so far.

Just a little BUMP to say that I've changed the font and adjusted the width of the right panel so you can actually read what's in the blog archive. Be sure to let me know if this change helps you read it better.

The two most recent posts are about Enhanced Economy and Alive Waters.