The Elder Scrolls Trekker

Some oddities I found on my way...

Something familiar about this...
Belly ache
A very clumsy gardener worked here
Bloodbath
Oh my God... is that a ... deer ?!
Oblivion - The Musical
A long way from home

And in case you are wondering, I did NOT stage any of this. They are just random occurrences..

News from corepc, creator of the indispensable Tamriel Travelers.

The good news is that the travelers are now roaming the Shivering Isles !

The bad news is that, due to pressure from real life, corepc announced he will be retiring soon from Oblivion mods. Hopefully, this will be temporary as his contribution to Oblivion has been immense. I simply wouldn't be playing the game now, two years after its release, if it was not for his work on Tamriel Travellers, MMM and Living Economy.

Best of luck to him.

The Oblivion mod community has been very busy for the past few weeks.

Both Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul and Martigen's Monster Mod released final versions after weeks of testing. Time to upgrade to OOO 1.33 and MMM 3.5.5

Several optimization and eye candy mods came out as well. Detailed terrains, Optimized distant lands and Beaming Sunglare push the limits of what was thought possible with the game.

A discussion about little known mods revealed several gems.

Finally, corepc brings us the much awaited completion of trollf's armamentarium, turning this wonderful modder resources into loot used by NPCs.

Difficult to think we are so close to the second anniversary of the release of Oblivion.

Someone in the Bestheda forum asked for comparison screenshots of Oblivion with and without mods to convince a friend of the importance of a modded game over a console.

It occured to me that textures alone was not enough to really showcase the power of mods - most mods add subtle details that take some time to identify for an untrained eye.

So I took some images from the official screenshots - both pc, xbox and ps3 - and tried to match them as much as possible with my modded game.

Anvil docks -
-

- Mods used: Qarl Texture Pack 3 Redimized, Natural Environments, Better Cities Anvil, Alienslof's Robe Trader, Streamline
- Notice the mountains visible in the background behind the castle and the difference in texture for distant land
- The difference of colors is due to Natural Environment. I personally like the Yellow hue that NE gives to the atmosphere. Vanilla Oblivion look colder most of the time. For a Blueish hue, you can use the alternate weather system AWS.


Skingrad Fighter Guild porter -
-

- Mods used: Qarl Texture Pack 3 Redimized, Tamriel NPC Revamped, Django's Unique Features, Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul
- The Guild Porter has freckles
- Note that the elf fighter is dressed down (civilian clothes) in the morning. She is not always wearing an armor.

Imperial City view -
-

- Mods used: Qarl Texture Pack 3 Redimized, Natural Environments, Better
road signs, Enhanced water, Almost Everything Visible When Distant, HTF noise replacer, BTQ Landscape LODs,
Streamline, More immersive interface
- Notice the distant bridges (left), dock (right) and village at the top of the hill (left) from AEVWD
- The haze around the city itself and the reduced amount of grass are due to Streamline
- Notice the discrete HUD in the bottom corner from a More Immersive Interface

Outside Prison Sewers -
-

- Mods used: Qarl Texture Pack 3 Redimized, Natural Environments, Unique
Landscape Imperial Isle, Enhanced water, Almost Everything Visible When
Distant, HTF noise replacer, BTQ Landscape LODs, Streamline
- Notice the changes on the dock and the other side of the water (right) from UL City Isle
- The ayleid ruin on the other side of the lake (left) is now visible
- The blueish hue is caused by a mix between Natural Environment rainy weather and Streamline distant fog.

Skingrad streets -
-

- Mods used: Qarl Texture Pack 3 Redimized, Natural Environments, Better Cities Skingrad, Illumination Within Revived
- Notice the clutter and tiny details from Better Cities, and the illuminated windows
- Qarl's Texture pack 3 gives more definition to stone pavement and facades

Chorrol streets -
-

- Mods used: Qarl Texture Pack 3 Redimized, Natural Environments, Better Cities Chorrol, Illumination Within Revived, Beaming Sunglare, moDem City Life
- Enhanced sunglare effect
- The Orc beggar is followed by his kid (city life)

Estelle Renoit Bookstore -
-

- Mods used: Qarl Texture Pack 3 Redimized, TNR All Races, Book Jackets Oblivion, Exnem Eye Candy body replacer
- New book covers
- NPC with more character

And finally, THE main reason to use mods

Inventory system -
-
- Modded as a table (PC)

- Mods used: wz_inventory, OOO (hood), Chaindress
- Two ways to view your inventory - a list with many more items and a grid, just like Morrowind.
- The chaindress is one of many armors available only from PC mods
- The shaded hood and elven sword come from OOO (hoods and capes are not included in vanilla Oblivion).

That did not take very long... only a few days after I finally decided I had a version of Oblivion stable enough to (finally) play the game, three major updates were announced in the Bethesda forum.

Tireless modders bomret and dev_akm unveiled the completion of their secret project - Qarl's Texture pack 3 - redimized - a complete review of Qarl's eye candy textures, reduced and optimized for better performance. The new texture pack comes at a price though - a 1.3 G download. But the result is worth the wait of a huge download.

Incredibly enough, corepc found the time to step away from his pivotal work leading the MMM team to go back and improve on one of his babies - Tamriel Travelers hit version 1.35 with vendors on horses and ... pack guars !

Finally, the team behind Better Cities Translated has released several compatibitily updates for some of the major quests mods out there.

A few weeks from its second anniversary, Oblivion keeps getting better and better...

The past few weeks have seen some exciting developments in the little world of Oblivion mods, and from the looks of things, the next few weeks will be just as exciting.

Under the tireless lead of corepc, Martigen's Oblivion Mod reached the milestone of a new release - version 3.5.3 - with an open beta testing already available for 3.5.4.

Dev_akm and the Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul team have been hard at work as well, releasing a new version - 1.32 RC 5 - and improving the compatibility with MMM.

It is a pleasure to see both mods survive the departure of their original authors and slowly move towards improved gameplay, balance and stability.

Ismelda Lasombra led an effort to translate and improve on Banasplit's Better Cities. The project is now known as Better Cities Translated and includes other translated city improvements mods, several modders at work and compatibility plugins.

Most importantly, the past few weeks saw the return of Jaga Talesin and the much awaited completion of a massive update to Streamline. Streamline 3.1 (now in open beta testing) is possibly THE single most important piece of software for anyone who wants to run Oblivion with a significant number of mods. The latest version includes Streamsight, a new feature that hides distant object behind a dynamic fog and results in a impressive gain in performance.

These are only highlights from the dozens of active projects currently in development by the modding community. One can never thank them enough for giving Oblivion its full potential as a playground, more than just a game.

So it took a year and a half to get Oblivion playable again. The release of Streamline 3.0 beta made it possible.

After creating a new character with A New Beginning, the first time I explored a ruin (the fort just south of Anvil), I realized that I had no torch but I was there, so I kept going and hoped I would find a couple of torches inside. I did eventually... but only after I had to experience a few pitch black room and fights in the dark with a couple of outlaws.

It was creepy not being able to see if there was a trap ahead or someone around the corner.

Edit: Performance issues and mod conflicts reared their ugly faces again. Back to troubleshooting...

The Quest for a playable Oblivion is starting to feel like going after the Saint Graal.

After a year and a half, almost 20 Gb of downloads, hours of debugging, testing and countless crashes, I have yet to play with a steady character for more than a few weeks. Sometimes the goal seems almost within reach... so close I become hopeful ... only to be disappointed again by yet another conflict between mods, a yellow square in the game or more crashes to desktop.

The good news is that finally, I have reached my most stable mix of mods to date. Crashes are now relatively rare. Conflicts between mods are still there but significantly more manageable. Still.. I am waiting for a final release of Oscuro's Overhaul and a few fixes to Martigen's latest version. A few more weeks of wait hopefully and the wait will be over.

Yet.. for all this trouble, I still feel it is worth it.

The potential to turn Oblivion into a decent RPG is still intact. I have come down my initial enthousiasm for the game only a few weeks after installing it for the first time. Without mods, the game is simply too 'simple' to be worth playing. Running around and kill, kill, kill in dungeons stops being fun after 10 minutes. Mods bring back the pleasure and challenge of playing this game.

Looking at the amount of mods produced since the release of the game, I am not the only one to feel Oblivion is worth saving. The sum of work from the modding community is simply amazing. A year and a half after the release, almost all the major issues with the initial game have been addressed in some way.  

I still find it difficult to think about a comment I read in an interview of someone at Bethesda at the occasion of the release of Shivering Isle. While he acknowledged the work of the modding community, he said they did not see any user developed mod worth including with the official extension (?!!!)

How about one of the vastly superior user interfaces or the hundreds of bug fixes from the Unofficial Oblivion Patch just to name a few ?

Fortunately, they did release the tools that made it possible to make this game worth playing, so I can't really be mad at them for ignoring what has been done with these tools. Let's hope they will redeem themselves with TES V. 

After another fight with unreliable performance of my system I traced the issue back to a faulty USB card reader.

I still experienced too many crashes to desktop playing the game, probably a bad mod or issues in saved game, so I waited a few months to dull the pain of starting over yet again.

I had to review the list of plugins, keep only the essentials ones and check load orders again. Then install game and official updates first - save the Oblivion folder at this point in case you need a fresh start. It is easier to copy this folder over than having to go through all the install CDs again.

Then create a saved game in the the prison cell and use it as a reference game for future plugins.

At this point, create these folders in your Oblivion/Data folder : Install, Readme, Unused 

Break down your plugin install files in categories:

- cosmetic, UI, textures (backup visually enhanced folder)

- gameplay, spells, land

- weapons, armors, etc

- quests, companions

Use Oblivion Mod Manager (OBMM) and test your game after each wave of installation to validate your load order. And remember to read all readme files !

I found this 'papyrus scroll' theme while upgrading the site to a new version of Movable Type - it feels much more appropriate for an Elder Scrolls site.

I also decided to revise the structure of the site itself. Instead of a chronological log of updates about mods, the site will read more like a book of articles about my experience with mods and Oblivion. Categories will include Summaries and reviews of some of my favorite mods, mods I used and discarded (and why) as well as issues and solutions about mods.

The front page will be turned into a table of content instead of a simple log.

I hope you enjoy the new design.

The real exciting news of the week was the much anticipated release of OOO 1.3 - Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul. After playing it a bit, it looks well worth the wait (and the trouble of installing it).

Making this mod coexist with several other mods can be tricky as it incorporates versions of existing mods and flat out conflicts with others. The changes are so extensive that it is almost impossible to preserve a saved game after installing it. The only solution left is a fresh start with a new character.

As I said above, for all this trouble you will be rewarded with a more difficult and challenging game. Expect to come across all sorts of creatures, including Trolls and Minotaurs Lords, even at level 1.

So, before you rush into downloading this gem, make sure you read the notes on the official website.

 

Continue reading "How to use OOO, MMM and other mods together ?" »

The wait is over. I got my hands on a copy of Oblivion.

Like many fans of the Elders Scrolls series out there, I had been waiting this release with a mix of anticipation and fear. Anticipation for the wonderful improvements promised by Bethesda. And fear of the inevitable disappointment at some of the changes that would be introduced.

Bethesda delivered on both accounts.

The bad news first....

I have been playing for a few hours only. The first hour was spent on a practice character - just to get the feel of the game. It took that long to configure the graphics to display an acceptable landscape while preserving a comfortable performance. The defaults settings provided by the game are very conservative - to the point of being disappointing at first. Distant hills look like a blotchy golf course. Nearby grass pops up only 10 feet away. I was relieved to find that my machine could handle a maximum view distant of grass and soft shadows from trees without breaking a sweat.

Some additional settings can be tweaked if you edit the Oblivion.ini file... assuming you find it first. Unlike Morrowind, Oblivion stores personal settings such as saved games in 'My Documents / My Games / Oblivion' (assuming you are on a PC of course). This is where the .ini file is stored.

If you intent to take pictures of your trip in Tamriel, make sure to edit that file and set bAllowScreenShot to 1, before you fire up the game. Why they keep leaving that option off by default on PC is beyond me.

Hopefully, someone clever will reverse engineer the rest of the .ini file soon and provide an Oblivion tweak guide like the one that appeared soon after the release of Morrowind.

The second bad news of the game is definitely the interface. This is where you can feel the influence of the XBox the most.

Oblivion's interface is available in one size - BIG. And if you are running the game at high resolution, the interface is REALLY BIG. After all, when you play on an XBox, you have little use of resizable windows and small fonts like in Morrowind.

The interface is also very linear, made up on scrollable list after list. Gone are the tooltips. Gone is the drag and drop of items between character, inventory and the outside world. Gone are the rich, hyperlinked threads of conversations with other characters. And gone are the editable saved games.

Instead, you will have to get used to shift-click to send an items from your inventory to a container (or to simply drop it). You will have to scroll through list after list instead of using your mouse to simply click on the item of your choice. Even the one size map becomes difficult to read after a while. As for the conversation topics, they are reduced to a meager list of topics of interest (with no way to go back to previous conversations). And saved games pile up with a default date and name.

And what to think of the journal system ? One of the main complaints about the interface of Morrowind was its very linear journal system. It looks like they ignored that lesson and went back to the original idea of lists of quests. Instead of a living journal with table of contents, index and quests, Oblivion only offers three lists - all quests, completed quests and active quests. How very disappointing...

A small tip if the new interface leaves you very frustrated - spend some extra time with the Keyboard options and try to map the keys as close as possible to the layout you are comfortable with. I set mine to display the 3rd person view with Tab, the journal with right mouse click and the new Block option with the 3rd mouse button. Only then I  became more comfortable with the interface.

After playing the game for a few hours, I can't shake the feeling that the game 'world' is smaller than the island of Morrowind, with less quests to explore (which is almost to be expected from a game that replaced text based quests by hours of audio content).

But then again, I only played for a few hours. It took me days to really appreciate the depth of Morrowind. I will have to revisit this first impression a few weeks from now.

The game is gorgeous. There is no other way of saying this.

Morrowind was the first game I ever played where one of my first actions was to sit on a rock and watch the sun go down. The landscapes were very alien, with charred valleys, giant mushrooms and flying jellyfish.

Oblivion is several orders of magnitude better looking, with much more mundane environments. The hills around the imperial city are so well rendered in their lush complexity that several times I had the odd feeling to find a particular configuration of rocks, brook and tree very familiar. Oblivion is the first game I ever played that reminded me of landscapes I actually visited in the south of France or in the Alps.

Speed and stability are the second good news of this game. Morrowind was plagued with slow load times and random crash to desktop. So far the game has not crashed on me, and the load times have been exceptionally quick,

But that is nothing compared to the speed of the game itself - being able to run through a forest, with trees, bushes, grass, roots, butterflies, deers, rocks and ruins... all in real time and with near seamless transitions is a real feat. Just for that the development team should be forgiven their mistakes regarding the interface,

The goal of increased immersion is achieved as well. The simplified (simplistic ?) interface is almost understandable in that context. You pick up new quests by listening in on conversations (repetitive after a while but always source of surprises when people talk about the consequences of your actions).  The world itself is more mature, with the notable absence of a new monster attacking you every 20 feet - the wilderness is ... well... wilderness. Deers run away from you.  Wolves don't. Bandits ambush you on the side of the roads.

The new physics system works quite well, especially when it comes to traps. There is nothing better than luring gnomes into their own traps :) I hope this aspect will be developed later on in the game or in plugins maybe. I have yet to see a full range of mechanical traps in a role playing game.

The last area where the game really stands out is in its advanced 'artificial intelligence'. Oblivion related forums are the occasion of a new game - what is your favorite Radiant AI moment ?

I don't have a favorite yet but I definitely have seen some examples :

- Like that patrol guard jumping to save me from a bandit as he was approaching with his horse

- Guild members walking to their room at night for a sleep or taking a break for lunch

- Patrons in an inn walking over to the bartender, then walking back to their tables with some food.

- Roadkills ... wolves or bandits already dead on the side of the road

- Guards being relieved for a night shift and going home for a drink

The system is not perfect, of course, but it is a significant improvement over any game I have ever played before. The feeling of a living world is there, at every corner.

It was also a pleasant surprise to see so many mods for Morrowind made it as full features in Oblivion, such as sheated swords, wearable quivers, hoods, dogs, locked businesses a night and people on a schedule. Speaking of mods, the game is not even a week old and already, Oblivion mods are available for download, some of which providing fixes to the most immediate issues with the game.

I can't wait to see what else will be available for the game a few months for now.

I created a new section in my main gallery for Oblivion screenshots.

This time around, I will document the adventures of Selena in Cyrodiil , my main character, right from the beginning.