User talk:Realmeleven

Introducing RealmEleven

Eleven is the fifth prime number and considering the state of my mods (namely as vapourware), the imaginary realm of this number seems entirely appropriate.

If I hear that there is interest in a particular project, it will get a higher priority: meaning earlier=more-likely completion - so if something I am doing sounds interesting, visit my website[1], skip the philisophical meanderings and drop me a line to let me know - or reply here: whatever appeals most.

My Vapourware

Talos Tower:

Welcome to the poor man's torr to be situated on the north-west penninsula of Imperial City Isle. This project was started to learn how to save a modification. I learnt how to save as, and then promptly forgot and after months of ignoring the TES4 CS, I found this wiki and learned that the answer was staring me in the face in the form of the "Set as Active File Button" - which still doesn't convey to me the idea, "if you want to overwrite the selected file, just push me" - but at least I know. I then went on to ridiculously more ambitious projects with no hope of completion! If I ever make up my mind about it's height, visibility, access, NPC logistics, and quest integration, I might actually return to Talos Tower and complete it.

Castle Verdance:

You'll never guess where I plonked this eye-sore. I'll give you a hint - somewhere where I'd hope it's sheer ugliness would be hidden by some of Tamriel's more organic features! After a violent case of verbal diarrhoea I found myself faced with an oceanic plotline and I couldn't figure out why actors kept walking through castle walls and coming up through the ground mesh in places they weren't supposed to. With my intricate and "unsinkable" plot sinking faster than the Titanic, I decided to try a seachange...

Aquavergne:

Come aboard me hearties! It's just a little barque with barely enough room to swing a cat (of nine-tails), much less walk through walls. This is where this wiki really began to make an impact on my ability (or lack thereof) to use the CS. Still struggling with terms like, "CTD" (Crash To Desktop) I started tinkering with scripts and I discovered that I actually could crash Oblivion on my computer. MoveTo and SetPos don't work too well on objects that don't exist in the world from which the call is made! I did get my relocking doors, disappearing gangplanks, and international regulation running lights almost right, but while I was learning the script functions, I managed to drive one of the NPCs right around the twist. The search for a cure to a case of apparent catatonia saw me literally trip over the answer to the iceberg that sank Castle Verdance - hidden in the NPC Patrol Tutorial. Path nodes are generally followed fairly closely by actors, and I noticed the lack of path nodes in the new village and docks I'd added excluded the expected incursions from wandering NPCs - some time after I read the NPC Patrol Tutorial. As it happens, correcting the altitude of existing path nodes and adding the missing path nodes (with the connecting paths) solved many of the abnormalities I was seeing here.

My Software

A few things for Windows[2] but nothing I would call complete for Oblivion - see Vapourware (above)!

My Unholy Inquisition

Ok, so I've got some questions. Yes, I know it's a branding iron and it's actually glowing. It's just to cast a bit of light on the subject. This won't hurt a bit. I promise!! :^)

Containers or Object Group References

In terms of frame rate on present-day computers, does it make a noticeable (ah, maybe that should read "catastrophic") difference to frame rate if I add between 400 & 1000 polynomial calculations per frame to be handled by the script processor? Presuming that this would incur an unholy penalty on frame rate, is there a way to create a reference to a group of about 130 objects so that the group can be moved, rotated and enabled/disabled as a single reference? Without a script extender to confuse the end user?

Only thing I can say is, give it a shot. The script processor is reasonably quick (it takes a lot to cause any slow-down), but what you're proposing is well beyond what it was designed for.

As for a simple way to treat a group of objects as a single object within script, no. Not even with the script extender or any plug-ins. It would undoubtedly be easier to do by writing your own OBSE plug-in, plus C++ would be much faster than Oblivion script, but if you care about users too dumb or lazy to download OBSE, I don't think there's anything you can hope for other than to just try the equations and pray the processor is much better than I expect it to be.

Dragoon Wraith TALK 11:56, 15 January 2009 (EST)

Building Distributable Components

Are there resources for building a script extender with Visual Studio? The idea here is to make something that simply connects the Oblivion engine via an ini file to an expandable collection of library modules. The extender would never have to change once the bugs were ironed out - allowing it to be freely incorporated as part of a modification package that depends on it - but the library components could be added to freely, and be separately installable so that a modification could ship with all of its dependencies without the "update" issues attached to evolving script extenders.

No. Oblivion does not have any native support for script extenders.

However, OBSE does have support for extensions to its systems. These consist of a DLL in the Oblivion\Data\OBSE\Plugins\ folder, which OBSE will automatically load. They have an API for it, which can be found in OBSE's Source Code.

All such plug-ins are requested to be open source, and there are some limitations on them, but mostly they can do just about anything you can figure out how to code. As they are your own work, you can feel free to include them with your mods (though most prefer to have a central download for the plug-in if it is going to be used in more than one project), but OBSE cannot be included with your project.

Dragoon Wraith TALK 11:58, 15 January 2009 (EST)

Filtered Dialogue Tutorial?

Is there a filtered dialogue tutorial for those of us who simply want to reference the existing voice dialogue components that ship with Oblivion? Would this be a good way to cross the language barrier without fluency in German, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Chinese, French, etc.; eg. to avoid having to create voice overs in the other languages?

I'm afraid I don't understand the question. What do you mean by "referencing" the dialogue components? If you mean just read them in the editor, if you load up Oblivion.esm, it will contain only the dialogue from Oblivion (and SI if you have it installed), in the language of the game that you have bought.

If you mean you want to have an NPC use an existing line, and therefore simply switch to the version of that line from various languages, conceivably, but I suspect it would be a compatibility nightmare. What you would have to do is edit the Conditions for that piece of Dialogue so that it runs both for the original NPC in the original situation and for your NPC in your situation. Doing so would conflict with any other mods that do the same with the same piece of conversation. Generally I prefer to avoid editing anything from Oblivion.esm if possible (CELL records are the exception as they can be modified by multiple mods correctly).

Dragoon Wraith TALK 12:02, 15 January 2009 (EST)

My Wish List

1. An installer compiler with multiple component options, ini file options, & uninstall file creation with complete rollback capability is really needed. Something that does activation on purchase would be fantastic, especially if the customer isn't troubled for pass codes that seem to go on forever. Microsoft have a similar idea going with online activation - but it hasn't been connected with ecommerce features yet.
2. Script Extender SDK with author site validation and update notification automated to usage (IE it checks automatically, but only when Oblivion loads)
3. The ability to stretch objects in the render window would be quite handy.
4. A more complete Object Oriented model with access to distinct subroutine/function/method levels of coding would also be useful.

Purchase is entirely out of the question.

As for the rest, who do you expect to do it? Bethesda is long done with this game. All you have are volunteers who are still interested in the game. I very, very much doubt the OBSE team is interested in creating a professional SDK. On the other hand, by writing OBSE plug-ins, that final wish is probably quite possible.

Dragoon Wraith TALK 12:04, 15 January 2009 (EST)

Vanilla is NOT Plain

Vanilla is one of the strongest and most expensive flavourings in existence. I know this because I purchase about 25 grams (just over an ounce) every year or so. Less than one half of one percent by mass of vanilla pod ground with coffee beans will completely overwhelm the espresso and the bitterness is far stronger than anything that coffee or cocoa can produce. However, if your coffee beans are more than a week old and you really hate stale coffee, a fraction of a gram of vanilla pod is just the thing to make the espresso a bit more palatable - especially if you don't have time to reroast the beans for half an hour in the oven prior to grinding.

Due to the fact that dishonest businessmen use the word, "vanilla" to denote a lack of flavour in their food, the term is often misused by victims of this fraud who have never tasted vanilla (even if they have had many foods falsely labelled as vanilla flavoured). Businesses that use the term vanilla to describe food that lacks "vanilla pod" as one of the flavourings or ingredients should be reported to the ACCC in Australia or the Better Business Bureau in the United States for deceptive business practices.

For those of us who know what vanilla tastes like, the implications of the term in conjunction with software implies bugginess to the point of crashing your operating system if you do not tiptoe around every single bug, and a five figure price tag (at least 100 times the price of alternative packages). This is because real vanilla pod costs more than 100 times the price per kilogram of coffee and cocoa (by weight), and if you make the slightest miscalculation in the amount used, it will overwhelm the food. I definitely wouldn't call unmodified Oblivion "vanilla" - not by any stretch of metaphirical logic. To start with, Oblivion is far to stable to qualify for the label and it doesn't cost enough either.

If we mean plain, can we please just "call it like it is" and say what we mean - instead of something that just gives dishonest businessmen yet another excuse for their dishonesty. The term we use in software development to describe a largely unmodified environment is "clean" and I think this would be a great deal more meaningful than "vanilla" - especially considering that fact that both TES4 construction set and GECK are fairly high level object oriented programming languages with more in common with Visual Studio than with an oven or a saucepan!

To begin with, the term "vanilla" is generally a reference to the ice cream flavor, which may or may not involve actual vanilla, and in any case is not particularly strong. Further, the idea that it is "plain", I think, has to do with two things:

1. Vanilla is white, a rather "plain" color
2. Vanilla is one of the two "default" flavors of ice cream, and chocolate is generally the more flavorful (in ice cream). Further, chocolate has various connotations of richness, boldness, and even sexiness, making it unsuitable for a term for "plain", and so that job falls to vanilla. Generally, the idea is "vanilla, as opposed to rocky road with fudge and sprinkles and and and!" - the idea being that it's just the single flavor, as opposed to the ice cream loaded with toppings and extras, so comparing it to cocoa or strawberry or whatever else is fallacious; you would need to compare it to more complex, compound flavors in order to get at the heart of the idiom.

Finally, I highly doubt that the Better Business Bureau would care about the use of the term "vanilla" in a product, unless they said "natural vanilla" or some-such indicating that they actually meant vanilla pods rather than some artificial flavoring, because "vanilla" typically refers to the flavor rather than the actual plant that has that flavor, at least in common usage. This may be technically incorrect, but unlikely fraudulent.

At any rate, I do feel your pain; being from New York, I have a certain amount of pride in our pizza, and am appalled by what, say, Californians think about pizza. There, they think it odd that I order "plain" cheese pizza - they consider the toppings the most important part of the pizza. That is, of course, preposterous; if the "plain" cheese pizza itself is not good, adding things on top of it is not going to make it so. The most important part of the pizza, in fact, is the crust, which few people realize, but it's very true. Californian pizza does extravagant things with the toppings, but they neglect the foundation too much. Probably because the water quality there is atrocious.

Dragoon Wraith TALK 23:45, 14 January 2009 (EST)

RE: Making a Living and Oblivion Modding

Point of interest: It is massively against Bethesda's EULA to charge for mods for their games. This is a completely commercial-free hobby.

Which also more-or-less eliminates, to my mind, your arguments against script extenders - modders quite work for free, often for long periods of time; any user too stupid or too lazy to download and install OBSE for my work, doesn't deserve my work. The Oblivion Script Extender has high acceptance (nearly 100%) on the Official Elder Scrolls Forums, though we suspect it is much less among users who are not members there.
Dragoon Wraith TALK 11:52, 15 January 2009 (EST)