Spoiling Myself

[ascottk]

Most of you know I've been throwing out AI into the Dark Mod furiously the last few months. But the last week or so has been my mod vacation :hehe:

 

First of all I got my graduate teaching assistantship & that pays most of my tuition so I've got a little bit more money this spring. What am I blowing it on? I bought a 1993 Mazda 626 LX for $1800 (add $350 to get it fixed because the used car guys got water into the spark plugs while cleaning the engine thus ruining the sparkplugs & wires . . . grrr ),

 

a Sanyo VPC-C40 digital multimedia recorder:

http://www.sanyo-dsc.com/english/products/vpc_c40/index.html

This tiny thing is awesome from what I tried out so far but it's too late in the evening to thoroughly test it.

 

& Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion (time consuming, addictive, & pretty). I've been taking screenies for those who are interested:

 

I think I'm only on level 9. I started off doing the thief thing then I decided to join the Mage's Guild. I'm trying out the Thieves Arsenal mod too (hasn't been too useful . . . mostly the blackjack and gas arrows).

 

I'm not going to apologize for my lack of updates on the mod (like I usually do) but we know a break from something like this is sometimes necessary. So I'm going to play with my new toys.

[Komag]

I recently (couple months ago) reinstalled Oblivion. Here is my list of HIGHLY Recommended mods:

 

Almost Everything VWD.7z

attack_and_hide_v20_bundle_pack.zip

Axebanes Hunters Mod 2.0-TESSource.zip

Ayleid_Wells.zip

Better grass texture without tiling-TESSource.rar

Borderless_Icons_v10.zip

Compass_Marker_Reducer.zip

DarkDungeons.rar

darker_loading_screens.rar

dyseso_Alchemy_Potions_Perks.rar

dyseso_LightIngreds.rar

Elven Map Redux.rar

FastHorse_v03.zip

Final-Harvest [Flora]-TESSource.zip

Francescos_leveled_creaturesitems_mod.ex

e

FrancescosOptionalNewItemsCreatures_new.

exe

Harvest [Containers]-TESSource.7z

ImmersiveInterface103.zip

Immortal_Horses.zip

KT_DetectHostilityv13.rar

KT_NightEyeToggle.rar

Landmarks.zip

Landscape LOD Texture Replacement-TESSource.zip

Landscape_LOD_NormalMap_Fix.rar

landscape_lod_replacement_textures_borde

r_regions-tessource.zip

lig_border_removal.zip

magiceffectdim.zip

More_Immersive_Sound.rar

MovableBodies.zip

Natural_Environments_v212.zip

No More Annoying Messages-TESSource.zip

no_psychic_guards_v12.zip

NoLoad.zip

nwl13.zip

Oblivion Mod Manager.zip

Oblivion NOCD_1.1.511.rar

Oblivion_Ayleid_Ruin_Parallax_Texture_Pa

ck.zip

Oblivion_Cats_v02b.rar

Oblivion_Sewers_Parallax_texture_pack.zi

p

oc_darker_nights_101a.zip

P1D_LowPoly_Grass_v10.zip

ParallaxCitiesGigaPack.rar

quickstart11.zip

Ultra_PP_mod_more parallax.rar

Unofficial Oblivion Patch Installer Version-TESSource.exe

Younger_Hotter_NPCs_10.zip

[Order of the Hammer Bureaucrat]

What are you studying?

[Nyarlathotep]

Komag, you know you can get the results of a lot of those graphical enhancements just by downloading Qarl's texture pack, right?

 

What are you studying?

Younger_Hotter_NPCs_10.zip

'Nuff said.

[ascottk]

What are you studying?

Music composition. I'm focusing on electronic/digital audio this time around

[Unstoppable]

Well I didn't know you were working that hard on the A.I. so good job. You deserve your vacation. Don't be too hard on yourself. I think every staff here is doing a pretty good job.

 

I happend to know about the Mazda 626. If it's auto make sure not to push it too hard cuz the tranmission will go on you. It it's manual then it's much better.

 

I also happen to know about that camera since I use to sell it. It's pretty good indeed.

 

Lastly I also happent o know about taht game. It won game of the year if i'm not mistaken so that in itself says what it is.

 

So enjoy your vacation =D!

[Domarius]

The cool thing about this list of mods is that they don't affect performance, and the biggest one is 14mb, and the rest are measured in kilobytes. And yet they make it look SOO much better. Town Lights at night time, more photorealistic sunsets, huge realistic trees, bees and birds flying about, etc. The exception is Oblivion Overhaul, which is 400mb and changes all the gameplay to be much better - eg. no stupid automatic leveling for enemies - negating the point of leveling. Instead, enemies are now rated in difficulty, their stats don't change with yours, but the frequency of more difficult enemies appearing does.

 

 

Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul v1.31 (413.56MB)

http://jorgeoscuro.googlepages.com/oscuro&...erloaddownloads

 

Natural environments - makes scenery look more photorealistic, adds bugs, birds, rainbows, nice sunsets, etc...

http://www.tessource.net/files/file.php?id=2536

 

Cities alive at night - lights up the city walls inside, for when you view from outside.

http://www.tessource.net/files/file.php?id=4423

Remember to read installation - good idea to set fLightLOD2 to 40000.00 in Oblivion_default.ini

 

Illumination from within - lights up the building windows at night

http://www.tessource.net/files/file.php?id=3700

Alternate download location (above link seems to download zero length file)

http://www.elderscrolls-oblivion.com/index...info&id=275

 

Sunlit interiors - in the daytime, rooms will be lit at normal brightness (sun). In the night, it will be dark except for the actual light sources.

http://www.tessource.net/files/file.php?id=3334

 

OBLIVION POLYGONE OVERHAUL [OPO], POLYS BE GONE!

http://www.tessource.net/files/file.php?id=6981

Replaces the ridiculous 50,000 poly rocks with much lower poly ones with no visible quality difference.

 

 

 

These last 2 are 2 I meant to try but haven't bothered because I'm afraid of it slowing my computer.

 

More varied cosmetics - eyes, hair, etc. Eyes glow where appropriate (eg. vampires)

http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View...ail&id=1201

Probably not one I'll bother with... cause I need to be selective, the thing runs slow for me as it is.

 

Realistic water

http://www.tessource.net/files/file.php?id=2734

Sounds like it would affect performance.

[Maximius]

Wow, how did they make those trees? The leaves don't look like the normal alpha test style, thats for sure.

[oDDity]

I wouldn't be surprised if each leaf was made of a dozen polygons, they don't seem to have any regard for poly counts at all.

There's so many useful mods for it. You have to make sure they are all compatible though. The problem is it'll take you most of a day to install the damn game, and find, read about, decide, and install all those mods.

One thing it tells you is how shoddy things were in the vanilla game. These aren't just optional mods, they improve the game by a long way.

And of course, the first expansion was also released for it - Shivering Isles.

[Unstoppable]

Hmm Oblivion is probably too long for my boat. I played Morrowind and gave up after about level 5 or 8. The gameplay just was not there. I can see why people like it etc buy by the time I played Morrowind I already went to MMO's.

 

I think this type of game caters to those who have never played much MMO's. Or to those with dialup. Not trying to sound harsh but oh well. Oblivion is much better in gameplay terms I heard but no thanks. I'd never get a life if I started it.

[oDDity]

You get bored with it after about a week anyway, if you're normal, there just isn't enough of interest to do.

[ascottk]

I wouldn't be surprised if each leaf was made of a dozen polygons, they don't seem to have any regard for poly counts at all.

There's so many useful mods for it. You have to make sure they are all compatible though. The problem is it'll take you most of a day to install the damn game, and find, read about, decide, and install all those mods.

One thing it tells you is how shoddy things were in the vanilla game. These aren't just optional mods, they improve the game by a long way.

And of course, the first expansion was also released for it - Shivering Isles.

Yeah, I really don't want to spend the day installing stuff

 

 

Hmm Oblivion is probably too long for my boat. I played Morrowind and gave up after about level 5 or 8. The gameplay just was not there. I can see why people like it etc buy by the time I played Morrowind I already went to MMO's.

 

I think this type of game caters to those who have never played much MMO's. Or to those with dialup. Not trying to sound harsh but oh well. Oblivion is much better in gameplay terms I heard but no thanks. I'd never get a life if I started it.

I have no life anyway

 

 

You get bored with it after about a week anyway, if you're normal, there just isn't enough of interest to do.

I've had a week & I'm already moving on to other things. With Oblivion, it's just one quest right after another while the gates keep popping up & you can ignore them for a while at least. I'm not much of a gamer but I'm tempted to mod it Don't worry, tdm team, I'm not going to do anything with it

[oDDity]

Well definitely do the assassin quests if nothing esle. That's the best part of the game.

[Maximius]

I wouldn't be surprised if each leaf was made of a dozen polygons, they don't seem to have any regard for poly counts at all.

 

 

How are they getting away with this, or are they just ignoring older computer systems totally? Mines fairly new and I doubt it would run well.

Edited April 11, 2007 by Maximius

[Unstoppable]

Hey you know :whistles innocently: I came across this the other day. Maybe you would be interested as you are treating yourself and you definately deserve it!

 

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...em=300100910665

[Domarius]

I wouldn't be surprised if each leaf was made of a dozen polygons, they don't seem to have any regard for poly counts at all.

 

 

How are they getting away with this, or are they just ignoring older computer systems totally? Mines fairly new and I doubt it would run well.

Hey guys, hows about trying something before making assumptions?

 

I only have a 1.8 gig CPU so naturally performance is my primary concern when I choose mods. See the mod about the polygon reduction? See the ones I said I didn't install because of performance concerns?

 

I haven't noticed the slightest bit of performance drop, and I'm running Fraps so I know what frame rates I'm getting before and after.

 

Who knows - maybe they could just be really good artists, ever consider that?

 

So yeah - try these mods. They really make the game look better, and, like I said in my first post - they don't affect performance.

[oDDity]

Whether they used alpha cutouts or used real polys for each leaf does not make any difference as far as the artistry required. If anything, it requires more talent to use actual polygons than use cutouts, so it was a compliment.

Also, the poly reducing app does not affect trees, I've seen people asking them to do something about the trees.

Anyway, even on my old system (radeon 9600xt, 2 gig cpu, 1 gig ram) it runs at at acceptable framerate at mostly highest settings.

[Maximius]

Dom I was not being critical really, I thought maybe they had some new techniques or something for trees that were low poly.

[Domarius]

Whether they used alpha cutouts or used real polys for each leaf does not make any difference as far as the artistry required. If anything, it requires more talent to use actual polygons than use cutouts, so it was a compliment.

...Riiiight. You can't squirm your way out of that one.

 

BTW the new trees are much bigger than the standard ones, and this actually looks better... the forests are more immersive, and it looks cool to see huge pine trees towering over the main city.

[oDDity]

Yeah, you'd know, being such a great 3d artist.

[Crispy]

You don't need to be an artist to be able to make comments on what you personally find visually appealing, and that's all Dom was doing. No need to reflexively jump down his throat whenever he says anything related to art.

[oDDity]

No, what he was doing was making an amateurs statement on whether it requires more skill to create a tree from real polygons, or to use alpha cutouts of leaves and branches, and unless you've done both (which I have) you're not entitled to an opinion.

He's the one who came in with the attitude in this thread, so he has the expect the same attitude back.

[Nyarlathotep]

Obviously I'm not an artist, but I can still hazard a guess: making an L-system is the easiest, making low-poly trees is easy, and making high-poly trees is the hardest. However, I don't think it's quite as simple as that.

 

High-poly trees are (relatively) easy to make look realistic. Leaves are essentially 2d; everything else is already modeled in 3d. Obviously talent is essential to make it look realistic, but the process is about as straightforward as it can get. The only (real) limiting factor is the modeler's ability. Almost any modeler that can fully model a tree can make it look realistic; it's building it in the first place that's hard.

 

Low-poly trees are incredibly hard to make look realistic. Generally speaking, poly counts are increasing slower than players' expectations of realism, particularly for models that are going to appear in large numbers on-screen, like trees. The artist is required to balance poly limits and still maximize realism. Almost any modeler can make a low-poly tree ("Look! I put a green sphere on a brown cylinder and it looks like a tree!"), but it takes a lot of talent to make such a tree look real. In fact, the difficulty can increase exponentially unless some serious concessions are made, such as limiting the realism or using lodding to make the process of balancing easier.

 

As a programmer, I'm biased, but I think L-systems are the hardest to make realistic (at least for games). The first problem is that it puts it entirely under programmer control, and believe me, nobody wants programmer art. Second, it's even harder to make a low-iteration L-system look good rather than just having an artist do it (the advantage is that you can populate a forest with unique trees in a matter of seconds--or less). Third, it's hard to make L-systems that can run in real-time, so the main focus with this technique is generally making it easier on the artists. And finally, the entire implementation has to be lod-friendly, and with minimal loss in noticeable detail.

 

How accurate was my assessment, oDDity? I'm probably missing something, but I have no idea what.

[oDDity]

You're right in a sense, but you're talking about technical difficulty rather than artistic difficulty.

It's technically more difficult to make a realistic low poly tree, since you have to think of tricks to pull it off, but artistically it's harder to make the real high poly one, since you're using real skills on top of having to make it look good.

[Domarius]

No, what he was doing was making an amateurs statement on whether it requires more skill to create a tree from real polygons, or to use alpha cutouts of leaves and branches, and unless you've done both (which I have) you're not entitled to an opinion.

He's the one who came in with the attitude in this thread, so he has the expect the same attitude back.

No, what I was doing was responding to this completely baseless claim;

I wouldn't be surprised if each leaf was made of a dozen polygons, they don't seem to have any regard for poly counts at all.

Each leave is not made of a dozen polygons, and of course "they" have a regard for poly counts because my computer doesn't run slower with the mod installed, and "they" also released a low poly mod.

 

As for attitude - you're in a perpetually smarmy and cynical attitude, and that statement was no different.

 

And yes they are good artists - they made the trees look good while keeping them low poly.

it's harder to make the real high poly one, since you're using real skills on top of having to make it look good.

and then it requires more skill again to bring it down to low poly while still looking almost as good - which requires an artists eye, there is no technical document that says exactly what polys to remove on what type of persons face, to make it look appealing. I'm good enough to know that, and you know it too.

 

You're just trying to squirm your way out, by debating semantics, which is very petty. I've got better things to do, I've said all that needs to be said here.