Oblivion Construction Set - Inner Workings

[saphalline]

Ok, having problems finding info on this particular topic, so I thought I'd ask here and get some more heads together.

I've been working with the TES Construction Set (Oblivion version) over the last several days. Just an hour here and there, and I found a great site (http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Main_Page) that has a tutorial to get people going on the basics of making simple mods. It really is quite nice for me since I've never done modding before, and thus never used the TESCS for Morrowind or any other game. It's been great fun to learn how to use the tilesets and place objects and work with the Havoks engine and install lights and place portals and link cells and all that. However...

Now we get into my issue. ;) The simple stuff is easy to grasp with just a couple hours a day and I made a test cavern (really just a proof of concept sort of mod though I have yet to fully test it) but now I want to get a bit more unique. And of course I hit a dead-end. The info on the wiki is fairly sparse at this time, but online searches for my queries also came up empty. What I want to do is create my own items and be able to craft my own enemies. Nothing super-fancy like making my own meshes and dialogue from scratch, but more like attaching specific enchantments to items and making the stock enemies more difficult (ie, giving them higher-level spells to cast and more Magicka and perhaps even giving them custom spells to cast). I know I can simply turn up the difficulty slider in the game, but that does not affect the tactics used by the enemies nor does it seem to affect their agressiveness in casting specific spells against a player.

For instance, if a player enters a new cell through a doorway into a room full of enemies, I want a Goblin spellcaster to attempt a Paralyze spell right off the bat while the Goblin warriors immediately poison their weapons and attack, or perhaps just attack with poisoned weapons that I give them. So far, I can't find any info on scripting or enemy inventory management that even comes close to this sort of idea. Likewise, I can find no instructions or info on how to custom-enchant items in any way. The Construction Set does have all the enchanted items in the game to use, and to a certain extent you can tweak these (such as increasing the soul points on an enchanted weapon) but there's no way that I can find to customize new & interesting enchantments (such a re-creating the Daedric Bow that my warrior has with frost damage + soul trap). One idea I wanted to experiment with is off-balance weapon enchantments along the same lines as a few in-game rings & armor - a weapon with frost damage that also increases the target's frost resistance with every strike. I just wanted to see if this could be done, but so far I can't even create a weapon with frost damage to begin with!

I know this a bit hard-core for those who haven't even looked at the Construction Set, but if anyone can find info or knows about these topics or has done them, I would be very appreciative.

[saphalline]

No one else can find any info, either, huh? :( Bummer!

[BartusCompater]

I've heard the Oblivion CS is very similar to Morrowind's... if so I can help.

To create unique items, find the respective tab for the kind of item you want to create, in this case, let's say it's a weapon.

1) Hit the 'Weapons' tab in the Object window.

2) Because we don't know how to make any new weapon models, we'll just build our new weapon off of one of the generic ones... for this little tutorial lets have it be a glass claymore... Scroll down in the Weapons tab's item IDs until you reach Glass Claymore, and double click on it. A new window with all of that weapon's specs should come up.

3) This window is where we change all of the weapon's characteristics, including the enchantments that you showed interest in. At the top left of the window you should see some text boxes along the lines of 'ID' (This is the construction set's ID for the item, not the name that shows up in-game), and 'Name' (This is the name that comes up in-game). Lets give our sword a cheesy name... something like 'The Soul Stealer of Nerevar'. So to keep things simple, lets put this name in both the ID and Name boxes. At this point don't worry, we aren't overwriting the old Glass Claymore, just building off of it.

4) Below these two boxes which you have just edited there should be two others along the lines of 'Type' and 'Script'. 'Type' is what you will use to specify the type of weapon in-game, such as blunt one handed, or blade two handed (like it is now). The 'Script' box is what modders can use to add really advanced characteristics to the weapon, such as having it cause specific in-game events (we won't mess with this for now). Just to make it fun, let's turn this Giant Claymore into a one-hander (unless you want to change it to something different). In the 'type' box, open the drop-down menu and select something along the lines of BlandOneHand.

5) The proceeding boxes Weight, Value, Speed, Health, Enchanting, and Reach are all the specific weapon characteristics which you can use to change the weapons performance. Let's make this a pretty unique sword by making it a little bit lighter. The 'Weight' value is what is used to edit how much (in in-game pounds) the weapon weighs. Reduce this value by about 10 (I can't recall how much a Claymore weighs in Oblivion, I'm working off of the Morrowind CS).

6)As far as the speed, all in-game weapons (at least in Morrowind) vary in speed value by about 1.00 (for two handers) - 2.50 (for daggers), with lower values being slower. Let's keep the speed where it is for now, we don't want our sword being too unbalanced.

7) 'Value' is parallel to in-game gold value, as you probably guessed. Lets change this swords value to about 30,000 just to reflect how good it will be once we are finished.

8) Also in the weapon's stat window should be an area for the sword's damage values (I don't know what they look like, Oblivion's damage system is very different), which you should be able to change later by just comparing your swords damage values to that of others to get an idea of how high you want it to be.

9) Lastly, there will be seperate areas that correspond to the weapon's inventory icon and in-game texture file locations. We'll leave these be, since navigating the texture files can be pretty tough. And at the bottom of the window, there should be checkboxes for specific characteristics like 'Silver Weapon' and 'Bypasses Normal Weapon Resistance' checking these activates certain properties like that of Silver or Daedric weapons which lets them do damage to ghosts and other creatures which resist normal damage. We'll leave these as they are for now, too.

10) Now we'll move on to enchanting this sword, but first we have to save it into the Object List. Do this by hitting 'Save' on the window you've been working on. Once you do this, the CS will ask you if you want to Overwrite the old Glass Claymore or create a new item, so opt to create a new one. Once you've done this, the new sword will be in the object list, and you can find it at the object ID you placed in at the beginning.

11) Now find the 'enchanting' tab, and click on that. Wait for the list to populate, notice it is organized very similarly to how the weapons tab was. We'll create a new enchantment very similarly as well: Right click on any item in this list, and this time left click on the 'New' option.

12) Now another window will open up. Let's name our enchantment "soulstealer enchant" or something along those lines (without the quotes) inside the ID box.

13) Below the ID you should see a series of blank dropdown menus, these are what you'll use to select what spells are located in your enchantment. In the first box open the drop down menu and select Soultrap, and for the second select Absorb Health. To the right of where you specified the spells, give Soul Trap a value of 5 for the 'Duration' to specify a 5 second effect, and a value of 10 for Absorb Health's 'Magnitude' value, so that when your sword strikes it will steal 10 health from the enemy that you hit. Next, find the 'Enchantment Cost' value, and change it to about 20 if Oblivion's CS doesnt already specify it for you. This is the amount of charge which is used when you hit something with the sword. Lastly for the enchantment, give the sword a 'Charge Amount' of about 3000 - a good amount of charge.

14) Save your enchantment like you did the sword, and when asked make sure to have it be created as a 'new' enchantment.

15) Now go back to the weapons tab and find your old soulstealer sword again. Find it's Enchantment drop down menu which you left alone before, and scroll through the game's many enchantments to find the one you just created 'Soulstealer enchant'. Once you have this selected, save your sword once again - it's now been enchanted.

16) Now just place the sword wherever you want in Oblivion's world like you did when craeting your cavern, pick it up, and you've got a Giant one-handed glass sword which steals the souls of it's enemies. Woot woot.

Hope this helped even though I was using a different CS :)

[saphalline]

Hey, sweet! :cool: It worked!

A few changes with the new CS. The Enchantments are their own category in the Objects window, so the right-clicking thing didn't work within the weapon properties window. It turns out you need to create the weapon properties and enchantment properties separately. And there's a few minor changes to the window properties design, but nothing that broke your instructions. Just the Enchantment thing. Oh, and creating Enchantments is a bit different. The screen for a new one resembles a spreadsheet now, with all the effects listed as entries.

Overall, it's pretty cool. But I'm still crying foul over the lack of instructions for this! Once I followed your steps and created a new customized item, it seems very easy to do. But for someone who has never modded before, it was completely unituitive! Left to myself, it would have taken me weeks to figure all that out, assuming I had the patience to do it. :rolleyes: I suppose I would have had better luck doing searches for this with the Morrowind version CS, but I've played Morrowind and done a lot of research on the Elder Scrolls games in general. Nothing I've read would have led me to believe that the two CS's were similar in any way. So of course I had no reason to even suspect that such a search would have yeilded anything fruitful. And given the fact that this was so simple (compared to other modding tasks) I wonder why this isn't listed on the help/wiki site for the Oblivion CS?

Ah well... Maybe I'll make a mini-tutorial for this and put it on our website. In the mean time, many thanks for your help! The instructions you gave were extremely helpful in getting this to work. Now I can experiment with this for awhile before moving on to my illusions of grandeur. :p And hopefully as time moves on, tutorials for doing the other things in my master plug-in plans will be developed...

[BartusCompater]

I'm sure a lot more information will be popping up in a while, once everyone's gotten really comfy with the game itself and decides to go and see what that "Construction Set" thing is. As for me, I've got Oblivion on the 360, so I'm kind of looking forward to a PC upgrade so I can dig into the CS.

Glad the instructions were helpful. :)

[saphalline]

I finally figured out how to rotate those frickin' door markers, too. I had originally tried to tinker with holding down the right mouse button and moving the mouse, but apparently I didn't move the mouse far enough. Googled that one for awhile before I found the answer (and even then I had to Google for the Morrowind CS :rolleyes: ). Ah well, it doesn't help me to get pissy about it, so I'll just sigh in resignation and move on...

I'm hoping that some good scripting tutorials will pop up soon, too. Or however you can affect enemies like I had originally envisioned. And what's up with containers? I can't figure out how to put things into containers...

I realize a lot of this is overly complex because this is what the pro's at Bethesda used to actually make the game, but it seems like the simplest concepts are just too difficult for me to do yet. So far I can only put leveled creatures in my caves/dungeons/whatevers. Plopping down a specific creature, like a Goblin, is not what Oblivion was designed to do. Pitty that.

[BartusCompater]

I recently formatted my computer, so I don't have the Morrowind CS on me any more (it was sort of just sitting on my hard drive), but I think I might still be able to help you a bit.

Editing containers to contain different things, and changing hostile creatures to be stronger wasn't all that different from making a new weapon (at least in the Morrowind CS). For the stronger creatures, you would just open up a normal creature's CS profile, such as a skeleton's, and a stat box along with their inventory list and a couple other stats would appear. If I remember correctly, the stat boxes weren't too hard to edit, you could adjust their strength, endurance, etc. all from the one window. To the right of these values was a window within the window that contained an inventory tab and a spells tab. To give the skeleton a stronger weapon I would just replace it's old inventory item with something like a daedric claymore from a list that was populated from the CS's main weapons tab. It was similar with the spells tab, where after creating a new spell (much like a new enchantment), I could go in and add a spell from the CS's spells tab. I didn't go too far into NPC editing, but eventually I was able to stumble along and eventually make a skeleton butler named 'Bob' who would talk to me and repair my items.

I think if you visit the Elder Scrolls forums though and ask the same questions you'll get some expert replies in about 5 minutes, if not links to entire tutorials. :)

[saphalline]

I've poked around with the creatures and containers, but the inventory thing continues to elude me (the only option I'm able to bring up is "delete" for some odd reason). When I have more time to devote to this project, I just may drop in on a forum to get help. I have a feeling that inventory control and scripting will be the keys for this.

The strength of the enemies isn't necessarily a problem with the in-game difficulty slider (which is a welcome addition to Obivion) but the intelligence and tactics of the enemies is lacking. :rolleyes: In particular, I'd like to make a dungeon full of creatures that are able to function like trained and experienced warriors, just like humans do. I know a lot of people that employ complex tactics with various classes of characters using large groups of up to 40 in World of WarCraft. It would be nice if the enemy AI were sophisticated enough to coordinate with eachother, rather than each of them trying to fight me individually (which invariably leads them to hit eachother and cross lines of attack/access). It's just sad that a game like Oblivion, which offers so much more than Morrowind in terms of combat potential and manouvers, is saddled with AI limitations that make elven soldiers just as dumb as ogres! :eek:

[BartusCompater]

At times I completely agree- the AI could have been much improved. In fact, I think it relates a lot to the physics engine they use. It's a GREAT improvement over just about every other game's AI engine, but it's so hectic: When they were beta testing they had city riots breaking out everywhere to the point where half of the game's population would die without player influence... NPC's nabbed items the player dropped and used them to cause destruction... they even killed and looted drug dealers when they couldnt find the money for their next skooma fix.
For the sake of making the experience more friendly they toned all of this down, which is kind of sad, because it is a lot dumber. At times I find it enjoyable how the NPCs can be so stupid when in fact it's a more complex thought process causing them to get themselves killed, but on a developing standpoint where you really want them to take some strategic action things become nearly impossible. Sadly, I don't think there's much you can do to improve the AI without some serious scripting skill unless someone decides to share something 'smarter'. :(

[saphalline]

When they were beta testing they had city riots breaking out everywhere to the point where half of the game's population would die without player influence... NPC's nabbed items the player dropped and used them to cause destruction... they even killed and looted drug dealers when they couldnt find the money for their next skooma fix.Hahahaaaa!! :D

Oh man, now that would be funny! I'd love to see that in a game! Too bad they toned that down. No wonder they made the in-game AI routines so simplistic! I'd love to see an expansion that would bring some of that back. Or maybe the next TES game will have improved AI combat techniques while still retaining dumb AI lives. Either that or just capitalize on the chaos. If the next TES game is based on an end-of-the-world plotline, city-wide riots would make sense! :p Hehehe...

[BartusCompater]

Yeah, I was kind of sad when I figured out they'd toned it down. While I was waiting for the game to come out I had been a little series of teaser videos that exhibited the different innovations Oblivion would have... here's one on the non-downgraded AI-
It's Chapter 5 on this page: http://media.xbox360.ign.com/media/702/702493/vids_10.html

[kimbrosj]

I've poked around with the creatures and containers, but the inventory thing continues to elude me (the only option I'm able to bring up is "delete" for some odd reason).

To add an item to the inventory of a container or creature after you have made the object to your liking and saved it, find out the id of the creature or container you are wanting to put it in. Open up the display of that container (where you were only seeing the delete function)......with that window open change the object window view back to the category of item you are wanting to insert into the object. Find your new item, and drag and drop it into the container contents window. I had a hell of a time figuring this out, who would of ever expected that in this very unuser friendly program, there is actually something accomplished by dragging and dropping. Hope this helps. I too am brand new to the program, and trying to get used to its little nuances.

[saphalline]

Drag-and-drop? How odd. Hmmm... Ok, I shall try that.

[fumblemuffin]

I know im gonna sound like a complete noob, but I'm not really planning on becoming a hardcore modder. I mod i downloaded had a glitch, and the only way for me to complete a quest in it is to modify the mod and put in a certain book from the mod. I am able to get the book where i want it in the game and everything, but when i try to exit it asks "would you like to save your changes to the plug-in file?" if i click yes, then it doen't close. if i click no, then the mod does not save and nothing changes. Any ideas?