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The Oblivion Bookbinding Mod
Via GameSetWatch, an article on the Guilded Lilies site interviewing a unique Oblivion modder. Phoenix Amon has taken on the task of rebinding every book in Oblivion, as well as spell-checking the documents within. From the article: "Q: How much time do you spend modding, and do you enjoy it more than playing games? A: I spend more time modding than playing recently, but I enjoy both a lot. I wouldn't have bought Oblivion if it hadn't been moddable, but that's because I knew from experience that I don't like a lot of Bethesda's game design choices. It's not a deciding factor for all games."
For those of us who think being a Librarian in real life is too risky, you can now do it on computer.
God spoke to me.
If you hear "Build a user mod of a game" and your response is "I can fix all the spelling mistakes" then you, my friend, may be the most boring person in the entire universe.
Perhaps he will next go in and create new patterns and quilting for all of the bedding in the game. :::yikes::: Glad I'm not stuck next to him during a long flight.
She, actually.
And she's really quite cool about it. She didn't think she had the talent to come up with some huge level quest mod, so she picked a small thing that bugged her and is going to fix it. Here are pictures of the books so far.
Also, she's got a couple guys to help her incorporate grammer and spelling fixes for the books. If only the original designers would put so much thought into the little details...
It sounds trivial but the change in gameplay is huge. It is like when you first played Doom and could for the first time tell you where about to pickup a chainsaw because it actually looked like a chainsaw. When you didn't need to be told what was health pack because it was clear.
This is where graphics matter. Not purely the looks but in making the world act like our own. In the real world we can check the spines of the books to see what book it is. We don't have to hover close to it to wait for a popup to tell us.
This mod is going to require a more powerfull machine but in return you can now regonize valuable books. Granted there is no real need in game, just as morrowind didn't require you to use the road signs, but you now can.
TES games are best bought a year later and then you can just mod your own game. It is amazing how much better the user mods make the game. Either I just don't like bethseda's game designer or every modder out there can read my mind.
This however does raise a question, what could be done with a game that is fully open and modders do not have to spend the first few months trying to decipher cryptic files?
Between NWN and TES I am getting more roleplaying then commercial companies seem willing to sell. Then again NWN did seem to kill of the stream of Baldur Gate games. Pity.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The original designers did put the thought in when they purposely used poor grammar in some of the books.
Why does she (and the parent poster) assume that all the residents in the world of Oblivion are capable of using proper grammar?
If she corrects all the grammar mistakes, then a player who reads the books will assume that everyone (who writes) in the land of Oblivion uses good grammer, which is not what the game developers intended. They obviously intended to subtly show the game player the diversity of the educational backgrounds of the NPC's, and to show that even though some of the NPC's may use poor grammar, that they still have a love for writing.
Fie on her elitist attitude! I shall create a mod to add the poor grammar back.
The quality of these covers is amazing. I realize it's not something that changes video gaming dramatically, but the fact that we can now use high-res textures that look like cloth is pretty cool.
Maybe he can give all of the ale bottles unique, detailed bap designs?
Well, some other people have already gotten close to that.
Hm. Please don't get involved in any grammar or spelling mods yourself.
I know more than you drink.
There was actually an interesting sorta debate on this point in the community of one of the games I played, Natural-Selection. Mappers would spend lots of time making maps that they thought were aesthetically pleasing and had a certain sorta flow. But then servers took to implementing mods that would do things like advertise their server and its home website with big glowing particle signs inside the lobbies and such. This caused the mappers to hem and haw about people ruining their maps. Of course, nothing was done about it in the end, but I thought it was an interesting little back-and-forth.