Modding TES Arena (and Battlespire?)

[Lemming42]

That first quote refers to Daggerfall, I believe - Arena's even more confusing since some sources say the Redguards and Bosmer have their racial abilities swapped by mistake, and Redguards therefore get a bonus for bows which Bosmer lack.

I'm at Labyrinthian and am level 11 and I'm so far behind what any other class in the game would be at this point in terms of damage output and ability to survive. Worse, Archers have no magic, so as soon as long-range spellcasters show up it's all over.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

It is funny, The photocopy manual I had from an actual "game rental" shop (they knew everyone pirated) was missing that section. I had a feeling bows could backstab because I would always be trying to hit mobs from behind and would notice some quick kills. I'm trying to remember how many 3.5" disks it was to install (6, 8?).

Edit... maybe it was daggerfall. I'm trying to recall as it was so long ago. Did I just rush and slash? I'm thinking that's what I did in Arena. Seems a terrible oversight imho.

 

[kevin988]

How would one go about changing racial abilities? (Specifically, I want to swap the weapon damage bonuses of Wood Elf and Redguard so that they're accurate to the manual.)

I would also like to know about this or if it is even possible to test if this is true. I've searched all over for someone who has done this already and no one seems to have bothered. I do know of a mod that changes the hit die on the thief classes to be manual accurate but that's it so far.

 

[kevin988]

Don't worry, I'm hard at work. I've figured out how to edit class hit die, weapon and armor proficiency, lockpicking skill, and XP requirements. I'm still digging around for special abilities, and crit chance. I'll release a mod for all of this soon. As you can see here, I have the Nightblade wielding a dai-katana. An equip-anything mod would be completely unbalanced, but it's more in step with modern Elder Scrolls games. Not sure what all I'm gonna do yet, but I'm taking suggestions. Some people are asking for an uber Eternal Champion who is and has the best of everything. What do you guys think?

I know this is old, but something like this would be amazing.

 

[Mojo'sMizarreMdventure]

How would one go about changing racial abilities? (Specifically, I want to swap the weapon damage bonuses of Wood Elf and Redguard so that they're accurate to the manual.)

I would also like to know about this or if it is even possible to test if this is true. I've searched all over for someone who has done this already and no one seems to have bothered. I do know of a mod that changes the hit die on the thief classes to be manual accurate but that's it so far.

I'm the one who created that mod, actually. I was hoping to fix both inconsistencies, but it seems that might not be possible.

 

[kevin988]

How would one go about changing racial abilities? (Specifically, I want to swap the weapon damage bonuses of Wood Elf and Redguard so that they're accurate to the manual.)

I would also like to know about this or if it is even possible to test if this is true. I've searched all over for someone who has done this already and no one seems to have bothered. I do know of a mod that changes the hit die on the thief classes to be manual accurate but that's it so far.

I'm the one who created that mod, actually. I was hoping to fix both inconsistencies, but it seems that might not be possible.

What about the possibility of changing the text around and the player sprites for Wood Elves and Redguards instead of actually swapping racial passives? Would that somehow be possible? I bring this up because I saw there was a mod that exists that swaps out the Khajiit for Imperials and it seems to mostly be a texture, stat, text change.

 

[Moonrise]

Out of retirement once again. Somebody asked if a mark and recall spell was possible. That's a bit much, but it got me thinking about teleportation. After three days of banging my head against a wall, I figured it out. This technique makes use of dimensionality and a leftover function from Terminator Rampage. You see, walls created via magic draw their properties from the floor tile. There's no worry adjusting those properties, because floors are on a plane that can't be interacted with. Brought into 3D however, we can. The leftover function reloads the map. By reloading the map it also conveniently sends the player back to the start position. And so with a simple edit the resulting wall of the create wall spell can be interacted with and will teleport the player, from any floor, to the first entrance of the dungeon. Utterly lost, and out of potions? Be free your vexations, traveler.

Think me mad? Rather it is because I see clearly. As for a mod, I'll get around to it.

He that enters Paradise enters his own Mother. AE ALMA RUMA! The Aurbis endeth in all ways.

 

[Moonrise]

It's up! You may now teleport at your leisure.

https://www.nexusmods.com/tesarena/mods/64

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

1:48

So, that made me wonder how far the project went which means I have to really look through that github.


So, from the videos in the old playlist I went to https://github.com/afritz1/OpenTESArena
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Arena_Mod:OpenTESArena

Arena was a game that really grabbed me even if there seems to be stuff on box art or ads that was dropped on the Arena cutting room floor.
All old news of course but David was just on github about 17 hours ago.
Unused content

Giant Rat"You see a loathsome vermin looking at you with stupid cunning...""You see something has crawled out of the sewers, mindless with starvation and diseases ...""You see an enormous rodent, stinking of garbage and plague ..."

Yep... I don't disagree there.

Maybe I will watch this video in chunks.

 

[Moonrise]

A friendly person sent me a message asking if I could slow down the NPCs, who move about the town as if they're bored Cyrodillian housewives in a power walking group. He said 'is it possible?' Never ask me that question, folks.

In the decompressed ACD.EXE at offset 45b48 you'll see ► (16), 0, ► (16). All you have to do is adjust these numbers, half for example being ◘ (8). Then at offset 45b50 we're looking at the same numbers, only in the negative. ≡ (240), 255, ≡ (240). 256-16 being 240. So if we want to halve that it's ° (248). Use UNP to decompress the executable, and HxD to edit the executable. ASCII code table for reference. Another way to find these values is to search 'mlgen0', which comes right after them.

 

[Moonrise]

It's been long enough I thought I'd share this chat log, some insight into the innermost me.
Let it not be said I am not a consummate puzzle enjoyer.

 

[Lemming42]

I just beat Battlespire and loved it, please tell me there's something amazing you can do with mods for it.

 

[Moonrise]

Well I only ever released the EZ Mode mod as a proof-of-concept, but you should reframe the question. Instead of asking what's possible, begin with an unqualified desire. The first obstacle to overcome is always the limitation we impose on ourselves. For instance, the importation of Terminator maps into Arena wouldn't have happened if I had first asked myself whether it was possible. I thought it would be cool and worked from there. In fact, one of the original devs expressed shock when they saw that it had been done. We can look to the Chaldean Oracles for our basis for cosmogony, which applied to the sub-reality of the game posits programmer as paternal intellect, and modder mother giving variation to his vision. This can result in something more refined according to our sensibilities, or it can result in the Thomas the Tank Engine replacer for dragons in Skyrim. So the question is: what do you want the world to be?

 

[Lemming42]

I wonder if the draw distance can be expanded, sort of like your Eye of Nocturnal mod for Arena.

Probably the most incredible thing though would be a recreation of the whole game in another engine, maybe in Daggerfall or DF Unity.

 

[Moonrise]

Draw distance. Alright. I'll look into it. As for the second request, that's a tedium for someone else to enjoy.

 

[Moonrise]

Well gee, that wasn't hard. All you have to do is go into the GAMEDATA folder, open LEVELS.TXT and change the first number. For the Weir Gate the default is 1336, but as you can see other maps are set higher or lower. This is a per-map setting. Doubling it didn't cause any immediate issues, but, you know, don't play modded without saving frequently. The other values seem to adjust lighting and culling.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

I want the bots running around in TES or... hah.. just plop the entire Rampage map as a dungeon filled with all the robots and cyborgs and weapons. Gotta sport dual uzis in TES killing ghouls and shit.

And it then turns into TES: Fallout Rampage. I'll never forget super uzi cheat in Future Shock and blasting the moon.

 

[Moonrise]

Here's a before and after example of what the results look like in one of the later levels.