Wanted: Help to document tons of add'l Oblivion mistakes!

[BFG]

For those of you who also look at the Oblivion mods thread, you've likely noticed that Spiney, kriscrash, Ionis, and I have been working on a mod called WEPON (Weapon Expansion Pack for Oblivion Nthusiasts). That mod adds new Amber, Madness, Mithril, and Orcish weapons to the game.

But this post is not an advertisement for the mod. Rather, as part of building WEPON, I thoroughly audited all of the weapon attributes, enchantments, weapon leveled lists, etc. in Oblivion and the Shivering Isles. I came up with a substantial list of minor mistakes that are not fixed anywhere else, including the unofficial Patches.

I'd like to add documentation for all of these mistakes to UESP, but that is quite a project, and frankly I do not have the time or energy for it right now! Is anyone else interested in taking it on, or at least working with me on it?

Documentation of the issues (and what WEPON does to resolve them) is available on the Files tab of this link:
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=35560


EDIT: And, as stated in an earlier thread, some of the fixes made by the Unofficial Patches are not documented either. It'd be a good idea to add those to UESP while we're at it!

[Odessus Naito]

I'm willing to help; but I need to know exactly what you mean.

Clarify for me, what exactly do you need documentation of, how comprehensive would you like it, a deadline, and where can I find a reference to start from/base the document on?

[BFG]

I will be honest, I have not done that much thinking about this yet! I mainly wanted to gauge interest first.
Several pages in the wiki have taglines that read something like "This bug is fixed by the Unofficial Oblivion Patch". I'm thinking the easiest thing to do would be to do the same thing with the fixes in question here.

For example, here are the mistakes I found and fixed relating to the Knights of Order Swords (from Shivering Isles).
(1) The Tarnished Order sword should not ignore normal weapon resistance.
(2) The Simple, Sterile, and Primal swords show up at the wrong levels. They were supposed to go in that order but were in the order Sterile, Primal, Simple instead. (The UESP page is incorrect in this regard.)
(3) All of the Knights of Order swords except the Tarnished one were supposed to have Frost enchantments. This is evidenced by the fact that all but one have magic charges, and the enchantments are all set up already.

So, in the above example, you could alter the Shivering Isles Weapons page to indicate each of those mistakes, and then add a note that "These bugs are fixed by the Weapon Expansion Pack for Oblivion Nthusiasts". In other words, use what has already been done for the Unofficial Patches as guidance. I'm sure the moderators of UESP could give additional guidance

As far as a timeline, I figure that that is completely up to you & others to decide! I would like to limit my involvement to explaining the fixes that I made so that someone else can document them on UESP. The fixes in question are recorded in a file on the WEPON download page, but in some cases the fixes I made may require additional explanation.

[Odessus Naito]

So, you want someone to add every bug that the WEPON mod fixes that no other mod does on the UESP Wiki? Sounds pretty ambitious, of course I wouldn't know what the mod fixes or does not - so I'll be able to help if you provide that, and I do the wiki editing.

[BFG]

Well, the "Weapon Attribute Fixes" file on the TESNexus' WEPON download page lists all of the fixes I made to vanilla content, along with a brief explanation as to why. (There are four tabs in the file, but only two apply to vanilla content - one for Oblivion, and one for SI. The other two are for WEPON's conversion to the MOBS mod.)
Some of the explanations on why I made the fix are...lacking, but if you are interested in doing this, the best place to start would be to look at that file!

Just do a search for WEPON on TESNexus, then go to the Files tab, and you'll find it. Let me know if questions. Thanks!


And yes, as long as the list of fixes are, it's quite ambitious to list all of them on UESP. Maybe the first thing to do would be to decide which of the issues are major enough to mark on UESP?

[Odessus Naito]

Okay, I'll start working on the edits as soon as I can. Question: is your mod listed on the UESP mod list? If not, I suggest you do that first.
edit: you have the Attribute Fixes file made from Open Office or something rather... is there any way you could upload a file-type that more people can use? (.doc, .txt etc)

[BFG]

What programs do you have? It would be difficult to read the list as a DOC or TXT - a spreadsheet would be better. Preferably XLS or XLSX (Excel). If you don't have that then we can try a CSV (comma delimited).

[Odessus Naito]

I have no Windows Office or Works programs. Just trusty ol' Notepad++ and Word Portable Edition

[KrisCrash]

(1) The Tarnished Order sword should not ignore normal weapon resistance.

Are you sure about this? My first argument would be how people like guards had silver weapons so that they may defend themselves against will-o-wisps and other such resistant-to-normal-weapons enemies (perhaps same for undead blades and their non-normal katanas)
But also, Dremora weapons are not "normal weapons" either, neither are Golden Saint and Dark Seducer weapons.
The pattern here is: They are daedra, their weapons are somewhat daedric too, no?
I think that makes sense.

Looks like a few of the Dark Seducer weapons are improperly lacking this property, though. You could bring consistency into whether a series of weapons (like the levelled Order Swords) ignore resist-normal-weapons, or make them do so at higher qualities. I think NPCs qualifying as guards need to be able to hurt anything though (dremora, saints and seducers).

I'd like my shadow clone to always have shadowrend even if the game thought my own weapon was better. I guess this is part of balancing things out.

EDIT: OH OH OH! For anyone who can't read a type of document, try Google Docs! It'll display many, many documents and let you edit them too. Really awesome document sharing thing.

[BFG]

Odessus--I've tried creating a TXT or DOC version of this file, but it's just not very legible. I'd recommend following kriscrash's advice and getting Google Open Docs. It would make this a whole lot easier!

(1) The Tarnished Order sword should not ignore normal weapon resistance.

Are you sure about this? My first argument would be how people like guards had silver weapons so that they may defend themselves against will-o-wisps and other such resistant-to-normal-weapons enemies (perhaps same for undead blades and their non-normal katanas)
But also, Dremora weapons are not "normal weapons" either, neither are Golden Saint and Dark Seducer weapons.
The pattern here is: They are daedra, their weapons are somewhat daedric too, no?
I think that makes sense.

Looks like a few of the Dark Seducer weapons are improperly lacking this property, though. You could bring consistency into whether a series of weapons (like the levelled Order Swords) ignore resist-normal-weapons, or make them do so at higher qualities. I think NPCs qualifying as guards need to be able to hurt anything though (dremora, saints and seducers).

I'd like my shadow clone to always have shadowrend even if the game thought my own weapon was better. I guess this is part of balancing things out.

Hmm, you do bring up a good point here kris!
To be honest, I had a tough time deciding what to do with the Order Swords. In vanilla SI, the lowest level and highest level Order Swords ignore normal weapon resistance, but none of the ones in between. I figured this meant that either all of them were supposed to have it, or only the top level one.
I ended up doing what I did because of the weapon descriptions in the Construction Set - the Tarnished Sword is called "SEOrderKnight0SwordSteel". And I figured, hey, Steel weapons aren't supposed to have Ignore NWR so neither should this one. But, how many people are going to see that description? It probably WOULD make more sense to change an entire series of weapons, from the player's point of view.

Considering that this set is the only exception to the rule that "either all of the weapons ignore NWR, or none of them do", I probably should change these too for the sake of consistency. OK, you've convinced me

Do you or Spiney have any interest to weigh in on the other changes I've made? As you can see, the list is pretty long...

[Odessus Naito]

My concern is if your mod changes quest items, would that affect the quest in any way?

[H8Ball]

@ALL: Try OpenOffice.org. It's a professional-quality productivity suite similar to Microsoft Office. It can do just about everything MS Office can do, and can even open and save Microsoft's native document formats. But the best part of all is that it won't cost you a <insert minimum currency unit here> because it's freeware!

Wordprocessor: Writer (MS Word replacement)
Spreadsheet: Calc (MS Excel replacement)
Database: Base (MS Access replacement)
Presentation: Impress (MS PowerPoint replacement)
Vector Drawing: Draw
Maths Formulae: Math

I have it installed myself, and converted my complex Electricity Meter Monitoring spreadsheet from Excel to Calc with very little trouble. ALL of the formulae and conditional formatting worked perfectly! The only minor problem I had was with the fonts being slightly different, so I had to resize columns a bit.

Hope this helps.

[Odessus Naito]

I was aware I needed OpenOffice but I don't want it.

[BFG]

My concern is if your mod changes quest items, would that affect the quest in any way?

My understanding is that the Quest flag only prevents an item from being removed from inventory. As far as WEPON goes, the only Quest flags I changed were ones that the UOP also changes - the various Bound Weapons and Armor. They were changed to quest items to prevent a player from using the Permanent Bound Items glitch.

Regarding not wanting Open Office - that's your decision! But I've heard nothing but good things about it. Anyway, I'll try creating a text version of the file that is legible but I can't make any promises...

[Odessus Naito]

My concern is if your mod changes quest items, would that affect the quest in any way?

My understanding is that the Quest flag only prevents an item from being removed from inventory. As far as WEPON goes, the only Quest flags I changed were ones that the UOP also changes - the various Bound Weapons and Armor. They were changed to quest items to prevent a player from using the Permanent Bound Items glitch.

Regarding not wanting Open Office - that's your decision! But I've heard nothing but good things about it. Anyway, I'll try creating a text version of the file that is legible but I can't make any promises...

I'll get it anyway - I'm simply encouraging you to make a plain text version for the general public so they don't need to go through the trouble.

[KrisCrash]

Aren't a lot of levelled armours and weapons named like "_________steel" in CS? I noticed it with the dark seducer shields.
for armour:
lvl 1-2: iron
3-5: steel
6-9: dwarven
10-14: orcish
15-19: ebony
20+: daedric
they get these suffices and have the respective quality, but I think it's just a name other than that. I mean, it's still the same armour, with different stats.

I don't really know if it's consistent, I'm on my laptop and can't check, but I think it just refers to the quality.
In any case, I think it's a mixup that the order swords are different. Looking across the Shivering weaponry there's more differences like this, so it's a matter of deciding which side to fix it to. Like whether you find it adds A LOT OF power to a weapon that it ignores normal weapon resistance. But you could use the daedric argument.

Always thought it odd that in Oblivion, Daedric = mehrunes dagon's dremora daedric.

It is of course easier for a high level player to achieve 100% resist normal weapons (but I think that kind of player might go for 100% reflect)

[H8Ball]

I agree with Ody. Tab-delimited text files can be imported/exported by literally ANY Spreadsheet program (or Database for that matter). It's a standardised "raw data" text file format. You can even manually create it using Notepad. Just press the Tab key ONCE between between "columns", and it's one "row" per line, so it's best to work with Word Wrap turned off to avoid confusion.

A Spreadsheet will interpret Tab as a column separator and Enter as a row separator.

A Database will interpret Tab as a field separator and Enter as a record separator.

Tip: A good way to manually copy table data from a web page is to cut & paste it into Notepad (to strip out the fancy formatting & font sizes, etc), edit it to tab-delimit the raw text data, then cut & paste from Notepad directly into a Spreadsheet. I do this with my Bank Account (on-line statements) to keep a Spreadsheet record of my incomings and outgoings.

Hope this helps.

[BFG]

Well, I tried converting the spreadsheet into a TXT document (tab, comma, or space delimited), but none of the formats are very legible. The problem is, the columns do not line up from one row to the next due to some values being much longer than others. Adding in extra columns doesn't help.

I don't suppose you tried downloading OpenOffice? The only other thing I can think of is converting the spreasheet into a PDF, assuming you have Acrobat Reader.

[H8Ball]

It doesn't matter whether the columns line up or not. As long as there's ONE tab between cells, they'll import OK and BE lined up in the target spreadsheet. If you don't believe me, use your Spreadsheet program to open the TXT file (as Tab-delimited Text), or simply cut & paste the TXT file contents into a blank spreadsheet. It will be lined up OK.

The only thing it loses is formatting like fonts, styles (bold, italic, underline), colours, cell borders & shading, etc. But you wouldn't be formatting an unfinished spreadsheet, would you? Remember. Get the data in first (important), THEN make it look fancy (optional).

[Odessus Naito]

I downloaded OpenOffice in case you cannot convert the file.

[BFG]

There has been some debate as to whether the fixes added by WEPON should be posted to the wiki. For this reason, I have begun summarizing the changes made by the mod on the Oblivion glitches Discussion page, found here: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion_talk:Glitches

Anyone who is interested is welcome to post comments on which of the issues, if any, should be added to the wiki itself. And anyone who is interested is welcome to make the changes to the wiki themselves!

[BFG]

By request, I moved these minor issues to a new page. Feel free to take a look and add as you see fit!
As mentioned above, I'm also interested in opinions on whether these issues should be mentioned elsewhere, or whether the one page is sufficient.

Find the new page here.

EDIT: Phew, that was fun. Took me the better part of 4 hours to get the Oblivion page set up. Next up, Shivering Isles!

[KrisCrash]

Maybe the lack of female versions of some of the armour. I would recommend scavenging other mods etc., but some of the female versions redesign the armour too much.

These fixes are ideal for bundling with larger .esps, and they need esps as otherwise the game simply grabs the same mesh for male and female. These unisex armours are then sometimes changed towards the masculine or feminine by other mods and look ridiculous on the opposite sex, then.

Steel cuirass: I saw a fix for this but it also changes the pauldron design. http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=35785
Dwarven cuirass: exists, but seems a little misproportioned/breasty. http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=3592

Can't remember anything else missing. It's decently easy to fix because the vanilla polygon count is not too extreme, but I can't make it spit out the .nifs again.

edit: Shivering isles... well, the UOP removes the anklet type of scruffy shoes, I wouldn't mind seeing it back as its own item.

[BFG]

If anyone is interested, I've completed the Oblivion version of this documentation, and am about half done on Shivering Isles. (Just do a search for "Unresolved Minor Issues" to find the pages.)

Kriscrash--thanks for the heads' up on the armor issues! I haven't examined them yet, haven't had the time. If you run across any others like that, please let me know and I'll take a look at them. (Regarding having unisex armor: you may be interested in checking out the "TeamFF Fantasy Figures Armour Base" mod on TESNexus. It makes a feminine version of each armor type without making the armor look impractical--i.e. you won't find any "armor bikinis" in the mod. Highly recommended )

[KrisCrash]

Thank you for the tip, but they look strangely too thin-waisted for me - but then, I don't like the FF body at all. Sorry

Well I checked the armour images in the wiki, only Dwarven and Steel are missing a female cuirass as far as armours go, don't know about greaves, boots and gauntlets but I think those would fit everyone? I am sure there's some clothing with issues.