178 replies to this topic

[Gloops]

Huntn, on May 8th 2007, 04:15 PM, said:

Tell me again why you are waiting for the STALKER patch to continue game play?

I finished Stalker once, got half way through my second run and started to feel like I'd seen it all before, and the repeating quests were getting annoying. So I'll wait for patch 3 that's supposed to add new content. Whenever that will be. Looks like Oblivion will keep me busy for the next six months or so, so GSC can take their time!

Huntn, on May 8th 2007, 04:15 PM, said:

Lion headed dudes- I don't remember seeing them. Where in Cyrodiil where you?

I think they were a couple of the characters you get an option to be at the start - Khajiit, after a quick look at the manual. They were on the road between Skingrad and Kvatch, and they took against Prior whatsits horse for some reason. It would be nice if you could fight cavalry style and just charge in with a lance.

[Huntn]

LoneIgadzra, on May 8th 2007, 10:22 AM, said:

Small tip: avoid Oblivion gates like the plague. They're utterly boring, and the main story will force you into them soon enough. Also avoid leveling up, because the game levels all the monsters up faster than you apparently, which just sucks. I finally installed a balance mod (OOO, though it honestly doesn't seem to have helped much) when I realized the only way the game was actually getting harder was it took me an hour to kill a single clanfear.

I myself just finished the game, and I'm kind of sad I did because even though half the game world is unexplored, there seems little incentive to explore it now. At least there are no Oblivion gates left, but even those sometimes contributed to the sense of adventure.

My number one complaint is the gate content as it was something I had to endure. However I did get a Sigil Stone for every gate I closed. There is a mod that eliminates the main quest, but I don't recommend it as the main quest is composed of a large quest chain, plus in many cases closing gates gets you in good with the local authorities for such things as buying a house.

Have you done Shivering Isles?

[Gloops]

LoneIgadzra, on May 8th 2007, 04:22 PM, said:

Small tip: avoid Oblivion gates like the plague. They're utterly boring, and the main story will force you into them soon enough. Also avoid leveling up, because the game levels all the monsters up faster than you apparently, which just sucks. I finally installed a balance mod (OOO, though it honestly doesn't seem to have helped much) when I realized the only way the game was actually getting harder was it took me an hour to kill a single clanfear.

Lots of characters in the game can be problematic. It also seems to me that the X1600 cards common in iMacs and MacBook Pros are not really up to the HDR lighting, though it is quite pretty. I think Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul has some creature AI optimizations that might help with your problem, if you're willing to go with a balance mod already.

I myself just finished the game, and I'm kind of sad I did because even though half the game world is unexplored, there seems little incentive to explore it now. At least there are no Oblivion gates left, but even those sometimes contributed to the sense of adventure.

Closing the gate was the least interesting thing I've done so far. The scenery wasn't very inspired either. I just had to peg it through all the enemies at the end and grab the stone, because there was no way I could have fought them all. Anyway, I got Sean Bean to his mountain retreat by the skin of my teeth, and now I'm just going to take it easy and do some side quests, which seem to be a lot more involving than the main story line.

I only get about 5 fps difference between HDR, Bloom and off - so I thought I may as well leave it on. It makes no difference to the sheep!

[Huntn]

Gloops, on May 8th 2007, 11:38 AM, said:

I think they were a couple of the characters you get an option to be at the start - Khajiit, after a quick look at the manual. They were on the road between Skingrad and Kvatch, and they took against Prior whatsits horse for some reason. It would be nice if you could fight cavalry style and just charge in with a lance.

Oh, them... I think of them like big cats but no mane so, oh never mind.

You've discovered the main reason why horses are not cool in Oblivion. They serve no good purpose as they are MOB magnets. Then if your horse lives, you have to take the time to heal it. And then when you use it as a walking storage compartment, it up and disappears on ya taking all of your stash! Now this happened to me in association with the horse armor mod, I ended up buying a second horse, put the armor on him but he would not work properly with the Call Horse mods that are out there. To make a semi-long story short, I switched to my original, non-modded horse but now he is missing in action with bunches of good stuff. Fortunately I am very familiar with the player.additem consol command so they can be replaced. Besides it is better for building up your strength to just hoof-it with no horse.

[Drinniol]

Forget buying horses. Do the Dark Brotherhood quest line, and you get an unkillable speedy horse of awesome!

[AussieMacGamer]

Remember when we were talking about that pick that follows you around after the arena missions?


remember my story?

well, I Did it again  

[the Battle Cat]

It appears that if you peel back the layers of the great Grand Champion, he is just a great big meanie pie.

[Huntn]

aussiemacgamer, on May 10th 2007, 04:13 AM, said:

Remember when we were talking about that pick that follows you around after the arena missions?
remember my story?

well, I Did it again  

Ya know there was an option to tell him to get lost without having to push him off a wall.

[PeopleLikeFrank]

Gloops, on May 8th 2007, 12:38 PM, said:

I think they were a couple of the characters you get an option to be at the start - Khajiit, after a quick look at the manual. They were on the road between Skingrad and Kvatch, and they took against Prior whatsits horse for some reason. It would be nice if you could fight cavalry style and just charge in with a lance.

Bandits. There are highwaymen as well (who are excusively Khajit), who will try to rob you for 100 gold first, but the bandits just attack on sight.

[AussieMacGamer]

Huntn, on May 11th 2007, 12:25 AM, said:

Ya know there was an option to tell him to get lost without having to push him off a wall.

yes but the grand champion would have you think otherwise.

[Huntn]

aussiemacgamer, on May 21st 2007, 06:38 AM, said:

yes but the grand champion would have you think otherwise.

But did you see the look on his face as he plummeted? "Master why?....."

[Fourth Horseman]

Huntn, on May 21st 2007, 08:03 AM, said:

But did you see the look on his face as he plummeted? "Master why?....."

Ah... it's the little things in Oblivion that make you smile.

[the Battle Cat]

aussiemacgamer, on May 10th 2007, 02:13 AM, said:

Remember when we were talking about that pick that follows you around after the arena missions?
remember my story?

well, I Did it again  

amg, why don't you see if you can dispose of the guy at the very end of this film too.

[Huntn]

I took about a 2 month break from Oblivion and now I'm back about 1/3 into Knights of the Nine. One lesson I learned- if your going to stash your quest items, somewhere, not on your person, make a note before you take your break! I spent about 40 minutes hunting my items down. Turned out they were at the Priory of the Nine left in the safe keeping of the spirits. Now if I could just find my horse...

[Atticus]

I took about a month-long break, but returned with a vengeance. I finally hit EVERY fort, camp, mine, ruin, and shrine on the freakin map, and in the process have amassed over 1.2 million in gold and now have the Adoring Fan following me around, which is kind of funny (at least for the next 30 seconds).  And I still haven't finished the main quest. Or even touched Shivering Isles, even though I bought it two months ago.  

And I ran into the "slow animation" bug. Had to download and run a utility that reset the problematic byte in a saved game. Worked like charm.

Atticus
Who's staring into oblivion

[ijedi42]

so im thinking of jumping into this again. Last time i played it was on my xp machine. How does this run on the 1st gen intel macs? I have the 17" with ati card and 2gb of ram.

[Gloops]

I left Adoring Fan out in the wilderness somewhere and don't remember where. I kind of miss him.

I also hit the animation bug, which probably means I've been playing the same character for far too long. I have a level 40-something Nord (been reading "Sagas and Myths of the Northmen", so Sigurd the Volsung was a must) who is just about invincible now. I just stand and swig mead as ogres beat themselves to death on my manly chest. It's getting a little boring. I roam the land in search of a challenge.

[Huntn]

Atticus, on June 19th 2007, 09:49 PM, said:

I took about a month-long break, but returned with a vengeance. I finally hit EVERY fort, camp, mine, ruin, and shrine on the freakin map, and in the process have amassed over 1.2 million in gold and now have the Adoring Fan following me around, which is kind of funny (at least for the next 30 seconds).  And I still haven't finished the main quest. Or even touched Shivering Isles, even though I bought it two months ago.  

And I ran into the "slow animation" bug. Had to download and run a utility that reset the problematic byte in a saved game. Worked like charm.

Atticus
Who's staring into oblivion

At least you did not push your adoring fan off a wall like someone I know!  

Did you manually haul every bit of loot out of each dungeon or cheat like I do? I don't want to take the time to run the huge amounts of valuable loot back to a vendor so I just keep a log and via consol, give my self a vendor equivalent, realizing that vendors have a max they pay out regardless of the items stated worth.

Can you or Gloops tell me a little bit about the "slow animation" bug- what are the symptoms, and where is the fix? I'd like to add it to the Oblivion FAQ (if it's not all ready in there!).

Thanks!

[Gloops]

Huntn, on June 20th 2007, 02:53 PM, said:

Can you or Gloops tell me a little bit about the "slow animation" bug- what are the symptoms, and where is the fix? I'd like to add it to the Oblivion FAQ (if it's not all ready in there!).

Thanks!

It's a really odd bug. Cast a spell and you'll be left enveloped in a static haze of spell effect, or doors can take about 5 minutes to creak open. Everything else continues to run at normal speed. It can start at any time, usually after 200 hours, and is most noticeable when you're exploring a cave or ruin. Bethesda know about it but have been unable to fix it thus far. Fortunately for PC users there's a handy utility.

http://www.tessource...ile.php?id=5127

"OAF - Oblivion Animation fixer V1.2
This program, OAF, will un-stick your animations in Oblivion. All types of animations can become stuck in Oblivion such as fires, torches, magic effects, doors and moveable platforms. You will know when this happens. It is usually reported to occur in games with greater than 200 hours of playtime. This program should not be used to fix anything except stuck animations and can not be used to prevent stuck animations. This program does not fix corrupted savegame files. The program modifies one byte in your savegame file that has been found to be involved in this problem. This solution should be considered an un-official fix which will not be supported by Bethesda Softworks, the publisher of the game Oblivion."

[Atticus]

Gloops, on June 20th 2007, 03:01 PM, said:

It's a really odd bug. Cast a spell and you'll be left enveloped in a static haze of spell effect, or doors can take about 5 minutes to creak open. Everything else continues to run at normal speed. It can start at any time, usually after 200 hours, and is most noticeable when you're exploring a cave or ruin. Bethesda know about it but have been unable to fix it thus far. Fortunately for PC users there's a handy utility.

http://www.tessource...ile.php?id=5127

"OAF - Oblivion Animation fixer V1.2
This program, OAF, will un-stick your animations in Oblivion. All types of animations can become stuck in Oblivion such as fires, torches, magic effects, doors and moveable platforms. You will know when this happens. It is usually reported to occur in games with greater than 200 hours of playtime. This program should not be used to fix anything except stuck animations and can not be used to prevent stuck animations. This program does not fix corrupted savegame files. The program modifies one byte in your savegame file that has been found to be involved in this problem. This solution should be considered an un-official fix which will not be supported by Bethesda Softworks, the publisher of the game Oblivion."

Apparently, this is because the integer or something for a particluar byte in a saved game file reaches a value that is too high (anything over 40), which for some reason affects the animations. The above utility resets the value to 40, which fixes the problem. Way cool.