Silgrad Tower from the Ashes

Actuall, I don't think it would be tricky to have the hurled rock cause damage to NPCs. The 'unequip' animation sequence allows the havok of objects to kick in (think of the collapsing bridges in some of the vanilla fort ruins).

I like the idea about the siege tower. :goodjob:

Yeah, but there's still much that could go wrong. Maybe the rock changes speed or direction. If the rock hit's anything you would have to make a script that kills everything it touches. That's gonna look stupid when people around it are dying even the rock has almost stopped and are just rolling really slow.
Plus a lot of npcs could die, and then it's a ragdoll/havok HELL. the Framerate is going to decrease dramaticly.

I think the best way to do it would be a cinematic approch.
We could make an invisible wall around the castle that the player is defending, so the player cannot jump out and start killing things.
Oblivion doesn't support huge npc armies because of AI and such.
But I think that if the enemies are just models of enemies with some animation applied to them. Then you could easily have armies of 10000 enemies or so.
They could be EXTREMELY lowpoly since they could be really far away.

They player could be called back to the main hall for planning, discuss with the king or something like that. Then when the player moves outside again we will have replaced that army with something else, so it appears like they're advancing and stuff.
Then finally then could break down the main gate and the player would have to fight actual npcs. Before finally retreating back into the main hall to defend the king.

Quote:Originally posted by Tobi the Dane
Yeah, but there's still much that could go wrong. Maybe the rock changes speed or direction. If the rock hit's anything you would have to make a script that kills everything it touches. That's gonna look stupid when people around it are dying even the rock has almost stopped and are just rolling really slow.
Plus a lot of npcs could die, and then it's a ragdoll/havok HELL. the Framerate is going to decrease dramaticly.

What I was saying is that it wouldn't need to be scripted to kill NPCs - due to it's havok it would work in the same way as the traps in vanilla Oblivion.

Besides, I can't imagine that there'll be that many NPCs around anyway. I was thinking it would be cool to launch rocks into the distance. Or be inside a fort when an NPC fires a rock in. I think the interactivity would be a nice extra that would make it stand out from any other siege equipment mods.

*drools at possibilities of sieges for quests*

I think that sieges are difficult due to how you want to run them - do you make them a set-piece engagement where the siege engines are a back drop to traditional Oblivion fighting, or do you make the siege more dynamic, but very very difficult to perfect.

Example:In a set piece, the engines would fire, walls would tumble, some NPCs would die, and then the assaulter comes rushing in. In a dynamic setting, the attacker chooses where to strike, the defender where to put his forces, and then the siege engines begin to fire, before and during the battle.

The problem with artillery during the battle is that unless it is quest driven and unique, then theres no guarantee you won't kill the player.

I really do think that the idea of a massive main quest siege, where the player and his faction must resist a massive siege in a separate world space has so much potential, my mind boggles :banana:

Quote:Originally posted by Coinneach
...then theres no guarantee you won't kill the player.

Isn't that half the fun.

Quote:Originally posted by nick_op

Quote:Originally posted by Coinneach
...then theres no guarantee you won't kill the player.

Isn't that half the fun.

:lol: I would tend to think that using the siege engines in all their glory will be so tricky to get working properly that it would take ages to do and have no guarantee of success. The whole idea of Oblivion having war gaming involved in OB would indeed be awesome but, although I'm not know the technical stuff, I feel confident when I say that, realistically-speaking, it would be too much. Personally, I would be happy just having the sieges engines as static models and using Tobi's previous, workable ideas as traps for an assault on a Fort.

It would be cool to command a team, deploy your NPCs and devise the strategy of attack but equally you might be able to set your defences. Perhaps you're given some intelligence that could influence your choices and, if you read the situation right, then you'll make the right choices. Depending on how you set up your defences, this would then favour either the cerebral or brawny game-player because without one then you'd have to rely on the other. Anyway, I'm just thinking aloud here. I'll let Tobi get back to his magnificent set in the meantime.

I wasn't actually proposing a fully fledged siege and it's an unreliastic idea to implement in Oblivion's engine. What I was suggesting was added interactivity which would make a player say, "Cool!".

Just imagine running up to a catapult and activating it and watching a rock/flaming ball of pitch/cow fire into the distance ("I hope they like beef!", Stonghold, anyone?).

I wasn't saying a fully fledged siege would be possible per se, but it is conceivable for a portion of a major quest to revolve around a siege (freeze UI and have part of the wall collapse, supposedly due to catapult). It wouldn't actually be impossible, just really complex

Again I don't actually expect to see this... but it'd be really cool

Quote:Originally posted by nick_op
...and watching a rock/flaming ball of pitch/cow fire into the distance ("I hope they like beef!", Stonghold, anyone?)...

I was thinking of Monty Python's cow catapult, personally:

I love stronghold, and yes, that's proberly the kind of trap I will make. If I get the time that is. I may have finally found someone who will accept me as an intern. If I, hopefully, get accepted then I don't know how much time I have left for this project.
If I don't get accepted, then there's a whole lot of stuff waiting for me.

So in either way, I will be more busy in the future, and you guys may not get to see me that much. I will do my best however not to leave the project completely, because it's really nice working with you guys. And it's a lot of fun too.

But the cow catapult has my vote