Mod Review: Lights 300; Candle Shop

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.morrowind (More info?)

I like light effects. I like fireworks. I like light and shadows. I
like to put all those permanent candles and lanterns and torches I find
around whatever house I am using like luminaria at Christmas. And,
well, I've been looking for better lighting than comes with the game.
Two mods help out here.

The first, The Candle Shop, is a straightforwards addition of a small
shop in Balmora that sells candles that stay permanently lit when you
set them down. Some of the candles and lanterns restock, some do not.
Yeah! I've been wanting such a mod! Now it is easy to get candles that
stay lit and that MATCH.

The other, Lights 300, does much more extensive changes. It makes
colored lights glow with the color of the flame. This gives their
lights a somewhat surreal, magical effect. Lights go out into a larger
radius, and many seem much brighter. However, the ambient light is
decreased. Torches stay lit longer. The unlit and permanently lit
torches are reversed. This makes some dungeons very dark indeed, but
allows you to buy permanent-put-down-light torches from any torch
vendor. The mod also adds light-based-sneaking.

I was concerned about Lights 300 because I really didn't want the
dramatic light effects in the game to be messed up. But I've been
running the mod about a week now, and have found that the lighting
always seems to be improved. Dramatic lights are more dramatic. Some
places are darker, but most are actually easier to see in. Carrying
torches allows you to see distinctly better now, for example. Best of
all, a low level night eye (say 15-25) combines very well with the
lighting in many places (such as mage guilds) to make the "ambient"
light atmosphere seem normal and pleasant. I have noticed DIFFERENCES,
but not differences I disliked.

If these two mods conflict, it hasn't been obvious to me.

Both mods are available at www.morrowindsummit.com.

There is also a Vivec light shop at the summit, but it--like lights
300--changes some of the light durations, raanges, etc in the game. So
it would conflict with lights 300. It might be a good choice for
someone who DIDN'T want the more extensive changes of lights 300,
however.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.morrowind (More info?)

DeAnn wrote:

> There is also a Vivec light shop at the summit, but it--like lights
> 300--changes some of the light durations, raanges, etc in the game. So
> it would conflict with lights 300. It might be a good choice for
> someone who DIDN'T want the more extensive changes of lights 300,
> however.
>

I noticed with Nevena's Slave mods that I suddenly could pick up and
collect the cool-looking red sixth house candles. I think it's a glitch
or bug in Nevena's mods, but I don't care. I have been using the sixth
house candles to decorate my lair.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.morrowind (More info?)

> I noticed with Nevena's Slave mods that I suddenly could pick up and
> collect the cool-looking red sixth house candles. I think it's a glitch
> or bug in Nevena's mods, but I don't care. I have been using the sixth
> house candles to decorate my lair.

I've seen plenty of pickup-able red candles not the result of any mods.
They're not the little 3-flame 6th house candles, but they do provide a
pretty cool spooky red light. I wish there were more colors, though.
Pretty much, normal candles and red ones are the only options. There are
lights of other colors, but not portable. I think it would be cool if you
could use certain alchemical ingredients as lights, specifically Coda
Flowers and Luminous Russula, maybe Ampoule Pods as well. They glow when
you see them in the wild, why shouldn't they glow when you pick them?

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.morrowind (More info?)

I gather TESTool is part of the toolkit for modders that
Bethesda has on their site? Is it intuitive to use?
I've tried opening mods with the elderscrolls construction
kit and found it a confusing, uninformative mess.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.morrowind (More info?)

Thanks. Went to MW summit and picked up TESMU and a
couple of other toolkits to look at/test.
I'm certainly running enough mods to make a decent tool
work out.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.morrowind (More info?)

Darrel Hoffman wrote:
>>I noticed with Nevena's Slave mods that I suddenly could pick up and
>>collect the cool-looking red sixth house candles. I think it's a glitch
>>or bug in Nevena's mods, but I don't care. I have been using the sixth
>>house candles to decorate my lair.
>
>
> I've seen plenty of pickup-able red candles not the result of any mods.
> They're not the little 3-flame 6th house candles, but they do provide a
> pretty cool spooky red light. I wish there were more colors, though.
> Pretty much, normal candles and red ones are the only options. There are
> lights of other colors, but not portable. I think it would be cool if you
> could use certain alchemical ingredients as lights, specifically Coda
> Flowers and Luminous Russula, maybe Ampoule Pods as well. They glow when
> you see them in the wild, why shouldn't they glow when you pick them?
>
>
The coda flowers still glow after you pick them. They make nice little
night lights.

 

[sarah]

Archived from groups: alt.games.morrowind (More info?)

"DeAnn" <von.sagrillo@verizon.net> wrote in message
news:1106402958.408211.290380@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...

>I gather TESTool is part of the toolkit for modders that
> Bethesda has on their site? Is it intuitive to use?
> I've tried opening mods with the elderscrolls construction
> kit and found it a confusing, uninformative mess.

It's not from Bethesda. It's a tool that merges levelled lists and resolves
conflicts between mods, including dialogue conflicts. You can't create mods
with it. You can find it at most of the usual download sites.

For those who use a lot of mods, I've found Tesmu2 very helpful. It's a
tool that installs mods for you and tracks what files a mod added. That
makes it easy to remove a mod if you decide you don't like it. You can use
the tool to remove a mod and all of its files are also removed
automatically - no more cluttered data files with mods you don't use. It
won't install mods that come in RAR files, but every time it starts up it
scans the data files directory (very fast) for mods. If you install a mod
manually, the tool will pick it and its dependencies up next time it's run.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.morrowind (More info?)

Thanks for the update. I've tried TESTool....now to go see how the
game reacts to the merged lists.

BTW, how about writing a review of NOW (e.g. how are new
lands from mods affected)? I've been thinking of trying it....
but am leary of messing up all the other mods I'm trying out.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.morrowind (More info?)

I like the Lights 300 quite a lot so far. Installed it just before
entering some tomb, and it blew me away when I saw the changed lighting
inside. Much improved athmosphere.

Lights 300 breaks Necessities of Morrowind, as it overwrites the fires
used by NOM for cooking. But remerging objects with TESTool seems to
solve that issue.


Thanks for this mod hint,

Peter

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.morrowind (More info?)

DeAnn wrote:
> I gather TESTool is part of the toolkit for modders that
> Bethesda has on their site?

No, TESTool is a third-party program, not related to Bethedsa at all.

<rant>
TESTool offers some fundamental abilities which should have already been
included in the construction set by Bethedsa, but was not. Instead some
kind soul writes this sort of thing, doing the work Bethedsa should have
done.
</rant>

TESTool is absolutely helpful for modding, but also quite good for
non-modders, if you are running lots of mods. It can merge levelled
lists (other tools can do that as well) and merge objects, which is an
extremely cool feature:
Consider some light item. Original game sets certain values to the light
object, like brightness, radius etc etc. Now Necessities of Morrowind
modifies this light item and attaches a script to it (it has no script
in unmodded Morrowind), but doesn't change the values of the light. Now
Light300 takes the original light and modifies the values, but doesn't
attach a script to it. Now we got a conflict.

Original light
NOM light - same values as original light plus script
Light300 - modified values, no script

If you load Light300 after NOM, then you get the new lights but no
script. If you load NOM after Light300, you get the script but no
modified values. So you couldn't run both mods.
Now comes TESTool: It merges the original light, the NOM light (which
only adds the script) and the Light300 light (which only modifies some
values) into a final object which got the new values *and* the NOM
script. Thus, you now can run both mods at the same time.

If this isn't a useful feature, I don't know what is. Quite essential
to be able to run conflicting mods, though don't expect miracles.


> Is it intuitive to use?

Yes, I'd say so. But read the included documentation first, before you
randomly click the buttons. You get the tool over at http://thelys.org


> I've tried opening mods with the elderscrolls construction
> kit and found it a confusing, uninformative mess.

It is...

<more rant, getting worse>
I've started modding a bit a couple of months ago but quickly gave up
because the construction kit is a major pain to work with. The Morrowind
script language is one of the dumbest languages I've seen, and I've seen
and worked with a lot of programming languages. Even C64 BASIC had more
features and better debugging facilities.
</more rant>


Peter

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.morrowind (More info?)

> > I think it would be cool if you
> > could use certain alchemical ingredients as lights, specifically Coda
> > Flowers and Luminous Russula, maybe Ampoule Pods as well. They glow
when
> > you see them in the wild, why shouldn't they glow when you pick them?
> >
> >
> The coda flowers still glow after you pick them. They make nice little
> night lights.

Yeah, I just checked that. They do glow, in that they can be seen in the
dark, but unlike candles, they don't actually provide any light, in that
they don't illuminate other nearby objects. It's too bad, because if they
did, they'd make excellent cheap flares to be placed on the ground in dark
caverns. Fortunately(?), this game doesn't seem to have a lot of dark
caverns. (Actually, I wish it did have more dark caverns. As it is, the
Light and Night Eyes spells are essentially useless, as there are never any
areas so dark you can't see without them.)