What do you guys think about adding arena's to the biggest cities and linking their quests and ranks together. For instance, you start off at the poorest arena and then work your way through the ranks until you fight in the next arena and then the next and so on. If you like the idea I will gladly do it myself

I believe Valisarius already has something in mind about this.

"The basis of the Arenas is:

Each city had its own performance theatre that developed into an all round seated arena where plays would be performed and occasional executions occurred. The executions became spectacle and eventually the law was made to accomodate the performance. Any offender could request trial by arena. He or she would live within the arena and were not permitted to abscond though after a time they could be trusted to go out into the city. When within the confines of the arena they were triable only by the Sandmasters and no other law was above them. They could of course be expelled into the hands of the authorities. However if they were found abroad in the city by anyone having a legal argument to settle that involved summary death then it was tough luck. Mind you, who would want to take on a bladesman?

Bladesmen were the professional fighters. One could volunteer or be compelled into the Arena for a crime. Those volunteering gave up five years and were paid well but under Arena law until their five years, or life, ended.

Swabs were the women who acted as surgeons and nurses. Often bladesmen had relationships with swabs though were not allowed to marry.

Sandmasters ran the arena.

Myrions were ex bladesmen or soldiers who were employed as guards. Only the best could become Myrions and the best Myrions hunted down bladesmen who ran."

I'm sure Valisarius would be glad if someone ran with this. Just talk to him about it so the quests fit in the lore above.

Darin summed it up well. This would be an excellent project and would only need interiors to be done as the Arena's exteriors come in one set lump whose texture could be changed to suit the city.

By doing small world interiors for the Arenas you could extend in all of the underground rooms then do the fighting scripts.

I can easily design the arena's based on the specifications you listed. I was thinking we could have a prison for the prisoners who are being forced to fight in the arena, a general living area for guards and arena combatants with contracts to fight in the arena complete with a set of trainers in a training area, and an infirmary area where the swabs generally operate that has a quick access tunnel to the arena floor. I also was thinking of including a sort of VIP building for the Sandmasters and their guests.

I would think that there wouldn't be many survivors of the arena and so the supply for myrions must be at least a little scarce. So maybe there could be regular guards also so that it seems more realistic and diverse. This is simply a suggestion/question.

I have a few things that I need before I begin also. I need the races that I will be populating this mod with. I will also need to know what weapons and armor I should use if any at this point because items and such can be added after they are done being created. I also need Co-ordinates for each major city. I was thinking of placing the arena's just out side of their corresponding town so that I could connect the prison system to the arena and I also think it would be less of an eyesore. If you have any suggestions about where I should put each arena in town let me know I will place them if you do not provide input but I will be sure to put them in a location that can easily be changed if you see it fit.

Will the administrating government official in town be present during the arena and its trials?
If so, are they also considered a Sandmaster or like the presiding Sandmaster?

Basically after all is said and done I need a download for the races and co-ordinates for each major city. Oh...and will you be creating a map for fast travel? if not I was thinking we could make a teleport system at each new major location we create so that we can easily navigate the world while it is still in development and when we are done with the mod the teleports could be easily deleted...just a suggestion .

I will get straight on to this. I have a sword mesh to do then this.

A bit late to reply in detail at the minute as i have work early. Tomorrow I will do a detailed answer.

Hope thats ok.

Ill do some proper coordinates too. Cant believe I got the - the wrong way around. Doh!

lol ok....i will just mess around in the CS for today then.

Good idea about teleports. We can put them into the next release of the master file.
I'll try to go through your points.

Myrions and surviving the Arena. The purpose of the arena was not to kill but to entertain. Combatants would fight until they either yield or were knocked down, lost their weapon and were as good as finished or, often enough, dead. People would have liked to see their favourites fight another day and would often root for the underdog if they put on a good display. Professionals would be good at display and therefore the longer you are around, the more chance you have of living.

Placing the arenas. Have you looked at the arena meshes? Dont use the arena panther statue as for some reason it causes a crash. It needs fixing. Dont touch the arena at Illusidum as I am changing the exterior mesh to make it much better on fps. Actually thats the only arena placed at the moment so its likely not worth bothering on the exterior of it.

Doing the arena. Each internal arena sandspace needs to go into its own either exterior or interior worldspace (small world exterior or interior that acts like an exterior with sky etc. Not sure how we link it with weather to the external as we dont want to walk into the arena at night and emerge in broad daylight. How to overcome that I dont really know unless we use small worlds placed like the worlds of oblivion, small worlds linked to the main master map. The internal arena sand area meshes should be ok, have a look and see what you think? The underground stuff is open season, make what you want of it, have fun with that, you could really go anywhere you like with it. I would suggest that the corridors would be fairly extensive, like a little town within itself. Prisoners, bladesmen rooms, swabs quarters, hospital, myrions barracks etc.

Sandmasters. A law unto themselves under the Holorian system. Nasica wrote the laws concerning the arena recognising the power it could play if hijacked by any particular politician and so gave them independence that is now protected by the Emperor. The Emperor can license each Arena and would use it to draw bodyguards from the best Myrions. Anyone can go watch, and anyone did, the Arena should be quite a popular sport as its about the only thing inside or near each city for entertainment other than plays and the like. The sandmasters referee but as each is allied to his own arena then they couldnt preside. The audience however could and the cheer of the crowd dictated the outcome, win, lose, live, die.

Races. These wont be too big an issue. As each members has adopted a race to work on I left the race development to them so at the moment we have several plugins around the world (literally) being worked on. I have made the Holorian race however have no Karithian, Agalien etc. What I have done then is made each NPC the nearest oblivion race, so for Karithian I have used Redguard then made them appear more arabic. For Agalien I made them appear more ancient egyptian etc but both use redguard. When I have the plugin for each race I will then go to each NPC and change the race and do any minor adjustments for hair and eyes etc.

Not the best way to go ahead but after some deliberation I thought that if I made all of the races to start with they might not be quite so diverse in appearance etc as if many people were involved.

Lastly the only major city placed is the one I'm working on. I can give you coordinates for where the others will be if you want to place arena exteriors there. Others can then work around the arena as one of the founding centrepieces of each city.

I did not think about the fact that you can change races easily I mess with npc creation all the time...I should have remembered...my mistake lol. Just let me know which oblivion race you would like me to use for each race so there is no confusion on any of our parts.

I have been creating some practice arena's so yes I have looked over all of the architecture you currently have.

As for the myrions and sandmasters I now understand what direction you are going with them now that you have clarified. I do have a question about the law though, will I be writing the scripts for the crimes penalized by arena? If so I want to know who has jurisdiction over each law so that I know which crimes I must script to be penalized by arena. Another question I have is will there be a trial process or should I just leave that out and notify the player of their sentence after their arrest? As for the world space weather of the arena I am sure I can find the answer within the arena that Bethesda created in the imperial city because it was matched up with the time of day and I am not 100% but I am pretty sure the weather too.

You want the arena's located in town so I was wondering how to link the prison to the arena. I was thinking there could be an underground "green mile" so to speak where the prisoners were escorted to the arena. Or maybe just attach the prison to the arena. Or I could have a road with a fence that led from the prison to the arena where the prisoners are escorted by myrions to the arena .The reason I am asking is because I do not want to interfere with the way you want the town to look and make it seem "off".

It will take me a while to 3d model for you guys because I do not have any auto desk software so I will have to learn how to use milkshape, blender, and nifskope. I was taught with 3ds Max and Auto Cad and have used no other programs so it is sadly going to take a bit...unless I come across a way to get those programs and I don't see that happening...I am afraid to pirate them lol.

Would like me to start work on the arena at illsidium? I will not touch the exterior. I just think it would be good to see how it flows with a fully functioning town so that we can use it to contrast with other towns. I will begin work where you wish after you respond.

I was also thinking about having some small underground illegal arena's to add a more brutal feeling to the whole experience...let me know what you think.

And finally, I forgot to ask If OBSE and its plugins can be used.

I was thinking of keepin everything in the Arena except the open sands and audience area etc underground. I hadnt thought of how to implement the laws etc, take whichever is your preference with that, whatever you think is best is fine by me The more free expression you have the more diverse the mod will be anyway.

Underground arenas are a great idea, we could have some prize fighting going on, on the quiet somewhere.

Start with Illusidum if you like, that would be a good one as we can link it into a city thats already being made.

Ive never used OBSE. Would it be neccesary to use it and would adding it in now cause problems for content already made?

I found out of all the programs Blender is the easiest to get used to.

OBSE would not mess with anything in the mod it simply adds more functions so that scripting is more flexible and you can do much more with it. The only downside is that in order to use this mod people would also have to have obse and whatever plugins we use for obse installed, but most people have obse so I don't think it will make many people not want to download...in fact it will probably attract more attention because mods that use obse tend to be very high rated like Midas Magick and Streamline.

How do you use OBSE? We would all need to start using it so that mods would be compatible.

Yes, we would all need to install OBSE but I believe it would be well worth it...I mean...deadly reflex is the shit. That was done with OBSE and if we are given the capability to do things that creative then this mod will really stand out.

OBSE is a quick download and install and it comes with a readme file that tells you how to use it which will only take about 5 minutes of your time if you do it slowly. The original way to start the Construction set with OBSE is "Open a command prompt window, navigate to your oblivion install folder, and type "obse_loader -editor".". I personally use Wryebash to launch the CS with OBSE with just a single click.

How many people will populate the arena? I am asking because I have no Idea how many people are going to be in illsidium and I do not want it to be disproportionate. Also, will their be ranks in the myrions like myrion captains?

Oh, the building attached to the right of front of the Illsidium Arena...what is that going to be used for? I was thinking of Having a registration building where people come to place bets, buy tickets and sign up for the arena but that could be done from the inside just as well.

I wouldnt use or trust those exterior buildings as I have probably changed or landscaped or both since the download you have was made. Better to keep everything underground for the time being anyway.

Yes, by all means rank the Myrions. Have you read this yet?

http://mesogea.org/chapter1.html (This discusses an event in the Karisum Arena. It might help.) Obviously Ive described the Karisum Arena but every other Arena can be as similar different so please feel free to use your own imagination, that way you can have more fun, more autonomy in creating things without asking me if its ok, generally I'm fine as long as the mod doesnt start turning into something too modern for its own reality. Consider me as a resource if you want, as Ive got a fairly rounded knowledge of the entire Mesogea project and can advise if something is fitting in with what else is being done. But please feel free to express your creativity.

As far as people in Illusidum are concerned. Ive done about twenty or so for the Agaria and thats about a third or quarter of the final number. The way to handle so many I have found is to stagger their appearances, never having more than about thirty to forty in the Agaria that is about 5x5 cells out in public at any one time. FPS doesnt suffer because they dont crowd in one place and there are so many corners and alleyways a player can turn down the NPC view distance very low indeed and still not have characters fade.

I think I will split Illusidum into another two interior worlds each having about forty NPC's so probabably in its entirety the city will have, including docks, Agaria, canal district, wealthy district and Middenstal, about 150-200 NPC's in exteriors and interiors. Many will be to thicken the broth and make the city seem busy, others will be quest or merchant based.

As you are using OBSE and the others at present are not, as long as when your work goes into the master file from then on we all start using OBSE, would that create any technical problems for the mod or merging?

Here's how OBSE (Oblivion Script Extender) basically works:

The scripting functions in the construction set are fairly limited to do anything cool. The people at OBSE are able to reverse-engineer (don't know of a better word) Oblivion and allow more complicated scripting functions. This is completely legal. To use the functions you need OBSE as well. I highly recommend it because most great script-heavy mods (i.e. Deadly Reflex or Supreme Magicka) require it.

There is one downside. People with a torrented or Direct2Drive version of the game can't use OBSE because of encryption issues.

There should be no technical problems adding OBSE functions to the scripts.

Did anything with this ever come to fruition?