To help get you guys involved with the blog, we’re now accepting fan (fan fiction, artwork, wallpapers, videos, etc.) Soon we’ll be updating the blog with sections devoted to your submissions. In the meantime, send your stuff to bethblog@bethsoft.com.
Late last week I got an interesting e-mail from one die-hard Fallout, Brdar Radosav, showing off his Fallout-inspired PC. I shared the pics with some folks around the office, and I gotta say, we’re quite impressed. I especially enjoy the rusted paint look.
Thanks to Brdar for sending them over. We’re hoping to get more stuff like this up on the blog. Check out more images after the break.
Over the weekend, I saw several places that hinted at this, so without further ado, it’s official…The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Game of the Year Edition is coming to Windows PC, Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.
On top of being able to play the heralded Oblivion, 360 fans not using Xbox Live will now have the opportunity to play Knights of the Nine and The Shivering Isles for the first time. TES IV: OGotYE (I’m sure this is what the kids will call it) also allows gamers to experience the insanity of The Shivering Isles on the PS3.
For more details on this announcement, check out the entire press release…
Over at The Imperial Library, several different maps have been made by fan of The Elder Scrolls. You can definitely see a lot of time and effort went into some of these ones that were made from scratch. There’s also a few cools one that are modifications of the game map made by our very own Mike Wagner.
Being somewhat new to the company, I just made ArthmodeusD’s world map my wallpaper to help me get my bearings. Head on over to the site and unroll the maps to full size. There’s some pretty impressive detail in these.
About a month ago, I got an e-mail from University of Florida instructor Dave Small regarding a “Game Design” class the university is offering this summer. For the class, Small is using the Game of the Year edition of Morrowind for its construction set (as well as other games) to help implement their game ideas. For those considering looking for a school with game design classes, check out the syllabus for the class. There’s also a discussion about the course within our forums, including participation from one of Small’s students.
Despite being jaded towards UF for making the BCS title game over my beloved Wolverines (even though they deserved it), this sounds like a cool opportunity those looking to get into game design. I’m a bit jealous, though I did get to take a blow off class that dealt with films of the 1990′s and gaming my senior year. It was the easiest class this side of Volcanoes and Earthquakes.
Via e-mail, I asked Dave for a little more information about the class. Click below for more details…
Gamer’s Hell has uploaded Qarl’s Texture Map III for an improved visual appearance within the game. The mod adds new textures and maps that aim to make Oblivion “more photorealistic, while at the same time still very close to the original feel of Bethesda’s intentions.”
Download the mod here…
Upon hearing that folks were having a few issues with the latest version of the CS (v. 1.2.404), we’ve uploaded the original one back onto the site here. This version of the CS will allow for creating mods that can be run on unpatched versions of Oblivion or to create lip synch files for voiced dialogue.
When I spoke with Todd, he suggested that modders looking to do lip synch work should use version 1.0 because the middleware we use for generating lipsync data is not compatible with the new features we added to version 1.2, despite us trying to make it work.
Actually, this is quite interesting. Yesterday on The Elder Scrolls Source, a new mod by Tyler Cobb went up that makes being vampire in Oblivion more “in line with traditional vampire lore while maintaining all the original features that came with Oblivion.”
To download and read more about the the mod, click here.
So, folks have talked about the Bloody Mess cake we did, and a number of people asked about it and how we did it and so forth, so I figured I’d go ahead and explain how it came to be.
My wife occasionally watches this show ‘Ace of Cakes’ about a company in Baltimore, Charm City Cakes, that makes really cool cakes. (The show largely centers on Duff, who owns the place and is the head chef and so forth.) So one day I’m watching the show with her and Duff is making a cake for his dad’s birthday and it’s this surprise cake he made him that was a rocket, or a plane, or something…it’s not important.
What is important is he had some kind of fireworks in part of it, which he lit at one point to make it look like it was flying, and that’s when I got the idea to do a Bloody Mess cake. Bloody Mess is one of my favorite things about Fallout. It’s just so meaningless; no gameplay purpose whatsoever. Just more bloody deaths than normal, represented by this icon of a smiling Vault Boy casually blowing another guy away…and it’s captured a fraction of a second after he’s pulled the trigger. It’s just genius on every level.
Over on Planet Elder Scrolls, which has tons of cool mods, I came across one this morning that I found particularly interesting. Looks like your hero will now have the ability to use the Force Push technique that the Star Wars prequels decided to overuse.
Only bad news is that Liam Neeson didn’t agree to add some Qui Gonn dialogue for the game. Anyhow, check out the mod here.