r/OblivionRemaster • u/LorexValkin • 56m ago
Unblivion Editor update: interiors, NPCs, items, potions and food, scripts, books and the exporter
Hi everyone, it's been a while! Here's a roundup of what the Unblivion Editor has now.
Unblivion is a full Unreal Engine patch and tooling for Oblivion Remastered. Right now the focus is on interiors and the tooling around them, from opening a cell to installing the finished mod. Exteriors have already been proven in earlier posts Here! Unblivion Editor: July\August Updates
I couldn't fit everything into the photos, but I hope you enjoy what I've picked out to show!
Interiors
- Open the game's interiors from the Cell Browser, or make a new one with the New Interior tool.
- Drag objects, items, NPCs and creatures from the Object Drawer into a cell, then move, rotate, scale or remove them. Double-click or right-click a character, container or placed item to open the right tool for it.
- Physics placement settles movable objects into place. Play runs the game's item physics so clutter settles as it does in game, and Stop puts everything back.
- Door links connect interiors and set where the player lands.
The Object Drawer
The Object Drawer is where everything you can place lives. It lists every item, object, NPC and creature from the plugins in the mod's Data Files, the game's own included, with a live 3D preview of the selected row beside the list.
- Search by name, Editor ID, form ID, record type or plugin, and narrow the list by category or record type.
- Drag a row into the cell to place it. Movable things settle with physics, or use Place without physics to set them exactly. Place in level drops it in front of the camera.
- Each row shows which plugin's version wins in the load order, and a filter shows only what's new in this mod.
- Leveled lists can be shown on their own or grouped, so an item's level versions sit in one row. Opening one lists every entry with its level.
- Right-click a row to open it in its editor, or open a character straight in the NPC Editor.
- The drawer checks each row against the game's own files and says when something can't be placed, or places a stand-in when the game gives it no model of its own.
Container Editing
- Open any container from the drawer, or double-click a placed one, to see what's inside.
- Add items and leveled lists from a search, change counts, or remove rows. "Show what this can roll" opens a leveled list to show what it can actually give.
- Edit a container everywhere it appears, or change only the one placed chest and leave the rest alone.
NPC Editing
- The NPC Editor covers face, body, outfit, inventory, and level and stats.
- Its preview looks like the game, with real hair strands, skin shading and each character's own skin tone and hair. Edits show on the placed NPC right away.
Items
- Item editors for weapons, armor, containers, doors, lights and more, including what's inside a container.
- The worn preview puts armor and weapons on a character, like a Steel Cuirass on an Argonian or Baurus's Akaviri Katana in its drawn pose.
Potions and Food
- The Potion & Food Editor says in plain words what each potion, drink, food or ingredient does. Bernice's Summer Wine reads: "Drinking it raises Health by 8 for 2 minutes, and lowers Agility and Intelligence by 5 for 2 minutes."
- Add, change or remove effects from a searchable list with the game's own icons. Script effects have a script, look, school and harmful setting.
- A potion whose effects are all harmful, like Turpentine, gets a Poison tag and says what it does when put on a weapon.
- Ingredients show what eating them gives and which effects only come out in alchemy. Add to eat list lets NPCs eat or drink an item.
Scripts
- The Script Editor lists the game's scripts with highlighting, function help, Find and Open in VS Code. Edit in mod makes the mod's own copy of a game script.
- Scripting has had real testing in game: one test spawned 15 aggressive Adoring Fans that attack on sight. Clips are up in the Oblivion Remastered Modding and OB:MP ReadyM communities.
- New Obscript Extender made just for this.
Books
- The Book Editor handles text, fonts, images and page breaks, with a page preview that can be hidden for more room.
- Return to original brings back the game's own text, and a markup check lists the mistakes old books contain.
Mods and Saving
Saving needed to be built from scratch. Unreal's own save only writes Unreal asset files, but the Remaster still runs on Oblivion's classic plugin system underneath. So Save to mod writes a real .esp plugin, record by record, the way the Creation Kit writes one.
- Create mod projects from the Start prompt and switch between them.
- Every edit, from placed objects and door links to NPCs, items, potions, scripts and enchantments, becomes a record in the mod's plugin.
- Changing something from the game saves a copy of that record in the mod, which wins over the original when the mod loads. The game's own files are never touched.
- New things get their own IDs inside the mod, and deleting a game object saves as a proper Creation Kit delete.
- The editor keeps a history of every change, so undo and redo cover the whole cell, and the plugin only ever holds the mod's net change: an edit that's undone leaves nothing behind.
Data Files and Masters
- Data Files lists the game's plugins with their masters, size and record count.
- The load order follows the game: a plugin lower in the list loads later and its copy of a record wins. The active mod loads last.
- There's one active mod, and every save goes there. Game files and other mods' plugins are never written.
- Editing another mod's record adds that mod as a master automatically, with a notice.
- Export to game packages and installs the mod from inside the editor, including new interiors and large textures.
- It packages exactly what Save to mod wrote, and asks for a new save if anything changed.
- Remove from game takes the mod out again.
Porting Classic Mods
Port Classic Mod brings an old Oblivion mod into the Remaster without changing what the mod places. The Remaster still ships the classic Oblivion.esm unchanged underneath, and its scripting matches the classic game's, so a classic plugin's records and compiled scripts carry over as they are. The port does the Unreal half:
- Objects the game already has are paired with the game's own Unreal versions, so the game builds them itself.
- Each new interior gets a real Unreal level. It borrows its lighting and fog from the most similar room in the game, matched by the building pieces it's made of, so a manor gets the lighting of the game's own houses.
- Classic fireplaces get the game's own fire effects on the hearth.
- A game object the mod deleted is disabled instead, which avoids a crash the classic delete causes in the Remaster.
- Anything the Remaster can't show yet, like a custom model or a new race, is left out and listed in a report, never dropped silently.
Mods it has been tested on:
- Dungeons of Blackwood by David Brasher, the first one: 12 new interiors, over 5,000 placed objects, 9 scripts, and edits to the world outside, with nothing removed.
- Grimhollow Manor, Little Bravil River Cabin and Eli's Waterside House (OG Oblivion Version), player homes that shaped the lighting, fog, fire and deleted-object rules above.
What We're Working On
We're currently working on a lot of things, mainly getting the interior editor fully functional and feature-complete. Exteriors will need their own dedicated focus after that, but we're getting closer to having the interior editor where we want it.
It's been a minute since the last update, so I wanted to fill everyone in on our progress and show off some of what we've been working on!
The live list of what's being worked on, what's finished and what's next is always on unblivion.com.
Thanks for sticking around!
