A Mark And Recall Mod, is it a good idea? Options

[RobRendell]

Well, the impression I get is that Bethesda have taken out the Mark and Recall spells, on the grounds that the travel map allows everyone to move about quickly, not just spell-casters.

However, I don't think that Mark and Recall have been completely superceded by the travel map. Moving about using the travel map still takes time, in-game, and it doesn't work indoors. I used Mark and Recall a lot in Morrowind to avoid the drudgery of carting loot back and forth in dungeons (since my characters often started without a very high strength stat), and the travel map won't help with that.

Now, I haven't played the game yet, obviously, so maybe it'll be designed such that the spells really wouldn't be useful anyway. But in Morrowind, I used Mark and Recall heavily, and I anticipate that I'm going to miss it in Oblivion, so I'm considering writing a mod to add some equivalent spells back in.

Technically, from what I understand of the changes to the scripting language, it would now be easy to write outdoors-only mark and recall spells. Mind you, the travel map already works outdoors, so you're just saving yourself time...

A local mark and recall spell pair that only moves you around within the same indoor cell could also be useful, and shouldn't be too challenging to write.

However, a full re-implementation of Morrowind's mark and recall would be a pain, because cells are named by strings, and there are still no string variables in the scripting language to store the data. So, you'd have to do something like the Morrowind multimark mod, which has a scadload of if-elseif-else statements testing all the indoor cell names, and another scadload of if-elseif-else statements to call the PositionCell to move you back. Obviously, this is fragile - any new locations added by other mods aren't supported. Also, I don't want to spoil the game for myself by reading through all the indoor cell names.

So, I'm pondering my options. Would other people be interested in a mod that re-introduced Mark and Recall in some form, if they have indeed been removed? Would you consider using it on your first play through, or would that interfere with the experience that Bethesda was trying to create?

[ShogunSniper]

i would try it. i liked mark/recall in MW and i hope they don't take it out in OB. somehow, i think hey won't. like you said "fast" travel takes in-game time but is instantanious for the player where as teleportation spells are instantanious for both the game and the player.

but i'm not a modder so i don't understand half the things you said.

[The Wolf]

It would be nice, in MW Mark/Recall saved me a lot of time.

[kzar]

I use it a lot in MW. But I figure it'll ruin the gameplay in Oblivion.. Since it was no longer a considered factor in quest writing, etc. Even when I use it in MW I kind of feel like a cheater.

[stargelman]

I've been working with locations quite a lot when working on my daggerfall music mod.

I also looked at the great multimark mod, which uses like 20 or 30 scripts to do what it does so well. It does all that without string variables, and the way it was made, I think it can be ported to Oblivion fairly easy - the author even included a perl script to generate scripts for all the location names!

The location names are strings, but the locations itself, despite looking like strings in the editor, are not. The strings are internally resolved to numerical IDs. Thus, even without strings and arrays and such, it's still possible to reimplement mark/recall. Hell, that guy with his multi-mark mod did that for Morrowind without ever touching the matching spell effect!

So yes, it is realistic.

[kzar]

I think the multi mark mod requires MW Enhanced. Which is basically a secondary app that runs alongside MW and interfaces with it to make modding more powerful. So we need Oblivion Enhanced I assume Oblivion Enhanced will be out pretty quickly.

[stargelman]

I think the multi mark mod requires MW Enhanced. Which is basically a secondary app that runs alongside MW and interfaces with it to make modding more powerful. So we need Oblivion Enhanced I assume Oblivion Enhanced will be out pretty quickly.

Nope It's just standard scripts. A looooooot of them.

[RobRendell]

Well, MrSmileyFaceDude said this in the latest set of dev quotes:

As an experiment, I used a Script Effect spell to implement a kind of mark & recall spell. You'd cast it once, and it would move a special marker to where you were standing. Cast it again, and it would move you to where the marker was. Took about 20 minutes. Maybe I'll release it as a mod after the game's out. Our designers have found some insane uses for Script Effect, and I'm looking forward to seeing what the mod community comes up with!

So, there's an alternative, more elegant approach. It would even work to indoor locations without a string variable. And you could have several marker objects, making the same strategy applicable for a revamped multimark mod.

Anyway, we'll see whether we miss the spells once the game comes out. Can't be long now... (he says optimistically )

This post has been edited by RobRendell: Jan 23 2006, 07:06 AM

[Muad'Dib]

Well its good to know that its possible.

If its possible, Im sure it will be done.

[Ola Martin]

Who can survive without the spells okey I can.