2.3/2.4 update includes:

* Special version for OOO 1.3
* Removed dungeon chest spawns to prevent conflicts with loot mods

* updated for Fran version to 3.1
* replaced CC version with one for MMM 1.2
* updated Open Cities version for all three above mods
* added No Rat Feet Sounds .esp
* added Less Rats .esp

Note: The special version for OOO bundles the FULL OOO 1.3 merged with Cats & Rats. Use this instead of your Oscuros_Oblivion_Overhaul.esp. Thanks go to Soto for permission to merge the two mods directly. Finally, there is no Open Cities for OOO version, as the two mods are not compatible.

VITALLY IMPORTANT FOR OOO USERS:
You MUST rename 'OOO and Cats & Rats.esp' to 'Oscuro's_Oblivion_Overhaul.esp' before you play, and yes that means making a backup of the original first (just cut and paste in explorer and you'll get 'Copy of Oscuro's_Oblivion_Overhaul.esp).

Note: Use the 'Less Rats' plugin if you prefer less rats being spawned. Use the 'No Rat Feet Sounds' plugin if your machine has trouble with many rats nearby (shows a distinct slowdown as they get close). Note rats still make rat sounds, just no feet noises (barely audible anyway). Load both of these optional plugins after your choice of C&R.

2.2 update includes:

* Open Cities versions were using older Cats & Rats code, now fixed. If you use Open Cities, highly recommended to upgrade.

2.1 update includes:

* Open Cities 1.05 update
* Standardised naming convention
* New optional plugin -- Less Rats for Cats & Rats

The plugin works with all of the included Cats & Rats versions, but must be loaded last to take effect.

To prevent Oblivion 'forgetting' the creatures already spawned when you upgrade to a new version, the naming of the mods will now be static (and not include version numbers). If you're currently using 2.0, reset your cells as usual or rename the .esps in this archive to match the one you're using now. Version numbers will be listed in the .esp comments (seen in the CS or OBMM when hovering over an .esp)

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SUPER MEGA AMAZING UPDATE!

Cats & Rats has been completely re-written to add new and unique intelligent behaviour not possible with Radiant AI packages alone. Could these be the smartest (and cutest) creatures in all Tamriel?

Cats now:
* Climb steps and stairs while waking, running or chasing (no more head-butting steps!)
* Arbitarily decide when to chase rats, and when to leave them alone
* Run to doorways of buildings for shelter from rain, snow, and thunderstorms until the weather clears
* Are super cute and purr when patted, sometimes sitting and licking themselves
* Use cat-mind powers to stop guards attecking them during a fight in populated areas (fix for game mechanics)

Rats now:
* Climb steps and stairs while waking, running or being chased
* Run to creates, barrels and other rat-infested containers to shelter themselves from rain, snow, and thunderstorms
* Actually 'enter' (dissappear) into the container they run to, and re-appear when the weather is calm again
* Spawn in 3 different sizes, with even the smallest able to climb steps
* Spawn in cities, dungeons, camps and the wilderness to differing degrees

Now also built for Open Cities! See the note on Open Cities under Compatibility.

Full release below. Be sure to read the Installation instructions, especially if you're upgrading from a previous Cats & Rats version.


Cats & Rats 2.4

Rats by Dejaside
Cats by Tegeal
AI by Martigen


Files included:
Vanilla: Cats & Rats.esp
Francesco's 3.1: Cats & Rats for Francescos.esp
Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul 1.3: Cats & Rats for OOO.esp
Martigen's Monster Mod 1.2: Cats & Rats for MMM.esp
Open Cities 1.05: [Vanilla/Francescos/MMM] for Open Ciites.esp

= WHAT IT DOES =
:: Adds atmospheric cats and rats to cities, towns, wilderness, and dungeons throughout Tamriel. Includes updated forms of Dejaside's City, Wilderness and Dungeon rats mods and Tegeal's Oblivion Cats with permission.
:: New cat and rat AI makes cats chase rats, rats flee from cats, and your character eminently more sexy. Er, no guarantees on that last one.
:: To prevent all-in brawls, guards now ignore cats attacking rats.
:: Smartest creature AI in all Tamriel! Or something.

Additionally, cats won't always go for a chase. Sometimes they'll be happy to share their immediate surroundings, and at other times get bored and chase the rats. It's not just a game though, if the cats catch up with the rats they'll die by its claws! Fortunately, both rats and cats respawn if killed smile.gif

= COMPATIBILITY =
This mod adds its own unique spawns to the world, and in the case of the compatible mods builds upon these mods' own entries. Warnings may come up in OBMM's conflict detector, but this is perfectly normal.

The mod makes changes to guards to prevent them killing cats when fights start. Any mod that makes changes to guard behaviour may conflict with this, such as Creature Continuum, Francescos, and OOO. Compatible versions are provided for each of these mods. Just be sure to load Cats & Rats last, and ignore any conflict warnings -- this is perfectly normal for the compatibility mod.

Special Note for Open Cities:
Because Open Cities is such an expansive and tightly integrated mod it's not possible to make Cats & Rats compatible without including the complete merge of Cats & Rats with Open Cities. For this reason, with permission, complete merges of Open Cities and Cats & Rats are included, as well as versions for Creature Continuum, Francescos, and OOO.

As this merge is the complete Open Cities with Cats & Rats, you must de-select the vanilla Open Cities.esp, and use the one bundled with Cats & Rats instead. Additionally, the versions of Open Cities + Cats & Rats for Creature Continuum, Francescos, and OOO must be loaded after these respective mods.

= INSTALLATION AND UPGRADING =
If installing for the first time:

:: Extract the files your DATA directory
:: Select Cats & Rats.esp (or Cats & Rats for Francescos/OOO/CC/Open Cties) and start Oblivion
:: Go into an interior cell (house, shop, cave, etc)
:: Press 'T', set hours to 24, and wait for four days.

NOTE 1: If you use Cats & Rats for Francescos, Creature Continuum, or Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul, be sure to load Cats & Rats after these mods.
NOTE 2: If you currently use Dejaside's Rat mods (City, Wilderness or Dungeon) or Tegeal's Oblivion Cats 0.2b, de-select these before selecting Cats & Rats -- they are included in this mod.
NOTE 3: Cats & Rats have shadows. You might want to raise your shadow count so nearby NPCs and Cats and Rats get shadows.

If upgrading from a previous version:
Cats and Rats 2.0 is completely re-written over previous versions. It's extremely important to do the following to upgrade. It'll only take a few seconds, but it is vital that you do this or your PC will mutate into a troll and eat all your children:

1) Load your savegame, go into an interior (building, cave etc), save your game and quit.
2) De-select the old version of Cats & Rats
3) Load Oblivion and your save game
4) Save the game again -- this now gives you a savegame free of any cats and rats
5) Select Cats & Rats 2.0
6) Load Oblivion and your save game
7) As with initial installation press 'T', set hours to 24, and wait for four days or however long your cell respawn is set to.

vv REALLY REALLY REALLY READ ME vv
For the cat, rat and guard AI to take effect any cells you've already visited need to respawn. This happens automatically as you travel, as long as you stay out of a cell for three days (the game's default). You can speed this up by pressing 'T' and waiting for three or four days (as per the installation instructions above). If you don't let the cells resapwn, cats may massacre all the rats and guards will attack any cats in a fight.

OOO users -- if you're using the Week, Month or Year respawn .esps, you'll need to wait this long (again use 'T' to wait, or just make a note to adventure away from the cell for a while). As a side note, you shouldn't use the 'Year' esp, a good many parts of the game depend on respawning happening in a timely manner. A week or two is a good value, a month at the max.

= NOTES ON BEHAVIOUR =
For those interested on the mechanics.

Sheltering: The running to shelter behaviour makes use the 'travel' package in addition to scripting to find doors for cats (i.e, to represent buildings) and containers for rats. For some reason, Radiant AI sometimes decides that specific doors or conatiners in a cell qualify, instead of just the nearest option to the cat or rat. Fortunately, this seems to work out quite well. It is possible to use the 'find' package instead of travel, but for reasons known only to Bethesda this prevents rats 'entering' containters once they arrive and cats treating objects such as gates as doors (and thus, not under cover). This may still see future tweaking, but it works fairly well. If you want to see the action, bring down the console and type 'fw 00038ef2' to force rain, and 'fw 00038eee' to force clear skies.

Climbing: The climbing code works by creating environment collision detection and scaling for animals where there isn't any in the game. It does this by determining if a creature has been stopped by an obstacle, and giving them a Z-axis boost (jump) to scale it. As it happens, being stopped by a step looks remarkably similar to simply sitting idle, or changing speeds mid-chase, or being dead among other stances! The code gets around this quite well, and I'd say it's 90% accurate -- but you may see an extra jump by a rat or cat at different times. In order to keep the mod processor friendly it also sometimes takes a second trigger, depending on the speed and angle of approach of the creature. Anyone is welcome to improve this code -- send me your changes and results. Generally though, cats and rats can now roam anywhere they please smile.gif

= FINDING CATS & RATS =
:: Rats spawn with certain types of crates, barrels, and sacks. Especially those containing food. It's a random chance at each cell reset if a rat will spawn. You thus find rats of varying numbers (and size) wherever there are such containers -- this includes inside and outside.
:: For this reason, locations such as the Imeperial Market or Cheyhindal will sport more rats than Chorrol, which is relatively free of streetside barrels and sacks. The cleaner the city, the less rats you will find outside. Similarly, warehouses and basements will sport more rats than upper floors with less clutter, as it should be!
:: There are 150 cat spawns across the world, both inside and out. Outside they can be found roaming all cities and some smaller settlements. Inside they can be found in warehouses, inns, and houses -- but not all. It would be excessive to put one in every pub or hotel establishment. If, however, there is a location you feel needs a cat, let me know and I'll add it!

= MAKE CATS & RATS BETTER! =
Feedback is important, as the mod covers the expanse of Tamriel inside and out and I can't test everywhere. Let me know:

* Where there are too many cats or rats, and where you'd likes to see less
* Where there are too few cats or rats, and where you'd like to see more
* New and specific places where the addition of cats or rats would add atmosphere
* General feedback on how the new AI changes perform

= VERSION HISTORY =
0.81
- Added Tegeal's cat meshes, textures and sounds!

0.9
- added shadows to cats and rats
- added more guards and named guards to ignore cat fights*
- added cats in some inns and warehouses to clean up the pests!
- added OOO 1.23f compatible version
- updated Creature Continuum 1.2.0 version
- cleaned out old code from Oblivion Cats

* Note, mounted guards on roads not included. They have less patience, for now smile.gif

1.0
- added rat spawns to some food sacks and containers of bandit camps, goblin camps, and dungeons.
- expanded cat faction relations to stop them seeing some people as cat food.
- increased slightly the length of time before a cat changes its mind -- the chase will last a little longer.
- reduced slightly the chance of a cat wanting to hunt rats -- make those rats last longer!
- reduced slightly the number of rats spawned in populated areas.
- pushed scatter distance to rats a little further out
- dodgy-arsed sleep package in. Cats may take a nap, or not. Awww.
- added Fancesco's compatible version
- updated OOO compatible version
- updated Creature Continuum version

2.0
- unique scripted AI to grant cats and rats behaviour not possible with AI packages alone -- cats and rats now roam anywhere!
- cats and rats now climb steps and stairs -- no more head-butting walls!
- cats and rats now run for shelter from from rain, snow, and thunderstorms -- cats and rats will be rarely seen in bad weather
- cats run to doorways of buildings for shelter (just like some real cats!)
- rats in cities run to barrels and boxes to hide in -- and disappear 'inside' it, to re-appear once weather clears
- rats go to ground near plants in the wilerness in bad weather, to re-appear once weather clears
- cats now stop and purr when patted
- new rat size added, now 3 different sized rats spawn in the game
- cat spawns added to all player owned houses
- updated rat spawn scripts to bypass bug in game engine
- slightly increased chances of rats spawning in some areas
- slightly increased cat sizes, different for each type
- slightly decreased chance of a cat to chase rats
- slightly increased period between next decision for cats
- tweaked AI packages for more consistent behaviour
- adjusted down rat health and cat paw damage
- cats show idle animations slightly more frequently
- rats now idle and show idle animations more frequently
- fixed Arboretum cat spawn
- added cat to local inn in Chorrol by request
- added cat to Tiber Septim by request
- updated all compatible versions
- New Open Cities compatible versions

2.1
- Open Cities 1.05 update
- Standardised naming convention
- New optional plugin -- Less Rats for Cats & Rats

2.2
- Updated old Cats & Rats code in Open Cities versions to latest version. Highly recommended to upgrade if you use Open Cities.

2.3
- added anti-cat-killing code to a few missed guards
- added No Rat Feet Sounds .esp
- added Less Rats .esp
- updated for Fran version to 3.1
- updated OOO version to 1.3
- moved CC version to MMM 1.1
- updated Open Cities versions for all of the above

2.4
- Special version for OOO 1.3
- Removed dungeon chest spawns to prevent conflicts with loot mods