Claim: Riverhold Architecture

[Lady Nerevar]

Originally posted by morcroft

I've done a concept here. It's entirely made out of towers, with no short buildings around (with the shortest of towers being 4-5 stories high).

The towers are built with a staircase running on the outer interior of the building, circling around the rooms of the tower (a similar make up to the White Gold Tower) -the towers being made primarily of wood, reinforced on the outside with stone bricks, and then plastered in various colours (colour range is specified in the concept thread, and visualised in the concept), and at the top of each tower is a dome.

Don't go too mad on height, though: timber-frame buildings max out at about 6 stories in RL, and they have brick to reinforce them. Beyond that you'll really need stone to be the main structural element. Yes, I know this is fantasy - but it will still look weird otherwise!

More importantly, it might look crappy (or not work at all) in game if it goes past the loaded view distance. One story is typically 256 units (discounting sloped roof and similar fluff). I'd make a bunch of boxes in the different heights and dump them in game to see how it looks and feels before making any real height choices.

[The Old Ye Bard]

Originally posted by Lady Nerevar
More importantly, it might look crappy (or not work at all) in game if it goes past the loaded view distance. One story is typically 256 units (discounting sloped roof and similar fluff). I'd make a bunch of boxes in the different heights and dump them in game to see how it looks and feels before making any real height choices.

It'll look fine, all the buildings will have LOD models.

Originally posted by Vintra
I'll wait for TOYB to confirm, of course. But i'll not start working on this. From monday i'll have time to this.

Middle class must have decoration, I think. Yes, a bit patchy decoration.
That's a good idea, that neighbours had to go one better...

Of course, the walls need to be high enough. Just not too high, that's it.

Confirmed :check: For decoration, it's mainly the prayer flags (to the extent it looks like a giant spider has made a web across the city with them), but also banners/tapestries would be hung from the cities towers, in a similar fashion to putting art up in your house (except given the size of the rooms are small, so where do you put your art? outside ofcourse! and tapestries are a stable of Khajiiti art).

Like I mentioned earlier, the walls need to be quite short (and fit the description quite precisely) because that info comes out of the description from TIC. They shouldn't be too short, but shorter than the walls of the Cyrodiil cities -however given this raises the problem of people jumping over them, the way of fixing this is to make the colision of the walls to go up further than the walls do (making it impossible to jump over). Problem solved! :check:

[Vintra]

Thank you very much for confirming me.

I'll start working tomorrow, if i can catch some free time.
As for the prayer flags: I've seen animated hanging cloths in mr_siika's high rock daggerfall video. That will be perfect with a retexturing. TOYB, do you have this file? If yes, that would be great, if we can use it for Elsweyr.

Tapestries are okay with me, i can make some new one. It will be great decoration for those towers. A question: Should i add outside stairs, or indoor stairs, or both?

Walls are okay, i have an idea for the size, and the collision idea is also great and perfect.

Anyways, i want the wall textures of tower, and even the walls to be less or more shiny. But i don't know how to make shiny textures, could you give me an advice about this?

Thanks again for confirmating my ideas, hope my meshes will look as good as on your concept draw.

Vintra

[morcroft]

Shiny is tricky - mostly stopping things being too shiny. Basically it's all about the alpha channel in the normalmap.

If you want a texture to be completely matt / dull / not shiny at all, save the normal map (*_n.dds) file as DXT1 format. Alpha channel is 1-bit (I think) transparent or not.

If you want shiny then save as DXT3. When you have no transparency at all then this will be completely shiny - I did this with a sandstone texture once and it looked like gold. The higher the transparency on the _n file, the less shiny the texture will be. You have to take the transparency a long way to get a reasonably dull finish.

[Vintra]

Thank you morcroft. I didn't expected, this is that easy.
Very good to know that, the domes must be shiny.

About the resource. I'll post you every class set, when its finished.
I mean, if the lower class set is done, then i'll upload it to my meshes thread.

Thanks again for your advice!

Vintra

[The Old Ye Bard]

Originally posted by Vintra
Thank you very much for confirming me.

I'll start working tomorrow, if I can catch some free time.
As for the prayer flags: I've seen animated hanging cloths in mr_siika's high rock daggerfall video. That will be perfect with a retexturing. TOYB, do you have this file? If yes, that would be great, if we can use it for Elsweyr.

Tapestries are okay with me, I can make some new one. It will be great decoration for those towers. A question: Should I add outside stairs, or indoor stairs, or both?

Walls are okay, I have an idea for the size, and the collision idea is also great and perfect.

Anyways, I want the wall textures of tower, and even the walls to be less or more shiny. But I don't know how to make shiny textures, could you give me an advice about this?

Thanks again for confirmating my ideas, hope my meshes will look as good as on your concept draw.

Vintra

Outside stairs/ladders for the LC towers. The towers should look like quite rickety and flimsy.

Shineyness of the textures depends on the normal texture and the settings with it's Alpha chanel.

Yup, a retex of Mr Siika's washing line would be perfect, however we still need a larger version (not animated) and a version just like it (again, not animated) for the higher parts of the city. The animated version is good for the lower areas of the city, however not for the higher parts, and should be used sparingly (because of Fps issues, if we had 100+ animated meshes in the city, the game would experience some serious lag issues).

[Vintra]

Animated versions fit in LC, yes it is okay. It will look great.

For UC, yes an non animated will be the best. But im afraid, i can't create these too realistic. Could you did this for me, please?

I want everything to be in the best quality. You can understand me.

[morcroft]

I think by "upper" and "lower" that TOYB means altitude, not social class. So near street level the flags wave, high in the air they don't need to.

[Vintra]

Originally posted by morcroft
I think by "upper" and "lower" that TOYB means altitude, not social class. So near street level the flags wave, high in the air they don't need to.

Oh, understood. Anyways, i still request someone to do a non animated flag.

[The Old Ye Bard]

Because I like to bring the sexy back.

Added the streams & palms/cabbage trees.