Gameplan for Silgrad Tower v3.0

[Razorwing]

The overall goal of Silgrad Tower v3.0, preliminarily slated for an end-of-2008 release, is to bring our mod to a stage where we can pursue the option of it being included on one or several game magazine DVDs. Given that Oblivion has sold millions of copies we can only ever reach so many players by promoting our mod on forums, so being included on such a DVD would enable us to reach a much larger audience - and might also yield new colleagues joining the team and working with us. There is a precedence for this kind of arrangement as the Morrowind mod Wizard's Islands was distributed that way once.

The criteria for determining when we've reached that stage is:
[indent][/indent]- The regions that are currently blank landscape will have been generated.
[indent][/indent]- The player can walk from Cyrodiil to Silgrad Tower via teleport scripts. [sandor]
[indent][/indent]- There is a road network connecting Soluthis, Steadhelm, Silgrad Tower and Ebbedin.
[indent][/indent]- Soluthis' exterior have been modded to completion [Razorwing]
[indent][/indent]- Silgrad Tower (the city) can be visited. [sandor]
[indent][/indent]- Most or all of our written dialogue is voiced.
[indent][/indent]- All our models are finalized and up to par.* [Razorwing]

* The remaining misc items physiqued, all applicable collision is packed, the textures in Reich Parkeep optimized to fix FPS problems; and so on.

The criteria decides ST v3.0's release date. In other words, we won't release Silgrad Tower v3.0 until the above requirements are met.

So, how do we go about carrying through the gameplan?

These tasks are set:
* sandor will create the transition between Cyrodiil and Silgrad Tower and work on Silgrad Tower.
* Razorwing will complete Soluthis' city exterior & finalize our models and bring them up to par.
* TheImperialDragon, sandor and Razorwing will together mod a placeholder road network across our mod, which can later be customized by other modders to look interesting; the point is to connect the cities.

Others remain open:

[title]1.[/title]
If you're an experienced modder and you don't currently have a large job on your desk, please consider taking up responsibility for one of our regions.

As mentioned above, TheImperialDragon sandor and Razorwing will mod a placeholder road network across our lands. To do that we will use the land texture TerrainBravilBase03NoGrass when modding in unclaimed parts of the landmass. Future region stewards can then replace that land texture with the road texture of their choice by hand.

We will also be using the method of ticking cells as Hand Changed, meaning that cells containing the road network will remain unaltered when a region is generated / re-generated. It's important that the region editor during the generation process uses an edge falloff of 0. That ensures a seamless transition between the road cells and the area generated by the region editor.

[title]2.[/title]
If you have the means to record voice work, please do! Whether you're good at it or not, or whether you sound like the race does or not, is of lesser importance. Having great voice work that sounds exactly like the race does is a luxury when we have as little voice work as we do. No player would complain as much about less-than-perfect voices than they would about no voices at all. (NOTE. You need to use the Construction Set v1.0 otherwise the lipsynch won't work; there's no problem having two versions of the CS installed at the same time.) We've had a slew of voice artists volounteer their services in the past, but none that I recall have actually done any work. Rather, the voices we do have stem from modders. Maybe they've never used the Construction Set before, maybe they think it's too complicated, who knows. In either case we have to get to work on this area of our mod because it is something players complain about.

- The Silgrad Tower Core

[blackbird]

Originally posted by Razorwing
The regions that are currently blank landscape will have been generated.

Do you mean that all regions will be generated? The whole landmass or are just going to add some texture to the whole landmass?

Originally posted by Razorwing
"As mentioned above, TheImperialDragon sandor and Razorwing will mod a placeholder road network across our lands. To do that we will use the land texture TerrainBravilBase03NoGrass when modding in unclaimed parts of the landmass. Future region stewards can then replace that land texture with the road texture of their choice by hand."

Are you going to use that texure as a road or not?

[TheImperialDragon]

Originally posted by blackbird
"As mentioned above, TheImperialDragon sandor and Razorwing will mod a placeholder road network across our lands. To do that we will use the land texture TerrainBravilBase03NoGrass when modding in unclaimed parts of the landmass. Future region stewards can then replace that land texture with the road texture of their choice by hand."
Are you going to use that texure as a road or not?

That texture is for the placeholder roads in the unclaimed regions. Region stewards can use a texture of their choice.

[Razorwing]

Originally posted by blackbird
Do you mean that all regions will be generated? The whole landmass or are just going to add some texture to the whole landmass?

One way or the other the regions that are currently blank landscape should be generated in Silgrad Tower v3.0.

[Beremat]

2 Questions:

Is anyone generating the land?
How long oes it take to generate a large chunk of the land? The reason i'm asking is because if you need help finding a person to do so, I can do it, if it isn't too bad. I leave my computer on for 6+ hours a day doing nothing except BOINC, so yeah :goodjob:

[Razorwing]

Originally posted by Beremat
2 Questions:

Is anyone generating the land?
How long oes it take to generate a large chunk of the land? The reason i'm asking is because if you need help finding a person to do so, I can do it, if it isn't too bad. I leave my computer on for 6+ hours a day doing nothing except BOINC, so yeah :goodjob:

I don't know how long time it would take for the actual generation to process, but I assume it would take a fair bit of time to set up all the necessary settings to begin generating one of our regions. We'd want a person who wants to spend that time making the generation as good as it possibly can be, like sandor did for the regions outside Soluthis.

[Wolvman]

Quick Question, I heard on the forums somewhere that you guys were wanting to get V.3.0 released this October. October is only about a week away so I was wondering if that is still the plan and do you guys have a specific date for the release. Also, I was wondering if the working map is still planned to be released in V.3.0. Thanks in advance.

[Razorwing]

Originally posted by Wolvman
Quick Question, I heard on the forums somewhere that you guys were wanting to get V.3.0 released this October. October is only about a week away so I was wondering if that is still the plan and do you guys have a specific date for the release. Also, I was wondering if the working map is still planned to be released in V.3.0. Thanks in advance.

Yup, but it was the end of October. It's still subject to change since we haven't implemented all the stuff we want that version to have.

I'll defer the map question to TheImperialDragon

[Cuthalion]

Razorwing, how many quests are supposed to be in V3?

[TheImperialDragon]

Originally posted by Wolvman
Also, I was wondering if the working map is still planned to be released in V.3.0. Thanks in advance.

Yes, the October release will include a playable map unless we decide to change the plans.