Hlaalu House Project

[Oom]

I've PM-ed Zyndaar about the situation, My interpretation (possibly wrong) of his words is that his set will not be available before November but maybe sometime later this winter. (He recommended me to continue the work).

He also believed it would be a good idea if someone had a word with Bethesda about our plans to mimic there architecture, I agree. Have ?Silgrad Tower: Oblivion? made any inquirers on the subject?

The set is coming along nicely, better than expected actually Work is done in 3DS at the moment so I have no new pics.

[Razorwing]

Couldn't we use both Oom's and Zyndaar's set? I?m sure they would compliment each other and add to the variety. I'd be delighted to see Oom continue working on his set, because I don't know Zyndaar and I'm not about to trust people I don't know with something of such importance to our mod. From what I've seen, Oom's set goes above and beyond anything I could ever personally hope for and I would hate to see his work on it discontinued.

What Bethesda has said is that we're not allowed to resue content from previous Elder Scrolls games in Oblivion mods, just like Morrowind modders weren't allowed to ship Bloodmoon statics in mods to get around the dependency issue. They haven't said we're not allowed to mimic their design, and indeed there have been many examples of that being done in the past, for Morrowind mods. Veet's Velothi architecture for example. There's a dev quote posted by me in this forum somewhere that highlights that, but time constraints hinder me from finding it at the moment. But I'll dig it up when I get home tomorrow evening, unless someone beats me to it =)

[Oom]

I guess that's the way it will have to be unless Zyndaar releases before me.

So it's down to what Bethesda consider to be reuse of content. Asking them still seems to be a good idea.

When I started the resizing I was going to do ?just a little? texturing at the same time. Not too hard to figure out how it ended? Alpha 004 will have all textures and basically only lack the ?boxes? be beta.

[Quentin Fortune]

I'm working on a message to one of the moderators or admins of the ESF. I know a few of them (and hope they'll remember me =) ) and will ask them, if there is any problem regarding your work.

Greetings

Quentin

[Oom]

:goodjob:

Originally posted by Quentin Fortune
I'm working on a message to one of the moderators or admins of the ESF. I know a few of them (and hope they'll remember me =) ) and will ask them, if there is any problem regarding your work.

Greetings

Quentin

[Razorwing]

Excellent initiative Quentin, I eagerly await the official statement from the company. But I'm going to go out on a limb and say I'm 100% sure their decision is favorable to the cause. I've always had the impression they are quite open to their fans, and their fans producing "fan fiction" and similar. Heck, some fans even wrote books that made it into Morrowind, and if they didn't mind mimicked buildings for Morrowind mods I can't see how they would mind the same thing for Oblivion mods. But my confidence in their openness doesn't mean it wouldn't feel nice to have an official stamp of approval from them, because it really would.

---

royalblue[/hr]

"Reuse of content" means thieving meshes, textures and other components straight from Morrowind (and expansions), and is how we (or I) originally figured we would rebuild ST, given the ease with which one could import NIFs into 3D Studio Max via the unofficial importer.

The reason I couldn't find the post I mentioned in my above reply was because it's stuck on the old forum.
>> Here it is.
As said by Locklear93 back in May (he's a Zenimax employee, not an Oblivion dev)
The issue here is using assets from previous Elder Scrolls games. Assets from Arena, Daggerfall, and (as I recall) Battlespire are mostly 2d and wouldn't be of use anyway. Assets from Redguard would probably be pretty difficult/impossible too, as it's a totally different, and very dated 3d game. Morrowind is the real question.

The hard and flat answer on assets on games from other companies is absolutely not. No, no, and no. The concern with using assets from Morrowind and its expansions is mainly that people who didn't buy those titles don't have rights to those art assets, even for simple use, so including them in your mods is giving something they didn't pay for.

So, my interpretation of all this is that Bethesda forbids us from reusing content because it would be to give away their stuff for free when people should be paying for it. If I model a house that looks Redoran, it's not their content to charge money for, and so their reasoning doesn't apply to it. I don't swear to be right on that, it's just my interpretation. I'm sure they're more prone to be lenient if the subject matter is for a non-profit mod for one of their games, rather than a competing commercial product (which we'll never become).

I should embellish somewhat on my statement about Zyndaar the other day, if nothing else then to set the record straight so to speak. I think that his set is very impressive and I can see that he's spent a lot of work on it. But going by what ThreadWhisperer said:
1) it's taken him a year to produce 88 meshes so far, and
2) it's going to be a larger set than the other one, which is said to be 200+ pieces
That makes me wonder if Zyndaar will get his set done in time for Oblivion's release. Maybe he will, maybe he won't - I can't say either way. But what I do know is that Oom's set is very near completion, and the fact that I can load up the models in 3DS is very reassuring to me that they really exist. Ergo, I'm certain we have a working exterior Hlaalu tileset right this minute (although as Oom said, not yet finished) no matter what happens - and I like that kind of certainty. I can daydream of the future Silgrad knowing that the fantasies are based on facts and certainties. :]

So, nothing would make me happier than to see Oom complete his Hlaalu tile set, and in my opinion Oom's work is just as excellent after we learned of Zyndaar's work as it was before. I wager to guess I'm not the only one who feels that way. If and when Zyndaar completes his set, using both of them could add a nice touch of variety, but I really and truly think Oom's set covers all bases and I long to see it textured completed

[Oom]

Locklear93 talks about ?assets? while you use ?contents?. Sorry about picking on words but when it comes to law things it is usually necessary ?Assets? would basically be the resources that comes with CS. ?Contents? can be anything that is in the game as names, quests and architecture. Bethesda will most probably let us get away with saying ?Guar? in Oblivion and most probably not with copying the Morrowind main quest. Mimicking the architecture is somewhere in between, hopefully but not obviously, on the ?Guar?-side.
I feel more confident now but it would still be nice to have a official opinion on the subject of reuse of contents.

[Razorwing]

Originally posted by Oom
Locklear93 talks about ?assets? while you use ?contents?. Sorry about picking on words but when it comes to law things it is usually necessary ?Assets? would basically be the resources that comes with CS. ?Contents? can be anything that is in the game as names, quests and architecture. Bethesda will most probably let us get away with saying ?Guar? in Oblivion and most probably not with copying the Morrowind main quest. Mimicking the architecture is somewhere in between, hopefully but not obviously, on the ?Guar?-side.
I feel more confident now but it would still be nice to have a official opinion on the subject of reuse of contents.

As long as I'm understandable most of the time, I'm happy.

[Oom]

What you can see in pic Hlaalu10 might look familiar but most of it have been changed. All parts are now texture mapped and the tile size is 256x256.
Around 15 parts have been removed (without any loss to what can be built) and about the same number of parts have been added, among others two new stairs.

As you can see in pic Hlaalu11 the difference between copy and original is now more significant but IMO, not alarming. The change in size have claimed one casualty however, the tower A wall. I'm working on a solution.
One of the advantage of the change is that house tiles can be mixed with cat walk tiles, resulting in some interesting possibilities (pic Hlaalu12 & Hlaalu13).
I expect Alpha 4 to be available fairly soon.

[Razorwing]

Good to hear from you again, Oom! It looks like it's coming together very nicely, and the house in the third and fourth pic is amazing - it looks like a town could basically have two levels, allowing the player to walk around up there. Now that's really cool, as a huge Hlaalu city doesn't have to take up as much space in Oblivion as it did in Morrowind. Being able to mod with your set will be friggin awesome

On a sidenote this forum renames attached files so they can't really be referred to by their filename, though in this case I had no trouble identifying which you meant.

I'm so looking forward to your next release! :bananarock: