Poll regarding Galadrielle's mesh converter

[Lightwave]

Hi folks,

If you do vote in this poll, please post a followup to say what you voted for (you don't have to give reasons, but they would be helpful. )

If you've seen some example screenshots in a previous thread of the scaled placed content placed on our heightmap, they show where we can be pretty quickly, if we want to be, so I've created this poll with an 8-day limit so everyone can have their say and decide which direction we take.

Each will have their own opinion, should we take a little trip down the seductive darkside, using Galadrielle's mesh converter, placed content and interiors, scaled up to fit our 2x landscape, almost instantly placing us many months, perhaps even a year or more ahead of our current position, or should we continue as we are, the long arduous task of creating and placing everything entirely from scratch, maintaining the interests of everyone involved in a race against TES5?

The way I see it, if we use the mesh converter and I create the interior and exterior placement data to fit our 2x heightmap we would do so with a desire to eventually replace all the Bethesda meshes with our own legally distributable, higher detailed meshes and textures at some stage and replace settlements with newer, larger and more detailed ones to fit the 4x extra building area. This allows some modders to press on with other parts of the project, such as story-line and quests because we have a placed world already available and interiors too. And offers a wonderful backup that if the modding resources dry up or run thin we don't have to worry about replacing everything, it leaves us mainly with the task of improving the existing world and is a wonderful antidote to reducing any nagging feelings of intimidation over all those ruins, tombs and wilderness that would have to be populated before the project could enter any stage of release.


Some Advantages

1. Huge jump forward in project development.

2. Many wilderness meshes can be swapped straight for similarly sized alternatives; such as boulders and many trees. If they're the same size, they'll still look right everywhere on the landscape and not require any re-placing.

3. Wilderness and ruin interior cells will be available now for any additional populating and questing. Most settlement interiors will probably be scrapped and replaced by new ones because of new building layouts.

4. Added interest amongst the community in seeing shots of a huge, fully populated Vvardenfell.


Some concerns

1. There is the temptation to settle for a lower quality Vvardenfell because it's the easy way out, using TES3 quality meshes with lower res textures and not bother spending more time adding wilderness atmosphere - such as placing new exterior clutter (rocks, foliage, fauna).

2. Modders and players alike will need to own a copy of TES3: Morrowind to get the meshes.

3. Small risk of someone redistributing Morrowind meshes. This will be have to vetted by whoever compiles the final mod files however. However since all converted meshes and textures go in to a clearly labeled sub-folder so it's very hard to miss the fact that it's an illegal mesh we cannot distribute.


From a mature standpoint I believe we can sensibly use this to our benefit. I personally haven't yet decided on 1x or 2x interiors, since mostly only caves, tombs and ruins run the highest chance of not being recreated and many of these could look good enlarged, though others could look too vast inside compared to their exteriors, so I won't vote just yet.


Thanks,

Lightwave

[KuKulzA]

for what it's worth, I voted:

Use the mesh converter as temporary meshes, but place all content ourselves

[Mormacil]

Me to although I'm no teammember

[InsanitySorrow]

I voted and chose:

Use the mesh converter as temporary meshes, but place all content ourselves

I think this is the better choice, really we are trying to create the best possible mod we can, using temporary meshes and textures then replacing them for better ones that we create will take us a step towards our goal of creating a good mod.

[Hidden]

Well I'm not a team member so I'll refrain from actually voting, but I would suggest to be very careful when using this tool. It is very buggy and I get too many warnings when loading a converted plug-in into the Construction Set, even after I save it.

The converted NPCs themselves all look the same and have the same clothes. Even worse, some have black "zombie" eyes. If you could somehow leave converting NPCs out, I'd recommend it. As far as I'm concerned, it's actually easier to create NPCs from scratch.

My game crashes each time I try to get near Balmora and I have a pretty decent computer that runs Oblivion okay even with settings maxed out.

Converting interiors isn't such a good idea, because you'll have to redo them as they're all made up of mesh pieces you can't legally use.

[InsanitySorrow]

Yeah I used it myself and its really buggy, what can you expect from a beta release. The nifs were converted and work perfect bu thats the best, so they should be used as placeholders, along with the textures, then everything else should be recreated.

[Lightwave]

Lol, well I'm going to vote for the everything with the 1x interiors, though it'll save me quite some programming effort if you continute voting the way you are.

I haven't tried region generation on our landmass myself, but those that tried reported that the CS is having a hard job coping with this large a landscape and it's placement system is very buggy, requiring manual work to fix all the mis-haps afterwards. Perhaps it's possible in small sub-regions at a time, but it's a huge and slow task over 29 square miles. Right now we can do that region generation instantly (by taking the TES3 placement data) and then substitute TES3 rock and tree .NIF files at a later point.
Neither CS Region Generation nor taking TES3 scaled up placement data (like the screenshots) are going to look intricately perfect - both need extra work to look extra good, but one method is instant (I've done it), the other could take weeks or months and is time we could use elsewhere.

And for interiors - so long as you honestly believe we have enough people to match (and ideally exceed) the volume of creation of every ruin, cave and tomb interior then I agree we won't need them. But if we truly hope to only use new meshes by the end of the project then there's no point trying ever using TES3 meshes for interiors since they'll need complete re-doing with new meshes. I just hope we don't end up with a world full of cities and too few people left to do the in-fill (which is the bulk of the work).

Originally posted by Hidden
Well I'm not a team member so I'll refrain from actually voting, but I would suggest to be very careful when using this tool. It is very buggy and I get too many warnings when loading a converted plug-in into the Construction Set, even after I save it.

Hi Hidden - we never had any intention of using Galadrielle's content converter. This is just about the mesh (NIF) converter. The screenshots shown in the other forum thread are entirely from this project's scaled up landscape (and some on a 1x TESAnnwyn worldspace for comparison), using my own generated and placed NPCs (from TESPort) and placed data ESPs. i.e. There's nothing from Galadrielles ESP Converter so none of the bugs. So the poll is about using the meshes and textures, then whether to have those meshes pre-placed in the exterior worldspace (in scaled up co-ordinates taken from the TES3 X,Y,Z values), and then also whether to have them placed in interiors or not.

Lightwave

[InsanitySorrow]

Is there anyway you could make a program that could generate the tombs and caves of TES3 and import them to OB but maybe using renamed meshes so its a simple swap later on. If you could do something like that then it might help with time an work load issues.

[john44]

I think using the converter to the greatest extent possible would be a good idea. I went out and bought a Morrowind GOTY edition so I could try Galladriell's converter. I think the Balmora crash someone is having might be because of the bonemould guard armor not automatically installing correctly. When I run though Morrowind using the converter I can at least tell where I am because I can recognize the landscape and scenery. I can't do that when I travel across the Vvardenfell landmass. The veiw distance seems more natural with Galadriell's converter on my P3 Nvidia 6800gt than The Varndenfell landmass does. Vardenfell looks like your on a island surrounded by water at the horizen in every direction and when you travel in any direction mountains appear to pop into exsistence and constantly change in shape. The output of Galladriell' content converter needs lots of work, as much or more than any mod team would ever need to keep busy, but at least it provides a basic world that I think would encourage many people to learn some modding skills in order to help improve it.

[Moryal]

Whoops... I voted for "Use the mesh converter + placed exteriors at 2x scale + converted interiors at 2x scale" But after further thought I think that "Use the mesh converter + placed exteriors at 2x scale + converted interiors at 1x scale" Would be best because the whole point of a 2x scale was to make it seem like there's more landmass. If interiors are 2x scale aswell as exteriors I wonder if it wouldn't just seem like you've shrunk for some reason. Logically, just because there's more land doesn't mean that there should be bigger caves.

That notwithstanding, it might be a good idea to double the scale of SOME tombs, caves, ruins etc where it will add to the overall effect. Many dwemer ruins, for example might seem more imposing if they were twice the size, same goes for the odd cave... I don't think that those interiors being scaled 2x would be necessary for the desired overall effect however and I think that too much interior scaling would detract from the feel of vvardenfell.

That being said, I like the idea of 2x exteriors because they'll make everything feel bigger and I think the thing everyone liked about morrowind was that no one was there to help you. If you were attacked, there were no patrolling guards, no concerned citizens and often nowhere to hide. I think that a 2x exterior scale would serve to amplify this effect.

As for why I vote for the use of the converter: Without progress in a mod, people lose interest, for whatever reason, be it just that their schedule is no longer free enough to allow them to help. When enough people lose interest, progress begins to slow and the cycle begins anew. Whether or not you like the idea of using the converter you can't deny that it would be a massive leap forward and a vital infusion of progress to this mod.

Once the clutter is placed in the wilderness and new people begin to move around in it in an incomplete form, you will get modellers who will think, "hey! I can make that Tree look better" or scripters who might take a crack at making an improvement where they couldn't have before because the Landmass wasn't complete.

In short, I think this decision would bring this mod much closer to the possibility of a partial release which will almost certainly bring with it an infusion of modders which, so I've heard help to hasten the development of a mod.

(Please change my vote from "Use the mesh converter + placed exteriors at 2x scale + converted interiors at 2x scale" to "Use the mesh converter + placed exteriors at 2x scale + converted interiors at 1x scale" if possible, thanks and sorry for the long post.)