Poll regarding Galadrielle's mesh converter

[Lightwave]

Originally posted by InsanitySorrowIs 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.

It already is a simple swap with the content converter - all meshes are placed in a subdirectory, as are the textures (Galadrielle's NIF converter's default sub-directory for meshes and textures is called morro).

The only reasonable way to generate just the caves and tombs is to automatically generate all of it first and simply delete the unneeded interiors using the delete key - we'd have to comb through them manually by name though - and there'll be hundreds, but that leads me back to the original point of the poll - just generate all of it and delete what we don't want when we know we're in a position to re-do it.

So if you take a claim area and don't like any of it, terrific, just drag a great big box around it in the render window and hit the delete key, it's so easy. Seconds to delete but days to manually generate.

That's a lot less work than trying to populate all of the 17,200+ cells from scratch, because once the towns are done it's going to be much harder finding people to do 15,000+ cells of wilderness in-fill, not to mention interiors, quests, scripting, sounds, voicing. And real hard finding some interested in making their allocated area of, say, 25 cells around (40, 10) in to the most beautifully rendered scene ever when there's a good chance few or no players will ever walk there, not to mention that by that time there's more competition from more advanced game engines.

So if you look at it strategically, after the towns are done it's going to require one person filling 41 cells with render every day of the year to fill in the remaining 15,000+ cells - that's just the exterior alone. Then if you look at how many volunteer modders we have and how many we're likely to have, I could be wrong, but I just can't see us getting enough people to do it. There's nothing worse than in 18 months realizing we should've used the pre-generated exteriors, because by then we'll be trying to convince people to continue working trying to create a 7 year old game in to a 3 year old game engine still with a huge empty landscape to show for it. Faced with the vastness of the task people could end up wondering whether the project was just too big to start with and this has happened once already within the core in the last 2 months ...


Btw, there are more votes going in than posts - please folks, I don't mind what you vote for, it's just good to know we don't have skewed stats at the end of it.

Moryal said ...

I totally agree with you on every point.

Lightwave

p.s. I'll have to program something for the interior importing and doort co-ordinate conversion anyway as I've just scaled Cyrodiil to 100 square miles (TESAnnwyn now does multi-layered landscape texture importing) complete with all the exteriors (including NPCs and creatures) which is pretty imposing, so I'll have the capability before too long.

[Dave_91]

I don't have time to type much right now, I voted to use the mesh converter as temporary meshes, but place all the content ourselves.

[cire992]

I want to play this mod before I die. No one but but me has taken a claim in a month and a half (and even then I only did two last month), so this is a more realistic alternative.... for the moment.

[Lady Nerevar]

as long as everything is replaced i think its a good alternative. however, using work directly from the converter would be not only illigal (since its from morrowind) but also cheating in my book.

[i didnt vote anything]

[InsanitySorrow]

Lightwave: That makes a lot of sense, especially when you look at the broader side of the work ahead, I guess it would help if it was generated and then the assets were replaced and everything else touched up and made better. It would in essence be like a template for people to work with, it would help modders get an idea on how things should look and should be.

[sandor]

Originally posted by InsanitySorrow
Lightwave: That makes a lot of sense, especially when you look at the broader side of the work ahead, I guess it would help if it was generated and then the assets were replaced and everything else touched up and made better. It would in essence be like a template for people to work with, it would help modders get an idea on how things should look and should be.

I agree and I voted for "Use the mesh converter + placed exteriors at 2x scale + converted interiors at 1x scale".
I think Lightwave explained it very well, including the pros and cons.

It's easy enough to replace the wilderness meshes (similarly sized alternatives).

[Moryal]

Alot of people seem to be voting for "Use the mesh converter as temporary meshes, but place all content ourselves". I don't think anyone has a problem with using the region generator in order to place exterior objects like trees and rocks so I'm not quite sure why they have a problem with using Morrowind placement data (at least for the exteriors) because I could theoretically take the X, Y, Z coordinates manually from every tree and rock in the game and then double their scale and have the same effect as Lightwave is proposing with 2x generated exteriors.

The only difference I see between the two is the year or more of manual labour that will undeniably be required in order to place all of these rocks and trees. Unless you can personally say that your schedule is going to be free enough to help place all of these static objects, I think you should at least be voting for 2x placed exteriors.

[snortator]

Hi all,

i'm pretty much for the "rapid prototyping" option. If we/you do everything manually it will be about 12 years before there is anything usable (no offence). If we use the converter we'd instantly have something people could at least walk around in...(not that this is the final goal)

Based on that, there is zillions of ways to improve the textures, or add a building here and there to account for the 7 years since MW, but it would always be usable.

I'm with Lightwave, "takes seconds to change, years to make from scratch".

Thanks, snort

[Moryal]

I had accidentally voted for the option including 2x interiors, is it possible to change it to the one with 2x exteriors and 1x interiors? I wouldn't want that option to lose on account of my stupidity... ?( ?(

[Lightwave]

Hi folks,

I haven't gone away or anything, just working on the same program to scale everything (including doors to interiors) that I'm using to scale Oblivion so both benefit one another.

A lot of votes went in without people saying what they voted for, so the final audit stands like this:

1. Everything + 1x Interiors:

Lightwave
Moryal (moved vote)
Sandor
Snortator
cire992
InsanitySorrow (moved vote)
john44 (implied vote from post?)

From Poll: 7 (Moryal moved)
From Posts: 5 (+1 from john44?)
Audit Discrepany: 1 too many votes.

2. Just meshes, place everything ourselves:

KuKulzA
Mormacil
Dave_91
(InsanitySorrow moved)

From Poll: 7-1 = 6 (InsanitySorrow moved)
From Posts: 4-1 = 3 (InsanitySorrow moved)
Audit Discrepancy: 3 too many

3. Don't use the mesh converter at all.

From Poll: 2
From Posts: 0
Audit Discrepancy: 2 too many.


Total audited votes:

Everything with 1x Interiors: 5 or 6
Just meshes, place everything ourselves: 3
Don't use mesh converter: 0


Unless there are any strong objections to this audit then the 'Everything with 1x interiors' vote has the majority. My tasks are to get a batch file together with Galadrielle's the NIF converter to convert the NIFs in to sub-directories and also create an ESP with all the placed exterior content (at 2x scale) and interiors at original scale. I'll keep you all updated when the scaling is complete.

Lightwave