Silgrad Tower v3.0 [WIP]

[Razorwing]

The Silgrad Tower mod is currently in closed beta stage and cannot be downloaded by players. A teaser mod is under development which is aimed to showcase our work to the public while we continue to work towards Silgrad Tower v3.0. The teaser mod's content will also become part of the full mod later on.

We've released wip versions of our mod in the past, culminating with v2.5 in the summer of 2007. Some time after that release a core member discussion reached the conclusion we should continue developing our mod in closed beta stage, until it had reached a stage of development that players expect and deserve from a mod such as ours. That stage of development was outlined in a gameplan posted in mid-August that year.

We continued to support the 2.5 release just so players would have something to check out while waiting for the real release. But as time wore on our internal work on the mod superceeded the 2.5 version by leaps and bounds. In fact, one wouldn't be exaggerating by saying we've come twice as long since that wip release than we had during the time leading up to it. The release also had a few but annoying bugs and quirks, and it included a system we tried out of using low-quality models in the public releases while keeping the full-quality models internal. We no longer feel that release gives an accurate impression of our mod and our team, and its shortcomings - most of which have been rectified in our internal development version - only serve to give us negative publicity. We'd rather players judge us by the upcoming teaser mod. So, to sum it up we decided in the late summer of 2008 to stop supporting that release.

Goals for Silgrad Tower v3.0.

Here are the goals we will achieve before releasing our mod.
[indent][/indent]- The regions that are currently blank landscape will have been generated.
[indent][/indent]- The player can walk from Cyrodiil to Silgrad Tower (after finishing the road) via teleport scripts.
[indent][/indent]- There is a road network connecting Soluthis, Steadhelm, Silgrad Tower and Ebbedin.
[indent][/indent]- Soluthis' exterior wil be moved to child worldspaces.
[indent][/indent]- Silgrad Tower (the city) can be visited.
[indent][/indent]- A lot of our written dialogue is voiced.
[indent][/indent]- All our models are finalized and up to par.

Progress towards the goals.

1)
These regions have been generated: Steadhelm Region, Silgrad City Region, Soluthis Region, Deepen Moor, Deepen Meadows, Ashunor Valley, Bitter Coast, Dumac, Forgotten Forest, Silgrad Hills. ---> Completed.
[size=0]Work on these regions have yet to begun: Borderlands, Velothi Mountains

- Overview of the regions

2)
Most of the roads have been finished except for the Forgotten Forest road and the road from Silgrad city South to Cyrodiil (the seamless transition will be added after the road has been finished). Further we intend to add a ferry system to connect for example Ebbedin to the main land (WiP).


3)
The city will among other things be more compact in the sense that the space is put to better use. The finalization includes dividing the city into child worldspaces, which will ensure a fluid FPS throughout it.
WiP, good progress has been made.

4)
The Slums and Riverside district can be visited when we release v3.0.

The Slums and Riverside district can be visited when we release v3.0.

For the Riverside district there are problems with fading wall pieces. This also applies to the city walls in general. We don't have the final models --> Missing collision for the single piece house objects and no _far nifs for the walls. These have to be made/fixed before we add this district.
The collision has been added by TheImperialDragon and he created the _far nifs for the walls. -->> This district will be included as well.

5)
We have recorded between 15 % and 20 % of the dialogue, equating to roughly 6000 lines out of 34 000. Although we still strive toward a fully-voiced mod, being able to offer the choice of using silent lines, which keep the text on-screen long enough to be read, will allow us to release 3.0 while still voicing the mod. Interested voice actors and actresses are still greatly needed.

6)Finalizing the models.
Completed.

The Silgrad Tower Core

Updated November 30th 2010 as per a recent Core discussion by sandor.

Screenshots.

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[Ibsen's Ghost]

First class post RW, very encouraging and definitely very much needed. Thanks a lot!

I am happy doing landscaping at the moment but I think there will come a time (soon-ish, I hope) when I get to work with a vengeance on the NPC voices. At the moment, I am finishing some work for other projects and starting two new jobs in real life but I can work with SACarrow on bringing in good, reliable female voices (an extraordinarily difficult task, believe me).

[Razorwing]

Thanks, though I should perhaps have mentioned that the post wasn't written solely by me. It included information and in one case a direct quote from both me, sandor, TheImperialDragon and SACarrow.

If you want I can make a composite map of your landscape work when you're finished so everyone can see at a glance how it turned out All I need is the data, either merged to the esm or as a plugin, and the cell coordinates of the map. (Specifically the northwest and southeast cell coordinate of a square grid.)

I'm sure the actresses will brighten the day for many players. Are they friends of yours? Back in the very early Oblivion days, early summer of -06, a modder called Opaque got his mom to voice dialogue for one of my characters and I felt that added oodles of fun to that otherwise unremarkable quest.

[Lady Nerevar]

woah, those trees are BRIGHT. any chance you could just open up the textures in photoshop and turn the brightness/saturation down some? its really unnatural and is burning mah eyes :eek:

[blackbird]

LN, do you mean the red trees?
Are there VWD objects for the Deepen Moor trees?

[Lady Nerevar]

yea, i mean the red trees

[Razorwing]

Originally posted by Lady Nerevar
woah, those trees are BRIGHT. any chance you could just open up the textures in photoshop and turn the brightness/saturation down some? its really unnatural and is burning mah eyes :eek:

That's a funny coincidence, because I brought up the same topic in an internal discussion a few hours ago. They struck me too as being very bright in those screenshots. The actual texture isn't unusally bright though, I think much of the effect has to do with the screenshot being taken under a clear sky during the day. So, a small reduction in brightness should make it display normally under all light/weather conditions.

[Sjors Boomschors]

I would like to comment on the low level fog seen in a few screenshots, I know how you made it because I have experimented with it myself recently. I would suggest you turn down the light reflective and light emitting properties by 50% to make it look more natural.

[InsanitySorrow]

Glad to hear of a new version, this will make me play Oblivion again for sure.

[TheImperialDragon]

Originally posted by Sjors Boomschors
I would like to comment on the low level fog seen in a few screenshots, I know how you made it because I have experimented with it myself recently. I would suggest you turn down the light reflective and light emitting properties by 50% to make it look more natural.

It does look a bit bright, doesn't it? I'm intending to change the fog's texture a bit before the 3.0 release, so it shouldn't be so bright when that time comes around. I'll also have a look at the NIF and keep an eye out for the changes you suggested.