The Exterior of Dumac

[sandor]

Originally posted by Seniosh
I'll have to ask sandor what the best way to do this is.

A separate esm could work but there are disadvantages.

First of all who's going to maintain the esm including the necessary cleaning.
The main issue is to avoid "bad forms" after the final (when the Dumac exterior is ready) merge of the file to the ST esm. Depending on the file size it can or can't be fixed in an easy way.

I am not eager to solve these kind of problems because maintaining one esm is enough.

To be very clear "corrupted" files won't be merged to the ST esm.

Originally posted by Seniosh
hmm, how exactly would that work? Could a Dumac ESM modify land in the Silgrad ESM?

If you want to playtest you have to convert the esm to an esp.

Originally posted by Seniosh
..but I can definitely see how a Dumac ESM would make it much easier to work on two or three things at once.

If you use the system of the landscape claims more than one modder can work on the exterior, you have to divide the region into claims.

[Seniosh]

I think we should stick with an ESP then, especially since none of us know how to work magick with TES4Gecko, and with this many active modders (me) it's just not worth it.

Thanks for the info, i think the easiest thing to do will be to merge individual Dumac ESPs as they get done.

Oh, and a small update for you guys on the exterior, i've created a set of dumac rocks, using Silgrad's rock models, but the westgash textures VABG made. They're all in the CS, so now i've just got to start doing beautiful things to the landscape.

Once i get a good portion of the ruin looking fantastic, i'll post ingame screenshots, which i was reluctant to do before because of the lack of good ground and rock textures.

[InsanitySorrow]

I got the exterior pieces from Razorwing(Thanks), so all I need is the landscape and I am ready to create.

[Seniosh]

Well, i've started tackling the region generator, which isn't as intimidating as i thought it was.

The only problem, is that i'm not even quite sure what to generate. Nobody's really tacked a description onto the landscape surrounding Dumac. Is it swampy like the bitter coast? is it a mini-ashlands from TES3? does it look like the area around Balmora?

I've got no references, so all that i'm able to generate is a nice variety of rocks, which frankly looks very bland, because (duh) it's only rocks.

So i'm going to have to ask right now, what needs to be in there. I'm not asking for somebody to go catalog everything that appeared in a 5-mile region of Dumac in TES3. I could do that myself. But i'm sure somebody's got to have an idea of what it was like, what templates i can use, ect.

or else i'll just have to go digging myself, which i won't be able to get around to for a while (school projects and such)

[Seniosh]

Just looked at the original Dumac, and one of our problems is that oblivion is like 10 times larger than morrowind. Also, going from the way the landscape was set up in TES3, it looks like i'm going to be doing most of the region by hand, unless there's a setting for "scale all rocks 5x, and put them on the tops of ridges"

It also looks like the west is going to be a transition to bitter coast, seeing as our region includes a good bit of the actual coast.

This will take me longer than i expected, i'm going to say it now. From what i've seen, both with my (admittedly minimal) experience with the region generator, and my overview of TES3, the west-gash like section will be hand-done. And there's a hell of a lot of it.

From discussion with Razorwing, it seems like we're being given pretty free reign over the entire region, so if you guys have any other ideas, feel free to post them. I personally want to stick to the look of TES3, because it fits the dwemer and the region. If they got it right once, why argue? Still, any ideas, constructive criticism, comments, ect. Post it

[bob196045]

For some reason I knew this was going to be labor intensive


I agree though, that is to try and keep it looking as close to the original as possible, at least as far as the contours of the landscapeing, the land textures can vary if necessary, but the bitter coast is the bitter coast, I don't know how much is available to re-create that look

keep it looking as morrowindish as possible is my only resolve, I'm sure regardless of what you decide it will turn out nice, hopefully with a little more time I will be able to do some modding in OB, I'm still at a dis advantage even with the new pc, it just meets the minimum requiredments to run, and sometimes it seems a bit sluggish, I'll still be able to work it, it may just take longer


Enjoy
BOb

[InsanitySorrow]

Bob196045: Try some FPS improvement mods, like streamline, it needs OBSE but works like a charm. Need to no anything about modding I can help out.

Seniosh: Cant help with the land becuase I aint got Morrowind anymore, but yeah just keep it as close as you can.

[Seniosh]

Alright then, i've begun to do the rocks TES3-style, in large ridges, all hand-placed. the landscape is a bit bigger than MW however, so it'll look a bit different, but i think good.

Here are 3 shots of what i've done so far. any suggestions are welcome. There's plenty of time to change stuff, cause this is going to be a long process

[Razorwing]

Originally posted by Seniosh
Alright then, i've begun to do the rocks TES3-style, in large ridges, all hand-placed. the landscape is a bit bigger than MW however, so it'll look a bit different, but I think good.

Here are 3 shots of what i've done so far. any suggestions are welcome. There's plenty of time to change stuff, cause this is going to be a long process

Looks terrific so far :goodjob:

[Seniosh]

My one concern is FPS hit. I'm not sure exactly how happy the game will be rendering all of those rocks. The landscape is so much larger than morrowind, that every rock has to be scaled up at least 2-3x, and even then, i need a heck of a lot of rocks for every ridge. And they disappear when you walk away, and it's really noticeable.

I assume that means i need to hit "visible when distant"? they all have _far models, so it should work. then again, i'm not good with the technical details, so if there's something else i need to do to make them show _far models, tell me.

I'll test out the FPS hit once i'm done placing more rocks. i've covered about 2x as much area as in the last screenshots, just haven't gotten ingame. If there is any slow-down because of the rocks, my computer will get it, because it's a piece of crap.

Thanks for the compliment, i'll do more work on it tomorrow, and post more shots.

Don't hesitate to post any suggestions! (this goes for anyone) i'm always open to new ideas, especially because i've never played morrowind heavily