The Parchlands and Darkmoor

[Senten]

Love that reptilian skeleton!

[Ibsen's Ghost]

Quick point: I finished preparing the assets for generating the Darkmoor region tonight. I'll need to run a test to see how it looks after sandor's region generation has had the assets switched. If it looks okay, I can send it to sandor but I may need to tweak things. This means that we're not far off seeing Darkmoor, our final beta region, make an appearance!

[Ibsen's Ghost]

Okay, I tried checking out my first set of assets for Darkmoor and I'm going to make a few changes to what I did here.

First up, there is the continuing problem of the trees with the magically vanishing foliage (see the first two pics) but once you're inside Darkmoor itself then it does seem to get more sensible.

Secondly, I worried a little that that ground texture was too bright for DARKmoor but, again, once inside the cells then it seems to look better.

Thirdly, I have a lot of 'bushes/trees' that look like the one in the fourth pic. This is the Ohelo tree and, like many custom-made trees, the foliage is a little 'cartoony' and bright. I still quite like them but I may have to severely reduce the quantity.

Fourthly, I tried to add the CamoransParadise version of the Cypress tree here which is a blue-ish tinged version but I think I'm probably better off with the standard version in order to fit with the more bushy, custom Cypress trees.

Fifthly, picture eight shows a vanilla Yew tree on the border. I particularly like this tree but if I keep it then it means that this will reduce the quantity of the more unusual, 'gnarled' variety of the custom Cypress trees....although I guess I could add those later.

Finally, I've decided not to add the pink Bromeliads. They just don't look right so I'll keep it to the redyellow ones that you see in pic nine. I'll also be using the Sloth's foot mushroom and the vanilla beans (pic ten).

Any comments, observations or constructive criticism is most welcome! This is the first time I've shared the region design process publically. Btw, there will be fog weather effects added to the final version.

[Koniption]

What harvestable flora are you gonna make available to get from this region, overall?

I know vanilla beans are in the mix, and I think the lumberries from past discussions...blueberries seem good here, too.

Btw, the vanilla vines are either supposed to be propped up against a tall tree or rock/wall, or wrapped around a tree. You can tell by their shapes, how to use each one. I know you just generated the land and haven't tweaked anything manually yet, but thought it best to let you know beforehand.

If you need me to make certain harvestable flora/ingredients, be sure to tell me. Or you can "set me loose", and I'll research appropriate flora myself and make. Better, yet, I can offer some plant recommendations for this region, run them by you for approval, then make the ones that are agreed on. I think we need more fantasy-based plants too, since we've been using real-life plants a lot. Lumberries are fantasy-based, whereas the blueberries are not.

Koniption

[Ibsen's Ghost]

Check out the OP of this thread for the original flora plans. I didn't like the Spike Plant tbh. I felt it didn't work and, out of the pink Bromeliads, although I prefer the Pink Sphere, it's a little too small, too low to the ground and too spread out to be used as an effective replacement for so many of the vanilla assets which are quite tall and thin (using the current preset flora).

Sugar Cane could be used as an alternative to the vanilla beans, I guess. Otherwise, we've got lumberries, redyellow bromeliads and Sloths Foot shrooms.

What did you think of the Ohelo trees? I could have them replace the Pink Bromeliads instead which would basically mean that there would be room for the blueberries. This will make for lots of blueberries but very few Ohelo trees....which sounds about right.

If adding more, I would say we're lacking some tall and thin varieties like Motherwort, Bergamot and Nightshade, which are some of the vanilla plants that I'm trying to replace here.

[Koniption]

Doh! My bad! We were talking about the Parchlands for so long in this thread, that I forgot to see that it was also for Darkmoor.

I think the ohelo trees are ok, but maybe can be toned down a little texture-wise. Make the textures duller, but with same colors.

Yeah, lots of blueberries and fewer ohelo trees sounds about right as well.

I'll research for some plants I feel might work for this region. Tall and thin....

Koniption

[Ibsen's Ghost]

Originally posted by Koniption
I'll research for some plants I feel might work for this region. Tall and thin....

They might not be used for this region because I think I may go okay as I am for now but I was hoping to get the mangroves generated as well and I may be able to use the same preset. Anyway, there's a general shortage of tall and thin plants so go ahead....

It's worth knowing that the biggest factor affecting which of your flora make it into the final selection during region design is whether there is a good enough match for them with the selection of vanilla items available. It has little to do with quality but more to do with compatibility. Motherwort and Bergamot are both high incidence-flora so creating stuff like that is good.

However, I just noticed that replacing the shrubs with blueberries isn't going to work because the auto-replace option invariably places the blueberries well below ground and it would be an epic quest to landscape them. Likewise, they turned out to be way too small and too wide. A good way to bring them in would be to set them up as 'shrubs' but I think that might involve .spt files rather than .nif. Creating shrubs rather than flora is often a good way to get really diverse flora in there because the generation procedure appears to cut down on variety and you can get round this by using shrubs. I'm currently looking for another way to rejig things...

[Koniption]

Ahh, them appearing underground is a problem within the nif itself. I can fix that. In Nifskope, they are centered on the "Axis" with half of them below ground..I'll just raise them above the axis.

I can fix the scale of them. I can fix the width, but this'll involve going in my 3D application. How much less wider do you need them

Do you want to use them if I make these changes?

Koniption

[Ibsen's Ghost]

Yes, I could do but most of them will have to be hand-placed anyway. The Ohelo texture is super-bright but they're nonetheless a good shape to work with.

[Ibsen's Ghost]

Okay, so this is how it's turned out. What you see involves some of the basic region generation stuff but I also added some of the final featuress as well that would only appear after landscaping. That includes the roots for the giant swamp tree, the Nirn worm and the use of the Dementia rock retextures. I added the fog effects that will mostly characterise the whole region for the second set of shots.

How do we feel about having a 75-25 share of fog versus cloud? Should we have a few moments when the fog clears? How about 70% fog, 20% cloud and 10% clear?