[TOOL] Project Andoran Plugin Converter

Ok, so there we are..

I lent a hand to our Anry friend with his Converter. Been working on it's sources for a few days now.

For what I can tell you is that we made huge progress in our work.  We've already done with most basic GRUP types and it's items & attributes ready-ported to skyrim. Currently we work on  CELL GRUPs' which are a bit more complicated because of multiple inside-nested grups, for which code isn't ( right now :D ) ready, but it will.

Also a good news guys - that converter will be made publicily Available as an open-source application ! :)

That's for now, stay tuned :)

Ormin, great news!!!  Thanks to you both!  :)

Fantastic! news Ormin,with a good converter tool [like the Andoran tool], if oblivion and morrowind can be ported to skyrim [TESV],then this time it would be completely legal.?

Short and simple anwser, no. 
Long answer, the legalities of porting content is another discussion all in itself.

What would this mean for the Mororblivion team?

How much does the converter convert, and how much will need to  be recreated? I'm assuming all quests will need to be recreated, along with AI, etc. Is this true?

Very, Very cool that the converter will be open- source. What a fantastic community this is. :D

Great news, Ormin!

Kudos to both you and Anruin! I'm proud of you guys!

Hi, I've been following this forum for a while now and I think Ive stumbled across something that might make your life a little easier...

http://www.darkcreations.org/forums/topic/806-common-worldspace-heightmap/

They plan to add the entire tamriel heightmap to skyrim so I was thinking that you guys could use their version of Vvardenfell.

I know there has been some controversy with your mod team (I dont really know the details, Ive loved everything you have done here) but these guys are really accepting. They are welcomed the silgrad tower team to work on their project with the heightmap.

Its just an idea though but worth a try dont you think?

Wouldn't we have to manually place buildings, trees, plants and etc into the map? Good idea though, however, the original converter waay back then already had all its buildings, plants the basics in the world...

imo the best (but not easiest) way will be replacing beyond skyrim's vvardenfell heightmap with morroblivion one while keeping the rest of their heightmap untouched. Vvardenfell is surrounded by water, so hopefully it wouldn't be that hard. Then moving all the models loaded with converter to a whole number of cells to fit vvardenfell position on the map. I think there was some utility for skyrim which allowed such thing to be done automatically, but I can't remember which one.

ps. I'm a newbie in such things, so I'm not sure if it's really possible, just my 2 cents.

Hi there!

Great news - our tool already parses whole file, from the first to the last byte of Oblivion.esm. Now the only code we're lacking is writing one, which will create ( based on what data has been received from Oblivion ) new .esm Skyrim-Compatible file :)  and we got some of it ready too! We're actually working on writing WRLD Landscapes & CELLs

Ormin: Great! I'm curious though, what will the "new .esm Skyrim-Compatible file" contain? Like, what information will actually transfer over?

I'm no ESM/ESP Expert yet, so I can't really tell you.. Any help on understanding both ESM ( Skyrim and Oblivion 's ) formats is highly appreciated.

I think experimenting would give us best results :)

 

Alright, I was asking cause I have no clue whatsoever. :)

Keep us posted!

Hello everyone. I have lot of exams in the university now. So can't post often. But I couldn't pass by and don't say that we've made progress with cells and references conversion. We still have some problems with formids duplication, but I think we'll fix them soon. Also we have the code for lanscape porting but haven't tested it properly yet. Thx and GL for everyone.

Anry

I hope we can get models ported over too. Then we could just retexture them to match Skyrim's standards and then quests, AI and stuff would be the only thing between us and Morroblivirim.

Hello again. I think that our team already has the model converter. At least I've heard that there was some work around this stuff some time ago and without no success. I'm not sure really cause I haven't asked our coordinator about this. I think just there are some limitations with Havok physics materials porting.

I have exam at monday and then I will go to China for a few days. So work will be done by Ormin at these days. He is great in programming and done much with this app, so don't bother :D

Best regards,

Anry.

Thanks! Anruin! hope all goes well for your exam,and have fun in China.

Awesome Anruin! It's great to hear all of the progress you and Ormin are making! :D

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There is a lot of excitement over moving Morroblivion into Skyrim, but what I wonder is this:

Who is willing to do what? (It's awesome to see Ormin and Anruin taking action, but what about the rest of us?)

I think we should be asking this question to ourselves. It's easy to talk about what we'ed like to see, but a lot harder to agree to actually do something.

So I propose that we make a topic where people can commit to what they'd be willing to do for Morro-blivy-skyrim. Seeing who is willing to do what may also help us see what direction to go in, or if there even is a direction to go in...

Thoughts? Actions?

For the beginning I so think it is necessary to receive the efficient converter that there was a basis from which possible would be to begin a reference point, and further already to think and distribute to whom of that under forces will really make on this basis.

when this converter be available to users who want to convert oblivion to skyrim?

I'll probably do what I did here, and work on getting the orginal Morrowind voices into TESV: Morroblivion.

As for which one should we convert first, Oblivion or Morrowind, I would say Morrowind because that was the original purpose of this project. Resurrecting Morrowind using a better game engine. So now, instead of using Oblivion's game engine, we're moving onto Skyrim's game engine.

I don't want to get into which game is better because that's purely subjective, but I was under the impression we'd be working on porting and working on Morrowind in Skyrim, not Oblivion or Cyrodill in Skyrim.

And I was talking to Anruin. The converter isn't going to convert quests, at least that's what he told me last time I spoke to him. So porting Oblivion over Morrowind really won't have any advantages since we'll be stuck in the same position with both. 

I want to give you a little advice. Skyrim's CK has many new features. So you better get some people learning it before you get the Converter. So you could start working right after receiving the copy of the Chuvakin and save a lot of time. :)

What about quests I think it is not possible to write code in reasonable time for translating them correctly, fully to the new engine because of different dialogue and quest system. So imo, we there for Andoran like you here for Morroblivion have to remake all the quests manually.

Interesting...Oblivion has no nastalgia for me whatsoever, but to each his own, right? I played Morrowind when it first came out, when I was in the sixth grade, so playing my first RPG with all the weirdness and uniqueness that Morrowind is famous/infamous for, left quite an impression on me.

I guess Oblivion could do the same for someone, given similar circumstances, i.e. being young, playing your first RPG and experiencing that freedom of gameplay and exploration for the first time, etc.

Oblivion certainly holds some nostalgia for me, but not as much as Morrowind. Perhaps the same reason as for you (in-fact, I just remembered I was in sixth grade when it came out as well). It may not've been my first RPG, but it certainly was the first of its kind, and it left a magnificent impression on me. Plus, though I don't tend to lean strongly to one side or the other on the Morrowind vs Oblivion debate (to me, both games have their strong suits), I feel many of the improvements that Oblivion made were in gameplay, and gameplay mechanics between the two would be irrelevant in a conversion: they'd both have Skyrim's mechanics. Morrowind overall I feel is a more interesting game in terms of its content, with some exception (e.g. many more of its quests are short "go here, kill/fetch this"). But even beyond that, Morrowind is an older game, so the visible improvement from a conversion would be greater. You could say that's irrelevant because there will be Morroblivion, but I think for people looking to play a conversion of a previous Elder Scrolls game on Skyrim, it won't be, just because the contrast between the original and the conversion will be that much starker, and it'll feel more worth playing the conversion.

Yea a quest converter would be awesome, don't know it is even possible though best bet would to be edit the scripts to work with Skyrim i think, but as you said this would take an impossible amount of time. I'd love to learn myself to help any way i can just can't get that new Skyrim Creation Kit working for me it just refuses to load! :(

Can the new creation kit import scripts at all? I've dumped the scripts for oblivion, shivering isles, all the official oblivion dlc, the unofficial patches and morroblivion into readable text and i think this would be a good place to start, it just be a matter of editing out the differences with skyrim equivalents right? Sorry if i sound like a complete noob, it's because i am and well everyones gotta start somewhere. :)

Is there a way to read Skyrim scripts aswell by any chance?

Having tinkered with the CS for a few dozen hours, I can see why quest conversion isn't quite practical, and script conversion is almost out of the question (and if anyone manages to pull that off, all the scripts will still need to be checked for accuracy).

Even this seems like a bit of an ask, but would it be possible to at least get quests that are empty accept for maybe dialogue?  At least that would give us a framework, and we'd just need to fill the quests in with the proper functionality (scripting, aliases, stages and objectives, dialogue conditions, etc.).

gidz89

it just be a matter of editing out the differences with skyrim equivalents right?

I'm afraid not. Skyrim's scripts are completely object-oriented. They're too fundamentaly different from Oblivion's scripts to be machine-converted in any simple way.  (Or any way that I'm aware of--I'm not a programmer by trade, so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, pros!)

Ah thought that would be the case well i suppose the only way is to manually build the quests again, i suppose only way it could happen is with a REALLY good scripter with in built knowledge of both oblivion and skyrim, which would probably be someone in Bethesda and i can't see them popping up and offering to help haha. When i can get this CK sorted and running on me comp i'm going to try to get familiar with it i'd love to help, i just fear a far larger motivated community co-working on this would be needed for it to have any chance so it really just probably is a pipe dream for the forseeable future.

EDIT:

Your right about the scripts being very different, just looking at two example vampire scripts from oblivion & skyrim theres not a lot of similarity, some but no a lot but hey if i'm gonna learn might aswell start with this new Papyrus language

Obviously it is going to be real hard and will take ages,but let`s look at it from another view.

We have all of the Oblivion scripts,and the morroblivion scripts already available in the Oblvion CS.?

So when [if] we can recompile those scripts using the Papyrus scripting editor in the skyrim CK [I assume that Papyrus scripting is more like C++,and uses the same object orientated approach.?],Then it should be possible with a lot of effort and time to get the scripts into skyrim.?

But the guys who do it will have to know all of the functions and syntax of both the CS [Oblivion] and the Papyrus [Skyrim] editors,and be able to cross lanquage script,like cross platform scripting between systems for example.

Hi there,

While our friend Anruin is in China, I'll be posting new announcements.

There's a millenia in our work - I've found a critical bug which has blocked us from loading generated .esm into CK. Now, I am proud to say that all internal cells, Activators, Books, Flora and a lot of other things have been succesfully loaded into CK , which means it is also probably loadable in-game :)!

Congrats, can you post a few in-game screenshots soon?

Wooot! Awesome Ormin!

Ironman: I've looked at the two scripting languages, and I definitely think they're too radical to be converted by a program. It's gonna take a human mind, so you're plan is write. We'll have to convert everything we can, and then do scripts by hand.

Robertneville brought up a good point: "Morrowind because that was the original purpose of this project"

What are we gonna do exactly:

1) Convert Oblivion to Skyrim

2) Convert Morroblivion (aka just the morrowind part) to Skyrim

3) Convert Morrowind to Skyrim

4) Convert both Oblivion and Morroblivion to Skyrim

Any one of these will take our task force years... if we can get people dedicated to such a project. Planning could do us a lot of good. If we choose option 4, then are we gonna develop both simultaneously or do morrowind first?

Again, thoughts?

ps. Last time I asked for thoughts, I really liked hearing the responses. It's cool to see people are ready to attack this new thing. :D 

I still say Morroblivion first. If another team wants to convert Oblivion (which, if a converter is made, I'd assume is likely), that'd be awesome too, but this project was for Morrowind and I'm still more interested in keeping it that way. But I can certainly see the advantage in waiting a while for the converter to be debugged and polished before going full force into development. But waiting for an Oblivion port to be completely developed seems a bit excessive, this team would be waiting years (and there's not even a guarantee anyone will put together such a project, converter or no).

Amen Leonidas...I mean Tanweth :D

Ok, I don't think we're all on the same page here.

I talk to Anruin pretty regularly, so he keeps me up to date on the status of the converter and what it can do. It won't be able to convert quests. I'm under the reasonable impression, that it'll be something like the original Morroblivion converter where its main purpose was to convert objects and put them in the correct place. And for those holding out on it converting quests, who's going to be the one to implement that into the converter? C'mon guys, that's wishful thinking. And if it does implement quest conversion before we're finished, then okay, we run that and we're good to go. Not a whole lot lost. But I think waiting for quest conversion or all the bugs to be ironed out is wishful thinking and also plain ridiculous. 

Do you think David B just waited for the Morroblivion converter to get better? No, he busted his ass assembling a team and just jumped in head first. And that's the only reason this project got anywhere.

So I vote for, once we get the converter, we start busting butt on TESV: Morroblivion.

Now, I think there's something else we all don't see eye to eye on: what are we going to port? Well damn, I thought this was a given, but apparently it isn't. Again, I'm not here to debate which game is better, but one thing we all need to agree on is porting one over the other isn't going to have any advantage over the other. We can't port quests. Thus we're both in the same starting position if we decide to port Oblivion or Morrowind first.

Now, with that said, what's the purpose of this project? Well, let's look at the top of the page. It says "Morroblivion: The Resurrection of Morrowind." The purpose of this project is to keep Morrowind alive. Oblivion was just a means of carrying this out. With Oblivion outdated, Skyrim's engine will now carry this out. Again, we're here to keep Morrowind alive. That's why we're all here, right?

Well said Robert... I've played through Morrowind with 4 different restarts each with hours on end dedicated to each character and with different mods... To this day I still miss it, i can of course reinstall it i do have the GOTY edition but that spark is no longer there.. Morroblivion reignited that spark and im glad to have participated/contributed to the project.. And once again I would indeed do it all again for Skyrim just to again reiginite that experience under Skyrim's engine..

Now for Oblivion? Well the actual storyline/game will have to be taken up by another team.. BUT perhaps in the far future models from Oblivion may be used to recreate specific areas for current game event based storylines e.g. visit the Imperial City during Skyrim's time using Oblivion's Imperial City models?

Thats my grain of salt good day ;)