Leadership for Skyblivion and Skywind

I nominate Ironman! He's been working his ass off on the Skywind master, and seems to really know what's he's doing and what's what when it comes to merging shit and what should be merged.

He's the Gandalf of the project!

I have to partly disagree with that Mehh,yes I have am still working my ass off,but frankly I am struggling with trying to get the morrowind_sk to let us edit stuff,infact after trying almost every move in the book,I am running out of ideas.

Using SkyWind.esm works if every thing could be merged to it,but I would not want to be project leader for a project that I am frankly struggling to get working correctly.

I nominate Ironman for Skywind lead too! (even if he isn't running hehe >:] ) I haven't been able to keep up and contribute to this project as much as I've wanted to due to college, thus I wouldn't even consider running for any type of leadership position.

However, I agree 100% with Ice. We need better leadership, clearer goals, and more focused efforts to get things moving.

Clint,

I am not running for leadership of the Skywind project,but I guess if a lot of guys were to want me to I would proberly agree,but they might not like the result as the only way I can see of standing any chance making morrowind_sk work in the editor would be to re-convert it and only merge anything to when it loads smoother in the CK and allows editing.

I will be trying to re-convert it anyway,but am just warning others that it might mean going back a few months to stand a chance,and there is no guarantee that the converter will help.

With the current masters that I have saved it might work but like I said there is no guarantee of success at least untill after the xmas break.

But this is a kind of lottery so the choice of leader rests with the members.

I actually tried to use the converter to make a new master for fun, and it wouldn't let me with the latest Morroblivion.
http://i.imgur.com/t8L6G.png <--- error message that stops the conversion.
It converted Oblivion over just fine though, it was near the same file size as our current Skyblivion file(minus the expansion and dlc)

Ironman seems generally like a nice and down-to-earth guy, and seems to know the ins and outs of TES-coding.

Doesn't he seems to posses the criteria for a mod leader? I do. But dont count me as a vote, I just report bugs and I am a noob with programming.

I started lurking here earlier this week because I came across this on youtube and thought it to be the best idea I've ever heard of. I thought to myself "I want to be part of something that awesome, I know how to use the creation kit. Plus I've got a spare 3-4 hours a day when the baby sleeps." So I came here and signed up. Spent half a day looking for my old Morrowind CDs (Didin't find them). Then I just started browsing around for something obvious to do to get warmed up.

Sure is hard to get a feel for this place. I also noticed a hand full of other people who joined and offered thier help and were given half hearted or semi unsure suggestions when clearly what they wanted was an order so they could feel useful. I understand though lot's of people SAY they want to help and then just leave halfway through like a teenaged employee but for every five that do you COULD have one that sticks with it to the end and becomes a real part of the team but without strong leadership or at least someone to bark some orders that just ain't going to happen.

If I had to make a suggestion just from the old threads I've been reading I'd pick someone who's an active part of the community but doesn't already have a clear role as defined by THIS thread. (thread should be stickied btw)

Ironman seems to have his hands full already, I'd let him do his part because it's big enough already.

That's my two cents as an outside observer.

Also, when I get the current Skywind up on my computer someone should tell me what to do. ;)

OniI understand though lot's of people SAY they want to help and then just leave halfway through like a teenaged employee

Ice

What do people think, would they be willing to endorse and vote for candidates, would having project leads benefit the project, would Thermador be willing to make a pole or allow this leadership expansion? What are all of your opinions on this?

Heh, you don't have to ask my permission.  Morroblivion has always been a meritocracy - the people doing the most work become the project leads de facto.  Dave B has done a great job leading the Morroblivion project, and he was the leader mainly because he was willing to be a leader.  It's a lot of work, and you have to be pretty serious about it.  Not a lot of people step up to the plate for that kind of workload.  I doubt we'll have more than one candidate apply for being project lead.

People start out with the usual idealism about Morroblivion / Skywind - "Wow, what a cool project!"  But the people who actually stick around are usually self-directed learners who don't mind studying and working on their own to learn out how to do something even if they are a total n00b. Dave B and I both knew nothing about modding when we started with this.

But, like Oni said, there isn't really anyone here to hold your hand and tell you what to do.  So a lot of people leave because they don't have the skills, and don't know where to start.  I've tried to include this information in the FAQ for Morroblivion, but that's not ideal for everyone.

Time is a huge issue.  Dave B and I both have full time jobs.  I also have four pet dogs (two of which fight each other and have to be separated), maintain my own house (slowly remodeling it) and cars (going to have to pull an engine soon if I can't get the broken off stud removed from the engine block), maintain five other websites (have you guys seen TTW's new home yet?), and have a girlfriend and other hobbies to which to attend.  Plus family, friends and farts, as the saying goes.  I hardly play video games at all anymore, and when I do I'm bugfixing Morroblivion, lol...

We need a project leader for Skywind.  No question.  Someone who assembles the master file and merges patches, bug fixes, and content.  Someone who is knowledgable, helpful, and can point n00bs toward the right places to get started in helping with the project.  That person has to be smart, dedicated, and have a lot of free time.  I wish it could be me, but I have way too many other commitments in my life.

Mehh,just my 2 cents,but the converter needs some more coding work done on imo,to make it [if possible] convert the lot,but that will take time,maybe quite a bit of time.

Imo.if we had a perfect converter we could maybe win [The converter is cool [Thanks Anruin]],but it still needs some work imo.?

Ironman, I'll talk with Anruin and see if they can help us. Do you think you could draft up some points to describe what exactly is wrong witht the esm? That way I can relay that to Anruin and see if we can fix it in the converter.

I agree with Ironman. Another must-have is a full set of 100%-working conversion tools.

King for a day, this is what I would do:

- Open source the code for all of the tools needed for Skyrim conversion

- Put the code on Google Code or Source Forge for collaborative code development

- Start a contest, a cash prize or something, who knows - to attract developers and finish building all of the tools

- End result: a one-click mod converter that can convert Morrowind and Oblivion ESP/ESM/assets to Skyrim format.

If such a thing could be built (and it can with enough work and the right people) that would be a total revolution for Elder Scrolls modding, and the person/team who did it would be a legend. 

Imagine being able to convert Morrowind mods to work with Skywind.  Or Oblivion mods to work with Skyblivion.  That is the kind of software tool that is truly needed.

Yes Clint,but not in code or C++ jargon as that might just confuse the issue,I will make a note of the main errors that our current esm is giving in the CK and post them here over the weekend,that way he could maybe know what needs doing to the converter code to cut down those errors.?

Is that ok.?

 I think that the "Array Out of Handle" errors are the same as we get in the VC tool which uses array files for each checkout/in job.When we try to edit anything in the CK it looks for a valid ID and FORM entry,but the CK has a bad habit of changing ID`s and FORMS if it does not find what it wants,so imho when making an esp it must be complete otherwise when it reloads into the CK the ID`s etc might be changed,not cool for us but if were Beth we would not mind,LOL.:)

 Btw thermador,you will always be King,because without you we would not have this forum,Thanks!.

Not that ive been on here long enough for my vote to count but ironman seems like a good candidate to me, from what i can tell hes putting an insane amount of time and work into fixing the skywind master, even if he hasnt had any success yet he has never given up and is always looking for more things to try, personally i think that says something about his devotion to this project, also shows his knowlege about the ck and such to be fairly good i dont think a lot of us here could do what hes doing(speaking for myself anyways) so hes got my vote, but only if he feels he has the time to be a leader we really need him doing what hes doing. just my thoughts ill go back to playing morroblivion for the first time, and ever so slowly converting the npcs i signed up for sorry im taking so long lol i signed up quite a while ago but i really just started doing them, maybe a third done but theyre coming!

Just some quick thoughts:

We really can't just pick a leader.  If we had someone like Dave B among us we would already know.  That person would already have this project organized and going somewhere.  Like Thermador said, someone just needs to step up to the plate and take on the massive workload.  An election just won't cut it here.

That being said:

Much of our problems now don't really have to do with a lack of workers.  It is the master and merging process that is killing us here.  We have .esp files laying all over the place that can't be merged, which of course means that work can't continue.  If we could somehow create a much more complete converter, things would be infinitely better.  And in the end, the workload would actuallly be much, much smaller, we would just have a different kind of work on our hands.  The real question is, Do we have enough good programmers around here that know C++?  I myself am partway through learning visual basic, so I don't think I could be too much help.  :)

I agree with Shadow,leadership is much less important than getting the converter up to scratch,but is there really anything wrong with the converter,?,it worked for morroblivion and using the CK the land and objects can be edited,in fact adding objects etc does not give errors because lots of mods [esp files] have been made for morroblivion.

If that is true then the biggest problem is the CK,because we are in theory using the same method,so imo the CK should work for morrowind_sk.esm just like the CS does for morroblivion.

I know it would be a real mad longshot,but was wondering wether morrowind_sk.esm would actually load into the CS.?

I do not think that the CK was released when we [Anruin] released the converter because mods for skyrim were made with batch files back then.?

And steam being what it is [mainly a copy protection method],all the updates including to the CK make it very hard to keep anything up to date because some guys might have updated thier skyrim installs with steam and others might still be offline using the first release version.?

But Morrowind & Oblivion were not controlled in any way by steam,so they basically stayed the same.?

Clint,

I have been sifting through the error reports given by the CK,and there are way to many to list here,but If you can tell Anruin that we are getting CELL errors for each WRLD in most main towns,and also lots of OUT OF HANDLE [ARRAY] errors,then I think he will understand the problem.

But our main concern is not being able to edit in the CK even if morrowind_sk.esm is loaded alone,I can`t think of any reason for that,but maybe he can.?

One possible workaround, and this would totally bork any new steam updates, would be to use wrye mash and tes5edit to bash together morrowind_sk and skyrim.esm, letting skyrim take the precidence on overwrites. Idk if this is a complete and total dead end, would completly crash everything, but if people kept a copy of their origional skyrim.esm on file, would it solve the coping errors in worldspaces?

When I converted Oblivion to Skyrim, I wasn't given an option to add Skyrim dependency. I always get an error message when trying to convert Morroblivion(probably why we get array errors =p).

When we used only the CS,it kept it`s data in "chunks",but the CK uses Arrays like when using VC it saves an array file,which is then filled by 2 other files for each master or esp.

When we checkout data it is locked into the checkout array for that master,then if we checkin it copys that data into the file we are merging into,but if we try to check out or in any more data to that file,it tells us we have to close the CK and start a new session [protection in teams to stop 2 guys checking in the same data].

But the CK does almost the same thing,by changing anything that it is not in an array to random ID`s & FORMS,which leaves us with out of handle [or out of array] errors.An array is just a matrix that is filled up like memory chip arrays.

It`s real hi-tech but a PITA.

thermador

I agree with Ironman. Another must-have is a full set of 100%-working conversion tools.

King for a day, this is what I would do:

- Open source the code for all of the tools needed for Skyrim conversion

- Put the code on Google Code or Source Forge for collaborative code development

- Start a contest, a cash prize or something, who knows - to attract developers and finish building all of the tools

- End result: a one-click mod converter that can convert Morrowind and Oblivion ESP/ESM/assets to Skyrim format.

If such a thing could be built (and it can with enough work and the right people) that would be a total revolution for Elder Scrolls modding, and the person/team who did it would be a legend. 

Imagine being able to convert Morrowind mods to work with Skywind.  Or Oblivion mods to work with Skyblivion.  That is the kind of software tool that is truly needed.

Perhaps a kickstarter to build the whole thing up from scratch if he was unwilling to open source?

One could in theory just release a .exe that converts morrowind to skyrim client side. That would be a pretty simple way to require the person to own both games. Then just release all the voice acting and new meshes/textures as a mod.

Perhaps though there would be legal implications of the kick starter. On the otherhand, if we get away with it, paying people usually gets shit done faster and I for one would be willing to pay.

Just throwing ideas out there.

Correct its all about Meshes, Textures, due to the fact we can not publicly distribute and include any content from previous TES games. All you need is a converter that converts the TES3 & TES4 BSA's into TES5 BSA's for the new .ESM .ESP to use. Only dificulty is that all BSA content must be converted for 100%. Some stuff can be added / replaced on the fly to fill in some of the gaps.

@SB Right. Heck, even the conversion of TES assets is legal, it's just the conversion of Bethesda's assets that's not.

That could be a good idea, assuming Bethesda wouldn't have any problems with it.  Though the converter already is open source so we wouldn't have to start from scratch.  While I would love to see a converter directly from Tes III, that would essentially double our workload.  Most of our existing converter code would become useless, and the new converter wouldn't even work on Oblivion, so we'd need a separate converter for that.  We could possibly think about that when (if) we finish a complete Tes IV to Tes V converter.

Edit:  Of course, this is all still assuming that we have some really good C++ programmers just sitting around.  :)

You could just convert Morroblivion for Vvardenfell and TES3 for TR. Just have them in different worlds. That way no skywind work is lost. Keep in mind that TR is HUGE and unfinished.

Sjors Boomschors

Correct its all about Meshes, Textures, due to the fact we can not publicly distribute and include any content from previous TES games. All you need is a converter that converts the TES3 & TES4 BSA's into TES5 BSA's for the new .ESM .ESP to use. Only dificulty is that all BSA content must be converted for 100%. Some stuff can be added / replaced on the fly to fill in some of the gaps.