Development Drop-box and Discussion

We have the thread "Morrowind to Skyrim Action Plan?", which is quite comprehensive, but I'm not sure how it relates to where things are at the moment, given the new(ish) master and such things. I feel that with trying to get a handle on recruitment and where areas of work can be done that this needs to be reviewed. Maybe if people could leave a list of what they are working on and what needs to be worked on, then we can collate just where we have gaps in where we need help.

We seem to have a number of people who have not many skills that want to help. Do we need to manually edit the NPCs, to get them to look like Morrowind equivalents? Maybe this is where some of these people could be put onto.

Those with Creation Kit skills. Nav-meshing, general world editing, what?

Those with tool knowledge (TES5Edit, scripting, etc), can figure out where they can help relatively quickly, so not worried about this area. Same goes for moddlers who want to help out, they can just work on what they want really.

We do not have the conversion tool yet. I'm hoping it will be done soon.

Well just about everything can be worked on really. The first step is going to be sourcing resource models already available and seeing how they measure up and which ones would be best to use.

I've converted the "Telvanni Mesh Improvement by Champion of Hircine" and looks better. A bit too smooth looking for my taste as the end result. I think some work could be done on making it a bit more organic (it needs bumps, more than just the normal textures).

We are looking at Sheogard resources which will cover a major section for architecture, but still they can be worked on further. They were made for oblivion and there is a chance that we can up the quality more.

There is also a major overhaul in the Morrowind Graphics and Sound Overhaul 3.0, which has a good selection for better quality models.

Its probably a case that once we have established what we are going to use within all these resources then we can work out what needs to be done. I don't think there is much point in start working on new meshes or textures, when the work is already out there. At least as a good base. Once we have an idea of these though, then will come the important part of UV mapping the textures potentially better and doing some improvements on the shape of the meshes

If you want to start on something now, then I think the Telvanni architecture is the one. I think I've resourced the best ones out there, so have a handle on what the final "base" ones we can use. Interested?

Just altering what we have already. These will be in the form of selecting between JonSatriani's Telvanni tileset, which is an Oblivion modders resource, so will need converting. Also Telvanni Mesh Improvement by Champion of Hircine, which I have already converted. Any other models that fill the Telvanni set will be from Morrowind Graphics and Sound Overhaul 3.0.

If you are still working on something else, then give me a few days and I'll package up a set of these models side-by-side, so you have a selection and a feel for which ones to choose as your base ones. But in my opinion for the best looking ones use JonSatriani, and also use these as inspiration for the rest. Unfortunately he has not done the whole set, hence the work.

If you are comfortably with converting Oblivion to Skyrim models then there are 34 in JonSatriani's Telvanni tileset for exteriors. I'd just like to focus on exteriors first.

I've not converted from Oblivion to Skyrim, but would it really take that long!?!

Umm the Moonpath stuff does look nice. Its never too late for anything, but it would probably require a lot of land texture editing to get the cliff surfaces textured appropriately. Unfortunately just swapping one texture for another is probably not going to get the results you would see in Moonpath.

Smerk10, we should wait for Dragonborn DLC to be released as this may have lots of Telvanni stuff. I've seen a screen shot of the inside of a Telvanni building.

But to get a handle on what is available resource wise so far within the modding community, here is a download of the models: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B1vwmz6hbHGPX1NkS1o1aUF6M28/edit

It has Skywind present set, Champions of Hircines versions and also Morrowind Graphics and Sound Overhaul 3.0. I have put them side-by-side in with suffixes to identify which set they come from. I have also included JonSatriani's Telvanni tileset, however this one is Oblivion meshes and doesn't actually match up with Morrowinds original set, meaning that in order to get them to fit and work would require more effort. However they are good to look at for inspiration and not to say that they can't be used. Often models stand alone by themselves, so "fitting" together not so much of a problem. I have converted the meshes for Skyrim, but have not put in any collisions. Too lazy and waiting for the tool to be finished first. I have not converted JonSatriani Oblivion ones.

I have also included the textures that come with each set so you can compare and decide which you think would look the best.

Here is a model that I whipped up today to give you an idea of what we are expecting.

Kidding! This was done by an intern at Zenimax for a Skyrim mod for a university course. Obviously not game playable (yet, bring on the future), but gives the idea of what I mean by more organic rather than pure smooth surfaces. The mod has not been released btw, otherwise yeah, we would use what ever they had with permission.

You might as well get a handle on what the models are now.  Dragonborn is out Feb 5th, so not long away.

The Guar is originally from the Skyrim Monster Mod. It also has a Durzog in that pack as well. Both of them are excellent and will more than likely be used.

The texture paths for Weapons are not right at the moment, and the NifTexture tool is not able to read in the weapon type meshes to correct them. It would need some work (coding) before it was able to convert them for new textures paths. So the weapons will remain incorrect until either the tool can accommodated the formatting of weapon meshes, or somebody manually edits them. There 182 of them. I personally don't want to do it by hand, I've had enough of changing texture paths :-P

For release 0.6 can we link files that should be included here please? There is a scramble to find out who has what?

Some meshes/textures that have already been merged with the master, but need to be included in our models packs:

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B1vwmz6hbHGPUV9ONEN1c0JUOGM/edit?usp=sharing

I would Mehh, but that filedropper website just never works for me! Hopefully somebody else tests it, but I'm sure it can just be included, get the masses to test :)

Here is a spreadsheet of things being released for 0.6

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AubmRhWYZsEbdDFrY1JoSDJRT0ZPaUplRUFjeUhiNXc#gid=0

Creation Kit Magic!!

If you have never used Versioning Control in the Creation Kit ( http://www.creationkit.com/Version_control ), well it seems to have the magical ability to handle loading up the full Skyrim.esm and Skywind.esm at the same time! This has been a problem for us in the past where we have used a stripped version of the Skyrim.esm to be able to load up our master.

However if you spend about 20 minutes going through the setup, you will be able to not have to "swap" Skyrim.esm, plus the advantage that you can view both worlds :)