Level Design - Skywind #1

This is a big call out for all those that have any Level Design experience. Anybody that has played around with the landscapes, town or interiors in the Creation Kit is going to be of much help.

Our problem is that we have an environment that was created with an automated converter tool. Although it has set up the game world with the original models, the translation has not faired well with both the land texture tiling and also the general look of the sparse object placements. A huge percentage of the Morrowind world is the height map with little in the way to break it up.

Please download the latest release 0.6.0 that has dirt-cliffs, mountains and rocks taken from Skyrim but altered with appropriate textures for every given area (region).

This will be the base models in which all landscape level design will be done from.
I have also added ztrees rock resources, which has 13 new rocks.

You will be able to find all these new models under "static\morrowind\landscape\dirtcliffs", "static\morrowind\landscape\mountains" and "static\morrowind\landscape\rocks". Each is prefixed according to area; 0AI, 0AL, 0AC, 0BC, 0GL, 0RM, 0WG.

The spreadsheet below is used to record what cells are being edited and if a person wants to book a number of cells so that they can work on them. These are the grayed cells. Light grayed cells are blanket changed cells; meaning they are open to further editing. Darker grey cells are areas that are being specifically edited by a person or team. Please post on this thread which area you are likely to work on.

CLAIMS ON AREAS WORKED ON - BE IN QUICK!!

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Alvwmz6hbHGPdGZib2ZTLXh1S195WWRSaE1XZUtfTGc#gid=0

Also specify if you are going to do blanket type changes, that are open for other people to come and add more detail to, or you would rather just do the entire start to finish of level design. For example somebody might do lots of rocks changes to areas, but leave flora, clutter, animals open for somebody else add.

So far the team for Level Design includes:

Anthelius : selected cells in Bitter Coast/Ascadian Isles and Grazelands/Red Mountain

Eloth : Balmora, (shulk egg mine and up to caldera), moving up the southern end of West Gash

Mireneye : Sadrith Mora, Wolverine Hall (not been present for a while)

SqallyDaBeanz : Moglar Amur

Sheo : Khuul

JDT001 : Gnisis

Happychappy: Seyda Neen to Vivec

Brent333: Southeastern Azura Coast

Ravanna : Environment Artist and Moddler

Veltoss : Pelegraid (not been present for a while)

Because of the vast vista differences of Morrowind it would be better to talk about improvements also for regions:
Ascadian Isles — A fertile agricultural region of islands and peninsulas in southernmost Vvardenfell.
Ashlands — A forsaken ash desert in the areas surrounding Red Mountain.
Azura's Coast — A mostly uninhabited region of rocky islands and peninsulas on Vvardenfell's eastern coast.
Bitter Coast — A swampy and poor region along Vvardenfell's west coast.
Grazelands — The pastures in northeastern Vvardenfell.
Molag Amur — A region of volcanic rock and lava pools in the southeastern interior of Vvardenfell.
Red Mountain — The volcanic mountain dominating central Vvardenfell which is encircled by the Ghostfence.
Sheogorad — A wild region of islands and peninsulas surrounding Sheogorad Island off Vvardenfell's northern coast.
West Gash — A rocky, highland region in western Vvardenfell that is rich in minerals.

Last edited by grumpycat on 15 Mar 2014 - 04:03.

Morrowind has its own flora

Morrowind has its own flora analogous to cat-tails and water lillies, but different. These could (assuming we get permission) be used as a base-line off of which to design our draggletails, etc. But we would lose a bit of authenticity if we were to use real-world plants on the alien island of Vvardenfell. :)

can i do tham maping?

I see the blight storm

I see the blight storm arising.
I see trouble on the way.
I see earthquakes and lightning.
I see bad times today.

Don't go around tonight,
Well, it's bound to take your life,
There's a blight storm on the rise.
I hear hurricanes ablowing.
I know the end is coming soon.
I fear rivers over flowing.
I hear the voice of rage and ruin.

All right!
Hope you got your things together.
Hope you are quite prepared to die.
Looks like we're in for nasty weather.
One eye is taken for an eye.

This is one of the few times

This is one of the few times where they saying "you don't want to make a mountain out of a mole hill" is not true.

I really want to get lore right of Red Mountain/Vardenfell as being the highest in Tamriel.

So a proposal is to raise the mountain by moving the crater and subsequently the residence of Dagoth-Ur to a height of about 30000 (currently about 15000). High Hrothgar in Skyrim is about 40,000, but without completely redoing the the entire Red Mountain region this would not be impossible to outmatch this height. The idea is just to get it vaguely more like a big volcano.

The path up to the top would have to be a extreme track around steep cliffs. I feel as this is end of game stuff anyway that this just adds to the general build up of reaching a climax to the story (oh eh).

Would try minimize work by not moving any other locations. So Kogoruhn, Endusal, Tureynulal, Mamaea, Odrosal, Vemynal all remain in same spots.

This would be the general concept.

Was that red cloud always

Was that red cloud always around turning mountain? First time I've seen it and may I just say that it is freaking awesome also I'm all for making the mountain taller if you can do it in a way that looks natural and is still climbable

No the red clouds are new.

No the red clouds are new. I'm doing some changes to the blight storm environment and weather. There is now a massive amount of lightning in the storm, which really adds to the atmosphere (literally) beyond the Ghostgate.

The only thing is that I also want to add lightning to the distant clouds as well, but unsure of how to do this.

These are photos from real volcanoes. Volcanic lightning is truly one of lifes most amazing spectacles.

As far as the distant clouds

As far as the distant clouds go, there is now a distant clouds mod on nexus, prehaps you could ask the author as to how he has the objects spawn, and use the clouds with randomized or constantly shifting "sources" of lighting, that or model randomly spawning lighting directly into the model animation? sounds dumb but just an idea.

The clouds above are using

The clouds above are using that skyrim mod :)

Lightning is a magical effect, so its not quite as easy as just adding the effect into the world. You need some sort of activation. I have my doubts you cn get the effect to show up at any distance as well...but if anybody knows how to trigger magical effects at a certain location I'd love to hear about it.

Holy crap that looks cool!

Unless white outline is fixed

Unless white outline is fixed for distant clouds, I prefer the game without them.

We don't have any LOD now in Skywind, so the bug is almost invisible (only a single outline in your second screenshot). But that will change drastically in future.

Actually when you are in the

Actually when you are in the clouds, anything that is touching them has a white outline, so basically everything :-P There will be a fix in the pipeline for sure.

Ok so we have the option of making the red mountain officially the highest in Tamriel 43000 (i.e. higher than High Hrothgar for skyrim engine comparison), and still maintain minimal impact to the content within the ghostgate.

Essentially the difference (well besides the fact there is a massive mountain peak), is the paths that lead between locations would either need to be tunnels or part of the path that leads up to Dagoth-Ur crater. Of course the a new path that leads up to the crater would have to be very steep and winding, think Throat of the World path, but probably winding around the outside rather than zig-zagging.

Red line is the base of the new mountain peak and the green lines are paths leading to locations. My suggestion would be to leave them as is but to make them open large tunnels. So this wouldn't change any content, except that Dagoth-Ur is moved and a new winding path to the top. Of course it would mean sanctuary from Cliffracers from above, but the path leading up to the top would be more scary with coming across their nests!!

I'm interested if people are a yah or nay to this idea. I would do all the work as this is my little (big) obsession.

Just a little reminder of how the mountain is portrayed in Dragonborn...

Alright, another option, and

Alright, another option, and probably the one most people would agree on...because I know you're a conservative bunch ;-) ...is to have a peak that is around 36000, so not higher than High Hrothgar, but getting very close. But this one will leave most of the paths intact between locations, meaning very little changes to the content.

I've made the blight storm smaller to give larger perspective to the mountain

This is how it is at the moment...pancake city...

Also this is kind of what to expect within the ghostgate. The bight storm really prevents you from seeing too far ahead, so the peak remains a mystery

I'm for extreme changes,

I'm for extreme changes, because why not?

I also won't mind if other landscaping guys will change landscape shape too instead of only placing rocks/trees.

Let me translate a comment from russian forum regarding recent AI changes which I fully agree with:

"This is not Morrowind - it is something different. And that different is awesome!"

The red clouds around the red

The red clouds around the red mountain are really cool. Hope the white outline problem will get fixed some day. Also I like your idea to make the mountain really huge. That's how it is supposed to be.

I'm definitely down with

I'm definitely down with taller! The bigger and more foreboding the better!

This is great work you are

This is great work you are doing happychappy

I say go with the super-tall version, make it the real deal. The red clouds look awesome too.

Agree with Thermador and

Agree with Thermador and everyone else, more creative freedom that sticks within lore bounds can only help the project and prevent burnouts at the same time :) So go as high as you can, the render distance is the limit!

PS, once the design is finalized, an optional plugin for dragonborn with the mountain looking similar to its' redesigned morrowind appearance would be cool as well :D

Creativity is 75% of what

Creativity is 75% of what makes a Bethesda RPG good. Since what's essentially being done here is the making of almost an entire game from scratch I think that we need to take a page from Bethesda's book and allow as much creative freedom as possible in the level design process. Make the game stand out from Morrowind in more ways than better models and textures.

"This is not Morrowind - it

"This is not Morrowind - it is something different. And that different is awesome!"

I love that quote, I think we should use it on the home page :)

I also like a comment by a user who said something like "this is Morrowind, but seen through the eyes of Skyrim".

The other great thing with the hard work that people are putting in, is that we are no longer just a port. It really is "Skywind", not Morrowind in the Skyrim engine. Bethesda would have a hard time arguing that this is not a bona-fide mod anymore.

Lore wise the Dargoth-Ur makes the Blight Storm emanate from the crater of the volcano, so I'm not sure what to do with that so that it doesn't cover the whole peak, which isn't good. i.e. you don't even know its a mountain. I'm thinking about a small cloud from the top and try and do some very opaque clouds so that it looks like it settles to the level around the Ghostfence.

http://zeldawiki.org/File:Dea

http://zeldawiki.org/File:Death_Mountain_OoT.png

Maybe something like Death Mountain from Zelda?

clouds like you had before,

clouds like you had before, the just add cloud billowing out the crater like the volcano is smoking but really just spewing blight

Maybe along these

Maybe along these lines...

But I want the clouds to be darker and more dense, looks too wispy and like puffs of smoke rather than a raging storm. Hard to get opacity and foreboding at the same time.

I think if we can get more like a tornado effect with the clouds then can add denseness to it, and allows the underlining surface of the mountain to be more visible through appearing and disappearing gaps.

Ok I've managed to get a

Ok I've managed to get a tornado cloud surrounding the peak, but you need to see it game to get the idea. Its doing about 1 revolution every 2 seconds so I need to slow it down a bit.

I have to come up with something else for the ground level storm as the stagnant clouds don't look right anymore, plus with so many alpha layers getting crossed over it causes chaos with rendering. Having the tornado clouds at ground level isn't quite right either.

happychappy wrote: "This is

happychappy

"This is not Morrowind - it is something different. And that different is awesome!"

I love that quote, I think we should use it on the home page :)

I also like a comment by a user who said something like "this is Morrowind, but seen through the eyes of Skyrim".

The other great thing with the hard work that people are putting in, is that we are no longer just a port. It really is "Skywind", not Morrowind in the Skyrim engine. Bethesda would have a hard time arguing that this is not a bona-fide mod anymore.

To be honest I think the idea of skywind being its own is a awesome idea, but I really think we should try to radiate the fill of the original morrowind in some way since that is sorta the game that where trying to bring into the skyrim engine and since where all really doing it to play morrowind with better graphical quality and production quality.

I'm most definantly am not saying that we should be ristricted by morrowind graphical structure or idea's since they where restricted on there own but we should aim for the gameplay to fill somewhat reminiscent of morrowind if you know what i mean.

[edit] just my opinion though, and I'm not refering to your mountain blight storm Happychappy, I think that it looks way awesome and should be here to stay! :)

happychappy wrote: Ok I've

happychappy
Ok I've managed to get a tornado cloud surrounding the peak, but you need to see it game to get the idea. Its doing about 1 revolution every 2 seconds so I need to slow it down a bit.

This looks awesome! Very cool.

I love what I see here : )

I know i was against the

I know i was against the balamora expansion and my reason why simply "we want to recreate morrowind not mod the shit out of it". I support makeing the volcaino bigger though. As long as you dont mess up the areas and totaly move things around to the point its unrecginisable as something from the origonal game.

In morrowind you had no distant land so you couldn't see the volcano so it would feel bigger than it really was. However now that you can see it... well its pretty damn small.

If this mod is based around recreating morrowind then why not recreate the feeling like you are climbing a giant ass volcano for the climatic showdown at the end of the game.

I support this idea just as long as the areas are not altered too drastically. (ok terrain editing is fine and hell adding rocks and stuff but don't go adding a crap ton of buildings and super cities)

Bitter Coast more swampy,

Bitter Coast more swampy, creepy and cold...getting closer to Ravanna concept art

<3 bitter coast is coming

<3 bitter coast is coming alive

What's the framerate like?

Wow, those screenshots are so

Wow, those screenshots are so awesome/creepy (in a good way) Happychappy!

A month late in pointing this

A month late in pointing this out, but still. Keep in mind that in Dragonborn, Red Mountain's had almost 200 years of non-stop ash buildup which is why it's so big. Back in TES3, it was of course much lower. Don't go by how it looks in Dragonborn, go by the original TES3 version, that way it doesn't mess up any lore either way.

EDIT: And having said that, i know Red Mountain's supposed to be bigger, but there's some discrepancy in the lore. Parts say the Throat is second to Red Mountain, but others say the Throat's now the biggest. So either they're making a specific distinction between "mountain" and "volcano", or it's a retcon, i don't know.

The Pocket Guide to the

The Pocket Guide to the Empire says

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Pocket_Guide_to_the_Empire,_1st_Edition/Skyrim

"This is the highest mountain in Skyrim, and the highest in Tamriel aside from Vvanderfell in Morrowind."

We need to make this mountain

We need to make this mountain huge. It needs to look mysterious, foreboding, and evil! Lets make this awesome!

Shushine wrote: The Pocket

Shushine
The Pocket Guide to the Empire says

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Pocket_Guide_to_the_Empire,_1st_Edition/Skyrim

"This is the highest mountain in Skyrim, and the highest in Tamriel aside from Vvanderfell in Morrowind."

probely maens like hawai is the bigest mountain on earth not MT Everest because the sea bodem is where u start

also there was already talk about this and red mountian was mady higher than it origenel was wasnt it?

alexanderb wrote: We need to

alexanderb
We need to make this mountain huge. It needs to look mysterious, foreboding, and evil! Lets make this awesome!

But can you keep the overall positioning the environment to be as close as possible to tes3? Cause from what i recall a lot of quests depend on accurate position of rocks, cliffs and other way points.

Kinda late but still: Would

Kinda late but still:

Would tunnels work going threw a semi-active valcano? I mean wouldn't there be issue with the lava flowing threw them? unless they went along the outer part of it I guess.... I know im over thinking things. :P but I just thought it would be worth pointing out.

Shushine wrote: The Pocket

Shushine
The Pocket Guide to the Empire says

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Pocket_Guide_to_the_Empire,_1st_Edition/Skyrim

"This is the highest mountain in Skyrim, and the highest in Tamriel aside from Vvanderfell in Morrowind."

I already read that, yet one of Skyrim's loading screens says the Throat's the highest.

I wonder if it is actually a distinction, not between mountain and volcano, but biggest and tallest. The Throat might be the tallest, whereas Red Mountain might be much wider and so is the biggest in that regard.

Or, keep in mind that book's from 2E 864, whereas TES3 takes place in 3E 427, a good 459 years later. It could be Red Mountain had gone down by then, the constant winds eroding it faster than the ash could cover. Was only after Red Year that it was putting out enough stuff to make it gain height again.

Ok doesn't really matter

Ok doesn't really matter which is officially "highest". They both stand as the 2 biggest. The idea being that we would like to get that recognized in some way as with both provinces of Skyrim and Morrowind to switch between its inevitable that gamers make visual comparisons.

In Dragonborn it's clearly a giant. Mountains get their height from the earth being raised. No amount of wind blasting and/or ash forming in a thousand year period is going to change this dramatically. If its huge now, its huge back in 3rd era. The only real thing that could effect a dramatic change is if it blew its top, which apparently it didn't.

The only real draw back is getting it as big as the area will allow, with as little work as possible.

Would tunnels work going threw a semi-active valcano? I mean wouldn't there be issue with the lava flowing threw them? unless they went along the outer part of it I guess.... I know im over thinking things. but I just thought it would be worth pointing out.

Tunnels going through a mountain is probably not the most accurate of real world scenarios, but neither is a mystical forcefield fence that holds in an artificially made storm which alters the anatomy and mind of creatures, houses grown from fungi, meteors hovering in the sky...run with me here.

Tunnels going through a

[/quote]

well like i said im probably over thinking things. :P

however even if elder scrolls is a fantasy game, with very unreal elements, it's the details that really bring you into it.

Sure here is a diagram of a

Sure here is a diagram of a volcano. You actually see the conduit is a relatively small funnel to the crater.

From my proposal the paths in green lead between locations and with Dagoth Ur location moved higher its possible to have it so that paths and conduit are not too close.

happychappy wrote: Sure here

happychappy
Sure here is a diagram of a volcano. You actually see the conduit is a relatively small funnel to the crater.

From my proposal the paths in green lead between locations and with Dagoth Ur location moved higher its possible to have it so that paths and conduit are not too close.

lol well that answers my original question then. YAY SCIENCE!!!

...so I know i said it

...so I know i said it doesn't matter which is highest, but...

The highest mountain in all of Tamriel is Skyrim's Throat of the World. The reclusive Greybeards live near the top, in the ancient monastery of High Hrothgar.

At the center of the Dunmer province of Morrowind lies the Red Mountain, the largest volcano in all of Tamriel.

Because of the semantic on Mountain versus Volcano both are exclusive when comparing these statements to decipher which is taller.

Going to have to go to the pocket guide then for the deal breaker

"This is the highest mountain in Skyrim, and the highest in Tamriel aside from Vvanderfell in Morrowind."

However because basically the restrictions of locations within the Red Mountain I cannot get it to be physically taller than Throat of the World so doesn't matter. The idea is that they are very close to the same sizes.

The land of Skyrim is the most rugged on the continent, containing four of the five highest peaks in Tamriel (see Places of Note: Throat of the World).

I just want the Red Mountain to seem as one of these highest peaks.

Well I don't know how the

Well I don't know how the mountain didn't blow its top off. Thats usually why they explode. Is there anything that says it didn't I'm actually sorta intrested in how it exploded now.

i'm all for the taller

i'm all for the taller mountain, with both winding paths outside and tunnel inside, bit like the mount doom of lotr.

me and eloth are fighting over the sculpting of red mountain soon, well at some time. I can also try modelling a static pyroclastic fume from the centre, like dragonborn lod distance model, that spirals upwards.

will finish baar dur 1st.

me and eloth are fighting

me and eloth are fighting over the sculpting of red mountain soon, well at some time. I can also try modelling a static pyroclastic fume from the centre, like dragonborn lod distance model, that spirals upwards.

Fantastic I was thinking that the top of the red mountain could be just one model, especially after I saw your baar dur, and thought by far the easiest way to get a path to the top is to sculpt it, rather than do it in the creation kit via placing lots of models!

So the base of this peak will be done to maximum the width of it, to make it as high as possible.

Again from this diagram, the red line would be the base, to what I think is the best way to not have to move locations. As far as as the ruins at the top of the crater, we either need to map the heightmap so that we can duplicate it exactly, or actually just remodel the ruins to whatever we want.

modelling a static pyroclastic fume from the centre, like dragonborn lod distance model, that spirals upwards.

Great, at the moment the dragonborn plume is a flat mesh, so can only be viewed at one angle. If we do a cylindrical mesh or meshes and apply the same effect then we could be onto a winner. The important thing to note is that particle effects do not work at any great distances, so we cant get too cute with trying to make real smoke coming out. The dragonborn one is simply a sliding image, the same as say rivers and waterfalls. The thing with this is that up close it very obviously doesn't look real. So obviously we would need to look at our LOD for various distances. The close one can be particle smoke.

We could also try a billboard model but that means it would be perfectly symmetrical, which may or may not look good.

Well I don't know how the

Well I don't know how the mountain didn't blow its top off. Thats usually why they explode. Is there anything that says it didn't I'm actually sorta intrested in how it exploded now.

Well I'm just going by the look of the mountain in Dragonborn, but thats not to say it didn't blow off some of the top, just not much as you can see.

Having had another look at

Having had another look at the TES3 Red Mountain, i'm fine with it being bigger, just not Dragonborn-sized since that is post-eruption and 200 years of ash buildup after all, two things that probably would've made it bigger after TES3.

I really do not like the

I really do not like the texture of Morrowind, is that they are repeated and it is very noticeable. We need a more uniform texture that did not seem that one piece of landscape is repeated a million times.

In Skyrim this is not, and we would like to ensure that this project also worked on the textures of the landscape. In general, I run about in version 0.8, very pleased with what has been done. Thanks to those who are working on this project, this is an old dream))

Hi, I asked before what I

Hi, I asked before what I could do to help but I got bogged down in work and couldn't spare any time for this project. I have been following it but now I have a bit of time to work on this and would love to do some landscaping (just making some of the landscape look a little nicer) so if anyone could direct me to any landscaping to do that would be great!

Thanks :).

EDIT: No worries, eloth has given me a job doing AI packages in Dagon Fel.