[RELz] Vivec Race WIP (Long Time No See)

I'm thinking that I might just end up using a combination of simultaneously enabling a reference static effect, such as the one used by Hermaeus Mora, and an invisible activator with collision which would surround the static effect. This way the collision-less effect would serve as the cinematic portion of the portal but the collision would act as the door.

Anyways, I have finished scripting the boss fight. Upon starting combat, two High level Dremora Valkynaz warlocks will be summoned. Each time Dregas' health falls a specified amount he will teleport and switch places with one of the summoned warlocks. I will post a video of the fight. However, I don't currently have any dialogue leading up to this fight, but I figured that would be the easy portion. Pretty soon I will only have the finalizing details and dialogue left.

I still need a voice actor for Vivec and Lord Dregas if anyone is interested.

Haha I wish this was at the point where I could release it as a functioning mod. But I haven't finished the quest itself. I have many details left to finalize. Here's the link to the video though:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ezf_P8Mw8uc&feature=youtube_gdata

Oh and they won't normally go and kill Vivec first :). I also have god mode on, cause normally Dregas kills my lvl 63 mage in two hits.

Hello, it's been a few days. So far I have just been finalizing the quest. I have finalized all the armors added by this mod (Ordinator, Daedric Lord, and Vivec). The Daedric Lord armor will only be playable as a complete set, meaning gloves, cuirass, and boots will all be equipped at once. In other words, they are not separated for individual wear like the vanilla daedric armor. This is due to basically my inability to completely adapt this armor from the oblivion body to the skyrim body.

The vivec armor now has fixed texture paths and should work, unlike the version I uploaded in my WIP release on the title page. As I have said before, Alienslof has only given me permission to use portions of her meshes in the male Vivec armor version, not the female. So I will release the female vivec armor looking very different from the male version. There will be no gold collar, and no gold choker. In place of these I will mostly likely just use a bra portion from the slave leia armor on Skyrimnexus. If anyone really wants to use the version I have made for the female that exactly resembles the male version, they will just have to pm me and I'll send it to them privately.

A weird bug in the skyrim creation kit is that scenes, or dialogues between multiple characters at once, will not advance if there is no audio for the scenes. So in order to do a full testing of these scenes, I need to have audio for them. Cadbury_Flake and RobertNeville have both "auditioned" for the role of Gaden and they were both simply amazing, exactly what I was looking for. And I'm sorry to keep them waiting on my decision, but they just made it very hard to pick one of them! I'm still not sure, but I'm hoping I will have a decision made by the time I'm done with the entirety of the mod, with the exception of dialogue.

I'm very pleased with how the boss fight has turned out with Dregas. The scene begins with the player walking towards Dregas and once the player gets close enough to Vivec, about 30 feet away, Dregas will rise from his seat and begin torturing Vivec with lighting, while he tells the player how much he enjoys torturing Vivec. Gaden, Vivec, Dregas and the player will then act out a scene in which Vivec pleads with the Player and Gaden to leave in order to prevent more deaths because of his decisions, and Dregas orders the player and Gaden to go. Obviously, the scene will end with Gaden and the player refusing to leave and combat with Dregas begins.

Upon killing Dregas, Vivec is freed from his shackles and the portal home opens. Here's where I have the dilemna. I'm not sure if I want the player to be forced between losing Vivec as a companion or Gaden. I would do this by having the portal home require a soul in order to allow passage. The player would have to choose between either sacrificing Vivec or Gaden and the NPC not sacrificed would become an available follower upon return to Skyrim.

Well that was a lot more writing than I thought I would do. As always, if you guys have suggestions, please share them with me. Hopefully I'm not just working on a mod to have it disappoint.

I was thinking about it, and it really makes the most sense for me to redo the ordinator armor so that the arms are completely armored. This will take some time, but I see now that the ordinators are a strict, military unit, probably one which wouldn't condone adventuring without a proper uniform. That being said, a more armored version of this armor will be the one included in the final release.

Rather than have the player choose between Gaden and Vivec, I have opted instead to have Vivec part with the player after he is freed from Azura's realm. He will basically tell the player that he will be too busy attempting to restore Vvardenfell to follow the Dragonborn, but that he promises to aid the dragonborn should they need it. This will add a once-a-day power to the player allowing them to summon Vivec which will probably last somewhere between 2 minutes and 5 minutes.

Upon returning to Skyrim, Gaden will tell the player that he will return to Morrowind to share the good news with the Indoril clan, and other clans, of Morrowind. Gaden will be gone for roughly 4 weeks game time. After this, the player will receive a letter from Gaden letting them know that he has returned to Skyrim and Gaden, and other members of the Indoril Clan, have opened shop in the New Gnisis Cornerclub. This gives me the opportunity to allow Gaden to sell Morrowind items to the player as well as potentially spruce up the New Gnisis Cornerclub.

Either that, or Gaden will simply become a potential follower. When not serving the player, he will protect his people in the Grey Quarter of Windhelm and sandbox around the New Gnisis Cornerclub. I'm not sure I want to add a store and everything yet, but we'll see what I have the energy for once I complete this mod; Skyrim is truly exhausting to mod for :)

I also did think about including the nerevarine in some way, but I'm not sure. Perhaps I could have the moon and star hidden within Azura's realm somewhere and upon picking it up the player would be teleported to a separate realm housing the nerevarine. But that's entirely separate.

I do know that once I complete this mod, I plan to have a stand alone project which will mimic the original morrowind quest to obtain the Daedric Crescent. You pick up the tel fyr amulet somewhere and it teleports you to a realm containing only Lord Dregas Volar. Once you kill him, you are teleported back to where you picked up the amulet and are awarded the Daedric Crescent. This would be just a cool, but brief flashback to Morrowind.

The quest is now finished. There remains only finalizations of the Ordinator Armor and Vivec Armor. I have no experience with collision, so the Vivec Armor will be using the default silver amulet model. The Ordinator armor will be using the Orchish Ground Models. The Daedric Lord Armor will be using the default Daedric Ground model. This is not really a priority fix, but I would love to have these use there own ground models.

I'm leaning towards making the ordinator armor not available to the player, simply because, due to the difficulties of converting Oblivion armor to Skyrim, the cuirass portion leaves parts of the player mesh blank. In order to overcome this, the Daedric Armor and Ordinator Armor both consist of one piece which includes the Cuirass and Boots. Otherwise, the cuirass would leave portions of the player's legs blank.

The Ordinator armor has a weird texture glitch. The cloth portions of the armor appear very odd in certain game lights. Parts of the armor are illuminated that shouldn't be illuminated and vice-versa. Here's a screenshot:

[External image]

The Daedric Crescent Mesh I am using also could use some drastic retexturing. I'll have to give it an overall before release. I wouldn't want one of the quest rewards to not live up to it's mythic hype :).

And finally, there is the topic of dialogue. This quest has a little over 80 lines of dialogue. Most of this is Gaden. I had two very nice auditions and I'm sorry to have put off my decision so long. But I talked it over with a few people and the person I wish to voice Gaden is Cadbury_Flake. Robert's recordings were of great quality too but they simply weren't the style of voice I was looking for. Immediately I could tell that Cadbury's voice captured the exact tone of the Morrowind Dunmer that I wished for Gaden to have. Thank you so much to you both for the wonderful recordings. I'm sad that it came down to having to choose just one of you.

Thanks for the support!

Just an update. In waiting for the voiced dialogue recordings, I have jsut started adding more detail to the cells of Azura's plane. I am working on a very limited garden where the player could potentially be solving a riddle to gain entrance to Vivec's prison or just meet up with some winged twilights for a quick fight. Anyways, here's a WIP shot of it.

[External image]

No screenshots right now, I'm still waiting on the voiced dialogue for Gaden Indoril, the ordinator and quest giver for this mod. As of right now here's a todo list:

-finish Winged Twilight Textures

-Script the reward for this quest (it's currently a reference to the Staff of Chaos, a future mod project I would like to work on. If I can figure out how to do it, I will have the reward cast some sort of mass hysteria spell when dropped from the player's inventory, mostly just for fun)

-Correct lighting problem on Ordinator armor (the screenshots I have posted above show the problem I am talking about, I really have no clue what is causing this right now.)

-Add armored arms to the Ordinator armor

-Add collision boxes where needed in Moon Shadow Garden

-Add unique world map for Moon Shadow

-Import Ordinator Shield

-Create Suitable portal into Moonshadow

-Fix transition from Moonshadow Garden to Vivec's holding place

-Disable Vivec and Dregas after leaving Moonshadow

-Add location to MoonShadow Map and create local maps for Moonshadow gardens and vivec's holding Place

-Set up proper doors for entering Vivec's holding place

Also, while attempting to sort some of this out, it seems I have somehow caused the .esp for this mod to cause crashes upon loading certain vital cells. I will be working on a solution, but if there is none, then this mod will have to be reworked from scratch I think.

Just an update for the day, using Tessnip I have fixed the major issue of this .esp causing crashes. I accidentally changed some location data for the whole of skyrim, which royally screwed up my game. Anyways, thank god for Tessnip. The garden portion of Moonshadow is still in the works and here's a winged twilight screenshot for you guys.

[External image]

The texture still needs a lot of work, but the basics are there, mostly as a placeholder.

In other good news, Cadbury has sent news that he has finished some of the misc. dialogue for Gaden Indoril and I am looking forward to hearing it.

On a less than good note, it is proving very difficult to get skyrim to use a custom worldmap for a Moonshadow, but I have one made.

Here's a cool update for the day, Cadbury flake has sent me a ton of misc. dialogue for Gaden and it all sounds great, even better than I hoped for. I have put together a little video of some of the dialogue for anyone who wants to check it out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsPcgcN0a-c&feature=youtube_gdata

Let me start with the fact that I still need voice actors for Vivec and Lord Dregas Volar!!! This is essential before a release.

I have begun forming the Morrowind-style shop in the New Gnisis Cornerclub. As of today, I am now working to convert additional armors to Skyrim, including the bonemold, the great house shields, and perhaps some additional armors if I get bored. But we will see.

Potentially screenshots to come today.

So far the bonemold armor is proving challenging in the most frustrating ways. I have the armor shaped and morphed properly. However, it causes instant crashes upon loading the game. This will have to be a project for tomorrow, but for now I have no idea what the cause of these crashes are. I will upload the file for anyone who wishes to take a look at them and see if they can discern why they would be causing instant crashes.

http://www.mediafire.com/?0w7cqdvk76ewl3e (This is for the light, male body)

http://www.mediafire.com/?ombzcvnaccd1qg1 (This is the heavy, male body)

Well, I'm really not experienced at all. I can hardly make a triangle. But I can manipulate what others have so wonderfully made. Anyways, I have figured out what the problem was. There was an object that I couldn't see because it was basically inside of the armor that I wasn't skinning because I didn't know it was there. So skyrim was crashing because it was skinned to oblivion bones that don't exist as far as it's concerned. So here's a picture of the armor imported in game, for now it is untextured. But at least it's there! There are some major visual issues with the armor as of right now, other than lacking textures. For instance, many of the armor pieces look very odd in game because they are skinned to bones which simply distort them horribly. But this shouldn't be too difficult to fix. For now, the hard part is done.Oh and ignore the indoril boots on Gaden, they are just there for laziness reasons.

[External image]

Well, I havne't tried this yet, but I have read that a lot of these unwanted lighting problems comes from having a shader flag on for using vertex colors when the actual mesh does not have vertex colors. Other than that, it likely has to do with the normal map or the the specular map. Also, try adding some transparency to your normal map as skyrim uses a different method for rendering these I guess.

I'm not clear on this, but I think that distinction has to do with whether you are using an object space normal map or just a plain normal map. For something like cloth, I think a standard normal map is more appropriate. But all of these issues are still being figured out. It's so frustrating working on modding for a game that not too much has been figured out about yet.

Well today I fixed the skinning problems with the bonemold armor. However, I have run into a very peculiar texture bug. The Uv maps are fine, the texture sources seem to be properly linked and so do the shaders, as well as the emmissive and specular lighting. However, for some reason, the armor mesh refuses to properly show the textures. Instead, they appear as solid colors on the mesh with no obvious cause. This will most likely be a problem for tomorrow, but it's a very tedious process, hopefully some good news tomorrow.

Okay, I have fixed this random solic color bug. Some of the random properties under the bslightingshaderproperty were wrong. Anyways, it now appears fairly normal. The armor still needs some skinning work, specifically in the scarf area and in the waist area, where the pants show through the cuirass. But here's a screenshot of the WIP armor in game, on Gaden of course.

[External image]

I agree, the normal map is not completely rendering. I'm still not used to Skryim normal maps, so this could take some time to fix. Today I managed to fix a lot of the skinning-related issues with the Armun-An bonemold armor. This includes leveling out the pauldrons; they are now parallel to the shoulders, rather than slanted so awkwardly. There is still some distorting and clipping when swinging weapons, but I don't think I'll be able to really do anything about this. Anyways, I have also converted the Chuzei bonemold helm, which renders pretty well. Here's a screenshot for the day.

[External image]

As for the scarf portion, what seems to be the issue? I am aware of the noticable mesh seam in the middle of the scarf, but as for the texture I think it looks alright.

Haven't updated in awhile so here it goes.

I have nearly completed the Armun-An Bonemold armor. However, there is a slight dilemna. The mesh looks perfect in game and I'm very pleased with it, but I failed to notice that Ghogiel does not allow for his armor resources to be converted to Skyrim. This could mean that I can't use this converted armor in my mod at all. Which is very dissapointing :(. But I will request permission from him, and hopefully he says yes.

Just to clarify, you mean that they stay in place and don't move with the hand bones?

As another update, I have pm'ed Ghogiel requesting his permission to use the converted assets of his armor in my mod. I really hope he says yes because otherwise I won't be able to include any of these conversions. But at the very least, these armors could hopefully still someday be used in a morroblivion conversion to skyrim.

Thanks Gidz89! Here's a screenshot of some additional work. As you can see, I have also converted the Armun-An Cuirass, the Gah-Hulan Cuirass, the Redoran Watchman helm, the Telvanni Cephalapod helm, the Bonemold boots. Not in this picture is the converted Bonemold bracers as I still have to add hands to them.

Since the first screenshot of the bonemold armor, I have reskinned a lot of it to fix most of the mesh distortion. I have also adjusted the pauldrons so that they appear less odd.

[External image]

Good news everybody, I have heard back from Ghogiel and he has given me full permission to use his assets in Skyrim. These conversions will be used!

Lots of updates for the day! But here's a compilation shot of the armor I have completed so far. Missing from this shot is the Redoran Watchman helm. It's kind of hard to see, but the bracers are now fully working with male and female models. Oh, and the Bonemold tower shield is complete :)

[External image]