Title pending: Other possibilities: "The Blight" "Dangers of the Blight" "Fear The Blight" "The Hills Have Blight"...

So, I've been looking through the concept art again and reading through the old develeper posts at TIL... drooling over some of the things I saw/read, wishing they would have made it into the game. Mainly I was thinking about the whole theme of Vvardenfell being a wasteland, dangerous. Honestly nothing seems less dangerous to me than green grass just off the slopes of a tainted mountain and the ability to stand fearlessly in a howling blight-wind, knowing you'll be just fine. So I decided, being a modder, that I should do something about it.

So here's my plan I jotted down at the time of it's inception. After you read it, I'll show you what I actually HAVE done about it so far. And ask for additional ideas.



Yep, so that's what I thought of on the spot. I still want more suggestion, what would make the Ashlands, Red Mountain, Molag Amur; truly bad ass? I want you to soil yourself when a quest-giver asks you to deliver booze to a mine in the middle of a hell-storm!! Ahem. Anyway.

So what I've been working on currently are a few new outfits, I've mainly expanded on the sets of bonemold (thanks to Saint_Jiub for a few of the cuirass) to be more accommodating for travelling in Blighted areas. So far I haven't used too many resources aside from some goggles. There is a lot more than what I'm showing you here (like thirty helmet variations), but I felt that this was representative of what I've done. What other types of gear would you like to see? Ash-snorkels?

http://i489.photobucket.com/albums/rr256/ericthered1090/BonemoldArmor1.jpg
http://i489.photobucket.com/albums/rr256/ericthered1090/BonemoldArmor2.jpg

Secondly, I've begun preliminary work on the Blighted Plants. Basically, what I want to do is just overlay a texture so that texture replacers will not be affected by my change. I may have done this successfully, but I haven't even tested in the CS let alone in game. What I did was add a detail map. Is that supported in Morrowind?

Anyway, here are the results. I'm curious which version you guys think I should go with. Exhibit 1, 2, or 3?

http://i489.photobucket.com/albums/rr256/ericthered1090/BlightedPlants.jpg

I appreciate feedback on this, I want this to speak to other people as well as it does to me. What else should be included?

-Melchior Dahrk

I love those armours! I especially like the ones with swords and the top right one in picture 1. Maybe you could add some ashlander camps inside the Red Mountain to use those masks.

Sounds and looks good so far.

For the plants, I like 1 and 2. But all could be used in different ways.

As you probably know, there is a small chance that walking through a Blight storm will infect you with a blight disease.
It's probably governed by a GMST, and therefore the chance could easily be increased.

I've been wanting something along the lines of this for years. I wish you the best of luck on this project.

The bonemold variations look fantastic, should mix nicely with the extra sets featured in Tamriel Rebuilt too, I think. Maybe you could make some more chitin/netch variations while you're at it?

The plants are pretty great too; I like exhibit 3 the most.

As for ideas/suggestions...I'm not sure if this is quite what you had in mind, but I did work on something that is kind of related to this a long while back. If nothing else, it may give you some extra inspiration. http://s119.photobucket.com/albums/o133/Xeth-Ban/Morrowind/Scenic%20Screenshots/?start=0

Sounds great! The blight should be more dangerous, requiring the player the gear up. I love the animé Nausica? of the Valley of the Wind where nature has become toxic, if you havent seen it i think it would be good for inspiration, very Morrowind'ish in a sense i think.. some typical clothing from the movie:

http://www.minhembio.com/dvdrec/jedi/screens/nausicaa/nausicaa8.jpg
http://ruthlessculture.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/nausicaa.jpg

Edit: also, i really like the title, the plants and armors looks great too.. i'd love to see a poncho like the one above

I plan on fleshing out areas in the ashlands a little more for sure, whether that will include new camps, I'm not sure yet; really depends on how cluttered it would feel. Perhaps some subterranean dwelling places to avoid the weather...


I did know that, though I've never actually caught a blight disease that way. I may end up tweaking that a bit. And then also adding a very small chance that you can catch one in a regular ash storm, after all, the Ghost Fence isn't perfect anymore.


I am absolutely going to be making chitin and netch variations, probably incorporating the good shalk armor as well. And maybe coming up with some other variations if I think it fits very well. Dunmer are often mentioned as having bug armor, even the bonemold is usually formed in bug shells, soooo... You like exhibit 3? Perhaps i could incorporate all three and have them give different types of blight, I'll have to take a look at blight effects.

Thanks for that link, it was very interesting to look through. Though it did seem to diverge into TR stuff I like how you changed the fog to green, very atmospheric. I don't know whether or not this mod will have quite so many changes to the actual weather settings. Can you change fog color based on region?


Interesting, I'll look up some more on it. No I had never seen it, though the title does ring a bell. Thanks for the pics.

Well, I haven't done anything more with this quite yet. To be honest, I got distracted because I got my old ps2 out again and have been playing FF12 again. But on the brightside it's been giving me good inspiration for my other mod. I'm definitely going to get to this again this weekend though. I need to get some more done while it's fresh in my mind.


Thanks for the comments and suggestions and inspiration guys. Keep it comin'!

Really love the look of those new headpieces. I think I'd install this mod just for those! (And I'm generally not big on armor mods.)

I wish you luck and fortitude on your project.

Armors look perfect. That's all I have to say Oh and nice idea about the blight btw, I was always wondering, if the storm itself infested so many, how come player never suffers when walking in one. :confused:

Thank you muchly, Octopus :disguise: :nuke:


Glad you like them, they were a fun challenge to create! Hopefully this mod will answer your question by giving you a case of blight :chaos:

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So for chitin I actually merged my mod with quorn's cool chitin armor resource. And I plan to edit here and there, add in my own stuff to complete the look. I've just created some preliminary helmets.

http://i489.photobucket.com/albums/rr256/ericthered1090/NewChitinArmor.jpg

Awesome, I look forward to seeing what you come up with. This is the http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o133/Xeth-Ban/Morrowind/Character%20Screenshots/ShalkArmour.jpg?t=1287213513 you were talking about, right? Always loved that mod.


It's my scenic screenshots album, after all. Seemed a bit too much of a hassle to link to each screenshot individually.


Hm, I don't think so. Then again, I never actually tried, since the goal of the mod was to turn all of Vvardenfell into an ash and mushroom filled wasteland, as depicted in the concept art, thus eliminating the need for a different sky in every region to begin with.


You may want to re-texture the cloth parts to be a bit darker. It looks a little bit odd when nearly all the pieces of the armour have almost the exact same colours.

Ooh, I like it! I'm really glad somebody is using my meshes for something so cool

Yes, that's the one. I've always thought it looked pretty amazing as well. Fit perfecty. I will probably create a custom helmet for it, based on the shalk mandibles though. Just to add my own touch


I see, I believe similar questions have come up before, in regards to MGE's capabilities.


Thanks for that comment, now that I look at it again I agree, and retexturing is easy. I'll find something that shows a greater contrast.


I couldn't let all that cool stuff go to waste, now could I :nono:

I look forward to seeing what you can whip up then.

Speaking of helmets; it occurs to me that http://img821.imageshack.us/img821/8571/test2sm.jpg, if re-textured and cleaned for clippings* could be a pretty nice addition to the rest of the collection. Shame that those hats aren't used more than they are.

*It clips a little on the back of the head.

Well, first off, I hope there will be an AIM patch for the armors, since even with the instructions, manual restatting to match the changes is a pain.

That said, seems cool. My personal preference is to leeway, though. While it may be thrilling and edgy to get blighted in an instant the first time, after a while it will get annoying, so I'd go toward a percent system. I'm not sure how doable this is, but I know some mods (the dodge mod, for instance) can tell how much you have on. Could you make a system so that the more you're wearing, the lower the odds are. Someone without the required gear could then maybe not abate completely the risk, but diminish it enough to travel short distances.

Cool, though I do foresee a problem with the armor, and to an extent the clothing as well. The items required to stave off the blight will conflict with slots used for clothing and armor. Unless you plan to make variants for all armors that have open helmets, you'll be excluding those armors from being viable for exploration during unexpected blights storms. Additionally, there will be a conflict: do I wear my special CE item that gives me good buffs, or do I equip a blight-gear item in case a blight storm suddenly whips up?

One possible solution may be to create scrolls or other consumables that provide the same benefits as your new armor models and gear. That way, characters that do not have special armor are not nerfed. Your new ash/blight plants could have new ingredients that provide "resist blight disease" as an alchemical effect.

I love the concept, it's just that the gameplay mechanics (limited slots) make it a tad tricky.

Thanks for pointing that out, I had looked at the boiled netch helm, but didn't really think of anything on the spot to do with it.


Well, I won't be in charge of any AIM patch :unsure: .

About your leeway preference. This mod is one part eye-candy and one part kick your butt. But a lot of this will depend on one thing which I suppose I will ask other people, though maybe I should ask this in the lore forum: My thought on blight is that it may be caught through the skin or by breathing it in (pardon my lack of medical vocabulary), hence why when you search a blighted corpse you may catch blight or there is a small chance you can catch it when walking through a blight storm. My idea to require special face-masks in the ashlands is mostly just so you can breath in the storms. Therefore, I would think that for the most realism, wearing gauntlets/gloves would help with avoiding becoming diseased when searching corpses. But in a blight storm you would need full coverings (face and skin) to avoid any sort of contact with the blight, and also to breath during the gales.

So I guess how that would apply to this mod would be thusly: Unless you guys think it would be a realistic/good idea, I wasn't planning on scripting every glove and gauntlet to reduce chances of catching diseases when searching corpses; in fact I'm not even sure that's possible.

In regards to what exactly you would have to wear in a blight storm: Bottom line is, I want this mod to make it dangerous. Granted, you wouldn't have to be wearing full ashlander bonemold armor to avoid the blight, a full covering set of steel armor would probably work as well. But the only problem is, and obviously I couldn't account for this without extensive, intrusive, conflict-inducing scripting, is that steel armor isn't sealed off against storms, there would be various cracks in the armor to allow in dust particles and what not. The actual ashlander armor would be water-tight, sealed with bug resin and leather.

So what I could do is that for every bit of clothing and/or armor the player has on (this is getting into the realm of requiring MWSE I think, which may be a problem since I don't know how to use it) his chances for catching blight will increase. However, wearing a suit of armor or set of clothes which is not "anti-blight approved" can only reduce your chances so far. In order to have nearly no chance of catching blight, one would have to wear a set of approved armor or garbs. Which, yes, may not look the most fashionable, but they'll keep you healthy.


^^Refer, in part, to my reply above.

About choosing what to wear, that's up to the player, if they want to bring around a crate of Cure Blight potions, then they can wear whatever they darn well please. But yes, you obviously can't wear my sets of armor over top of your chosen set. You'd have to change if you're going out into a possible storm. And the CE item, you'll have to bring along blight equipment.

The idea of scrolls, or work-arounds, may be a possibility. I'll look into that once I get farther along.

Thanks Alaisiagae and Kefke the Wren for the criticism. It's making me actually think about where I'm going with this.

So... there's an opportunity for creating some enchanted versions of these armours too. It seems that, for a higher level character, there maybe some reluctance to part with their phat l00t because the items added by this mod are less buff.

However, if the Blight really is as powerful as this mod is going to make it then wouldn't the natives and the Imperials have been using their enchanters to create powerful versions of these armours for use by suitable heroic types? Or has there not been enough time for these items to enter circulation by the time the player arrives on Vvardenfell?

Hmmm, not sure. It'd seem that adding a few items to levelled lists would be a good way to go. And a few of those could be enchanted. And suitably high level types could always enchant their own / get someone to enchant it for them...

Could even be some quests there. Retrieving the Neckerchief of Filtering. Or curing the curse of the http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/gallery/s1_09-10gallery/800/15.jpg

Noooooo!

Thanks for reminding me. :cold: The one and only tv show episode that truly scared me both during and after I watched it.

Mummy?

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Part of me worries that making the blight so powerful will cause it to become more of a hassle than an immersive gameplay element. However, that's only my personal opinion. To me, I think "must eat, must sleep" mods to be too micro-managementy, but other people don't find those mods to be restrictive. :shrug:

Well, perhaps I will also make some non-native, anti-blight equipment as well. Do you think it would fit for the imperials o have something like one of http://beebe-mulligan.com/images/MullieRaccoon-(Large)2.jpg, or http://www.quanonline.com/military/military_reference/japanese/wwii_equipment/gas_mask.jpg? And then possibly some magical types. However, if the blight is too easily avoided (which I mean by magical means) then why the very strict boycott on Vvardenfell? As far as having unique, more powerful versions of stuff; the player will probably just have to take their Helm of Oreyn Bearclaw off for the trip if they want to avoid blight, sorry. I do have like 20 or 30 different bonemold helmets/masks though (and I plan to create similar variations for the some other types of armor, so I could make a varying degree of quality there. But I'm not going to make it too extreme. And I don't know if I want to make a Daedric Face of Blight-Off.

Then again, now that I am thinking about what I have just written, if I am only going to require the special helmets for travel in blight weather (rather than a full suit). I may actually create some "outfitted" versions of other armor types. Perhaps there will be an Ashlander Camp you can take your regular helmet to and they will outfit it with a breathing apparatus. How does that sound?

What I plan on trying to create next is a beast race type of mask. We'll see what I can come up with. I can't exclude the beasties



What do you think about what I suggested above, in response to Dragon32's post?


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Since I have been focusing on the armor first, I confess that I http://i489.photobucket.com/albums/rr256/ericthered1090/BugArmor.jpg

looks good

but can i make a suggestion for the bug ones? The cloth bit at the top of the curiass looks a bit outta place. How about re-texturing the shalk curiass instead - I think that might work better?

Sure you can make a suggestion :gun::ooo:

I wasn't sure about the cuirass either, but do you think that the whole thing looks wrong? Or just the cloth? I actually did try the shalk cuirass, problem was, he has custom textures for the set (I'm just using the vanilla texture), and I tried just overlaying the bug textures onto his cuirass texture in paint.net. But I couldn't get it to look very good.

I actually had a set of other possible cuirasses I was going to use before I settled on this one. Would you like to see those to give your opinion?

yeah its just the cloth bit

sure fire away with the screenies - I dont mind criticising them

Yeah, I wasn't suggesting magickal anti-blight things. And thinking about it it'd be best if it was native equipment rather than Imperial that one had to use. Not sure what the guys in Fort Buckmoth will be wearing...

Anyway, my idea was really to create a few magic item-versions of these new helmets and armours you're creating. Such items could (if you're feeling adventurous [ha ha]) be used to initiate or reward quests.

And I wasn't really serious about the WWII-era gas masks. The name just kind of fit (if you've seen the episodes) and it was cool to freak Alaisiagae out

http://i489.photobucket.com/albums/rr256/ericthered1090/md_bug_armor.jpg

Problem with removing the scarf from that first cuirass is that it leaves a big gaping hole in the mesh. What about if I retexture it to http://i489.photobucket.com/albums/rr256/ericthered1090/md_bug_armorbackfront.png


You mentioning Fort Buckmoth made me think. Does LCV make NPCs go inside during ash storms? If not, I know that LCV is a pretty well-known mod and incompatibility may not be good. Because for realism, with towns like Ald-ruhn and Maar Gan, their residents should theoretically go indoors to seek shelter during a storm. Except for maybe a few who have proper covering (some guards etc.).

I'm not really sure, could a global script be written to cause NPCs to do that? So that it wouldn't conflict with mods like LCV and LGNPC (though it may still conflict with LCV).

Or do people think I should just leave that alone and let people wander the streets just like they always have?

I do not think that Living Cities of Vvardenfell makes any accommodation for the weather since the scripted schedules cannot be synchronized with the change in weather. Your mod could merely disable NPCs when the change of weather occurred and it might not otherwise interfere with their LCV schedules. You may want to manage it in a way that will not have NPC's disappearing and reappearing before the player.

I do not see a problem for LGNPC mods other than the same issue for any official or unofficial quest NPC not being available to the player when expected. The idea to incorporate schedules for NPCs (including weather accommodation) has been considered by us, but it is more than we can take upon ourselves at this time. A few outdoor NPCs do allude to the weather in their greetings.

In the original Traveling Merchants, Ghan Buri Ghan scripted Hamoubil Hamzanubai out of Ald'ruhn to equip headgear whenever an ash storm arose in the wastes. I used the same strategy for the new traveler Ashar-Mat out of Maar Gan. Both travelers are scripted to return to the nearest destination of their route unless they are already well out of town. They will wait out the storm in town, however they do not seek shelter indoors. We use the official netch_leather_boiled_helm for the protective headgear, but there are other options in the standard inventory:

chitin_mask_helm
dust_adept_helm (Telvanni)
storm helm
velothian_helm (same model as chitin_mask_helm)

Even the morag_tong_helm looks suitable for the task. It would not be a difficult matter to place a script on a hidden activator to add one such 'helm' to an outdoor NPCs inventory (and perhaps tweak the appropriate armor skill so they will equip it).