Eyvindr - The Island mod


Introduction
Eyvindr is a work in progress. This Morrowind mod adds an island south-west'ish of Vvardenfel (In the sea of destiny - that is its official name) and will be planned to be nearly the size of Soulstheim. The mod is starting pretty slowly. Basicully, its me and a 10 year experienced modder trying to plan this hall of fame capable mod. There is one other guy, but he is probably dead by the looks of it (and I mean it). Simon and I are recruiting a few more modders who are wont bail out on the job in 2 weeks. The modder(s) has to be able to:

• Landscape
  
• Design Interiors
  
• Help plan quests
  
• Help plan dialogue
  
• And has to know a fair bit about modding in general

These skills would be also very helpful

• Scripting
  
• Meshing
  
• Sounds
  
• Texturing
  
• Icons
  
• Animations

As you can see, this isn't any house mod. Like I said, it is a big scale island mod that will need a lot of preparation and effort.

Description
This is what we have thought of so far. With Avatar out, we have had to change our plan a bit. Firstly, Eyvindr was recently discovered by the Imperial navy when they were on their patroll in the sea of destiny. From their quick scout around the island, they only found Dunmer natives. They seemed to have come from Vvardenfel, and they could speak English. The Dunmer slave traders said that they could steal people from other races and sell them to the Imperials. The Imperial agreed even though there is a law that says no slave trading. While on the island, the imperial troopers and scouts discovered a unique type of wood. The wood came from a tree (No name thought of) and the bark allowed a person to eat it and be cured of Corprus and to be healed fully. With a sample of this new alchemical ingrediant, the Imperial navy ship sailed back to Ebonheart where the duke declared all of Vvardenfel could peacefully share Eyvindr.

Four races set sail as soon as possible. First there was the Imperials, then the Altmers, Nords and finally the Bretons. The Imperials obeyed the duke's order at first, peacefully letting all 4 races have the trees, but soon the High elves got greedy and started taking more than they were allowed. A war was declared and the Bretons soon joined the High elves' side. The Nords however made their own alliance, by them selves. They raided villages and towns every few nights. With the war raging on, the Dunmer slave traders joined the Imperials.

Main Story line
So far, we have decided that the main story line will actually be player chosen. Firstly, the player is asked to go to Eyvindr, to help the imperials. The alliance is broken with the slave traders a few quests in, and the player will then be given a chance to rebel against the Imperials and join any other race of their choosing (Excluding slave traders). A script will be running, making it so enemy races attack you if you're race you are currently in is in war against that specific race. If the player goes near any of the towns with enemy races in it, he/she will be attacked. When the player is Neutral (no race), only the race that you just left will attack until you join another race. You getting me?

The Island
As said, the island is planned to be about the size of Soulstheim. I have got a very VERY rough plan of what the island will look like. Firstly, there will be a volcano somewhere on the island (Like Hawaii). The volcano will have dungeons and hard monsters on it. Around the island there are lush forests with things to discover.

Summary
As you can see, Eyvindr can be a spectacular mod if we put effort into it. If anyone was to join, we are currently making the quests before we start landscaping (so if you could help, that would be a lot quicker). I live in Australia (+10:00 Timezone) And Simon lives in England (00:00 Timezone). We are looking for anyone around the world, it doesnt matter where you are, you just need to be active and you are not allowed to die.

Contacts
My Email: Brandon-555@hotmail.com
My MSN: Brandon-555@hotmail.com

We also will be using a website (tbh, it is the worst url you could think of. I will be able to post it when Simon tells me what it is again).
The website will be used for posting the latest ESPs, documents, textures, meshes and we will be able to discuss what needs to be improved, what needs to be done, and what needs to be gotten rid of.

-Brandon/Vaon-

I might be intrested in this, I'd love furnituring interiors. I might not have the time required though

Perhaps, we need to do quests and stuff first though :snoring:

That might be a good start,

Anyways I've been modding for some years now, check the link below:

http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=5057

Give me a PM if any help is needed. Mainly intrested in interiors as I said above.

:twirl:

I would never start a project that I wasn't prepared to finish all by myself.
As helpful as the community is, you have to be aware that we all have are own mods to work on and our own ideas to explore.

I would suggest doing Quests/Dialog much later. After you have the exteriors/interiors done, and all meshes/textures/resources ready.
Finish your world before you populate it.
Having "a very rough plan of what the island looks like" doesn't make it sound like you're ready for quests beyond a paper/pen planning stage.

I speak from experience. Good luck!

You've got a point there Pluto. Exteriors/interiors should be the first priority. Many things may change during the development, and it's a pain in the ass to redo quests, markers, pathgrids etc. :shifty:

Interesting project. I might be able to help via icons/limited retexturing.

Ok guys, I will discuss what you said about doing the interiors/exteriors first. I will be able to reply on what the decision is when he sends me an email (Take note im 10 houres ahead of him -.-

You may first try to find resources among the many mods released til now.

About sounds there is http://www.freesound.org/searchText.php and also other websites, where you can download sounds from.

About animation, what animation(s) would you need?

Do you have any screens to show what youve got so far atall?

Yeah, you look a little bored with this statement. I am, too.
I was dry heaving after your first description paragraph. Don't you think it's a bit early to proclaim this fill-in-the-blank ad-lib mod hall of fame material?

Yeh, i know about the already made ones, but if we wanted to make our own, that is why


There is no screens because we havent started the mapping yet!


Well, if we put enough effort into it, and we plan it properly, with new material, scripts etc, why cant it be? Anything (well, alot) is possible.

Well I suppose I should put my two penneth in as I am the one helping Voan out.

Firstly I will let you know how the land lies as far as modding is concerned;

I do not have home work of any kind
My children are grown up and left
I have a business I do not get involved with
Even my wife plays Morrowind

I think the above qualifications give you an idea of the time available to me to help in this project?!

There are a couple of area's I think need addressing the most and one of those is sound. I don't do sound and nor does Voan so help there would be useful.

I can do interiors but I hate them and help there would also be very welcome indeed (my usual forte is to copy paste from other interiors which is not very original lol)

If someone signs up for the interiors then the world is your oyster so to speak. If you have ideas for an interior but not the furniture then ask! I will make it.

I have a vast amount of unseen resources and retextures that I have tucked away in a folder mostly designed for a mod that has been in progress for the last 5 years or so but are mine and can be used in this one if required.

As Voan stated the storyline is a little sketchy at the moment and to be honest I am not involved in that a great deal as I have the imagination of stuffed cat but it appears to be reasonable enough to kick start it.

---

Off to other posts now.....

I tend not to do things the way you guys do. When making a mod I tend to add a quest before anything else then create the land around them and any other characters they interact with.

i.e. A simple quest to get something;

Dock guys asks if you would get him a fishing rod?

Now, I would make the land, the exteriors on it, the shore line, the dock, the character
I would add all the possible replies for each section for that character and then move onto the bit where the fishing rod is going to be and do the same.

By adding the characters one by one as quests develop I find that all characters can be given the option to talk about more things and even other characters.

Ajira and the teleporting woman are standing with each other all day but don't have a word to say about each other - anyone know any women like that?

Well anyway if anyone wants to help out and like he said not vanish in 2 weeks then please give us a shout!

Have fun all.

Who is your concept person then? If you are in need of someone for that, you are more than welcome to run some ideas past me and see what happens. I tend to be really awkward moving around the CS itself even when I know my stuff, but I could prolly help with concept. I'll reread the OP and make sure I know enough, but so far this is the input I have.

Good comparison using the night elves and avatar, because the two races do have quite a bit in common at a base level. There home world is a crazy mix of over-sized plants and bugs, where mushrooms glow blue and so many other things like that. I do wonder though. Is this island of yours really viable atm? That volcano in the middle, with quests and dungeons around it sounds a great deal like stock MW. You should mix it up a little more. From what I understand, the mod area this will be using is not far from MW on the map, so it does stand to reason it would have it's simularites, but look how much bloodmoon has set apart from MW.. you'll need something to set your area apart like that.

Might I suggest a series of smaller volcanoes located in different areas around your map? This could easily allow under tunnels and a vast difference of vegetation should you need or desire it, all explained by the unique climate that such a land would then present, and would actually give a good opening as to the reason these special trees exist. Now your native people also make more sense and your dungeons can be spread out however they are desired, with a few even hidden.. perhaps there is even different sects or styles of natives much like in stock MW.. with this new land, there might be some better suited to the lands and some better suited for the tunnels or the fires deep within.


EDIT:

okay some additional notes now of things that jumped out at me during a rereading..



The order seems off. The nords are the least likely to be worried about corpus as most of them don't even live in MW where the disease is. So it would actually be.. Imperials (they heard about it first) Altmers (skilled wizards, someone had to run tests) and Bretons (they tend to be part of healing and researching groups and would run tests too) then lastly nords. I see the night elves are not mentioned, but this is fine. They do not trust "outlanders" and may not want to be involved.

Next thing.. high elves did this?

They may be vain and a holier than thou kind of people, but they don't seem like the culprit. The imperials do. After all, they have been shady from the start of this story, and imperial greed is well known. Imperials may be clever talkers, prone to action, but they especially look after their money belts.

Another interesting idea would be for the wood elves to hear of this. They are purists and since trees are involved they would take an interest. Maybe they don't like how the other races are doing things with these plants and start a revolt.

Lastly, I have a question.. is this lore friendly? It sounds like it is intended to be. If so, has it been thought out to how these native dark elves got here and when? Will they look like ashlanders, but a little different or more civilized like the city folk of MW?

As I said before I might be able to help you furniture the interiors. Although I need someone to build the interiors first, since I'm not very good at that :shifty:

If you do want to be lore-friendly, I'm not sure I like the idea of the main plot atm, the imperials would not trade so openly in Slaves, as they have relations with Black Marsh and Elsewyr to maintain.
And the idea of tree bark curing corprus... you're undermining a key point of the Morrowind plot by making a corprus cure readily available.
Even if this is set after the MQ (in which case large amounts of the cure isn't needed), what about Divayth's patients and the last Dwemer?

Maholix, I think the imperials as a race in general are diplomats, no more greedy than the dark elves, and no more likely to be crooks. The Dark Elves are most likely to seek the cure as it affects them the most, and the other races wouldn't want the cure unless it possesses some other quality, as corprus doesn't affect them yet, or to use as a bargaining chip to gain something from or damage the dumner perhaps.
The wood elves wouldn't give a damn about the trees unless they were from Valenwood.

I wouldn't split the groups into races, so it looks like people have travelled from all over the Tamriel, it isn't likely to happen in this circumstance and seems kind of uber (I don't see the races of the world going to fight Ur).
I'd have an imperial legion group, a telvanni group (replaces Altmer, and sides with native dumner), perhaps a mages guild group (replaces bretons, joins with imperials), and then Nordic barbarians from Skyrim, perhaps there to undermine the dumner.

Though, as I said, it'd be better imo to give the bark another property rather than cure corprus imo, perhaps it's a unique cure-all ingrediant that they want to study, to see if it can apply to other cases such as corprus.

right, I figured it would be an after MQ thing.. your cured, but others will want to figure out how. The corpus thing was a bit steep to be sure, but I didn't want to pick the whole concept apart and throw it out like some sort of trash. And the night elf thing could go either way, in MW we see they are resistant to trusting in outsiders, so I was thinking they weren't involed in this story because it's not been proven that it's a reliable cure, but rather is rumored to have cured others.. so the dark elves may see it as an outsider trick. This was an assumtion on my part that I guess should not have been made.

As for the imperials, most stories make it pretty clear that they tend to act with alter motive and that usually involves coin. Normally diplomacy or land grabbing would factor in, but these imperials in the story seem almost like renegades who act as part of the empire but do not follow it's practices, so to me it seemed clear money was the motive here, especially with them dealing in slaves.. this may be why they were assigned to MW in the first place. They were trying to come there to trade slaves under the table and stumbled onto something else.

In fact, if they are ranking members, they could easily lie to their men and say they are capturing people when they are secretly selling them, or even claim that it is a special mission. The land is just far enough removed it would be hard to get a report out if they were discovered.

I do however stand corrected on the wood elves. Thank you. Wood elves don't eat living things, or so the lore says iirc, so I thought this zealousness extended to other things as well. And I would second a motion for a change in effect because as I said, nords and such would be pretty unaffected by this discovery except for prevention purposes. It needs to be something a little less monumental if possible, but still pretty awesome, because otherwise it wouldn't be just select groups that were interested.

Actually, Wood Elves don't eat plants, so as part of the green-pact they stick to eating meat and ritual cannibalizing. I believe this only applies to plants within Valenwood.

lol'd



Back to topic

Looks like the member of the team who died came back alive. So, we now are back to three people. I believe Jake (The undead member) can do sounds. I am not too sure about it though.

After reading the long replies, I will take into consideration about the corprus wood. I did include full healing properties also in the original post, but what do you guys think, should I add something else?

About the races. I think I will get rid of the nords, but I thought they could be a minor race that just is an annoyance? At the moment, having guilds/factions instead of just singular races is a no. (Dont ask me why).

Having multiple volcanos is a good idea. This will be added.



Finally, we are still looking for a few more members (Nobody has asked yet). So just send an email and you can join in in the fun.

-Vaon-

I take it this od was originally intended as an Avatar mod?

Naaah, the description says there was a change of plan due to Avatar inspiration.

Well, we wanted to do a: Imperials vs Natives Main quest, where the player gets to choose what side they go on?? And then we remember avatar.

We do not want it to be like Avatar.

Oh, my apologies. It's not an inspiration, you just wanted to steer clear of that storyline. Got it.
Yeah, stick with that sacred tree thing. Avatar never came to mind, not once.

Rofl. Bloody Avatar has stolen lots of things but let us face it Avatar itself is a stolen movie....

Amazonian Indians and bull dozers spring to mind?

Voan is the man anyone thats into this idea to contact I just mostly hurt people - no! wait, too much Alien resurrection for me >.<

I await my direction, come on. Give me some direction >.<

**** Avatar, now, i will send an email on what our decision will be about how we start to make the mod, but we are still looking for a member (nobody has asked )