Well, after hearing millions of rumors about the supposed "cursed" project, Greater Dwemer Ruins, I tracked down Julian K. Spire, one of the old modders who was attempting to do the mod himself. Apparently he suffered a critical hardware failure and lost EVERYTHING, but he told me that all of the meshes, etc. were still available for download on one of his backups. With his permission, I've undertaken the role of attempting the project for the millionth time, hopefully this time for the last time. I think I've got a good battle strategy worked out this time to prevent the project from going belly-up, so I'm going to outline it for you all to find out what you think.

To honor Julian's work, a new landmass "Amzufelth" is being created to the far south of Vvardenfell with its own (slight) storyline and a canonically plausible reason why it wasn't discovered before. Amzufelth is an archipelago of islands that fell under Dwemer control and were converted into a massive city. I'm going to construct the first two islands before releasing a trial or beta. Each island can have as few as five or as many as twenty new interiors, including Dwemer shops, homes, ships, towers, laboratories, et-cetera. Plenty of new things to explore, new enemies to fight, new fun to have. Hopefully.

I'm not actually going to begin work on the vanilla ruins until I know for certain this will work. I'm designing Amzufelth as an acid test to see if I can even hold my own creating a fifteen-island archipelago. Once it's done, we'll see about the ruins. If I finish Amzufelth and no one supports this, I guess I'll just release it by itself.

Due to hardware issues on MY end, Tribunal and Bloodmoon are not available. This expansion relies solely on Morrowind. I have ported some (emphasis on SOME) textures and meshes from Tribunal, but it's a drop in the ocean.

I'm going to be honest here: I have absolutely NO idea where Julian got a lot of his meshes and textures from. Some of them, i.e. those beginning with DN, I can trace to Darknut's Greater Dwemer Ruins. Others, not so easy. If you recognize a mesh that's yours, let me know and I'll either give you proper credit or remove it, whichever you choose.

Screenshots will be up probably by this weekend, but I'm just throwing the cards on the table to see what you all think.

Yours Truly,

Commander Dartimien

You've piqued my interest!

Hmmm ... designing 15 new landmasses (even if small) sounds more difficult to me than adding new areas connected to already existing interiors. Is there a specific reason why you do it this way? To me, this path seems to increase the complexity of the project unnecessarily, and thereby increase the failure chances. It also creates inevitable landmass conflicts which a dungeon expansion doesn't need to have - actually it's one of the big advantages of a dungeon extension that neither modders nor users have to worry about landmass conflicts, and you seem to throw this advantage away.

I think that the original project idea (by Nedius, Piratelord and the "team") was pretty well designed - give each of the Dwemer ruins a special "meaning", then connect them. You could start with one of the less significant ruins and then work your way through the others. Even if the project stops again, it'll always have the ruins that you already completed. (Note that the only part of GDR that was ever finalized, by Darknut, took such an approach, it limited its scope to three ruins.) So why not choose the path that _did_ lead to success before?

Psyringe,

Julian Spire piqued my interest when he told me of his original concept for Amzufelth. His mod, before he lost it, had an area the size of Solstheiim and he was able to direct me to his old photobucket account to see it. I rather like the idea of a Dwemer capital city and wanted to include it. As for difficulty, I find it about as difficult as an interior, although more time consuming. I actually planned to SKIP Vemynal, Odrosal and Dagoth Ur because Darknut did a good job, and I have been studying PirateLord and Nedius' works to see what can be salvaged.

Check out the pinned http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1057001-list-of-morrowind-modders-resources/ thread, that'll have some of the resources in there I'll wager.

Here's some notes I made about GDR_MasterFile.esm (from Darknut's mod, not sure if these are fixed in Julian's ESM):
None of these are used in Darknut's Greater Dwemer Ruins Vol I.
(*) Weapon "GDR_w_dwrv_warhammer" (Dwarven Warhammer) Changed mesh from:
GDR/GDR_w_dwrv_warhammer.nif
to:
GDR/GDR_dwrv_w_warhammer.nif
Had to get mesh and (GDR\TX_W_Dwemer_Warhammer.dds) from elsewhere (can't remember where, PM if you need), and fix the bogus paths in NIF

(*) Weapons "GDR_w_dwrv_shrtswrd_uni", "GDR_w_dwrv_cent_sword", "GDR_a_dwrv_twrshield02", "GDR_w_dwrv_pickaxe_01" and "GDR_w_dwrv_pickaxe_02" are all missing icons (no sign of icons anywhere).

Have you seen the original GDR homepage, it was on Geocities but is in the http://web.archive.org/web/20071212210211/http://www.geocities.com/greaterdwemerruins/? More info and screens from one of the http://www.chainsmokingdryad.com/g_morrow_p_gdr.php.

And good luck :thumbsup:

[Edit: typo]

I have the GDR_Masterfile.esm, but my Tribunal glitch won't let me use it. I've had to add all of the meshes included by hand, and I still remember enough of the additions made to places like Nchuleft and Arkngthand. The glitches you mention have been fixed in my instance of this as well, but thank you anyway. As for the missing icons, I have them, but they're .dds and without Tribunal, I can only load .tga. (Or maybe it was the other way around; I don't have my CS loaded right now.) The GDR homepage is gone, even the cache lacks pictures which renders it worthless. A few links have provided images, but I prefer to start from scratch instead of emulating someone else's work.

Progress Report:

Amzufelth: North Island (Island 1)

EXTERIOR

Terrain Alteration: 100%
Terrain Texturing: 100%
Terrain Decoration (flora, fauna, etc.) 40%
Structures: 100%

INTERIORS

Interiors Planned: 11
Interiors Complete: 5


Amzufelth: North City (Island 2)

EXTERIOR

Terrain Alteration: 0%
Terrain Texturing: 0%
Terrain Decoration (flora, fauna, etc.) 0%
Structures: 0%

INTERIORS

Interiors Planned: 17
Interiors Complete: 0

Screenshots are planned for this Saturday.

Glad this project was picked up.

Looks like tons of work. Mod-hard bliviongate:

Thanks Myxale. I will. Working on it now.

As an additional note - something I meant to post previously, here are some of the things you can expect to find on Islands one and two

ISLAND ONE:

Ilacheria: A Dwemer bar and rest stop
Bthanchinglefth: A large Dwemer house
Island Dwelling: Home of a Dwemer hermit
Knchngleft: A cozy Dwemer home
Nblthunch: A Centurion Repair station
Stngthumz: A minor geothermal plant

ISLAND TWO:

Bthunch: Centurion Production Facility
(Remainder unplanned as of now)

Just a question out there for anyone who is script- and/or dialog-literate. Is it possible to make a fast travel system in which the ferryman will not take you from point A to point B unless you give him an object other than gold? I have an item called "misc_traveltoken00" that the player can acquire to use as transport fare around Amzufelth. And I need to know if this is possible or if I should make another way. Thanks in advance.

Glad to hear this project is under way.

Would anyone like to elaborate the history of this attempted mod? (Brief History of the Empire edition please)

As far as I can tell, the original mod was picked up by Nedius, Piratelord and (I think) Darknut. That one went belly up for some reason and was later continued solely by Darknut who created "Darknut's Greater Dwemer Ruins Vol 1."... I have yet to see Vol. 2. Julian K. Spire picked it up later and created quite a bit - over a year's worth of work - before his project, too, died due to computer failure. According to a few people I've spoken to, this project seems to be cursed. Anyone who tries it... fails. Miserably.

A few changes have been made. Just keeping you updated.

Nblthunch has been changed to a cozy home instead of a repair station.
Knchngleft is now a temple
There is now a train station running between Amzufelth and Vvardenfell, although I haven't selected an exit location yet. (Open to suggestions). This train is nothing as advanced as TrainWiz's in "Deus Ex Machina" but it'll do until I can get something better (if I get something better).

Also, I'm just going to state that if anyone wants to help, I'm not going to turn away the help. I need people who are good with scripting or who are detail oriented. I'm also in need of someone who could help me with exterior decorations (planets/trees/grass/etc.). Please contact me if you want to help.

You can easily make a travel script like that, but it wont function the same as typical travel in that rather than simply placing an arrow in the appropriate cell you will need to put the actual destination coordinates+orientation into the script.

My scripting skill = 0. Any chance you can help with this?

I'm fairly rusty but there are probably many here who can easily show you what to do. Do you have Scripting for Dummies? It's explained in there as I recall.

I've looked through Scripting for Dummies, and it has helped me about as much as handing a monkey a copy of Newton's Laws of Physics. Sorry But if anyone reading this can help, I'd be infinitely grateful.

It's possible, but you cannot use the game's regular travel service system (i.e. the service "Travel" that appears on top of the topics column). If you use that system, then the cost is hardwired. You can, however, introduce a new dialogue topic, have it check for the existence of the travel token, and have it teleport the player to the destination. The new topic won't appear in the "services" section on top of the other topics, but it will do what you want.


From memory: GDR was originally an idea by Nedius, who wanted to expand the Dwemer ruins. The popular mod "Tombs Expanded" may have been an inspiration, though GDR was meant to not only add new levels to the ruins, but also design them in a meaningful way. However, this was too much work for one single person, so Piratelord joined Nedius, and a team was formed around them. The team created lots of Dwemer resources, and designed a very interesting concept of how the ruins could be expanded (one ruin was to be a former power plant, one was to be a former laboratory, etc.). But they never actually implemented it, so Piratelord finally released the work that had been done as a resource. The project remained abandoned until Darknut picked it up, roughly at the same time Nediius reappeared and wanted to pick it up too. The two agreed to split the project, so that each one would work on separate ruins. Some time later, Julian appeared and wanted to join the project too. This was viewed with some skepticism since he had a bit of a history of getting lost in huge ideas and then releasing chaotic and rather disorganized betas of dropped projects, but he was given one ruin to work on. While Darknut was making progress and finally released his part of GDR (which dealt with the three main ruins on the Red Mountain, i.e. those where the endgame takes place in), Nedius vanished again. Julian released a beta of his ruin in a very dirty and chaotically organized mod and vanished as well (for a while). Darknut was asked to complete the rest of GDR, but had no intention to do so, so the project seemed abandoned again. Since the resources were freely available, from time to time some modders would say that they were taking it up; these were mainly new modders who underestimated the work involved and/or overestimated their long-term dedication to such a project, who again vanished after a while, with nothing released. At that point I stopped following the project. From the posts above I gather that Julian apparently continued working on it, but didn't release anything but screenshots. The project is not cursed, it just has a high potential of attracting inexperienced modders who are fascinated by the grand ideas and possibilities, and who like to play around with the freely available resources, but who underestimate the difficulty of the task and then give up without releasing anything.


I still don't understand why you're making the project (that already failed multiple times) even more complex by adding exterior landscapes, when this means that you also need to recruit people for doing things that wouldn't even be necessary if the project stayed indoors. I'm sorry if I sound overly skeptical. I would be overjoyed if someone actually managed to release more GDR mods (no matter whose vision is being followed in the end). However, I have seen several failed attempts to work on GDR already. And it seems to me that instead of learning from their mistakes, and starting small by doing one ruin that you can manage to release (without depending on others), you're repeating the same mistakes. I'd be glad to be proven wrong though.

If you like, you can just look at how the teleporting is handled for Mournhold/Morrowind and maybe some dialogue that requires a particular object to get an idea of how to use that kind of condition. It's really not that hard. You just need to take bits and pieces out of other scripts/dialogue and mash it together.

Psyringe:

1. Thank you for expanding on the history of GDR. Appreciate it. Sorry for anything I got wrong in there.

2. Nedius and PirateLord were the original genii behind the project? I thought Darknut was a part of that too. Guess I was wrong.

3. I didn't know Julian tried to join them. I thought he was off on his own. Again, guess I was wrong.

4. The reason I'm going ahead with this project is to...

a. Have fun
b. Challenge myself
c. Accomplish something
d. Kill time
e. Have a project to return to when my creative juices need lubing.

It sounds like you have a rather skeptical/cynical outlook on this. Can I ask why?