Have you deeply investigated Oblivion resources? As you probably are aware, there's a lot available. Maybe the Big City chaps could help out with sharing some assets. Is there a list of assets needed on the forum? I see some stuff you're working on, but that's all I saw. I'm sure everything is still being setup.

I've not had a good look at resources in a long time. Generally not a huge fan of using resources. I know there is a lot of quality stuff out there to use.

As far as architecture goes I'd like it to all be made in house so to speak. I am using some resources such as select models from Mr_Siikas better Ports.

I find the problem with using resources, especially resources from other games, is that the scale is often off, or you don't get exactly what you want. With regards to using the Big City assets, yes I think they look very nice and well made. But I don't imagine High Rock to look Victorian.

There is still a lot needed in the way of planning obviously. But that's why I'd like to get people on-board and discussing ideas if nothing else.

Absolutely, the best bet is to do it yourself, if you want it to look just the way you imagine it.

I've never given much thought to High Rock, so I don't know how useful my input would be. Have you read that "High Rock is Awesome" document which floats around the Lore subforum?

Hmm... I searched and searched for a "High Rock is Awesome" document to no avail.

Any ideas where it is?

My mistake, I guess it's the "High Rock is Cool" project.

Here's a https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dM0O4dV7lMBQjqDMLfM3MIpcISy6JbaJsBOjiw8YxJI/edit?pli=1.

I don't want to discourage you, but the task you are setting yourself is massive. If you do want to share resources we may be able to hammer out an agreement of some sort. I'd have to consult the other active members of our team, though.

Awesome, cheers MD! Oh also, I uploaded those West Gash rocks for you. On Nexus I mean.

I'm aware its a large task but I work on High Rock in my spare time for fun. It is rather relaxing.

But I'm interested what sort of agreement you have in mind? I'm by no means a good modeller and I don't have a great deal of time.

Also, as I mentioned before. I think the mod you're working on is quite a different style to how I imagine High Rock. Unless people tend to think otherwise?

I missed that! I just downloaded them and will take a look. Thanks!

Hi Sortis - send me a PM if there's anything in particular you require. I will then discuss with The Wanderer.

Well, I wish you luck with your mod, though to be completely honest the Morrowind modding community isn't really large enough to even support the three main province mods out there (Tamriel Rebuilt, Skyrim: Home of the Nords and Province Cyrodiil), two of which I am a member of. My advice: pick a smaller section of High Rock to focus on. I'd personally love to see a mod dedicated to the Kingdom of Orsinium, for instance. It would be a far more manageable and realistic goal starting out.

I think a combination of good heightmaps (which SG has extensive familiarity with) and the mesh generator could result in nearly the entire province having a very basic but utilitarian appearance - aside from settlements of course - in what amounts to a lot of preparation but then executed by a couple button pushes.

In short: he could generate almost the entire provincial wilderness and then just work on detailing and vuilding certain areas as you say.

That's something I have messed about with in the past MD. I've made ini's for Yacoby's Mesh Generator that are able to scatter anything from rocks, plants, tree and grass or whatever across the entirety of vvardenfall using vanilla statics with similar results to the vanilla game. I have it setup so that I can run a different ini for each region and the results are pretty damn good.

Once I get a good idea of how each region should look and what should be there it will be fairly straight forward. Not to say I think it will be quick or easy. Plus this is for wayy in the future.

My main focus for now is getting architecture for the southern kingdoms nailed. I had originally planned on making a sort of preview release of Daggerfall city, but I've decided to focus on a smaller town and surrounding wilderness.

The tilesets for Daggerfall city AND the common town/village's are both well on the way and I'm blocking out the first town, planning to show some screenshots when im a bit happier with the overall feel of things. All looks a bit shiny and new at the minute. Everything needs roughing up.

My only worry with the mesh generator is that it seems to get unstable when dealing with a large number of changes to a large file. But that might just be blamed on the fact that I'm running it on my laptop... might run out of memory or something for all I know. It crashes for Lyithdonea if I try to generate grass for both the swampy region and tropical region.

But I toyed around with a file misseri (probably misspelling their user name...) made of Cyrodiil with a bunch of meshes generated in it and it was pretty impressive. Considering how little work it took to create.

And yes, it won't be easy. But it would certainly take less time than building everything up from scratch! (like I've done ).

Good luck with that architecture!

How exactly does this mesh generator work? Using an automatic process alone would probably lead to immensely generic landscapes that would require a massive amount of detailing to spice up. Even then exteriors are only one of many steps. Thousands of interior cells, npcs and dialogue lines would have to follow. And then, of course, there is the huge amount of thematic planning, discussion and outlining that goes into each of these steps. Talented modelers and scripters are also hard to come by these days, making the rest of the process and even greater challenge.

As such, I stand by the opinion that the Morrowind modding community simply doesn't have the manpower to take on any additional province mods outside of the big three. Heck, I don't even think it's realistic to expect all three of those projects to reach completion. If the province creation process could be accelerated to the extent you suggest, SHotN would have finished The Reach by now, Province Cyrodiil would have a 100 percent completed Stirk on its hands, and TR would have released Almalexia. These kinds of massive projects, all of them larger in scale than any actual Bethesda-created world not counting Arena and Daggerfall's computer generated lands, require large teams and long-term time commitment. There simply aren't enough modders to go around.

The method I mentioned would never lead to a 100% completion of anything. I'd say it'd contribute to 50% completion at best.

It works by generating any mesh you want on specific land textures, in various clumps, frequency, and lots of other options to make it less generic. But it's NEVER going to be as intricate as hand placing things. But I'll argue the point that generic forests and grasslands, etc. can often look better than one where a modder tries to make his claim look "unique" when considered as a whole - i.e. only taking extra time to hand detail certain areas and features (hey, this is what was originally planned for Morrowind! lol).

But I'm definitely not arguing any of your points about how much work has to go into creating a province. Each of these projects is striving towards creating what Bethesda considers to be an entire game worth of content. Not something to shake a stick at.

Of course the mesh generator would only really provide a basis to work on in this case. It would all still need detailing eventually. But it just provides a quick overview of how the region will look with whatever statics you are using at the time. Im not saying you could generate statics for an entire province and then call it a day.

I'm well aware its a massive task. I'm really not interested in discussing how feasible a project like this is. I do it for a bit of fun on the side.

Fair enough. I wish you luck and look forward to seeing what you end up creating.

i also think it would be the best idea to start with a reasonably small section of the province (for example the island of Balfiera with the Direnni Tower), which could be possible to complete with as little manpower as possible, as the area would not be too big, and not alot of city building and NPCing would have to be done. really the worst you could do is to start with a big ass city like Daggerfall, or the resources that would be needed for a cluttered area like this, before even starting to work on the area itself.

and once you got something to show/play for the community, even if its just a small showcase area, more people will start to help the project.

Yep, that's pretty much the idea. Although I think working on something like a village or town would be much more straight forward that one of the most important structures in High Rock, i.e. Direnni Tower.

So yeah, I plan to work on Anticlere or Glenpoint to for a showcase.

*pisses on Camlorn*

From what I read most mmo worlds are procedural generated these days. If the rumors are true even Cyrodiil landscapes have been mostly made with such techniques (which wouldn't surprise me considering how samey and bland they look). Based on current 3 big province progress I think this approach may be the only viable way moving forward. Are there any sample plugins/screenshots/videos that showcase these 2 above mentioned programs (comprehensive generation, not just grass)?

Next year release of open world The Witcher 3 may provide some nice assets for province mods (http://forums.cdprojektred.com/threads/22022-Using-witcher-2-assets-for-other-games-is-this-allowed?p=876668&viewfull=1#post876668): http://media.pcgamer.com/files/2013/06/The-Witcher-3-Novigrad.jpg

There are not any tutorials that I am aware of. And as I mentioned, the Mesh Generator doesn't seem totally stable, but it can still be used, just carefully. What'd be great would be if OpenCS allowed some procedural generation like in later games. But that might be too much to ask.

Alternatively, there is also http://mw.modhistory.com/download-95-2282, which, while not used as commonly as Yac's mesh generator, can also do heightmaps and seems to be designed specifically for generating objects across wide expanses of land.

This might actually be a better choice, I forgot about Littoral.