I like the floating rock!

gtm

I also liked it way back when I first saw it, glad he stuck with it. Not out of place at all considering Morrowind. Although now that it's been mentioned, placing it lower and over the lake would also be cool. Congrats UCM!

He's proven he has tough skin and I'm sure many of us wouldn't mind frank critique. But, fair point. To expound, for all the comments about adherence to lore regarding the City's metropolitan nature the whole floating university thing seems a little weird and out of place. Plus, does the fact that it's floating at all really add anything? Of course, that's for him to decide; I merely get to comment on it. I'll just say that I think the University would look more fitting grounded, not to mention it'll play more friendly with other mods, to boot.

To clarify, I love the idea of this mod; even with all the decorative mods out there for the Imperial City it still never feels like a proper capital. And some new quests are always nice.

At any rate, again, I'm sure a compatibility list would be well appreciated by all of us. There's a lot of IC mods floating around out there.

Hm, thinking of just saying "screw it" and remove all mods in IC, this looks a bit too awesome to miss out on.

And keep the Arcane University on the rock!

Wow! Can't really ask for a compatibility poatch to better cities now, can I? :whistling: bliviongate:

This is awesome, i'm going to test this with other mods IC related and let you know what happens , very good work UCM!!!

http://memberfiles.freewebs.com/69/63/54916369/photos/Everything-Unloved-an/SillyRock02.PNG


But in seriousness for once, I do want to keep the island floating for a few reasons. I want to free what remains of the island for a park and lumber yard (as one peninsula is directly outside the manufacturing district). Two, it has a precedent in the moon Bao Dur from Morrowind that Vivec uses as an ever-present threat of his power. And three I think it makes the city seem much grander and more mysterious. Those who say the lore city is devoid of magic forget that the city is also described as having living dragons there and shrubbery that talks to you.

I have experimented with lowering the island and moving it out over the lake, but there are a few problems with this. One, when closer to the ground the island seems enormous and feels oppressive, and frankly I worried it would somehow fall down and crush me. The different perspective also makes it seem comically large, and from certain angles it practically replaces the entire sky. As for a different placement I cannot find anywhere above water that satisfies me. The body of water closest too it is so close to that bridge that the University and that bridge clash from a visual standpoint robbing both of them of all magnificence either of them had. Besides that location, the body of water beneath the University ought to be larger than the University island itself, and most of the lake around the city is rather narrow. The few places that could fit this bill are already occupied by some city structure, such as the Prison or the waterfront for example. Placing the island above these creates the same problem as with that bridge. It makes that area too visually busy plus the added problem that moving the island out over something else on the other side of the city creates an enormous empty space for the southeastern side of the city. Having so much activity on one side (over the Prison or Waterfront) and nothing on the other creates an imbalanced look for the city that I do not like. One of the largest problems I had with the vanilla City island was the great amount of wasted space, and I don't want to repeat that problem.

So, I am sorry, but I do not think I can move the Silly Rock^TM and make it look better or even as good as it does now.

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

For my part I like floating things. It makes the world a little less mundane and more magical. I even try to offer a docking place for new district with my http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=15286 but it was not well received. The objective was to add a way to enlarge the city without actually changing its size nor being incompatible with any other mod. The Dome itself is here to cover the emptiness of the mod which is only a platform in the air.

About Better Cities compatibility, there is a good chance that we will work on that

May He Who Shall Not Be Named be splatted by a falling Arcane University.

I love your Sky Dome, even i used it as a place to make my first efforts in modding, but i'm not very good at that.

lulz
Nice mod man, i have about 17 minutes remaining on the BSA download, but it looks promising, :celebration:

Fast service! I like that.

As for your point, it's well made, even if I still doubt the whole floatiness angle. And I was going to mention the precedent set by the Vivec moon but I figured that went without saying; I actually think things like that ought to stay in Morrowind to maintain the atmospheric differences. Not to mention (and this is purely me woolgathering here, feel free to discount it if you disagree, I suppose) the fact that it seems to be making a statement by itself that mages are to be kept separate from the other citizens, whereas they seem to be pretty well accepted everywhere else; no different from the Fighter's Guild, really.

If you're going to this much effort to expand the city why not expand the island slightly to accommodate the University? Ultimately I'm a little worried about compatibility but, as you said, you're going for broke and your own vision, which leads me to ask: what's going on with the vanilla districts? Are they remaining untouched (and, for that matter, will the AU cell itself be untouched beyond the obvious difference in, erm, placement.)

Anyway, an idea on what quests we might be seeing would be nice, even if it's just hints.

Why, thank you!

The high fantasy ideal is present in more than just Morrowind. The lore of Valenwood states there are massive walking tree-cities, and Black Marsh has a race of sentient trees (lots of trees) Summerset Isle has a disappearing islet, and High Rock has the Adamantine Tower. As for increasing the island's size, I don't feel I can add much more land to the island itself without the lake turning into a stream. As it stands, I would already generously call it a river instead of a lake or even a pond. Finally, about the separation of the mages, in the vanilla game they already keep to themselves behind magically locked gates and only permit people entrance after passing through several hoops. Magical, flaming, undead hoops. Mages needed for quests not related the the Mages Guild will still be reachable without joining the guild.


You can actually see the beginnings of two quests in this version. Look around the palace maze, or go talk to recruits in the Legion HQ. I cut out the progression in either of these quests with fourth-wall destroying dialogue because they aren't completed. Nothing is worse than playing a game, getting into it, and then it stopping abruptly. No one likes video-game based "bluesies".

One quest line, the one the recruits start you on, is to join the Imperial Legion Reserves. I understand there are other mods that let you join the Legion proper, so I made this faction separate from that, which also serves as a handy reason for why your player character isn't forcibly deployed to some other province like the bulk of the Legionnaires. Other than that I'm going to expand on and investigate the skooma/moonsugar trade going through the capitol, have the player defend themselves or someone else in front of a judge a couple of times, and stop an insanely jealous Jeeves from offing the family he works for. And those are just the quests I'm hinting to you about. My quests are designed to allow for multiple conclusions most of the time. A combat method, dialogue-based story method, or a sneaky/subterfuge method. That won't be present in every quest, some will only have one or two solutions, but I'm going to endeavor to make multiple solutions available in as many cases as possible.


Also I encourage, nay request anyone with quest experience to contact me. I'd like some assistance in making the quests as succinct, glitch-less, and polished as possible. I admit that most of my experience is in world building, interior building, and writing.

Hey - just got it up and running - I was hoping to help out and offer some nice screenshots. (I think I have a pretty nice mix of ENB, OBGEv2, and ScreenEffects.)

I immediately noticed a few oddities and wanted to see if I'd messed up the install somehow.

I downloaded both files - "Imperial City Redux Beta.esp" and "ICredux.bsa" they are both in my Data file.

Here's what happened -

http://www4.picturepush.com/photo/a/3776287/img/Oblivion/Oblivion-2010-07-11-01-09-10-22.jpg

http://www3.picturepush.com/photo/a/3776286/img/Oblivion/Oblivion-2010-07-11-01-07-44-50.jpg

http://www5.picturepush.com/photo/a/3776288/img/Oblivion/Oblivion-2010-07-11-01-13-32-48.jpg


Did I do something wrong in the install? I tried adding the .bsa to the .ini file, but that didn't solve anything either...


Again - great work - it's quite lovely. I'm excited to see where this goes.

Yeah, im also missing the pavement in akatosh's arms.
Otherwise, the city looks wonderful, nice work man.
Also, any chance you'll edit the map to show the new city properly?

Ooooh, thanks for those screenshots. It really helps an open beta like this when people do that for me. The skeleton architecture is something with LOD, I'll investigate that tomorrow sometime (DAMN YOU WORLD CUP). I'm not sure why the Akatosh Arms street is missing, I don't think I forgot it in the BSA, but I'll also look into that, as well as the missing flag that ought to be on that tower in Septim Road. In regards to editing the map, I plan to include an optional map that people who really like map mods can ignore. Also, I feel I should mention this, I'm removing most of the map markers in the city to reduce the map clutter around there, with a nice secondary effect of that making the player walk through the city. The markers were there mostly for my benefit when testing things.

And finally, seeing my mod through all of those effects made me drool slightly.

EDIT: I have no idea why this posted three times. I blame the gremlins.

EDIT: Sorry, I have no idea what happened.

Real life has taken me away from the game in recent months, but I find time to pop into my favorite forum now and then.

Really pleased to see the release on this one. A big THANKS to you, The UCM.

I'm looking forward to my return to Oblivion + Imperial City Redux.

Yeah, tell me about it. Where else would I have been for the last few months? I know the feeling.

I took some screenys of my own, however i dun no how to take shots so they are bland

http://i947.photobucket.com/albums/ad312/nixaguy/screen9.jpg

http://i947.photobucket.com/albums/ad312/nixaguy/screen6.jpg
http://i947.photobucket.com/albums/ad312/nixaguy/screen7.jpg

http://i947.photobucket.com/albums/ad312/nixaguy/screen8.jpg

http://i947.photobucket.com/albums/ad312/nixaguy/screen3.jpg

http://i947.photobucket.com/albums/ad312/nixaguy/screen4.jpg

http://i947.photobucket.com/albums/ad312/nixaguy/screen54.jpg
It seems like the door's collision has been removed.


http://i947.photobucket.com/albums/ad312/nixaguy/screen2.jpg

http://i947.photobucket.com/albums/ad312/nixaguy/screen1.jpg
The last two were taken in the imperial theater district(adjacent(i think thats what its called) from each other), and the dummy cell leads to, what looks to be a theater, void of mostly everything. Mind you i didnt go into the theater districts theater, i was just taking a tour

Just a few of the things i noticed while looking at the imperial city

That throne on the water is from TIE .. there's a lunatic claiming his the real emperor there.. with 2 mudcrab acting as his personal bodyguard ^^ .. I dont know if he is related to a quest or not, but he kinda hostile and killing him grant you the emperor's robe.

Ok, thought that was odd, have to sort that out.

Just to be sure.. that floating throne is the one you find floating on Lake Rumare, yes? if its not, then I'm sorry.

This is a really great piece of work. It does make the city look a much bigger and more impressive place. You deserve a lot of credit for adding so much new architecture and structures without impacting very much on performance. In this respect it is much better than other IC mods such as Better cities.

Most of it seemed to work apart from the Akatosh and Waterfront sections which were severely screwed. All the surfaces and walls failed but this could be due to incompatibility with Unique landscapes city isle which I have installed. Also, I cant find the floating Arcane university.