noirdesir, have you ever contacted BGS about getting as much information as you can about how to construct your assets so that they can be easily used in their new creation kit? Or about what features the creation kit will have?

this is interesting news. i was kinda hoping there would be a bigger push to make hobbiton or bree more alive or something before you inevitably moved on. the last time i checked out one of your builds the world was pretty empty as far as npc's and towns, no interiors for the hobbit holes..or any building for that matter. for me it ended up to where i was just checking out your new models, and running around the map of course [which is fantastic by the way. really big]
do you have any plans to keep working on your current version to give it some life before you give up out for some other oblivion focused team to finish?
like add creatures to the wilderness so we can just go kill stuff? or try to breath some life into bree? get the prancing pony functional?

I got a question here, how are you going to port it over to Skyrim? is it hard or do you open the same meshes and textures in the new creation kit?
Good job on the mod i have been watching it for years now.

also, could you release your hairs as a separate esp please? call it merp hairs or something. i would download it like crazy just because they rock!

I think its a really good idea, and I hope youhave someone on the team who knows what they are doing I hope I will be able to return to MERP development next year Good Luck

I've been keeping an eye on the MERP project for a while now. Actually, it excites me to a large degree to see this announcement. I hope the porting goes successfully, as I would love to see the physics we have already seen with the dragons and giants in the demo applied to middle earth creatures, such as Fellbeasts and Ents.

@alphamat: I hope so

@brainslasher: we are quite sure that we are able to port our heightmap and the resources that we've created ourselves. The interiors and exteriors will be lost, but for me this isn't a huge problem because we all learned a lot while modding for Oblivion and have the chance to make everything even better now

@jimmyw: no we haven't contacted them, but I don't think they would give informations to a specific modding team only, instead of the whole community.

@senju: In the upcoming beta for Oblivion will find many new landscapes (check our ModDB thread for details), most likely interiors for Bree and maybe some creatures and music (really unsure). So there will be quite some new content compared to the last public 0.2.4 release to enjoy. However we do not plan to release any of our assets to the public before 1.0 ... sorry.

@Left4Candy: Looking at all the information about Skyrim we most likely will be able to easily import all of our meshes, textures and the heightmap in the new Creation Kit - our models for example are saved in the .nif format which will also be used in Skyrim. We also will be able to use our own music, literature, quest ideas and the like. Everything that has been created in the Construction Set will be lost however.

Great to see you are now approaching Skyrim! I think I will definitely check it out when it is finished.

Great project, can't wait to play it.

Keep up the good work!

Just wow, those screenshots of the mountains and inside fangorn are just...breathtaking

Sounds awesome. Do you guys do make items other than weapons, like rings? I want a mod of Vilya that grants insane healing regen, and the ability to throw enemies that are within a given radius of the player character with your weapon when user defined weapon combo is used (e.g, three successive swings of sword, axe, hammer, etc). Can you do it?

Sorry to be a debbie downer, but if you guys aren't even going to finish it on the Oblivion engine what guarantee do we have that you'll ever finish it on the Skyrim engine? I've seen so many big "total conversion" projects just sort of die off slowly as contributors get bored and abandon it, and the sheer amount of work it will take to port it over to the Creation Engine makes me think it really wouldn't be worth the effort. Skyrim will have different assets and different scripting methods. You'll have to recreate all your landscapes from scratch. Every last piece of equipment will be useless in its current state and you'll have to remodel many and re-rig all of them and then painstakingly enter each and every one into the CS as a unique entity. Any races you've got going on right now? Gone. Worthless. New chargen, new animation system, new skeletons and texture maps and such. Anything you had planned for NPC classes will be thrown out the window as that's on a completely new system as well.

For all intents and purposes you'd be abandoning your current project entirely and cannibalizing it to stockpile resources for your new project. Why not just stick to Oblivion and have a completed mod, rather than a half-completed one on Oblivion and a new one that will suffer a ton of setbacks as you try to convert it to a new engine?

Isn't it just the maps? Nothing else?

I'm not on the team but I think I can answer this alright. MERP only really picked up pace about 2 years ago when they got lumpypats heightmap and relative to the size of it not much landscaping has been done, although what there is is amazing. Most of the work achieved is in models and most of those are essentially too good for Oblivion, play the Beta and go to Minas Tirith, it's a very pretty slide show. It also saves a large amount of time not having to add things to Oblivion which are in Skyrim. The project is also more like a quarter done, maybe less actually so not as much work as you think will be lost. If it remained in Oblivion the mod would only slow down and might not become completed , in Skyrim it can speed up and be done much faster and much better.

Merp Merp Merp. I like the sound of this. Merp merp mer....

I honestly don't care for content mods. No one is as skilled as Bethesda for content. I only use mechanics mods and graphics enhancers. Once and awhile Ill download something like a cool set of armor and I just feel like I am cheating.

Then I severely overestimated the stage this project was at. Sounds to me like it's barely started, and it will most of the work will be optimizing the meshes for the new engine. We don't know exactly how the new renderer works but it should make long-distance meshes easier now.



Plenty of people are more skilled than Bethesda at content. New Vegas was sure as hell a lot better than Fallout 3 in that regard. Bethesda's specialty is crafting ridiculously huge worlds and stuffing them to the rafters with content. In the past it hasn't always been good content, certainly not in Oblivion. Hopefully that will change with Skyrim.

Amazing work.
I've been watching this project for a while, and I have been wondering:
How much has the team got to go? Any approximate percentages?

I wish you the best with your project. The dedication I've seen with this project has been incredible.

I was kind of baffled why you would quit the oblivion project to start over but you give some good reasons. Just getting some new modders on board is itself a good reason since the oblivion mod community will probably slow down a bit when skyrim gets going.
Good luck, I look forward to seeing a playable version sometime.

Merp hasn't just started, in fact there will be a huge amount of content added on next release. The reason, there had been a delay of version update 2.5 was that the mod was in need of reorganization to meet the requirements of the sheer size of content. During this process of nearly a year of restructure, many new professional and nearly professional modders had joined the team and continued to develop the project. 2.4 release was only 555 mb, 2.5 was thrown out and moved to 2.6 which will be well over 1 gb. Many more tilesets and armors, clothing has been created with textured a worldspace that will be approximately 95% textured if not completed by its release. New combat systems, like mounted combat and mounted lance attacks. There's more than what I'm willing to disclose but be assured the project is not dead or just starting.

Hi noirdesir.

Good luck my friend, hope everything's good over there. I have to say MERP will look fab on skyrim ? Just make sure you complete it before Elder scrolls 6 comes out? :wink_smile:

This truly amazes me, I never knew this mod had such quality. This is truly awesome...... :goodjob:

EDIT: It would be awesome to see this in Skyrim, don't let this one down. The detail is just astounding.

I would tend to agree, and had planned to post pretty much this - though it seems most have already stated the warnings I would have given.

Switching to Skyrim will be highly non-trivial, and will amount to a complete reboot. As someone who would really like to see this mod finished (in my lifetime) I'm hoping you guys reconsider. Finish it for Oblivion. The sheer amount of work I've seen so far tells me you would take a dramatic hit to the team inertia by switching.

Yes, Duke Nukem Forever did finally come out - and it was incredibly obvious that it had seen several game engines, and had assets developed over a decade.

I will admit, Skyrim is a tempting target. The graphics really have been overhauled, and it looks incredible, but for an established mod team, it's a siren call to the rocks.

I seriously think the new combat system in Skyrim will do LotR much more justice than Oblivion's. I should have some formal video game design training under by the time the game comes out (so far I'm fairly amateur), so I'll check back in with you guys then and see if I can't lend a hand.

I beg to differ. The Tamriel Rebuilt guys have, at the very least, equaled Bethesda's standard of quality in Morrowind.

And yet, Nehrim: At Fate's Edge is arguably superior to Oblivion.