[Isaac Saetern]

Quick update:

Still working on this as many hours per day as I can. I have been adding in a varied set of villages, towns etc to serve as examples for modders. So making a location is easier. You can check an example, then follow it, adding your own mark etc. For instance I have done a Sarach hamlet and a village, an Imperial city and several forts, a Karithian city and a Scathaean village too. The hold up at present is optimizing and getting distant meshes in and working plus just adding a little bit of custom stuff to make sure there is a wide choice for modders.

The first release will be private for one modder to add in some post houses for Imperial use, and players can then obtain a horse in game by following a simple quest line. After that, the location of the download will be released (once this post house plugin has been merged into it), then mod away!!


If anyone wants to do interiors for dungeons, caves, tombs etc, the vanilla game meshes are the mainstay anyway so utilise those. Just PM me and we can discuss.

[lolly13]

Hello thekarithian.

I'm just posting to say how much I admire your tenacity, pushing onwards despite the apparent indifference of most of the Oblivion community.

I've been following development of this mod since you first started posting, and I'm aware of the huge amount of work you put in to creating the background and 'lore' before you even started modding.

I feel that my current player character is coming to the end of her playable life, so a fresh install may be in order. I shall certainly download Mesogea and explore this vast new world.

Keep on plugging on,

S'lider

[Nathan Hunter]

Thanks. Will do.

[Your Mum]

I havent gone away. Very busy weekend at work and now back into things. I have tidied up Ventara and removed some of the meshes, plus completely reworked a few that are just dumb walls with no in game use other than as a barrier between exterior and interior world spaces. So there was no use having walkways and the like, not really.

A few more meshes added and some nice locations to visit. Just doing a few NPC's to add some spice. One of the plugins had errors and failed so Ive had to do that bit from scratch.

Working hard, will have this uploaded soon,.

[Ash]

hey, i've been following this mod for a week now, and i just want to say that i admire you for making an ENORMOUS mod.

also i wanted to say that it might be interesting to add the seven wonders of the world (the ancient ones).

[Channing]

hey, i've been following this mod for a week now, and i just want to say that i admire you for making an ENORMOUS mod.

also i wanted to say that it might be interesting to add the seven wonders of the world (the ancient ones).

Not a bad idea, except that I wouldn't go with all or even most of the Seven Wonders if Mesogea's pseudo-real world ancient history theme is to be followed. I think the timeline puts the world of Mesogea waaaay back in antiquity before most, if not all of the 'original' ancient wonders were created. The likeliest candidate(s) would be the Pyramid(s) at Giza - circa 2550+ BC puts it the oldest wonder. Everything else is after 500 or 600 BC or even later.

Mesogea, in my opinion, should have its own Ancient Wonders, perhaps only loosely based on the historic Seven Wonders. Only the darkest, most remote legends should be used. I was thinking that a Sphinx could be used, though - it's not one of the true ancient wonders, but it has been conjectured to be even older than the pyramids... perhaps even by thousands of years. Even if this has not been confirmed by hard scientific fact, it could still be fun to have a few things like this in Mesogea.

Also, the colosus of Rhodes was originally fabled to have been so huge that it straddled the harbor. Though modern historians find this highly unlikely, no one knows for sure how big it was. So how cool would it be to have a huge statue, on the scale of the imperial tower, which actually straddles a harbour (big enough to easily straddle a ship and its mast)?

[Brian LeHury]

I like that! The statue idea is excellent. Its giving me ideas for one of the cities.
Yes youre correct Mesogea is a long time before the first ancient wonders. Its not even prior to the last Ice Age as thats too specific and close to what archaeology could easily throw up as a load of nonsense. Mind you Ive never read any archaeological discussion on Middle Earth so clearly, sensible people can detach themselves from reality and just take a fictional work for what it is without seeking to debunk it on the obvious.

I purposefully set Mesogea between two major ice ages, over a period of about twenty thousand years, where mankind existed under the domination of the Vandur, an ice age occurred where numerous humans were left to scavenge on the surface whilst the Vandur and their human slaves withdrew underground to volcanic sites. As the ice thawed over thousands of years Mankind developed civilisations, forgot the Vandur, until of course the Vandur emerged and war occurred. Mesogea ends with a second ice age when its civilisations collapsed though the memory of them was preserved and emerged much later in our own ancient history as myths and legends.

Well, Tolkien got away with no less.

[Adrian Morales]

Announcement:

The Mod is now ready for upload. Distant land checkd and working.
I will release the download location to one member of the forum who has agreed to create a number of Roman type posthouses across the so far civilised areas of Mesogea. Once that is completed, I will merge it into the master file and upload the updated version.

So, stand by.

[Laura Wilson]

Announcement:

The Mod is now ready for upload. Distant land checkd and working.
I will release the download location to one member of the forum who has agreed to create a number of Roman type posthouses across the so far civilised areas of Mesogea. Once that is completed, I will merge it into the master file and upload the updated version.

So, stand by.

So cool! This is good news! :goodjob:

Can't wait to have a look around, and then see where I can add stuff. I would definitely like to try my hand at adding a bard or few, maybe a dungeon and maybe even a small town if I'm feeling creative.

[Pumpkin]

Not a bad idea, except that I wouldn't go with all or even most of the Seven Wonders if Mesogea's pseudo-real world ancient history theme is to be followed. I think the timeline puts the world of Mesogea waaaay back in antiquity before most, if not all of the 'original' ancient wonders were created. The likeliest candidate(s) would be the Pyramid(s) at Giza - circa 2550+ BC puts it the oldest wonder. Everything else is after 500 or 600 BC or even later.

Mesogea, in my opinion, should have its own Ancient Wonders, perhaps only loosely based on the historic Seven Wonders. Only the darkest, most remote legends should be used. I was thinking that a Sphinx could be used, though - it's not one of the true ancient wonders, but it has been conjectured to be even older than the pyramids... perhaps even by thousands of years. Even if this has not been confirmed by hard scientific fact, it could still be fun to have a few things like this in Mesogea.

Also, the colosus of Rhodes was originally fabled to have been so huge that it straddled the harbor. Though modern historians find this highly unlikely, no one knows for sure how big it was. So how cool would it be to have a huge statue, on the scale of the imperial tower, which actually straddles a harbour (big enough to easily straddle a ship and its mast)?

oh... didn't think of that, but it would be really cool to see a HUGE pyramid or an enormous statue. perhaps an optional module for adding the seven world wonders (so the people that want to stay lore-correct don't have to use them).

by the way, how can roman posthouses exist if the mod takes place couple of thousand years before the romans?

[Brad Johnson]

"Roman type posthouses"

Not "Roman posthouses" Subtle difference but very meaningful. Two thousand years (roughly) after the Romans we still see Roman architectural elements in modern buildings, we use latin writing on statues and walls, we use Doric, Ionic and Corinthian pillar and even Roman pillar types. I dont doubt that in another two thousand years some of those aspects will still remain.

The mod is based loosely upon ancient history, its not exact, nor anywhere near it, but a presumption of what in fantastic circumstances might have been a distant precursor to ancient history.

[Valerie Marie]

I am packing the files at the moment. The main file is 060MB approx, it looks quite large but as it is an esm not an esp the game runs fine, though CS loading can take a little while. Basically put the kettle on. My system isnt particularly great, its an Inspiron 531, Vista 64, Dual Processor 5600+ 2.8 Ghz, 4GB Ram, 8600 video card. Game play is generally:

City 15-50 fps dependent upon whats happening. 15 or so in extremely busy, built up loads of NPC areas though generally quite a bit higher.
Town 24-50fps as above
Dense forests 25-40
Open areas anything up to 70+fps.

CS takes about 12 mins to load up. I generally save regularly and occasionally go into the data file and save a copy of the save esp just in case of problems. That way hours of work arent lost and any problems I can go back to the last stable esp and use that. Ive rarely had any problems anyway.

When loading the CS it will always throw up an error that "the bad forms encountered bla bla" this crept in somewhere during the very early stages of the mod during placing trees and rocks with the region editor. I played for hours and hours, days and days, visiting all over the world to try to get it to crash, freeze or mess up and it just didnt! It actually crashed LESS than playing a basic modded original game. The likely reason for this bad form malarcky is that somewhere I moved an article then merged to the master and it conflicted somewhere. Anyway, lots of advice taken on this one and the answer has always been, "not a worry". So just click OK and mod your little hearts out.

Loads and loads of claims are already put up on the website. They are nearly all open to grab. There is a lot of real estate out there and a vast world to do stuff in. Once the mod has the necessary content I will activate the download locations.

[Melissa De Thomasis]

One quick question though; would people prefer the mod at this stage to have stuff packed in a bsa or as loose files?

[Lindsay Dunn]

I don't know, I like BSA because they are easy to move around, but I also like folders loose because I can easily take a look at all the stuff.

[elliot mudd]

One quick question though; would people prefer the mod at this stage to have stuff packed in a bsa or as loose files?

Well, at this point, with future updates/additions likely, a BSA might be more convenient for the end user, for ease of install and updating. Maybe you could offer both versions, if it's not too much trouble.

For potential modders like (myself), having some kind of resource pack that could be DLed for different areas would be nice or just a basic guide for which tilesets, etc. to use for different cultures/towns/tombs, etc.

I'm still trying to figure out how I'm going to manage the different install, as I'd like to have a separate install for Mesogea... Now I wish OBMM had an option for separate mod list sets. Maybe I could use a different user profile (Vista), but not sure if that would work. I'll have to think on that a bit.

[City Swagga]

I'd like to do the same, for MERP. Two installs that is.

I will start by having the whole thing available as it stands, in open folder format. Its fairly easy to use then and modders can look through it all.

[gary lee]

Well, at this point, with future updates/additions likely, a BSA might be more convenient for the end user, for ease of install and updating. Maybe you could offer both versions, if it's not too much trouble.

For potential modders like (myself), having some kind of resource pack that could be DLed for different areas would be nice or just a basic guide for which tilesets, etc. to use for different cultures/towns/tombs, etc.

I'm still trying to figure out how I'm going to manage the different install, as I'd like to have a separate install for Mesogea... Now I wish OBMM had an option for separate mod list sets. Maybe I could use a different user profile (Vista), but not sure if that would work. I'll have to think on that a bit.

I'd like to do the same, for MERP. Two installs that is.

I will start by having the whole thing available as it stands, in open folder format. Its fairly easy to use then and modders can look through it all.

Download Wrye Bash, and it has this option. Go into the saves section, then right click on file I think it is, and it has profile or something or other and you can just create a new profile and call it "Mesogea Testing" etc. or something or other

That's how I run MERP, as it does add quite a while to the loading of the game, and Mesogea makes it even longer as it is much larger

Good luck

[brandon frier]

I would need to be able to put files into different folders. The distant land for Middle Earth will automatically go into the same distant land stuff as Mesogea which will cause real problems packaging and modding the entire thing. Two seperate installs would be much better. Not sure if it will work, but worth a try.

[Mélida Brunet]

I would need to be able to put files into different folders. The distant land for Middle Earth will automatically go into the same distant land stuff as Mesogea which will cause real problems packaging and modding the entire thing. Two seperate installs would be much better. Not sure if it will work, but worth a try.

Oh, I see, yeah, that would be hell.

Easiest way to do that is if you have two hard drives, then just install it on each one, same for partitions,

Or, if you only have the one partition/hard drive, copy the entire Oblivion folder, including the .exes to some other location that you want, then uninstall oblivion, then reinstall, and you should have two copies of the files. There may be other ways of doing it, but just ask and as I'm sure you're aware someone will know

Also, how's progress going on this?? We could do with some of your awesomeness over at MERP

[Jason King]

Re MERP. I would love to have spent time on that, I intended to throw some considerable hours into it a few months ago but as soon as Mesogea was salvaged I couldnt resist. The mod has transformed massively now, Ive spent hundreds of hours on it and now there are quite a few locations that people can do plugins for. I am about to do another announcement later today too.

Stay posted.

[Luis Reyma]

Ok, lates news:

I have uploaded to my own webspace but there is a bandwidth limit and these files will absolutely svck it dry very quickly. Please PM me if you want the links and I will provide them as long as I dont get dozens of requests,

In the meantime I have:

Emailed Fileplanet and TESNexus for permission to host these very large files. I am awaiting a reply. If anyone knows of any other good hosting sites then please shout out.

EDIT: Also contacted TESalliance.

[Sabrina Steige]

I am preparing a movie to introduce a lot of the new content, however it barely scratches the surface of what is now included in the mod.

[Bambi]

Ok files have now uploaded to my own provider. So PM me for the location to download.

Meanwhile, Uploading to TESAlliance now.

Mesogea version 3.0 is complete. Video to follow soon.

[Sarah MacLeod]

Ok files have now uploaded to my own provider. So PM me for the location to download.

Meanwhile, Uploading to TESAlliance now.

Mesogea version 3.0 is complete. Video to follow soon.

Yay! :celebration:

PM Sent.

I guess it's perfect timing for a new Release thread, though I suppose it's still technically WIPz, unless you are ready to do a more "public" or general release.

Still, can't wait to see where my creative juices can flow with this. I kinda have some ideas for a river/lake town and some old-school D&D-style adventures (in a more ancient setting, of course)

[Veronica Martinez]

Thanks.

Ok, news so far. Uploaded to private server and downloads on request here to save bandwidth.

TESAlliance now have the main files. There are instructions on how to put everything into the game at Mesogea.org under forums news.

Any problems contact me.

1. I am uploading to fileplanet later today.
2, Three more files to be uploaded: 1 ReadMe containing instructions and modders guide. 2. Credits. 3. Optional Earth sky and moon.
3. I am in the process of creating two trailers for the mod. One for players/tourists. The second a guide for modders to the items, articles, meshes etc contained within the mod to give some guidance on adding content.

Some modders may well find some of their own content in Mesogea. Full credits will be provided with the ReadMe material to be uploaded later. I have over the past couple of years tried to record every instance of 3rd party material contained in it. Unfortunately after the original HD crash I lost some of this. If you come across content, please contact me so I can make sure all credit is given where due.

(Modders: if you need to use anything out of Mesogea, short of taking the whole thing or making a copy world of it or somesuch - in which case you might as well just help me here - please feel free to use whatever you need. No contact is needed, just credit me in your files somewhere - if you remember, though I wont be put out if you forget.)

Other than that, just enjoy touring mesogea and Please HELP MOD IT WITH US.



Off to London for the day so will sort this all out this evening.