I always wanted to see what Vvardenfell would be like if Red Mountain was less of a hill, and more of a mountain.

So, using TESannwyn and learning about engine height limits, I discovered that the red mountain could be 1.6 times higher then it currently is.
Mutiplying the landscape height by 1.6 everywhere results in these images:

Bamora Before: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/46396473/MGE%20Screenshot%20A2.jpg
Balmora After: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/46396473/MGE%20Screenshot%20A.jpg
Caldera Before: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/46396473/MGE%20Screenshot%20B2.jpg
Caldera After: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/46396473/MGE%20Screenshot%20B.jpg
Looking south Before: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/46396473/MGE%20Screenshot%20D2.jpg
Looking south After: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/46396473/MGE%20Screenshot%20D.jpg

There are some problems.

1) The main one is everything is now sunk into the ground. This could be globally "fixed" by a tool that will make a patch esp to move everything up by adjusting the z co-ords. Would need to find someone with knowledge on how to write that, and the tool will need to use the same movement rules as the landscape.

2) At 1.6 times increase, it's now impossible to walk up red mountain from ghost gate. Just too steep. Would need to test different multipliers to see what is the maximum.

3) Mod conflicts. Since it's changing the entire landscape, almost every mod will conflict in some way. Again, if a tool could be written that could patch mods that would help. Although every patch file would need checking as some things will still be out of position and need fine tuning.


Instead of a flat mulitplier across the entire landscape, I'm thinking about gradually increasing the multiplier based on altitude. So sea level, no change, 50 meters up, 1.05 increase, 100 meters up, 1.10 increase, etc, etc So the lowlands will stay flat and gentle gradients, while the big bumps will be bigger, resulting in more dramatic pictures then the ones above.


What do you guys think? Worth doing? All depends on finding someone to write a tool though, otherwise it's a major job to manually move every item in game to it's new position.

That would be good!
If you ask me, I like the idea of a Dagoth Ur (city) that can be reached only from Kogoruhn!
Although the PC should be able climb rest of the Red Mountain region nonetheless, so OK for the gradual increase.

Last thing: all your links points to just one picture...

EDIT: all your links are belong to us!

to me it sounds impossible...

Great idea! If moving everything up by adjusting the z co-ords via external tool couldn't be achieved, how about multiplying the landscape height by 1.5 just for the Red Mountain region (unnecessary cells deleted via mwedit) and move the remaining objects manually in CS? There are relatively not many of them in these few cells compared to other regions. Red "Mountain" definitely deserve to be extended and there aren't many mods which modify this region so the mod would be still very compatible with other popular plugins.

Well, I'm going to muck about wih the heightmap, to see what areas end up having minor height adjustment, and those that have major. Should be able to end up not touching most of the land by the sea, which is where most of the content is located.

Once I'm happy with the landscape, I'll most likely end up contacting various people who have written tools to see if they could help with a "quick" mini-tool for moving everything else.

I think tes3cmd's http://code.google.com/p/mlox/wiki/Tes3cmd#modify_-_Powerful_batch_record_modification_via_user_code_extens command could do it. It was something I was looking at a while ago (changing the Z-height of all a particular mod's items within a cell) but one needs to understand regular expressions, and they do my head in...

Are you using a linear 1.6 multiplier for everything, or using some sort of exponential scale? I feel like the latter could work better and make mountains even higher by comparison.

All the obvious problems aside, it is an appealing idea from a landscape perspective. Nice concept shots, too!

Guess I have competition now. I've been working on a new, taller Red Mountain since August. Guess I'll have to up the ante to stay in the game

EDIT: If you ever hop onto the http://wbe02.mibbit.com/?settings=432adae4d9ef419c53ccb554b2ed6baa&server=irc.chatspike.net&channel=%23morrowind, I can show you the work I've done to combat the steepness problem. Perhaps it will give you some ideas.

I'm looking at doing a scale system. For every X increase in altitude, increase multiplier by Y. That way the map is divided into bands of X, and hopefully it won't be too noticeable at the band edges that the multiplier has changed.


Dragon32, thanks for the link. It's already done my head in just glancing at the page

Really? There's no real point in me continuing if something like this is already in progress, although this mod concept doesn't in effect change anything apart from height. Should be no need to add meshes, etc, etc.

Just checking you are aware of the height limit in morrowind?

I believe I hit a limit a bit above 32,000 units. After that the game just stops trying and you just fall through it all
Would love to work on it with you if you'd like. It's a lot of work for one person~

Indeed, 32768 is the maximum height the landscape will work to, although you can go higher in the CS.

Right, following on with the idea of a gradual multiplier to the landscape starting at 4000 units (virtually all game content is under this height) worked pretty well, enough to prove that it can be developed further.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/46396473/MGE%20Screenshot%20016.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/46396473/MGE%20Screenshot%20017.jpg/ http://dl.dropbox.com/u/46396473/MGE%20Screenshot%20A.jpg/ http://dl.dropbox.com/u/46396473/MGE%20Screenshot%20A2.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/46396473/MGE%20Screenshot%20018.jpg / http://dl.dropbox.com/u/46396473/MGE%20Screenshot%20B.jpg / http://dl.dropbox.com/u/46396473/MGE%20Screenshot%20B2.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/46396473/MGE%20Screenshot%20019.jpg (major seams)
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/46396473/MGE%20Screenshot%20020.jpg

Still currently have an issue about not being able to travel up the mountain from ghostgate, even the lower end which is at a smaller multiplier is still too steep. May have to end up carving that path deeper into the mountain and possibly adjust the paths around the place. Since, IIRC, there is a mine near the ghostgate, showing that some construction work took place before the ghostgate blocked it all off, I may have to also make use of adding in wooden steps to get about near that area.

We shall see

Cool stuff. I personally would like to see mountain meshes placed all over Morrowind where appropriate. This is how Skyrim handles a lot of it's mountains, but I think that would be a lot of work unless it could be somehow automated. I think Vality7 was experimenting with a similar technique in fact.

An interesting project, and attractive screenshots. Some of the textures in this screenshot do seem to be somewhat overstretched:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/46396473/MGE%20Screenshot%20018.jpg

Is it possible to change the number of times the texture is repeated on those surfaces?

It's not that it's stretched, it's just a weird seam that is a gap in the landscape between cells. Currently working on a better way of adjusting the landscape data.

Ah, thanks. Looking forward to seeing the results.

I wrote a program to adjust the heightmap much more finely, and the results are good. I told it to start a bit lower in the landscape (which I feel was a mistake), and also to go slightly higher (originally, I had 30,000 units max, now I'm telling it 32,000).

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/46396473/MGE%20Screenshot%20021.jpg(looking quite impressive)
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/46396473/MGE%20Screenshot%20022.jpg / http://dl.dropbox.com/u/46396473/MGE%20Screenshot%20A2.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/46396473/MGE%20Screenshot%20023.jpg / http://dl.dropbox.com/u/46396473/MGE%20Screenshot%20B2.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/46396473/MGE%20Screenshot%20024.jpg / http://dl.dropbox.com/u/46396473/MGE%20Screenshot%20D2.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/46396473/MGE%20Screenshot%20025.jpg

The Red Mountain is now truely more of a mountain, and in correct proportion. Repositioning the ghost fence is going to be interesting! Some areas appear to be too steep now for the existing meshes....

There are some landscape errors right at the top of the volcano, and strangely, the lowlands that are part of cells with some changes are slightly higher then they should be (like 30 cm higher). As a result, I will experiment with changing the lowest height that I change. Currently at 3600 units, was at 4000 units.
This http://dl.dropbox.com/u/46396473/changes.jpg shows all the areas now with more height. Looking closely, there are a lot of small blobs with minor changes to, which then affects the entire cell. I need to reduce the number of blobs to reduce conflicts.

Looks great! My only suggestion would be that some manual sculpting at the end wouldn't be a bad idea, as it's looking a little boxy at the moment (particularly in http://dl.dropbox.com/u/46396473/MGE%20Screenshot%20023.jpg screenshot), especially compared to the http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6217/6385494675_0214121ddd_z.jpg of Red Mountain found in Skyrim:

Yep, I'll give it some attention once the main bulk is sorted out. As a quick experiment, I tried putting Dagoth Ur ruin in the vent in it's new place, and it didn't really fit too well or too accessable. Some landscaping will be required.
I may also try adjusting the formula that controls the height increase, so it starts gentle, then becomes steeper, then goes more gentle again. At the moment the formula get's steeper and steeper with original altitude.


The Morrowind that you can just about make out in Skyrim doesn't look like Morrowind to me. I couldn't match up the landscape to what it should be. Now, I understand that red mountain erupted again, so maybe mass lava flows have drastically changed the appearence.

You have my support! It would seriously look great. But I'm afraid that you'll have many handwork to do to fix anything... :/

Wow, definitly looks more beefy than before. The only problem is that it would conflict terribly with GDR.

Please don't get discouraged, PL. This is a fantastic idea and I know when it's finished I will use it. As far as I'm concerned, you can re-landscape the entire red mountain region and make the original questy-locations and items fit to your landscape. I've played it vanilla enough times to not care if Ur's ruins are changed completely.

Indeed, that's really the only major mod conflict this will cause.

I'm not discouraged
No doubt there will have to be some structural changes, shifting some buildings a few meters here or there, adding in some more structure to counter the extra steepness, relocating the ghost fence, etc, etc.

I've seen a few screenshots of Spiffymans major Red Mountain overhaul. It's even bigger, and been restructured!

Just remembered I need to get the textures to use the texture seam fixes, just using default Morrowind, which is not a good idea

Really good idea to make Red mountain a mountain and fits with its importance to the main quest to have it more widely visible on the island. Nice work and I look forward to seeing more screens.