[WIP] MERP - Middle-Earth Roleplaying Project : V - Skyrim

» Wed Sep 07, 2011 12:58 pm

closed for clean up

re-opening
Please refrain from spam, off topic posts and flames and flamebait. Please if I visit this thread again don't let me find any of that here or I won't be happy at all.

» Wed Sep 07, 2011 11:08 pm

Does this mod add to the existing world or does it replace any space previously there?

» Wed Sep 07, 2011 11:16 am

Vault-boy, it will be an entirely new world.

» Wed Sep 07, 2011 1:42 pm

Hmm, well I guess it could be said we are not a TC or Overhaul, but we changed gameplay style on a significant level in regards to combat and skills. Maybe not fully for every skill, but at least to our own needs. Definitely, we have upgraded models to replace others but only those that we are using for our Worldspace, not Tamriels Worldspace. We have changed artistic assets, though some remain the same. Definitely we have changed core aspects of gameplay in that portions of that are completely different from vanilla oblivion. MERP & Blade, anyone? Google it. Certainly, we have combined creations from our team and assets from other modders, as well as changes we made to vanilla into a significant and sizable download ( way over 1 gb ). Absolutely, you will require memory modifications to meet platform limitations to play this mod, and some of you may have to increase your cpu and graphics. So if that isn't significant enough to qualify as TC with the added content and total change of the game, well .. I don't know what would be. We're not looking to start a game company, come on! LOL We just want to play in a Middle Earth World, and provide you that same mod.

» Wed Sep 07, 2011 10:03 pm

I think you need to remove the word "total conversion" from your project. Total conversion means there is nothing left at all from the original game except for the engine code. Every model, graphic, sound, building, tree, spell, item have all been removed and replaced. And anyone who's been around the block knows 99.9% of all total conversions are an epic failure.

Dictionary quote please? You made that up yourself it seems. The only place where I can find a 'definition' of 'total conversion' is in the urban dictionary:

A total conversion when used with respect to video games, is a type of mod that alters the game to such a degree that it either no longer, or very loosely resembles the original game.

I'd say that applies to MERP. As for the rest of your advise, no thanks, you obviously know too little of this project.

Why announce this now, and in here (and label it as a [WIP] when the game isn't even here).
Amateurs guising as professionals with no license to actually use Tolkein lore.

If your project and 'team' are as big as you say they are, there is no reason why you couldn't develop your own engine instead of stealing the work of others (and taking all the credit).

We are a talented team of modders, not professional game engine developers. There's a huge difference between the two. We give credit where credit is due, and since our mod is non-profit we consider it essentially fan-art. If any copyright holders think we're infringing their copyrights we'll take it up with them, but ultimately that can only decided by a court of law (not by the author or owner of the original work). I quote from wikipedia (yes I know, not a very reliable source):

The legal status of fan made art in America may be tricky due to the vagaries of the United States Copyright Act. Generally, the right to reproduce and display pieces of artwork is controlled by the original author or artist under 17 U.S.C. § 106. However, fan art using settings and characters from a previously created work could be considered a derivative work, which would place control of the copyright with the owner of that original work. Display and distribution of fan art that would be considered a derivative work would be unlawful.

However, American copyright law allows for the production, display and distribution of derivative works if they fall under a fair use exemption, 17 U.S.C. § 107. A court would look at all relevant facts and circumstances to determine whether a particular use qualifies as fair use; a multi-pronged rubric for this decision involves evaluating the amount and substantiality of the original appropriated, the transformative nature of the derivative work, whether the derivative work was done for educational or noncommercial use, and the economic effect that the derivative work imposes on the copyright holder's ability to make and exploit their own derivative works. None of these factors is alone dispositive.

American courts also typically grant broad protection to parody, and some fan art may fall into this category. This has not explicitly been adjudicated with respect to fan art, however. Moreover, while parody is typically afforded protection under § 107, a court must engage in a fact-intensive, case-specific inquiry for each work.

And that only counts for the USA, while the vast majority of our team lives outside of the USA, spread all over the world. Due to that fact I do not think there will ever be a court of law on this specific matter to decide whether we are infringing copyrights or not. We may get a Cease and Desist letter, but that by itself means nothing, anyone can send one. We wouldn't listen to it, and then the sender would have the choice to take it up in a court of a law or let it be. I expect they will let it be, since due to the international nature of our team and the anarchist nature of the international system of states, it would be a very costly and a truly legal nightmare to prosecute our developers. With a significant risk of 'them' losing the case as well.

So hold your horses, until a court judge has ruled, the statement that we infringe copyrights (or 'steal', which is legally speaking an incorrect term in this entire discussion since 'stealing' requires a missing original) is an opinion and not a fact.

I can't wait to not play this because it's not finished yet and you guys decide to ditch it when "Elder Scrolls VI: High Elf Hullabaloo" is announced and you guys decide to move your conversion mod to that new engine and then never finish it and when "Elder Scrolls VII: Oodles of Orcs" is announced you'll tell everyone how you're working on the conversion mod for that game that will never be finished.

This concern has come up before. The Oblivion->Skyrim port does not mean that we will keep porting to the next release of the series over and over, since the circumstances of this port are unique. MERP only started with Oblivion 2 years after it's release, and in the beginning the team was very small and lacked professional knowledge in several modding areas. Due to this our earlier releases weren't merged properly which caused a lot of severe errors. It took more than a year to repair our merge, and we're only just done with that. During that repair a lot of work was on hold, and we suffered significant delays.

In contrast, we have a lot more knowledge in the house now, and come Skyrim we will immediately have a big, experienced and multi-talented modding team, we have a lot of custom-made models ready, we will have a new and improved heightmap ready, we have a fleshed out plan of development, and we have a huge fresh modding community from which we can recruit a lot of new talent into our team. Our starting position is nearly perfect. Again, in Oblivion we started half-way with a largely inexperienced and far smaller team.

» Wed Sep 07, 2011 8:54 pm

Hello everybody, I've got a little update on our mods progress for you

Our team is somehow splitted up at the moment: several people are working on new things for Skyrim, some others are finishing up the last release of MERP for Oblivion and several others are just waiting for the release of Skyrim in order to start with the landscaping of Middle Earth for Skyrim.

The first thing that I'd like to show you is an awesome model made by Justb: http://www.moddb.com/mods/merp-middle-earth-roleplaying-mod/images/elronds-robe-wip#imagebox

ztree is working on a new tileset for one of the cities in Middle Earth - we're only showing a tiny preview of it now (of course placed in Oblivion) ... http://www.moddb.com/mods/merp-middle-earth-roleplaying-mod/images/which-city-is-this#imagebox

In the meantime Lumpypat - who already made our old heightmap that we've used in Oblivion - is working on a completely new, more lore accurate and detailed heightmap. He is creating it with the heightmap editor from the Oblivion Construction Set, but as soon as Skyrim is released we will import the heightmap into the Creation Kit. Here are some first pictures from our new heightmap inside Oblivion:

http://www.image-share.com/ijpg-892-59.html

http://www.image-share.com/ijpg-892-60.html

http://www.image-share.com/ijpg-892-61.html

Alasdair Hurst has overhauled his MERP Launcher that he created for Oblivion in the last months, and made an improved version for Skyrim. Our goal is to include an automatic update for MERP inside this launcher: http://www.image-share.com/ipng-892-65.html

» Wed Sep 07, 2011 1:07 pm

Just wanted to say awesome job to everyone working on this mod.
I am currently studying computer science in college and am going to try to learn scripting for oblivion starting tomorrow hoping it will carry over to Skyrim.

Would love in the future to help work on this project.
Will make a few mods when Skyrim comes out and hopefully get good enough to join the team one day.

Scripting boss fights, quests, and dynamic events sounds like fun to me

Converting over to Skyrim is an excellent idea. Staying with Oblivion is not a wise decision. Once Skyrim comes out hardly anyone will continue to play Oblivion and also the updates and new feature in Skyrim make the update worth it.

Good luck. Hopefully can help in this behemoth task soon :smile:

» Wed Sep 07, 2011 1:24 pm

I appreciate people trying to do these things,it's great creativity and if pulled off is extra for PC user's. However,i know lord of the rings is popular,but why not something different?
I just don't like the idea of the elder scrolls turning into Lord of the rings. Though it is nice for those who want something like this. But i'll be honest,if i had a PC, this would not interest me at all.

I do wish you the best of luck with it though,because it's nice for other people,and it would be great for you guy's to complete something of this nature.

» Wed Sep 07, 2011 4:11 pm

Nice, i had thoughts of making a thread about if it was possible to move the works from oblivion to Skyrim. You got there before me XD. Great job btw. I've watched this mod for years, i whould like to help but i svck with 3d modelling, i'm using blender and the new version doesn't have any tutorials :/.

» Wed Sep 07, 2011 6:21 pm

Good job. I wish i could help but I'm no good at modding.

I will be following your progress with great interest though.

» Wed Sep 07, 2011 3:52 pm

This is going to fit Perfectly for Skyrim, lets hope it Actually gets Released for this Game. :celebration:

» Wed Sep 07, 2011 10:24 am

am going to try to learn scripting for oblivion starting tomorrow hoping it will carry over to Skyrim.

Scripting in Oblivion is a lot of fun, but if your sole purpose is to prepare for scripting in Skyrim you might want to hold off. The scripting language is rewritten from scratch in the Creation Engine, and we have no information at all what it will be like. If it turns out to be quite different, having vague/beginners knowledge of Oblivion scripting in your head when you're starting to script in Skyrim might cause you to start mixing up the two and confuse you.

I appreciate people trying to do these things,it's great creativity and if pulled off is extra for PC user's. However,i know lord of the rings is popular,but why not something different?
I just don't like the idea of the elder scrolls turning into Lord of the rings. Though it is nice for those who want something like this. But i'll be honest,if i had a PC, this would not interest me at all.

I do wish you the best of luck with it though,because it's nice for other people,and it would be great for you guy's to complete something of this nature.

Well, tastes differ. We chose this project because we are all big Tolkien fans, MERP is obviously not for people who are not fans of Tolkien's work. Thanks for wishing us luck.

» Wed Sep 07, 2011 7:22 pm

Looks awesome! But you forgot about Moria! I might join for Skyrim, once I get good at modding!

» Wed Sep 07, 2011 7:40 pm

i have one question: how badass will the riders of Rohan be? will i be able to spear and orc whilst riding on horseback? can i traverse the plains of rohan on my trusty steed? i spose thats a few more than one, but yeah

» Wed Sep 07, 2011 10:07 am

i have one question: how badass will the riders of Rohan be? will i be able to spear and orc whilst riding on horseback? can i traverse the plains of rohan on my trusty steed? i spose thats a few more than one, but yeah

I scripted the basics of that in Oblivion:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Aw9fzEiyzk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccRKQTPYX1I

But Skyrim will have a new scripting language, so I can't be sure yet I can manage the same in Skyrim. I'll probably need support from the Skyrim OBSE (SYSE?) to get the necessary commands and functions.

» Wed Sep 07, 2011 8:05 pm

Great to here, I love Lord of the Rings and seeing such an overhaul in Skyrim would be pretty cool. Wish I could help but I svck at making mods and general computer related things, so I can only offer "Good Luck!".

» Wed Sep 07, 2011 10:21 pm

Nice, i had thoughts of making a thread about if it was possible to move the works from oblivion to Skyrim. You got there before me XD. Great job btw. I've watched this mod for years, i whould like to help but i svck with 3d modelling, i'm using blender and the new version doesn't have any tutorials :/.

It's a long road to master modelling, so don't give up. BTW there are a lot of very nice Blender 2.5 tutorials on http://cgcookie.com/blender/. There even is a http://cgcookie.com/blender/category/getting-started/ section.

To all who want to help: We have a http://merp.straygenius.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=162 section in our forums. There you can claim small jobs without having to join the team - just take a look.

Thanks for all your support.

» Wed Sep 07, 2011 3:43 pm

Looks pretty epic and I loved the movies (and books of course!), but imo I would have based it on the books and not the movies. Makes things easier too as there is no real answer to how anything looks in LOTR that way

» Wed Sep 07, 2011 8:15 pm

Looks pretty epic and I loved the movies (and books of course!), but imo I would have based it on the books and not the movies. Makes things easier too as there is no real answer to how anything looks in LOTR that way

Our main inspiration are the books. The lore experts in our team always try to keep MERP as close to Tolkien's vision as possible.
We take the movies as inspiration though, as long as they don't contradict the books. And there are lots of regions not shown in the movies (including the upcoming hobbit) that we have to create completely by ourselves.