» Fri Dec 03, 2010 12:06 am and welcome to my little thread. This is to introduce my current project to you. First thing you will ask:
Arkngchend R3LOADED - what's that?
OK, so let me first talk about history. Arkngchend has been a german Mod. Although fully compatible to english versions of Morrowind, it was never released on english community sites and thus never spread. It was a pretty large Dwemer Housemod located somewhere south of Balmora. It offered a hideout with rooms, mannequins, an ingame battle simulation cell for training, an old dwemer teleportation device, that could warp you from every point in the world to any Dwemer Ruin, Dunmer Stronghold or Tribunal Temple you want to be and offered enough container space to store almost everything your character could find. There was nothing more to it. Once you found the entrance, the underground fortress of Arkngchend was yours.
OK, now you say: Another housemod - yeah, just what I don't need...
I would agree to that, but I'm not going to offer you another housemod. If you want to try the old version, you can download it http://www.scharesoft.de/joomla/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=27&func=fileinfo&id=684. As I said, it is fully compatible with the english version of Morrowind - and it is bilingual english/german.
It's rather old school, though and this is where "R3LOADED" starts... it all began on a day when I tested texture replacers and visited my own housemod ingame. I was not impressed. With some replacers, Arkngchend looked quite strange and so I fixed that for personal use. I also had some smaller improvements not released to public and I heard of odd things happening in connection with certain mods. Long story briefly told: I decided to create an update for the old version that fixes all issues knwon to me, replacer problems, bugs, added some requests from players and handled some smaller things. That was the plan... and I started. The more I worked on the Mod, the larger it became. Finally I said to myself... no, not this way, I'm not going to make the same mistakes again. From that point on, I re-created the whole mod with own IDs, meshes, textures... everything. I reworked the original meshes and managed to create new ones for things I needed but never found as resource. Some months later, I looked back and was surprised what happened:
This project will deeply expand Arkngchend. Coming from the state of a housemod, the R3LOADED version will be a far more complex adventure within the world of Morrowind, offering a questline with hours of playtime. The housemod is still in there, a part of it, but the "house" will no longer be available for you without solving the quests. This is the first mayor change.
On a rainy day, in a common place, you will get in touch with a strange dunmer lady, a travelling merchant who invites you to visit her shop in Vivec. Do this, it will be worth the time. If you are trustworthy - this is checked by stats, reputation, answers given in dialogue, etc. - you will be asked to do some "odd" jobs for her. Being successful, Tara (that's her name) will tell you about the lost Dwemer city of Arkngchend - and that she hired a group of adventures, dwemer experts and fighters to gather information from all over Tamriel to finally locate and enter the city. It was a long hard task but finally they were successful. The team went there and this has been the last time, she got word from them. From that day on, things became "unpleasant". Your Questmistress lost contact to her exploration team and fears them to be in trouble. She knows Arkngchend to be extremely dangerous for intruders since the Dwemer abandoned it some time before the battle at Red Mountain and sealed the fortress. And they had a reason for that...
That's where you come in... she needs someone tough enough to handle such problems. You'll only be given this quest, after having finished the Mainquest of Morrowind and killed Dagoth Ur. Up to this point, you already spent a lot of time to do a dozen quests. And now you enter Arkngchend... you find remnants... notes, items... the group obviously entered Arkngchend. But what happened to them? Will you be willing to explore the depths? Will you be strong enough, to survive the deadly traps and enemies? Will you be wise enough to solve the mysteries of the Dwemer machines and how to start them. This is essential, you are ordered to do so, it is part of the quest. Uncover yourself what Tara, the questgiver, really wants with the old Dwemer artifact or machine that is called "Dwevarkngth" - in modern language this means "The Eye of the Deep"... If you do this for her, she promises to leave everything else in Arkngchend to you. OK, of course there's more behind it - I won't spoil that. In fact, if you do the quests, you will be rewarded as rightful owner of Arkngchend but before that, the storyline will take you through various other Dwemer locations, some known, most completely new to the game. Such as the ore mining colony Mzuldahrk-Druschend, the fortress of Nchmartingth, the large frozen city of Bthlad-N'Har (currently known as "Balad Naran") and various other colonies like Vholenark, M'Kor-Dush (Emkor Dush), the Island resort of M'Kor-Brl (Emkor Brel) and the dangerous research facility of Arkngdahrk-Amschend. You will have some hidden sidequests inside the main questline too, riddles to solve and sometimes you have to make decisions with whom you want to side to accomplish your mission. Be prepared: What you do and how you act will sometimes have unexpected results on the quest at a later stage. It can ease your task or make it harder... so think about before acting.
This to the story... now some technical facts about the Mod itself:
? requires Morrowind GotY (MW & both addons enabled)
? does not require third party program or plugin
? does not require script extenders
? atm over 1000 meshes (retexed & reworked ones as well as completely new and yet unreleased ones)
? more than 300 Textures
? four fully working dwemer corridor tilesets (with translink elements so they can be easily combined)
? over a dozen custom and completely unique ruins/dungeons to explore with traps, secret areas and sometimes hidden quests
Arkngchend R3LOADED is what some would call a "development kit for Dwemer". The mod uses its own mesh and texture pack what will make it immune to all replacers around. Every dwemer mesh from the original game will be retextured and created as new Ref in the Construction Set. This will be done for two reasons:
First, Arkngchend is not a replacer and my primary goal was not to create problems with different texture sets. Second, I dislike what some replacers do to the dwemer stuff. Since I like the original Dwemer feeling, I decided to take Darknuts' Dwemer Ruin Textures as a base (permission granted), add some parts and build my own, replacer-resistant design for the locations I will add. The effect is that Arkngchend will not interfere with other mesh and texture replacers at all - at least it shouldn't.
During this procedure, bugs (e.g. wrong texture, missing RootCollisionNode, buggy UV, bad faces, holes, etc.) in the vanilla meshes have been repaired. There were a lot of bugs... additionally this mesh pack will cover stuff from various modder resources (e.g. some elements from Darknut's GDR Rescources and many other smaller things... even meshes from the famed Oblivion "Dwemer Technology" Plugins by MrSiika). Some meshes have been retexed only, others were fixed in parts if there were errors in the meshes. You might know Darknuts Tube Corridors... well, you will find a rebuilt version of it in this mod, take a look at the screens below. My meshes are inspired by his ones but in many ways different, enhanced with new meshes for halls, rooms... best of all, they can easily be stacked with any other dwemer corrdor I use in my mod - and I will have four tilesets in this mod. All these use the same grid. Further there are many completely new or redesigned dwemer items - this will cover building parts, design elements, new exterior ruins, furniture, machines and portable items including an alchemy set, new weapons, repair tools, some armor parts and a lot of misc stuff.
Altogether this is a massive design pack: hundreds of Meshes, Textures and a lot of other Stuff like icons, bookart and so on... everything you need to build a really complex Dwemer mod. The mod itself will be split into two files. This first one is the "ArkngchendR3Base.esm" with all the basic CS entries (including some common scripting). The second is the Plugin itself that builds up on it - you may use the base-esm for your own projects later on, Arkngchend R3LOADED can be used as modders resource.
But I could write a lot - better to let the screens speak:
First some impressions from the Arkngchend complex:
http://s3.directupload.net/file/d/1872/v9hyz6n5_jpg.htm [29.07.2009]
http://s12.directupload.net/file/d/1953/e3jwuhdd_jpg.htm [20.10.2009]
http://s6.directupload.net/file/d/1953/eyhdiyq3_jpg.htm [20.10.2009]
http://s2.directupload.net/file/d/1953/9wz2tmkh_jpg.htm [20.10.2009]
http://s4.directupload.net/file/d/1953/3w8vq3zl_jpg.htm [20.10.2009]
http://s1.directupload.net/file/d/1953/bqjw3pjp_jpg.htm [20.10.2009]
http://s12.directupload.net/file/d/1953/ob5pdgqn_jpg.htm [20.10.2009]
http://s3.directupload.net/file/d/1953/hm3sl4kw_jpg.htm [20.10.2009]
http://s2.directupload.net/file/d/1953/frwkt5pa_jpg.htm [20.10.2009]
http://s2.directupload.net/file/d/1953/orjj2ra2_jpg.htm [20.10.2009]
http://s12.directupload.net/file/d/1953/9z4zzk25_jpg.htm [20.10.2009]
http://s8.directupload.net/file/d/1953/fvdei7j2_jpg.htm [20.10.2009]
http://s12.directupload.net/file/d/2023/fyj6samh_jpg.htm [29.12.2009]
http://s7.directupload.net/file/d/2023/zwr9rptm_jpg.htm [29.12.2009]
http://s12.directupload.net/file/d/2023/i65ymc24_jpg.htm [29.12.2009]
http://s7.directupload.net/file/d/2023/ri8lk6hl_jpg.htm [29.12.2009]
http://s1b.directupload.net/file/d/1777/86s45dja_jpg.htm
http://s1b.directupload.net/file/d/1744/clf2t9mu_jpg.htm
http://s5b.directupload.net/file/d/1744/j6xt9ypy_jpg.htm
http://s5b.directupload.net/file/d/1744/zprmopt2_jpg.htm
http://s5b.directupload.net/file/d/1744/rgg2qves_jpg.htm
Now some other locations:
Arkngdahrk-Amschend:
http://s12.directupload.net/file/d/2023/ehahua2o_jpg.htm [29.12.2009]
http://s1b.directupload.net/file/d/1744/pw22wc5h_jpg.htm
http://s10.directupload.net/file/d/1777/38zdkege_jpg.htm
http://s3.directupload.net/file/d/1872/22f2e9x2_jpg.htm
Sundrakalit Caverns:
http://s5.directupload.net/file/d/2023/kgwlt62j_jpg.htm [29.12.2009]
http://s4.directupload.net/file/d/2023/th798if2_jpg.htm [29.12.2009]
http://s4.directupload.net/file/d/2023/qsucfqeo_jpg.htm [29.12.2009]
http://s5.directupload.net/file/d/2023/a5np9lf5_jpg.htm [29.12.2009]
how Bamz-Amschend "could" be (it will not, just to show how the Textures will be on those meshes)
http://s10.directupload.net/file/d/1642/2fn34yw4_jpg.htm
http://s11.directupload.net/file/d/1642/k5x4di38_jpg.htm
http://s11b.directupload.net/file/d/1642/y99m2ung_jpg.htm
http://s10b.directupload.net/file/d/1642/n33rgvov_jpg.htm
http://s10b.directupload.net/file/d/1642/q6lknp3v_jpg.htm
Arkngzahnch:
http://s5b.directupload.net/file/d/1744/ydxuqmmb_jpg.htm
http://s3.directupload.net/file/d/1872/6drtd5gi_jpg.htm
http://s4b.directupload.net/file/d/1777/2sitvdib_jpg.htm (Corridor Tileset Ingame Preview)
Durkngmez-Ungkor (in modern language: "Palace of the Lake"):
http://s11b.directupload.net/file/d/1814/345n7om6_jpg.htm
http://s8b.directupload.net/file/d/1814/g6uhw3e3_jpg.htm
http://s6b.directupload.net/file/d/1814/46wa7xaf_jpg.htm
http://s10.directupload.net/file/d/1814/rhowzive_jpg.htm
and some various screens ingame/nifskope:
http://s3.directupload.net/file/d/1884/4njf5f3h_jpg.htm
http://s6.directupload.net/file/d/1896/h29vaxte_jpg.htm
http://s7.directupload.net/file/d/2023/9pj3t8lz_jpg.htm
http://s1.directupload.net/file/d/1953/ihbacauc_jpg.htm
http://s8.directupload.net/file/d/1953/7co8dwtd_jpg.htm (double-sided Arkngchend R3LOADED version)
http://s2.directupload.net/file/d/1926/ovl9ec5o_jpg.htm (has animations and steam)
http://s7.directupload.net/file/d/1939/rjri2aib_jpg.htm (has transparent glass and animated Bubbles
http://s3.directupload.net/file/d/1939/utw8wkom_jpg.htm
http://s12.directupload.net/file/d/1942/6o6zzss7_jpg.htm (there are different models of anvils, this is the low quality one)
http://s8.directupload.net/file/d/1942/joolrgst_jpg.htm
http://s12.directupload.net/file/d/1942/94y5wb2s_jpg.htm (attached to Interior Walls/Outdoor Buildings)
http://s4.directupload.net/file/d/2022/lntivz2d_jpg.htm (Unique)
http://s12.directupload.net/file/d/2022/fbul2q8x_jpg.htm
http://s12.directupload.net/file/d/2022/2g48lelp_jpg.htm
http://s12.directupload.net/file/d/2022/x7mezp4g_jpg.htm (new exterior building)
I will add more Information and screens later on. This is an ambitious and long-term project, so don't expect regular updates. It's just to give you a chance for leaving comments or ideas of what else could be done that is still missing.
regards
?exa
?exa's wantz:
A project of this scale cannot be done completely without help or using the work of others. So, if you like the idea of seeing your work added to this mod and think you have a good idea for a dwemer thing that could be added... do not hesitate to contact me. I'm always looking for good meshes since creating them on my own consumes a lot of time. Time that could be used to create ingame and quest content.
I'm looking for dwemer machines, weapons and armor - for dwemer clothing and clutter stuff of all kind and especially for new dwemer creatures to make all my Dwemer locations look and feel "unique"...
