http://img713.imageshack.us/i/mgescreenshot28.jpg/
http://img713.imageshack.us/i/mgescreenshot29.jpg/

I've been reworking the stock mudpots to look more like real ones, or at least to better fit the geothermal areas in my mod.

I've replaced the rolling action with a subtle two-part bubbling action. The first is a gentle overall bubble, where the entire surface rises slightly. The surface has a funky alpha setting to make it look like a residue on the surface of the mud. The second part is a modified version of Korana's soup bubbles - but with mud.

Combined with the sound effect, it's pretty decent. I do need to tweak the particle emitters, though.

Cool. Always great to see continued gradual improvements on the game.

Sounds like filthy goodness. Any plans for a similar overhaul of the swamp muck meshes?

I've created my own swamp muck layers, but I'm not real happy with them - they cause goofy lighting problems from a distance. I suspect that it's due to the alpha layer, but I haven't had time to finish them.

How are those mucky particles coming along? I'd love to see any pics of your swamp meshes too, even if they're just wip

I need to tweak the texture map on the bubbles, but other than that, I'm happy with them. The animation is good, and the textures decent. I would need to try them with vanilla textures to see how they translate, though.

If anyone wants to play with the improved mudpots, here they are.

http://www.4shared.com/file/CfZgdZuR/Better_Mudpots.html

Let me know if you make any further improvements!

I'd love to - but is there any way of setting them up as default replacers for the Ashlands?

I'd need to revert the textures for the pot itself back to vanilla, and alter the mud to have a more ashen look. Not terribly difficult, I can desaturate the mud texture, and darken it, and that should do the job.

I opened the nifs in nifskope and the particles are all showing as white squares. Maybe you forgot to add the particle textures or put in the wrong ones?
Also, in mudpot_sr9.nif (the brown one) the mud plane clips out of the pot.

Apart from that, the effect is really good and I think it would make a great replacer for the vanilla mudpots.

Argh. The white square thing is a screw-up. I, for a brief while, was toying with improved alpha effects - so it's probably pointing to textures/mvr/fx/steamalpha00.tga instead of just "steamalpha00.tga" - take out the path info, and it should be good to go. I'll fix it in the next release.

As for the clipping issue, I'll take a look at it. I hadn't noticed it before.

Thanks!