Just Posting new topic for this for Phitt since the old one was full.
at least I'm a member of his forum so hopefully he won't have sharp teeth like other monkeys
Pacific Morrowind

Absolutely love the work you're doing, Phitt! Fantastic as always.

And OT: What would the world do without people like PacificMorrowind? I suspect nothing good.

You can't go wrong with Morrowind'ish mods. That tomb looks great!

And I've never been this happy to see a Cliff Racer!

I posted this in the previous thread, but I'll post it here since I don't know if Phitt is going to read the old one

Hey there, I'm back from vacation. Thanks for making a new thread, I don't have sharp teeth...at least I don't use them. Funny you say that because some monkeys didn't let us go back into our car (which they had claimed as a playground) during vacation and showed us their very sharp teeth, but that's a different story. It became quite scary when they even tried to steal my wifes shoes (she still had them on her feet), but eventually I managed to get into the car and we could flee.

Will go back to work on the mod this week.

It's really sad that Dave91 has more or less stopped working on his meshes as it seems - they are all of very high quality. Right now I certainly don't have any time to work on his Telvanni tileset as it would be a never ending story if I started doing that as well (not even sure he'd allow me to do that).

To be honest right now I even think about releasing the meshes I've done so far as a resource for anyone to use. Not that I would stop working on the Sheogorad mod, but a new job and the house we bought are giving me less spare time then I used to have a year ago and before. I'm not sure it makes sense to keep all the hard work locked up for another twelve month or more - it's impossible to say how long it will take to get a 100% finished version out. I would probably be happier if people could use the meshes and play with them in game before TES5 came out. I wish I could say that the mod will be done in three months or less, but I can't. What do you think?

on one hand its a good idea, but on the other i think it would ruin the mystique of the land. i know i just about peed my pants in excitement as i was walking around the island because it looked just like morrowind but better. if the meshes pop up in dozens of other mods it will just kill that feeling. i want people to have that same magic.

Fantastic!
I don't play OB too much anymore, now that I mod MW, but I'll definitely keep my eye on this.

I would personally favor an earlier-than-originally-planned resource pack release, because once you release the assets as a resource, it will still take a long time before they begin showing up in other mods in any well-realized way. Sheogorad may still be the first exposure 99% of people have to the meshes. But maybe there's a selfish part of me that thinks if the assets are out there, that will put more pressure on the Sheogorad/Ashlands North team to churn out a first release faster.

true but perhaps a few limited Morrowind style mods might find the mesh's useful.
I can think of one

called something like silly grad power?

I agree with Lady Nerevar. It'll cheapen the whole experience if there are 4 or 5 daedric houses strewn about the gold coast by the time the actual mod is finished.

I kind of see what you're saying, but if what Phitts doing will take more than 12months to finish (supposing no one helps the project) then i'm sure other mods will kill the experience.
Perhaps you could do the best of both worlds and release a kind of half finished version of Sheogorad, releasing those meshes as you do so. That way everyone still gets to see the awesome new content in action and those particular meshes also get released.
Who knows, it might just inspire more people to help out, too. :shrug:

Actually, Wizard had a good idea (I think). Why not just selectively release the assets on a case-by-case basis? Someone asks for permission, and you judge based on whatever criteria you like when to supply the goods, on whatever conditions you like. That way you could get the meshes out and avoid the "Daedric houses on the Gold Coast" problem, if that is a problem. The only drawback is if you don't want to get into the business of discriminating against certain people or certain mods, and that's a matter of personal preference.

I agree. Its a nice idea in theory but Phitts going to have a reall lot of people Pming requests for the stuff after a while, and people could get pissy...

I'm not sure what the best thing would be to do to be honest. Its just sad to hear the project may be so far from done.

Case-by-case is not something I'd like to do. Either everyone can use it or no one (except for a few who helped me out with lots of resources like Silgrad Tower - they already have permission for the Dwemer tileset and I'll give them permission for Daedric as well if they want). Otherwise I'll get 10 PMs a day and I don't really want to say 'your mod svcks and I won't let you use my resources' anyway.

I didn't think about just releasing the resources without any mod to look at. But the original idea of making everything complete plus a few quests plus main quest is taking too long. I'm really tired when I get back home now and instead of working for an average of 3-4 hours per day on the mod like I used to I can only mod for 1-2 hours at most. So this is the new plan:

1. Get the landscape done. Finally. I made a huge amount of progress since I got back home and I really think I can do it this time. Most of it is done anyway.

2. Get the LOD landscape done. Unfortunately the Vvardenfell team is not active anymore and I doubt they'll start working on it again. That leaves me with an unfinished landscape in the LOD region (Ashlands). Too much detail work done to use the region editor, not enough to do the rest of it on my own. Hope I can do it roughly by hand so it looks good for LOD without spending 100 hours on it.

3. Do the pathgrids. There are so many little paths in the region, I'll need to put in the blue pathnodes all by hand - as well as red ones for the villages. The rest can be auto-generated fortunately.

4. Set up leveled lists. Most creatures and armors/weapons/items have already been implemented. Setting up the lists will still take some time.

5. Clutter the exteriors with spawns and generic NPCs (NPC without specific dialogue or quests). That shouldn't take very long.

6. Complete all dungeons that aren't finished yet and do as much as I and the others can. I guess we'll have about ten dungeons for a release that way, which should be enough.

7. Make a connection from Cyrodiil and release a beta.

I really hate doing it this way (without the main quest), but hopefully a complete landscape, lists setup and a few complete dungeons will attract some (or even only one) serious, experienced quest modders. That way I think we could do the rest of the mod within a few months. And people could already use the resources as long as it takes. It will still take a lot of time to get this far, but it won't take forever.

You wouldn't happen to have a copy of their files would you phitt? They had some rather impressive screenshots, and I'd like to see exactly how much detailing they had of the Northern Ashlands.

This is my saying that I may be back modding again...

All their stuff is in the esm already. They did a good amount of work, but the Ashlands are large. The problem is that I need everything up to the Red Mountain for the LOD landscape. That would be an estimated amount of 500 cells for the Ashlands alone left to do (plus Grazelands, a small amount of West Gash and a small amount of Azura's Coast). Impossible to do that in detail if we ever want to release the mod. So what you would need to do is make a good looking LOD landscape without any small objects like small rocks, plants etc. Mostly textures, vertex colors and trees is what we need. It won't take forever that way, but it's probably less fun then making a detailed landscape that looks really cool when you walk through. Don't know wether you want to do something like that.

I think when the resources are out there a lot of people might be encouraged to pic up the mantel and work on vvardenfell. Even a TR type set up would be good. With TR people from the team leave and new people show up all the time but slowly and surely its gets completed eventually. Really a great model if someone were to set it up some day for VVardenfell.

I think I could set up presets and such just fine to generate the regions that surround the northern ashlands (Grazelands, West Gash, Azura's Coast, etc). From what I know the small chunk of the Ashlands that is considered northern was mostly completed by the Vvardenfell team; I think I *might* be able to polish it enough to actually include it as an explorable area. When was the most recent version of the esm released phitt?

Most of the Ashlands North area was completed anyway. Just a small section remained (with a few gaps in between).

I have a more up-to-date esp for the Ashlands area if its needed but I'll need to check the (Ashlands) assets because I replaced and added a few.

If you would be willing to send me an up to date copy of the Ashlands I'd love to take a look and get a feel for what needs doing.

This will be EPIC when and if it gets finished. Hell, it will get finished...even if the next ES game comes out. How do I know? I am basing my assumption on the fact that people still mod Morrowind and it has been over 3 years since Oblivion was released.

The current esm will soon be outdated as I'm in the process of making a new one with the Velothi tileset and the landscape work I did added. The Ashlands done by the Vvardenfell team are in the current esm already.

It's true that most of the Northern Ashlands are done, but for LOD I need everything up to the Red Mountain because that's how far the player can see from Sheogorad. I've made a CS screenshot to show what is already done and what is not.

http://s66.photobucket.com/albums/h271/Phittte/Ashlands.jpg

To the left are the Grazelands, to the right is the West Gash. I think I can do these pretty quickly by using the region editor and doing some rough detail work. Only the Ashlands can't be done like that and as you can see it is quite a lot of landscape left to do if you want to make it full detail. But you could maybe finish the Ashlands North and do the rest with less detail. There will be a bit of fog already towards the Red Mountain anyway (even with clear weather) and you can't see every single bit of the LOD landscape anyway.

That gives me a better idea of what I've done since. The right-most area isn't done on that screenshot but it's mostly done now. The big gap where the esps clashed to the left is also fixed and I altered the amount of trees and vertex shading in a lot of areas. Fixed the land textures there too. I also filled in a the 'foyada' to the right of the screenshot... up until about where it touches Red Mountain. I made a start on the Ashlander Camp too (exterior) and it's mostly complete.

Seigfried - I'd be more than happy to. You could actually do me a little bit of a favor and let me know if any missing statics/textures come up when you load it with the esm. I'm aware I added some new stuff (not much) but lost track of what it was.

Phitt - Before I send the esp to Seigfried I could texture the landscape around the whole of Red Mountain if you want with vertex shading too for the distant LOD land. I did this when I was making Azura's Coast for a personal thing and it didn't take long to do the whole region with a few surrounding areas (an hour or two).

That sounds really good, didn't know you're still working on it. Would be great if you could texture the rest of the Ashlands, since you made most (all?) of the landscaping it would look like the rest. I would also prefer if you would send me the esp once you're done so I can merge it directly into the esm. Of course you can send the esp to Siegfried as well so he can have a look at it, but it's better if we all work from the same esm.

I can hold off doing anything until an esm update if thats the case. From that screen, it really looks like the whole of the northern ashlands is done (I'm not counting the Foyadas). Were any dungeons ever completed for the Ashlands?