I have to agree with Pseron there, I've loved these villages since I added them to the game. They look and feel like they belong.

I just can't wait for Pell's Gate!!! I hope you can make it just a single mod. With no other villages added.

Oh Shezrie, surely you must know by now what a beloved pillar of the community your are. Your the bomb and ORE is a one of a kind place I don't think the community should do without, Thank you for sharing.

Wow, that is praise indeed, worm82075. Thank you.

One quest in Pell's Gate will be reliant on visiting the other villages so I cannot release Pell's Gate on it's own.

bookmarked . woodland village is awesome. to bad the compilation conflicts with ul mountain top.

Great idea, I'm excited!

Yay more meek creations!

Okay, I will just take off the UL mod when I want to play all the villages.

Looks realy nice. I'll check it out!

Keep up the good work!

Cheers!


p

Sounds like you need an ESM for your interiors and three ESPs, one for each village, with the quest assuming full installation.

This makes me So happy! :twirl:

Some thoughts after testing out the major village mods-

I'd really like to see a village overhaul much like Better Cities - well more sparser than better cities (the BC real estate is crowded to say the least).

One great thing about BC is the modularity of it - you can use which-ever towns you want, or all merged. If the quests are in an esm would it be possible to then have it so that (if modular village esps are used) the quests are altered depending upon which esp are installed? Probably not.

I can appreciate the desire to have merged villages - I want to merege more in, but I also would like to have choice. Like offer the villages in merge combinations, or instructions on merging just the ones you want.

I like this pack of villages, except Ravenview seems to be misplaced. Even without the UL and its beautiful blown out forts I look out across the mountain range and see a liches tower, remote guard houses, Wild terrain for miles - oh and a well-to-do condo like village perched precariously on top of a mountain with what looks like unstable support all around. As I get closer I see that it is not a rustic, mountain village either - looks like it has running water - kind of like Aspen without the skying. Very disconcerting. So I'd rather have the UL, but then I have to do without the other two which are top notch: really great. That village looks like it would fit better with the areas around skingraad. my opinion - take it as you will, it is only worth what an opinion is worth.

A couple of things that I always wish modders of real estate would consider - checking to see if other mods alter the same spot, Modding with UOP and UL in mind (or at least patches available), alternate versions available for these contingencies would be great - like with Verwin Brewery.

The Ore site is pretty slick - but what I'd like to see mentioned is a a section for each regarding compatibility, like if it is UL incompatible then say so. This is easy to find out and can save time for downloaders. I know UL is everywhere these days but there is still a lot of places. It would seem UL compatibility would be at the fore of many mod users attention. From a mod users perspective it looks more like competition than cooperation is the tone of the times.

Within the last week I installed most village mods and about 20 dungeons - hard to believe all the incompatibilities. Like having a fort, black rock mountain, a necromancer tower and - I think - Moracius all within the same cell - right on top of each other. Then nothing around for many cells. Strange to me with a game where real estate is golden that there isn't a central storage of info about what is where. I know UL has their team and then there is ORE - it just seems with a bit of organization that a map or series of maps could be drafted and found at a central location that reveals a bit more about what is where both for modders and for mod users.

Kind of like what real estate people do in real life.

Just do what I am doing, Psymon...

I am just going to take the UL mod off when I want to play that village, and take the village off when I want to UL it.

Yeah I understand that using the mod is totally my choice - I was just voicing a point of view regarding compatibility.

If the villages does expand (my hope) and quests do become an integral part of the villages then just removing it is not going to be the lasting option.

I also understand that cloudtop is mostly just something to look at.

I also understand that not all mods are going to be compatible.

Psymon does bring up an interesting point. Suppose someone does want the villages, except for the one that conflicts with favorite mod X? Right now, if I'm understanding things correctly, quests between these 4 villages are planned. Crossover content and the like. That's great. Things like that make many of us quite happy because it adds to the belief that all of these new places do indeed belong in the game and know the others exist. So how does a situation like this get resolved?

Break off the quests and as many interior locations as is feasible into a master ESM. Technically all content in new interiors can be placed in its own ESM. All new NPCs, AI packs, scripts, quests, clutter, weapons, armor, etc can be created and placed in the ESM. Connecting it to the vanilla world is where the separate ESPs come in. This way someone can leave Ravenview off if they want the UL instead, and still leave the quest between Woodland and Lakewood intact.

Something to consider anyway.

I do see where you are all coming from, I do. But at this point it is pretty impossible not to conflict with a UL. I have obtained a map to put on ORE of all the completed UL mods. The problem with doing UL compatibility on ORE is this,

*There is only me working on ORE. I don't and cannot download the UL mods because I have to keep a very unmodded game in order to test out houses for ORE. I have only a few select personal choice mods. Although where a UL conflict is stated on the author's description it is added to the notes on ORE in that description.

*Almost every single house will have a UL conflict. Given the speed the talented UL team are working at there will soon be UL everywhere.

*So I will put up the map and leave it at that.

At this state in the game it is very difficult to make a mod that is OOO, UL, Better Cities, FCOM etc compatible without comprimising creativity. So this goes for Pell's Gate, it sits on a spot designated for a new UL project AND and it conflicts with the Archeology Guild in Lost Spires. You can bet it sits on OOO spawning spots and maybe more. I am going to talk to the Lost Spires author and see if I can make a patch with their agreement, that pushes the guild back so that it sits right behind the town as opposed to right in it. I cannot do anything about the new UL that will go right over Pell's Gate though.

Oblivion modding is now into it's fourth year and locations are harder to find. My view on it is that mod users are going to have to pick and choose more as was the case in Morrowind where it was easy to find 6 houses all in the exact same spot. For me, I have to disregard the other mods out there when choosing location otherwise it limits my creativity and enthusiam for modding. If people choose other mods over mine that is their perogative. :shrug: I mod because I love the creative process and bringing a vision to life not for download numbers.

With regard to the villages being merged. I am sorry but given all my troubles with people ripping off my work this was the only solution I felt comfortable with and what got me back modding. I had quit modding for quite some months as I had lost my enthusiasm for it and for releasing mods. In one neat package it is much harder to rip off a part and much less likely for this to occur. I am sure many don't agree but this was the solution that made me feel comfortable about releasing mods and regain my enthusiasm. So Pell's Gate will be in with all the other villages and it will not be a pick or choose each village situation. It is a shame for the UL conflict with Ravenview, but in the future there will be more UL conflicts and there is nothing I can do about it and I will not limit my creativity because of it. So people will have to pick and choose or do what Richard is doing and play one without the other then switch back. If we can make patches great, if not.... :shrug:

I am sorry if people think I am being obstructive and or an 'isolationist' (I really hate stereotyping labels) but from my perspective it is either; do it in a way I feel most comfortable or not at all. So while I know that keeping the towns all in one esp will mean lots don't download it, that is fine. There are still many who will enjoy it and at least the option to download it be there period. I do not want to spend another year taking abusive emails and dealing with the situtation I had to deal with. I am not here to get stressed or take abuse I am here to have fun.

Psymon, thanks for your opinion on Ravenview's location. For myself my opinion could not be more opposite but it is good to hear other people's perspective and it makes me think more when choosing other locations. Did you find any errors on your look through?

You don't need to make your mods compatible with someone else's. It's unfair you're expected to do so, in my opinion.

Understood. And despite being part of the UL team, I do sympathize, considering I've got other projects that run into the same problems. I was really only trying to bounce some ideas around.



Two things right off the bat that I don't even consider when messing around in a location: OOO and FCOM. If you think the ULs are bad for spreading all over everywhere, those spread even farther. However you may be interested to note that on our latest UL map, the White Rose River mod has been removed from the WIP list. Apparently it didn't look likely that any work was going to get done on it. The Lost Spires thing is obviously a bit more of a concern, and if you'd like some help with working out a compatibility solution I'm willing to lend a hand there. The FAQ over on the Lost Spires homepage already gives permission for extensions and modifications - just no alterations of the official ESP file. So a patch is already covered by that.



I never really took to mods when I played Morrowind, so I guess I haven't seen what it ended up like but I can imagine that after all this time even a landscape as vast as that is filling up fast. Cyrodiil being smaller isn't helping. Usable land is indeed becoming more scarce. There are portions of Cyrodiil though that seem to get modded more than others. With the coming of some of the large province mods though that may start to change. Some folks have also begun moving beyond the game borders to find space. Even the UL team is finding that things need to go outside the borders.



Fully understood. Your situation was quite an extreme that I don't think too many people have had to deal with. Believe me, I'm glad you've found new enthusiasm and I am definitely looking forward to Pell's Gate. Nobody is asking to limit your creativity, or, at least I hope not. I know I wasn't attempting to do that. Just bouncing ideas around to see what would work and what wouldn't. I can see just as many pitfalls with a modular set of ESPs centered around a common master as I can see with everything in one bunch. My Open Cities project has gone through both sides of that.



No, I certainly don't think you're being obstructive or isolationist. You've got to do what you think is best. If that means ignoring pleas for compatibility, then so be it. I've been known to do the same too. We all have. More often than not, these things have a tendency to work themselves out one way or another. Ravenview is an exceptional condition, and even though it looks impossible to resolve, it may not be. More work than your average patch, but I think I can probably come up with something given enough time - provided you've no objection to my looking into that? It would most likely involve shifting the UL content since the village has a lot more on the same location.

Thank you for being so understanding.

It would be great if you could help out on the Lost Spires patch on Pell's Gate's release. That would be a huge help.

With the patch for Ravenview I tested one for Ruikuli, there was still much to do on it to make it a working patch if he is able to pull it off. If you fancy having a go at making one that would be great. It would certainly help so much if we get a working patch for that.

Oh no I didn't find any errors or anything like that.

Weird this was released right when I was in the mood to check out all the villages. I don't know of the abuse you speak of and was probably not around when that went down.

Please understand that I'm just trying to make suggestions that other might benefit from. I certainly don't want to quelch creativity.

That said - even the UL modders don't seem to take UOP into account either and I've found floating rocks added by UOP that were not seen by the UL folks too. Yeah they get a big swath of land to play with and then it most definitily sets others up to have to be compatible with them as well. Not only is space limited in Cyrodiil, but load orders too. A sizable portion of mine is patches (don't even get me started on FCOM). There are new provinces and border regions though. Elsweyr is looking pretty darn cool.

Right now I run two profiles for oblivion with Wrye bash and I can switch out all ULs (or any other mods) rebash (or have two bash patches) and then rerun LODGEN within minutes.

With Ravenview I'm sure that within Vanilla it looks great, just with other popular mods it looks out of place - making me think - how do they stay so clean and neat up there? what do they do? Why are they isolated - a cult? A reason for being there? IN my load order though they have a lich tower and a guard outpost as neighbors and no road to civilization. Story I guess is what I feel is needed.

Seems to me that with the crowded nature of Cyrodiil that having some sort of effort to work in community or with cooperation will be necessary or it will be a long chain of hard OR questions. Arthmoor and Vorians are really great about that.

With a map - Maybe ask the modders (if they are willing to plot what areas they effect) so that people can see at a glance.

Anyway - I'm sticking with the these villages and look forward to a reason for their existence: quests.

thanks for listening/hearing me out.

I agree with the others: follow your vision, do your work. Let us sort it out.



Words cannot adequately convey how much I despise those categories. I wish they would all disappear forever. I wish they had never been invented. I have much respect for the accomplishments of the person who began the list...but no respect at all for the list itself or the concept behind it.

That's because the UOP edits are nearly always going to be out of place in any UL with significant landscape alterations. Stuff that needs moving will get moved. If not, then it's left alone. If the land height is the same and the UOP moves the rock, it will continue to move the rock. Mistakes like floaters happen to everyone, even the UL modders

In my opinion, a modder should first create for themselves. Then if they wish to share what they create then good for us.

For mod users, I suggest using http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=11536 to check for compatibility. Before I begin any game I always check for compatibility and clean the mod list with it. I also suggest http://wrye.ufrealms.net/Wrye%20Bash.html, creating a bashed patch can help overcome some conflicts. http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=8665 can be used to create mod patches too. That said, all of the folks who create any utilities to make modding or playing mods easier have my eternal gratitude. :wub:

Shezrie, make your villages the way you want. If you want to try to make them compatible, then that is your choice. It sounds like some folks may be willing to help you in that endeavor. For me, all of of your villages are a permanent part of my game whatever you decide.

Exactly my feeling. If a modder is naturally inclined to dealing with compatibility issues, great, that's awesome, but if they are not then nobody should complain about it. It's much more important to have the creative work available. Beyond a basic appreciation for the issue, and some basic precautions to avoid unintentional changes, conflicts are unavoidable. And they can be dealt with after the fact in most cases.

I'm very much looking forward to this collection and I wouldn't want Meek to compromise anything or lose any enthusiasm worrying about compatibility with any other mods.

:)

Just want to say express my happiness over having these villages back in my game, and in one tidy package. I know I PMed you on the ORE forums looking for Woodland Village in particular, as I had lost it when my laptop died. You were lovely enough to reply, and let me know you were compiling them all for rerelease. Now they are all installed, and Cyrodiil feels like home again. Thanks for these beautiful works of art! :twirl:




I could not agree more.