Skies V.IV Beta

http://www.mediafire.com/folder/vlc8xoibeux71/skies_v4_beta

documentation:

• "sky_clouds_01.nif" New clouds mesh, allows for limited horizon clouding and has an improved UV map.
• "sky_night_02.nif" Night sky fix, reuploaded because the old file host expired.
• "tx_sky_clear.dds" New Clear sky texture, based off of Morrowind's original texture, Oblivion's texture, and other influences.
• "tx_sky_cloudy.dds" New Partly Cloudy sky texture. Loosely based off Morrowind's original texture and cumulous clouds.
• "tx_sky_foggy.dds" New Foggy sky texture, based on Morrowind's original texture, my texture from v3, and other influences, now has an alpha channel so moons and stars will show through.
• "tx_sky_overcast.dds" New overcast sky texture. Based off Morrowind's original texture and actual overcast clouds.
• "tx_sky_rainy.dds" New rainy sky texture, based on the original Morrowind texture.
• "tx_sky_thunder.dds" New Thunderstorm sky texture. Based off Morrowind's original texture but with much more detail.
• "tx_sky_ashstorm.dds" New ashstorm texture, based on vurt's texture and the original Morrowind texture.
• "tx_sky_blight.dds" New Blight Sky texture. Based heavily on the original Morrowind texture and Undulatus Asperatus clouds.
• "tx_BM_sky_snow.dds" New Snowy sky texture for Bloodmoon. Based off of Morrowind's original snowy sky texture and cloud formations that occur in real life during snowy weather.
• "tx_BM_sky_blizzard.dds" New Blizzard sky texture for Bloodmoon. Based off the original texture and real life cloud formations that occur during blizzards.
• "tx_stars.dds" New night sky texture, is a remade version of Morrowind's original night sky.
• "Moons" (folder) Contains new V.IV Moons. The moons are based off of Skyrim and Oblivion's moons, but use the same imagery Morrowind's original moons used and are coloured the same way. They also have dynamic phases, new moons, and pseudo atmospheric scattering.
• "Original Mw Skies format" (folder) ported versions of Morrowind's original sky textures, they are sharpened and problems with the clear and cloudy textures appearing blue at night are fixed. I plan to do more with these before the final release.
• "Remastered Mw Skies" (folder) contains some cleaned up versions of Morrowind's original skies that work with V.IV's framework.
• "Depreciated V.IV moons.7z" old v4 moons, I will include these as an optional download with the full release.
• "Seethrough Moons edit (depreciated).7z" makes stars show through the moons, can be tweaked so stars only show through the moons shadows. I may do this as an optional setup in the final release.

What's left before release?

Most of the base content is close to finished. Every sky texture from Morrowind's skies has been replaced.

The final release will include:

• Remastered and reformatted versions of Skies from AoF's Skies, and Masoxx' Skies.
• Remastered and reformatted versions of Morrowind's original sky textures. (this is mostly done, but there's a little bit left for me to do)
• Finalized changes to the particles I've been working on. These include new ashstorm particles, new blight particles, new rain, and new blizzard and snow particles.
• Cleaned up and finalized versions of the textures included. This includes cleaning up any jpg artifacts, seams, blurryness, alpha issues, and other things to make this release worthy, clean, and beautiful.
• (once all else is done) a packaged mod, being a user-friendly, easy to install, well documented mod, that will encourage not only use ingame, but further modding using the framework provided.

How can I help?

While I am responsible for this large project as a whole, beta testing can make it a lot easier for me to identify and fix issues in development. Here's how you can help:

• Point out any issues with textures. This is most helpful with screenshots highlighting the issue and a good description of the problem. Keep an eye out for seams, jpg artifacts, blurriness, and other problems with the mod while playing ingame, and take screenshots and document them if sighted.
• Point out issues with my framework, improvements that I could make, ect. This isn't something I expect everyone to be able to help out with, but if you have an idea of how to improve any of my meshes, and improve the overall quality of the mod, please let me know and I'll try my best to implement said suggestions.

Okay, how do I install this?

Since this is a beta, I don't have any readme or organized zip archive for easy installation. Every texture and mesh is placed into my mediafire folder and has to be downloaded individually. I believe if one has a paid mediafire account, they could download the entire folder as an archive, but this won't be an option for most. Regardless, here's what you have to do to install the mod:

• Download and install my http://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/21960/?. The download is rather large, and everything's a bit wonky, but all you have to do is extract the textures to the textures folder and meshes to the meshes folder in your data files. Don't bother with the ini tool, it's broken and my changes aren't compatible with the beta anyways.
• Download every .nif file from the mediafire folder. These are needed for the new mod and will fix some glaring bugs with the old version.
• Download and move appropriate textures to your data files/textures folder. I recommend installing every texture in the root texture plus the Moons in the Moons folder. These are the most tested and most final of the work in the mod. You can also try out the reformatted original skies or remastered versions if you like. All these should work but what I most reccomend is the textures from the remastered folder combined with the original "clear" texture from Morrowind. The other textures will work, but are rather bland and I have recreated a lot of their appearance in my skies.
• Apply the changes to your INI noted in http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1166146-wipzbeta-swgs-skies-v4-now-in-public-beta/#entry22976938. This will fix cloud movement speeds and should stop your skies from zooming along the horizon at five times their regular speed.
• If possible I recommend using MGE XE with things like sunshafts, atmospheric fog/scattering, sky bloom, HDR, vignette, and http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=9201 to improve the appearance of the skies. Personal testing has been done with MGE and these textures are intended to be used with it.

See the thread for screenshots, and I encourage you to post your own. With permission, I may include them on the Nexus/GHF page on release.

Do not hesitate to provide feedback, ask questions or leave comments, I really appreciate it. If you just want to try out the new skies, that's fine too, just keep an eye on this thread for updates!

you seen my weather-editing mod?

might wanna check it out for ideas.
(just suggesting)

http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=8982


/blush.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':blush:' />

Cool, I hadn't seen it before. /smile.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':)' /> Unfortunately it wouldn't be something I'd include in the next Skies mod, as it's limited to edits I can do via meshes/textures/and INI.

Oh, I forgot something on the list, a possible Oblivion port.

Would twinkling stars be possible? That could be really nice.

Hmm, I've thought about it before, maybe if someone made a twinkling shader and I hooked it to the night sky texture via MGE, but you'd have to ask someone else about that, I don't know how to make shaders at all. /shrug.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':shrug:' />

EDIT: Does anyone have or know of where I can get a perfectly uv-mapped UV Sphere? You know, the type that planet textures are mapped onto? Blender is awesome, but unfortunately it fails at mapping spheres correctly. /frown.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':(' />

Sounds awesome, we need more skies.. i was fooling around with some really http://piclair.com/data/4apqw.jpg skies just yesterday, looked awesome for 5 minutes, than i got tired of them, hehe.

"Horizon support", how do you mean?

Have you seen this? => http://www.mediafire.com/?kyunljupnpcnuwa

This:
So yup, I have. I did check it out. The support for horizons in theory is relatively simple, you just have to extend the dome down to zero on the z axis, unfortunately getting the texture to look good around horizon level is the tough part. Horizon clouds are different in appearance than clouds directly above, Fallout 3 uses a separate mesh/texture set for horizons, and Assassin's Creed simply maps the clouds to just horizons, considering they are what you end up looking at most of the time, this method wouldn't work in Morrowind though, due to the way the clouds move across the sky.

shooting stars!

unless you have them ofc, but there's a mod for oblivion that adds them, and it's great!

I'm totally happy with the latest skies you made, but lore-friendly and the famous constellations like Mage, Lady Tower and so on, would rule!
Maybe a shooting star, ( if technically possible ) /wink_smile.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':wink_smile:' />

Can you show some screens?

No, I haven't gotten that far yet. I'm still in the brainstorming stage, so as the first post says, throw me ideas!

As for the shooting stars guys, there's a mod that does that, it's quite awesome. I may have to tweak it though, because the shooting star mesh moves across the sky based on the size of the texture, and SWG's Skies v4, and even v3 used/will use huge textures, so the shooting stars would, and will again shoot across like half the sky.

Would be nice with clouds that arent just on the skydome itself. In GTA: San Andreas they have 2D planes of clouds + a sky dome. Would be cool if it was possible to do something similar for Morrowind. It would add a little depth to the sky i think.

Well... how about rainbows after rain? Don't know if it's possible though.

'Tis already done! /smile.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':)' /> It's a cool little mod, the shooting starts are not overdone, rare enough that when you see one it's a nice suprise:
http://www.elricm.com/nuke/html/modules.php?op=modload&name=Downloads&file=index&req=viewdownloaddetails&lid=1556

@ SWG - everything you've already mentioned pretty much completes my wishlist for skies - good luck and looking forward to it!

Added a couple things to the list, Particle Cloud/Weather system (will need to get in touch with MGE developers for this, probably Hrnchamd), Even more weather particle improvements, unique sky coloring (the sky looks different depending on what direction you look!), and improved/remade moon textures using alpha (the way they were supposed to be according to lore. I've already started working on this).

EDIT: I'm throwing lightning textures onto the list, if the meteors mod can figure out how to make a mesh act as a decal to the sky mesh, I can too.


SWG's Skies v3 had all the Firament Constellations in it, they just never changed from month to month, and weren't quite as obvious as in the vanilla game, you had to stargaze to find them, which was entirely my intention.

an animated sky..

lol. Unless you want to download a file that's over a Gig, and I sure don't want to have to upload one, that's not going to happen. Sorry.

Umm.... is it possible to make effects like Aurora Borealis, and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumhorizontal_arc? In other words, have some unique weather patterns happen everyone once in a while, or when certain conditions are met (i.e. a rainbow occurs but only after a rainstorm).

Is it possible to add more weather types? What with the US snopocalypse, I was pondering what Solstheim would be like in a hail storm. And by the way, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graupel is so cool. Also, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning#Cloud-to-cloud_lightning would be neat to see, either on its own or in addition to cloud-to-ground lightning strikes. Dry lightning - like http://officeofstrategicinfluence.com/gates/ - would be so cool to see over Red Mountain!

But, I don't know if such things are possible, if the current engine just is not capable of being able to do things like that, even with MGE and MWSE power.

-double post, please delete-

Well, I'm waiting on Hrnchamd to see what he says about my current crazy ideas, maybe yours will be possible as well, that would be awesome. /biggrin.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':D' />

I'd love to add some, Hrnchamd had said it was possible in the past (I don't have a quote but I remember it clearly), besides, ashstorm/blightstorm/and snowstorm lightning would need some edits via code patchy type things anyways. For new weathertypes, I'd love to have ash snow, ash overcasts, blight overcasts, clear skied snowfalls (they happen quite often here in Ottawa), and much more. Dual layered skies ala Oblivion would be nice too.

These types of effects would be done the same way I would do visual lightning, and all those types of lightning you mentioned, I already planned to include in some form, they would make the game so next-gen...

My goal pretty much is to give Morrowind the some of the best weather in games these days, we have some of the best graphics enhancements, awesome shaders, MGE XE and whatnot, and our game is covered in high-res textures, so lets add even more!

your skies are already awesome I don't see how humanly possible for them to get any better then they are, oh How about updating your mod and including the patch along with it?

Meteors would be cool, I really don't like this Meteor mod though:

http://www.elricm.com/nuke/html/modules.php?op=modload&name=Downloads&file=index&req=viewdownloaddetails&lid=1556

My main complaint is that the Meteors almost never appear. I think you should see them a few times an hour when you aren't near bright modern cities. Also, it's just not fun if you never see them! Another criticism: the meteors appear only in a discrete number of places and directions, because of the way the script is written.

What? Well obviously you aren't a texturer, because I find them horrid now, the cloud formations are too large and/or repeated due to laziness/lack of effort, they lack the sharpness I want, they have lots of seams, the night sky texture is too drastic in the way that it doesn't flow through itself well enough, and lots more...

Besides the things I mentioned in the first post... Hey, if they were so great, why wouldn't everyone use them? Not that I'd want to do that to my fellow texturers of course.

Err, umm. I could, but then I'd have to repackage it, and reupload it to Nexus and PES, and that would take too long, it's a battle between my laziness as a modder and the users laziness not to click on another link... /tongue.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':P' /> I'm just going to be annoying and let users lose. /teehee.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':teehee:' />

Progress update! Almost done the new Masser textures, now with proper alpha and differing appearances ala Oblivion (moon looks different depending on phase)!!
EDIT: Done the Masser textures! Woot!

Sorry for the double post, but I knew that if I just edited the previous one, nobody would look at it. /tongue.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':P' />

Anyways, the moons are done, and I've uploaded them for public beta testing http://www.2shared.com/file/p6RJwsxL/Skies_v4_Moons.html. I don't have Morrowind Installed at the moment, so unfortunately I can't provide any screenshots, so just back up your moon textures before testing this.

Things I'm looking for feedback on:

• Alpha shadowing confirmation- moons now have shadows via alpha maps, I'd like to know if they allow the player to see through the moons to the stars.
• Continuety errors, ect. Does one of the moon textures not have transparency at all for some reason? I'd like to know.
• How spherical do the moons look, if they look flat, I may have to include versions of the moon meshes with edited uv maps.
• Any other feedback or suggestions are nice, I'd like to have this looking perfect by the time I release the whole mod.

That's it, here's the DL link again if you missed it:
http://www.2shared.com/file/p6RJwsxL/Skies_v4_Moons.html