How's the in-game map look? Does it look similar to Tamriel Rebuilt's map (http://tamriel-rebuilt.org/?image=g/maps/map_HF_Ingame.jpg&p=modding_data/maps) in style?

How do you plan on making the transition between Cyrodiil and the Black Marsh seamless?

No one needs to see anything until the mod is finished. Surprise is much better than hints.

Looks fantastic, great use of some already existing stuff, everything looks really good!

If you could send me the textures you already have I wouldn't mind adding some wear and tear look to them and stuff to make a lot of the buildings look like they were built and exist in a filthy marsh instead of looking so new. PM or e-mail me (oliver_pb@hotmail.com).

Thanks, people! Regarding the map, I was contacted by a map-maker who specialises in such work so I'm hoping they're still around in a short while when we're ready to get the maps up and running. It should look similar to the maps in the revamped maps mod that was posted up a while ago on TesNexus....at least, I'm hoping so . However, for the time being, the maps that we use are taken from the old modding team. This was the (very) old website: http://theblackmarshproject.weebly.com/ which is in rather low resolution but the old modding team were very good with lore so we're basing it around their knowledge and the existing information about the Black Marshes from various sources.

The transition issue is a problem that we'll discuss with our father project, Silgrad Tower. For the playable beta release, I think we may opt for generating a border area that looks sufficiently like Cyrodiil's border but is basically a mock-up. There are a number of options open to us as to how the player might travel from one to the other but blending the two worldspaces would be a bad idea in terms of performance and a reduction in the breadth of modding possibilities.

Thanks to Ofronish and once more to richardrocket009....it's nice to see people are keeping updated on progress.... :nod:....

Edit - I sent you an email, Phinius Master.

The map on that site wasn't made for this mod (or any mod), though I did post it on the BM forums a long time ago. It's pretty lore accurate, it's based off http://www.imperial-library.info/maps/blackmarsh.png moreso than the Oblivion-era maps, though judging by your other old maps (KuKulzA's?) it looks like your mod may be too. So you can use it if you want, for whatever, I should still have the psd somewhere so I can probably make some changes if need be.

Here's a better version of it - http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i201/Vality7/maps/argonia-5.jpg.

Oh, fantastic, Vality7! I've been looking for a decent version of that map and couldn't find it anywhere. Tenmar Wall and Soulrest have moved a little bit from this map but otherwise it's quite a faithful reflection. I'm afraid the old team weren't very good at positioning things on the map. Some guys seemed to have modelled the settlements in the wrong places so I had to rearrange things a little once I'd joined.....too late to do that now though. The reality is that in the Black Marshes, the inner areas are subject to flooding so things are likely to change anyway. This is what to Glenbridge which will be partly underwater in our mod. Anyway, having this map is great news! :tops:

It was worm82075 of the CraftyBits team that offered to help in this respect over on our TesNexus dev thread. I'll have to get back to him soon as we now have the beta areas completely outlined.

so...who's it goin?

It's still going ok. The major hang-up on my end is that the optimizer program I use is not working right, but it's being looked into. Therefore, I recently have not been sending new meshes to Ibsen to incorporate into the Blackmarsh archive, until I can run them through the script ok.

So in the meantime, I'm auditing the Blackmarsh archive meshes to see which ones could be improved either by lowering the triangle count, or adding MOPP type collision, for better ingame performance. I know Silgrad Tower: The Forgotten Garden release was having some FPS issues, that some said might be related to meshes that lack MOPP type collision, so I want to make sure Blackmarsh does not suffer from similar problems, to the best of our abilities.

Koniption

great, progress is progress, no matter how little
glad to see it's not dead :goodjob:

We're pretty far from dead. This project has always kept a low profile and people don't see what goes on behind the scenes. Our modders are returning lately from 'exam duty' so more activity has been occurring and I've been getting a little more help with the modding. Even still, the Everglades Region is now well on the way and the Jungle is being tweaked.

Wow this looks absolutely fantastic!

Congratulations Ibsen and BM team, this will definately add a lot of uniqueness and originality to Oblivion! I love Argonians, one of the reasons I got CM Partners was to have Cog Rein backing me up, can't wait to see the mysteries that Black Marsh will offer.

I know perhaps it is too early to ask this, but have you discussed whether Balck Marsh will reflect the ingame events as they happen? What I mean is: if I visit BM before or during the Oblivion Crisis will those topics be on the mind of the population and if I go there after the Crisis ends will that be reflected as well? I don't actually expect open/closed Oblivion gates and Daedra hordes invading or anything like that, I just mean in terms of narrative will events in the core game be addressed?

I look forward to seeing more of this wonderful project in upcoming months. With such great projects such as Silgrad, Ileana's Elsewyr and Lady Nerevar's Hammerfell Oblivion will have so much more to explore! Now all that I hope to see are some adventures in Skyrim.

:foodndrink:

I can't wait, sounds cool. is there going to be vegetation similar to Morrowind? or is there going to be new vegetation.
I always imagined black marsh to have the morrowind vegetation but you know, whatever.

@ Atreides - I don't think we've gotten that far in doing quests, dialogue, and stuff of that nature; we're still setting up the landscape and cities for people to make claims. But I'm pretty sure we'll take all of what you said into consideration. Since Blackmarsh is fairly wild and untamed, and thus less traveled, news of the Oblivion gates and such, could technically be heard about on the outskirts of Blackmarsh that borders Tamriel, but maybe it shouldn't be as well known about in the innermost parts of Blackmarsh territory, except among a few residents of those areas. Either way, I leave most of those decisions up to Ibsen and our "lore monkey", Deeza, while I tag along and help out the best I can in that area (and without overextending myself, heh).

@ Ntom - we're using existing vegetation from the vanilla and SI versions of Oblivion. But Ibsen has also been using almost all, if not all, of my plants in my ResourcePack1 on TESNEXUS. He seems to be dividing up which plants go in which regions, so not all plants are found in all regions. I also have made some custom plants for Blackmarsh that have not been released in a resource pack of mine.

Koniption

I am glad to hear you are making some good progress on this...the more land to explore, the merrier...

Actually Koniption the Oblivion Crisis spawned the entire Tamriel, the gates were supposedly everywhere including Black Marsh. That's why you hear baout attacks on other provinces like Morrowind where Vivec disappears when that city is assaulted and Ald'ruhn gets wiped out, I think they mention other provinces as well but I can't recall.

I know you guys will not actually portray the invasion itself by putting open gates and daedra coming out the whazoo, and that's fine because honestly I think it would be too much trouble for too little payoff both to you guys as devs and us as players, but I was only wondering if people would recognize the difference between pre and post daedra invasions in their topics of conversation.

Rumor (dev confirmed) has it that the Hist recalled all the Argonians back to the marsh to defeat the daedra invaders, and managed to kick their asses quite well. any chances we get to see that?

@ Atreides: Oh gosh, you caught me. :facepalm: I'm no where near a lore or game story expert. I have yet to venture beyond the immediate exterior outside the intro dungeon in Oblivion, to this day. And now that I mod for Blackmarsh, well, let's just say that the intro dungeon is gonna be my home for good while longer. I have duties at home too, and that takes up more time.

@ Lady Nerevar: Get to see the Argonians kick the Daedra's asses? I have no clue if that's planned for the mod. *safe answer*

Koniption

Thanks, Atreides! FYI, seeing as you now have CM Partners then perhaps you'd like to make use of brucevayne's excellent 'sound sets' mod. I voiced about 4 characters for it, Jeremiah, Ja-Khaiit-myr, Borrodin, Kyndrulhu: http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=12588 . I didn't get round to doing my Argonian for it though....but maybe later. Great mod though and you can find my 'advlt' Kyndrulhu voice set elsewhere, if you're interested. The reason I mention this is that BM will have a much more interactive companion who speaks during combat and in different situations and has a story of their own, a bit like Simyaz's wonderful Ruined Tail mod....only souped-up.

I had planned for the events of BM to take place after the Oblivion crisis but to ignore it would seriously interfere with the sense of immersion and what the original team set out to achieve, so yes, it will be referred to (and perhaps built on to some degree). I actually didn't like the Bethesda storyline though so I have no intention of going into Oblivion.....there will be an entirely different dimension in BM to consider. :whisper:

Considering those projects you mentioned, we actually work with members of Silgrad. Sandor is an enormous help in generating our regions and I've still got a heck of a lot of voice files (must be well over 4000 lines) recorded for the project, some of which I might be able to use here. Lady Nerevar often drops by our forums (and she's welcome) and our ex-core member Senten has worked with Ileana in the past so it's quite a close-knit community we have going on.



Koniption has already answered this but I wanted to take this opportunity to publically thank Koniption for her fabulous work. She has been a real revelation to us and, returning to the subject, has recently submitted some truly awesome new BM-specific flora models.



Probably only in passing. After I did the voice work for 'Lost Spires' I wanted to take Leo's obvious Cthulhu / Heart of Darkness inspirations and create something unique, perhaps continuing something related to the Archaeology Guild of that mod. Personally, I'm not a lore monkey. Deeza keeps me straight on that (and does a fantastic job) but I wanted to avoid most things Daedra-related.....although I daresay it will probably make an appearance. After all, the event/rumour that you refer to (kicking their asses) will certainly need to be addressed.

hey guys, any updates? what regions are you working on atm?

also, i'd like to know how exactly you plan on capturing the alien nature of argonia. this land is supposed to be creepy and dangerous and foreign to all but its natives, will there be any special things to really make the player think twice before going exploring? from what ive seen so far its not too different from cyrodiil, but i assume thats because youre only on the border...?

I was planning on making an update very shortly...

We recently had the Everglades completely generated. It still needs work on landscaping but this is where Argonia really starts to become the Black Marshes and, despite experiencing one of those typical data-loss horror stories that you hear about mods, we managed to make some good progress on the jungle and the Morrowind mountain border....stay tuned for screenshots. Oh, and we've been concentrating on making the landscape much denser so it's not going to look quite so much as it does in the current screenshots....at least with respect to Blackwood anyway (the jungle is already pretty dense now).

Our big project at the moment is reworking the three major cities that we have planned for our playable beta version. Work on Soulrest has begun and Stormhold is being finalised by Deeza. One of those cities though. Gideon, really fits with what you're referring to there as we've had a few old members returning to work on it (the history of BM goes way back). Gideon is a very crime-ridden city and has a long and turbulent history. Many of the ideas are drawn from lore references but there are a good many that are totally original. This is something that Tlo1048 is working on. Hopefully, the number of ideas he's been bringing with him can help with the overall atmosphere and character of BM. I don't want to reveal too much but we've got some new creatures lined up along with some totally new environments and totally new threats so yes, it's very much a more hazardous landscape than anything you've come across in Cyrodiil. It's not exactly Oblivion-scale but you're going to need to learn about the land a little in order to beat it.

Big updates are on the way including a lot of stuff that I'm just itching to mod....although we could use help...not having the odd extra modder on hand to finish up little bits here and there drags us back....but I'm still hoping the playable beta will be out by the end of the year.

Beta by the end of the year, sounds like a challange IG

When making a new character it says the Argonians have developed immunity/resistance to poison and disease to better suit their enviorment in Black Marsh. Does this mean you'd have a % to contract various diseases / take damage while wading through marshland? That'd be awesome

Furthermore, will there be any references to historic peoples in dialogue? By this I mean, would anyone there speak about/refer to chararcters from books like The Argonian Account and such?

Forgive the silly questions, I am really excited about this. Black Marsh was the first location I wanted to see happen in ESIV, the second being Akavir

I NEED to get Shivering Isles now.

This is going to be so great...only 5 more months!!!