If people are gathering up on MSN I can invite AnOldFriend to such discussions as well since I have him. I'll send a pm with my MSN to TDW.

Cheers =)

@MDH_Modder: Tip: If you're not a fan of getting spam all day, then you might not want to post your e-mail here so obvious to see!!! I will install msn today and add you to my list of contacts. Never used msn though, but I guess I'll figure it out.

What is needed at the moment? Unique 3D-models of plants, trees, mushrooms and so on. Most of them we will make ourselves, but if there are good ressources, that would be helpful. What also is needed is many retextures of rocks and rubbles, so I can play around with that on the main isle. But I have to decide which texture is final first.

What we will also need is new environmental sounds, like jungle ambient. There are some free sites on the net with sounds we could use for free. IRRC it was www.soundsnap.com and www.partnersinrhyme.com" and some others. If somebody could gather some of those sound as .wav, this might be kinda helpful for us!!!

EDIT: Just got another idea this moment. What was always bothering me all the time when doing animation was, that animation gets interrupted, when player's idle changes. But you can get rid of that when you synchronize animation with those idles. What I want to try out is giving the player a different facial expression for each idle. An angry face for all the attacks, a concentrated face when sneaking and so on. Never tried this before, but I think it should work.

TheDaywalker :rock:

Looks just like the character! Man, you're good.

As for textures, try http://www.spiralgraphics.biz/packs/brick_block/index.htm, I'm sure you'll find something in those 22 categories that will be useful.

I thought about that face idea a while back, but what bothered me was that the blinking and talking animations aren't synched with the base_anim track, they use their own note/text keys.
I'm just wondering if it's possible to have both synched animations and blinking and talking animations together. Hope I'm making sense here. :/

Also are synched animations compatible with animation replacers?

Anyway, if you do morph the face to different idles that'd be great, as the morph template will be very useful to other modders so they can easily morph meshes to the idle sequences.

I'm liking the look of this project so far, will those plants be as large as they are in real life AnOldFriend?

Do you want crits on the texture?

@Dirnae: The animations I had in mind were planned only for the player so far. NPCs should be a bit harder to animate that way. But I may have a try at that too. I will place those on my "to do" list, but at the very end of it, cause the environment has priority now!!!

@Yacoby: Sure, crits help me to improve my skills. 99% of my time I'm hanging around at professional forums with guys way better than me, but this is the only way to learn something!!!


TheDaywalker :rock:

Well, you still have blinking animations and compatability with animation mods to worry about with the player, if these two things turn out to be a problem.
We can't know if this is the case until someone tests it out though. It's a good idea to do the head morphing last, sounds like it'll involve a lot of testing.

What about creatures? Are you planning to do this ?
Maybe something like:
Ikran (Banshee),
Toruc (Leonopterix),
Pa'li (Direhorse),
Palulukan (Thanator),
Nantang (Viperwolf),
Angts?k ( Hammerhead Titanothere),
Prolemuris,
Yerik (Hexapede),
Riti (Stingbat)
Wasp (Hellfire)

....annnnddd...

Atokirina') (Woodsprite) ?
Creature animation can be original, I think. Heh.

Hey man, slow down a bit, please!!! We didn't plan to recreate the whole thing. It's more than enough to do with what we have planned so far, any further addition will be decided once we have finished environment plus race.


TheDaywalker :rock:

It will increase the end-file size of the mod by some MB, but I would strongly recommend getting only audio files of 320kbps or higher. It will take some searching but the end result will be very noticeable, compared to the usual 92-96kbps of free sound samples. Your sounds will be closer HD Surround Sound quality, and it will really immerse the player in the mod. Getting them in a lossless format first and then using proper software to convert to the most lossless format MW can read would be good too.

Sounds good, but I have no experience with audio stuff at all, would be up to someone else here!!! Any volunteers?!


TheDaywalker :rock:

I think Morrowind likes a particular quality (I know MWSfD has it listed), but 320 or better... You could get away with as low as 128 in a pinch (or as a low-quality version). 196-256 works, especially in games for ambience or quick-playing noises. Only for foreground sounds that the player has to notice and listen to would I use 320. You can save a lot of space by going down to around 200kbps, and the audio quality isn't too bad.

To take care of that, though, you may want to get all the sounds in 320 or lossless, and either:
- package low-quality audio with the mod to save space, and provide high-quality as an optional download
- provide two different qualities, both as optional downloads

Downsampling is quite easy though, and since MW uses MP3s, I think you could even do it in iTunes if no other apps were available.

Firstly I hope everybody had a merry Christmas.



@TDW:

Like I said in a reply to ZackG earlier in the thread, I want there to be variations in the tree sizes, and some different types of trees so you need not be concerned about that. Not sure if ZackG is making trees but if he isn't then I will do it.

As for the island, I like the model, the texture is not so great though. I noticed you said its still WIP but I hope you will take a more realistic route with the textures then fractals. I would strongly suggest that anybody working on any 3d assets use cgtextures or any other free texture site on the net. You should be able to find just about anything you would need at cgtextures and other sites for this project. You can also do some pretty amazing things with Photoshop.

I will be working on the foliage (smaller ground plants, mushrooms, and the like), rocks, fell trees, and possibly some standing trees if need be.




For anybody who is offering there help on the project. Please PM me with what you are or would like to work on, this way we can try to organize things better. I will update the first post with the details.

I think we can use MSN messenger for file sharing and some realtime discussions on the project, I would suggest anybody who is offering there assistance to DL that if you don't have it and we can try to get everybody connected on there.

Okey, heh. But it's just a simple question. I'm asking about two (three) creatures, some of them. It wiill be very cool to see cat, helfire and ikran, for example.

@AOF: I'm not that good with making and applying textures, I'm much better at just making the models. Maybe if you provide me a texture, which you think of is right, or I may send you the landmesh too?

You must have misunderstood what I ment with using fractals. I don't want to use it as texture for 3D-models. I want it to be leaves and blooms of some plants. You know everything out there in nature is based on same mathematic terms, tree branches, veins, rivers and so on... I will make you one of those plants and you can have a look at then!!!


@Kalian: I guess you underaestimate how much work just a single creature is, don't you? Model has to be done from scratch, animations have to be done or at least be tweaked, textures need to be done...plus we agreed on not copying anything from the movie directly!!! I'm totally sold out with what I'm working on at the moment, so speaking for myself, I say I will do no creature, sry!!!


Thedaywalker :rock:

Of course, it's hard. Well, it is too bad..
p.s. I guess I have a "bad idea" now.. Hm.

Well, just show us your all pogress, we want to see more screens.

Sure, send me the model, I will make the textures for it.

Fractals could be good for plants, but they would have to be done right.



As for creating creatures... Westly offered to toss some stuff and junk and things together to create some unique creatures. Perhaps we will see what he comes up with.

Yeeas, that's sound good. Thanks, AOF.

How about my earlier suggestion of just adding a second set of wings to a cliffracer and increasing the size a bit? I'm willing to take a crack at applying some riding scripts to it...I once managed to make Mostly-Mini Pete ride on a cliffracer for a few minutes before he fell off...and wouldn't ever get back on. :hehe:

@Fligg: Rideable creature sound great!!! Cliffracer sounds ugly, so I'll better make a custom creature and use given animations. Problem with riding creatures in an interior cell though is, that if you come to close to the borders of the cell, you will get placed back by game engine to a starting point imediately.


TheDaywalker :rock:

I've got a small setup with three of the plants in a row. When you walk near them, or any NPC walks near them, they light up. When you walk away, they turn off. As soon as I find my Frap installer file and finish up some polishing I'll get a video made.

Just wanted to report that it works, and I think I've worked out a relatively FPS-friendly method to accomplish this with.

Fligg :: Hasn't Riding scripts for a flying creature already been made? I remember playing a mod, where you can acquire your own ridable dragon. I think the mod was named The Lord of Dragons, or reign of fire ( like the movie ) or something like that. I don't remember who it was by or anything, I do know however that the scripts were pretty good, at least for me. Unless your talking about making more stable or Better scripts??


Daywalker :: I am curious, would you like some help with maybe plantlife, landscape or creature concepts? I am decent at modelling, but I do have an exceptionally great talent at drawing. And I could help with some concepts, and when I do get a computer that runs my modelling program, I'll help if i can, or you'd like.

@Fligg: Can't wait to see it!!! :goodjob:

@derek robbins: Those scripts' s author is mainly Madmax. I once was looking for a way to contact him for permission to use them, but I think he's out of business far too long. Never saw him posting anywhere???


TheDaywalker :rock:

Ah, I see. I at once knew who made the scripts, but It's been so long I have forgotten.

Yeah, it was done both in Lord of Dragons and Reign of Fire. The problem with such scripts is that they have to heavily modified to work with a different creature; although the Lord of Dragons script was the basis of my cliffracer script. I don't worry about usage permission when it comes to scripts though. Rarely do I actually use a whole script; rather I usually just get the gist of the logic and rewrite it myself.