That city is really awesome.

One Thing though: Why do these propellers remind me of something? *cough*your first dwemer armor design*cough*

ISGC: It's a modder's resource, so you can place the city where ever you want. Where it will be in my plugin isn't decided yet!!!

@Mercarryn: It is the same vent I used in my Dwemer armor and in my mod Grimchand. I think it fits very well, so why making a new one. Those vents will be loose objects, so anyone can place them where he wants to.

At the moment I'm making a floating Vivec St. Olms statue. I'd rather have a dwemerish one, but textures all look crappy and I'm not in the mood drawing a complete new texture right now!!!


TheDaywalker :rock:

Made some new stuff, check it out!!! Quality of video is bad though, cause I had to convert and join single vids together!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzSsWAm-qlw


TheDaywalker :rock:

Have you ever wondered why dwemer ruins 99% are placed in barren and stoney environment. I'm no lore expert, but the kind of crafting they did must have been a rather destructive one for environment around those ruins. Well, I thought to myself, when nothing vital will grow across the areas near those ruins, why not have some metallic substitute and so I made some metallic mushrooms. What you think?

http://img683.imageshack.us/img683/9060/24410447.jpg
http://img35.imageshack.us/img35/3350/13707999.jpg
http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/229/18519546.jpg
http://img691.imageshack.us/img691/7696/96926795.jpg


TheDaywalker :rock:

I always thought it was because they drill into the ground to draw their ore (whatever ore that may be) and throw the refuse outside so the outside is all the smothered in dust and dirt from deep in the ground, but that's just my theory.
as for the mushrooms they are... really big. they look great, but really out of place... I would think metal trees would be more fitting, but for a ground ruin.
I honestly don't see why a flying city would need mushrooms on the ground. Don't get me wrong, they're awesome, but like I said, out of place.
if you are going to put them into the inside (will there be an inside?) then it would probably look great.
another question, this looks like it would devour my fps, the video seems fine, but assuming you have some sort of super computer, how would it be on a computer that can handle just a little bit more then morrowind?

The mushrooms were ment just for decoration and like everything new you must give it some time to get used to it. I always like to make something, which is a bit different from the rest, but as this is a ressource people can decide themselves wether to use those shrooms or not. I will add them to the package nonetheless!!!

Yes, there'll be an inside, but I don't know yet wether I will release it with this package and take some weeks longer or release it in a later plugin. Depends on how fast I come up with all I have planned sofar!!!

Don't worry about fps, cause I have possibly the oldest PC on the entire forum. It's about 8 years old and I can't play PC games later than 2005!!! All the models you see have highres textures, there is a bunch of animation going on and I have gamecam active and my PC doesn't have any problems with that!!!


TheDaywalker :rock:

great!
but actually the mushrooms looked kind of like some sort of dwemer invasion force, I'll either expect dwarves to start pouring out or that I'm being invaded by aliens O_O;
wait, another thing, will you put the mushrooms by the towns like in the shot, or will they only be near the ruins, because I think they might look good in the ruins...

Alien mushrooms, good idea...

I don't know where I'll finally put all this stuff, originally I wanted to release the models only, but as there are still some people that can't mod I thought it'd be kinda unfair not to arrange something in game too!!!


TheDaywalker :rock:

:clap:


It all looks so awesome! I've always been of the opinion that it takes character to release a mod resource pack, especially of high quality, because it's a very selfless thing to do, so part of the clapping is for that too.

What about if they were some sort of power supply? Put them near lava or steam vents and they could power internal turbines for energy. Or maybe in the bitter coast they feed on the methane emissions.

Just some ideas, not that creativity needs an explanation

Yeah, good idea, I will add some functionality to them, may involve some scripting though!!!


As we speak about scripting, I could need a certain script!!! I made an underground basemant, which can only be accessed by an elevator. This elevator is a platform, which is part of the basemants ceiling. From surface the platform seals the hole, which leads down under the ground. I can animate an elevator, but I don't want to have it move up and down all the time. I need a script, which will be placed on an activator and when that activator gets clicked the static platform will be disabled and my animated one will be enabled. The platform will go down and up again one time.

Could somebody please do that script for me?!


TheDaywalker :rock:

Well, I can see quite a few of these finding their way into my WIP.

@Zaarin: Cool, I hope this ressource will come in handy!!! Hope I'll be able to visit my city someday and play a good quest!!!


I overworked the whole model today, because I wasn't yet satisfied with it. So what I did is, I retextured the model so that it gets more interesting, I changed the central building into some kind of chinese tower with circular balconies on different levels (wanted it to look more like a castle), added some extra turrets, pipes and last but not least took off the hiccup out of the wing's animation. Now I'm personally good with the model and will make some further tiles for decoration.

Btw, I love these metallic mushrooms, LOL!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8PI8fnXb1M&feature=channel


TheDaywalker:rock:

Made something new again. I thought my city would need some kinda transportation system and so I made a small dwemer skyship thing called "Leviathan". Actually it's just and activator like the siltstriders are, but maybe with some help of a good scripter I could make something like that, which you can actually ride. We'll see...

http://pic.leech.it/i/3d35f/31ed93flev1.jpg
http://pic.leech.it/i/1ddf5/504669elev3.jpg
http://pic.leech.it/i/b28bb/4f588dflev2.jpg
http://pic.leech.it/i/48c76/87b2dbdlev4.jpg

EDIT: If I got the time, I'll overwork textures and make better wings!!!


TheDaywalker :rock:

OMG !!!
It's so gorgeous !!
+100 for your works \o/

A lot of the floating city resource isn't very dwemery, but it's beautiful none the less! :foodndrink:
What have you got planned for after you finish the dwemer city? Also, remember to test all the collision (especially the animated parts)!

As I already said in the first post:

After 8 years of Morrowind and same ol' dwemer ruins, it should be time for something new/ different. Maybe Dwemers died out, because their environment bored them to death, LOL!!!

Collision is fine sofar. Animated meshes do not have any collision at all, except if they move on the vertical axis, like for example my elevator. All other animated meshes will let you walk right through, no way to prevent that!!!

EDIT: The flying city will take me some time. I still have to make a whole bunch of decoration tiles and then interiors also have to be made. After that I'll create some further landmeshes, rocks, tunnels and stuff. And then? - Don't know yet. As soon as I get that NiUVController exported correctly, I think I'll work out a set of new water meshes.


TheDaywalker :rock:

'K then

btw:


Bounding Boxes work fine with animated activators, it's what's used for animated meshes in vanilla Morrowind.
I think the only exception I've seen to this is the Akulakhan mesh(?).

A bounding box should work fine with the propellers.
Don't try to cover the whole of the wing during animation with a bounding box, you'll end up with massive invisible walls.

Hmm, never ever used a bounding box for anything, will have to test it!!! But I doubt it will work, cause animation doesn't stop, when it collides with the player and player won't get pushed away by the animated parts, so what should it be good for? Only use I could think of is detection for "hurt colliding actor".


TheDaywalker :rock:

Bounding boxes are used for animated models in the game, including creatures and NPCs.

The thing is, I'm not sure it will move with your mesh, but instead, you place it around where your mesh will move.
This is why I said it'll be fine for collision with your propellers (just spinning), but you have to be careful with the wings.

Got you!!! I just took a creature into blender to check out that bounding box thingy. Seems to be just a normal collision box, which is named "Bounding Box", that's all. The box will easily follow the movements of the animated parts, when you make it a child of them. Well, as I looked at that creature, I came up with a new idea and first tests look very promising, check it out!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uU7lkV6iKA

EDIT: Oops, there's a lamp dislocated in the vid, gotta fix that, LOL!!!


TheDaywalker :rock:

Crazy Creature! Needs mechanical tentacles methinks.

The Bounding Box is a collision box with special properties, that's what makes it different (notice in NifSkope the bounding box comes up as a red wireframe, with a special Bounding Box node).
I don't think it is just a normal collision box, though I could be wrong, as if you try to export a normal collision box for use with a creature, AFAIK, it wont work.
I suggest you look through some animation tutorials, especially the old max ones (you should be able to transfer the instructions over to Blender).

Here's a quote from a tutorial I have stored for animating activators for Morrowind, written by TumbleDumpling:



Unfortunately all I know about Bounding Boxes I have learnt from tutorials, so I can't give any more details than this.
But from what I've read from tutorials, it seems though static meshes work fine collision-wise w/o a Bounding Box, an animated mesh wont.

edit: also remember, if you want to make a bounding box in Blender, you have to name it a 'Bounding box' exactly, so the exporter will make it a bounding box upon export with the correct properties.
Also, I don't think you can parent the Bounding Box to an animated node, and have it work like that. In all the instances I've seen it's been connected to a stationary node (usually the scene root).

I plan to make this house on top of the creature accessable for the player by script. In theory, if you'd script the coordinates of the player to be synchronized with the creature, you could build a whole village on top of a giant beast, like netch, mudcrab and such. Maybe I can even mount them with another creature like with the ice minions in bloodmoon.

Tested bounding box in blender, it's just typing in the right name and export, saw red box in nifskope!!!

EDIT: Tested bounding box as child of animated mesh, works fine as I thought!!! Made some simple rectangle rotating, surrounded it by a bounding box and made the rectangle parent of bounding box. Inside nifskope both rotated clean!!!

TheDaywalker :rock:

That'll be pretty neat.

Cities on top of creatures, if that's possible, it'd be pretty cool.

Yep, you just name it Bounding Box in blender and the exporter will make it a bounding box automatically for you (easy or what?).
Btw, if you want to make one in NifSkope, you can't just rename a box, instead use the block details window with a NiNode and change Has Bounding Box to yes.
Then type in it's radius, translation and rotation.

edit: can you test the animated bounding box in game? Like I said, I've only ever seen stationary bounding boxes, so it'd be interesting to see how it works in game.
Animated bounding boxes will be something I have to play around with (though it'll only work with activators really :/). Also, I haven't tried this myself, but can you use more than one bounding box for activators?
And what happens when the player hits into an animated bounding box?