DemonTide (Converting Oblivion)

[pooshoe]

Has this been discontinued or something. I was really looking forward to this, oh and my grammar really used to suck didnt it.

[DM8954]

The project is still going. We've continued working on the concepts and storyline on a private forum to prevent possible spoilers from leaking. We've got quite a bit of lore built up and the world is really starting to take shape.

Unfortunately, we're not even an eighth of the way finished with the heightmap/landscaping. Just the other day I sent Reep a copy of the mod version 0.06 to have a look at the current progress. [don't expect a public play-test before v0.99] So, don't get your hopes up about seeing a beta or even a pre-aplha release any time soon. I'll talk to Reep about how much we'd be comfortable telling everyone in here. I'm glad you're still interested in the project. I'm sure we'll give an update, I just won't know how much to reveal before I've talked it over with him.

I'm comfortable enough telling you now that I've landscaped the area immediately around the location of 4 major cities and a very large portion of the main river. The problem is the hundreds of in-game acres of land in between plus 9 more cities after these. There will be at least 13 total cities in the final version (10 Nyman cities plus 3-5 nearby foreign cities on the same continent).

In the time since my last post in this thread, I've learned a lot about creating meshes for Oblivion. I can now build a new model from scratch, texture it, and add collision to it. I can't yet get weapons, armor, or skins to link to the animated skeletons of NPCs or creatures, so I can only create stationary objects. For now, I'm just glad that we're finally in the CS and moving toward the goal.

In about 2 months, it will be my 3rd anniversary of joining this project. We don't seem to have accomplished much in such a long time but, considering the total amount of work planned and how many people we have working on it (2) I'm still pretty proud of what we have so far.

[Update likely within 1-2 weeks, max]

[DM8954]

After talking with Reep, I think the consensus is that my last post was actually a decent update about what's been going on. So, I haven't been authorized to show you anything too new yet. I'm posting again just to make sure I don't forget about this and let the "1-2 weeks" noted above go by without letting you know what's happening.

I don't want to let this post be completely lacking in new information, though, so I'll just give a few minor updates to stuff that's already been discussed here.

Here's the old chart of Nyman Cities, updated with the latest information. (Changes noted in blue.)

City		Gemstone		Symbol		Color
Citadel City		Diamond		Crown		White & Gold
Urtmas		Topaz		Lighthouse		Blue & Orange
Oakenthal		Emerald		Oak Tree		Green & Brown
Courmat		Ruby		Claw		Red & Black
Sundra		Amber		Sun		Yellow & Orange
Vinecrest		Amethyst		Grapes		Purple & Green
Lakenthirst		Sapphire		Fish		Blue & Silver
Iron Forge		Ebony		I / Hammer / F		Silver & Maroon
Havencrest		Quartz		Eagle		Royal Blue & Sky Blue
Icewind		Pearl		Snowflake		Silver & Sky Blue
-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Taragaras		Obsidian		Special Symbol		Black & Red

I just realized that Freeport isn't listed above. It's sort of shared between Nymm and the Orcs, so it's almost a city-state on it's own, but not really. Maybe they're too busy fighting and/or partying to make a flag. They certainly don't have an official gemstone and I can't think of an appropriate symbol. Maybe I'll make a flag later that combines the Orc and Nyman flags somehow. I'm not sure. Probably in-game, there will simply be flags from the two separate countries on official buildings and not have a flag of its own.

There's not much else I can tell you about. I guess I can tell you which 4 cities have dry land on which to be built in the CS: Urtmas, Citadel City, Iron Forge, & Sundra. Not much is done on them yet. Some are started, some are empty land with a few markers or cell names. There's not much to show you but I can tell you that I'm proud of how these cities will some day look, just based on what little we have so far and how I imagine they will turn out. We couldn't possibly release images of a city until it's 80-90% finished, in case something has to change. Urtmas, the city with the most progress is only at 2.5% - 5% done right now.

[Igiss]

Good to hear that. Are there any plans to release something for us general public to test somewhere in the near future? Or maybe not to test, just to take a look? I didn't track this project's progress so far, but reading back what was done with heightmaps, items etc does look impressive.

Btw, how do you split your work when working in TES CS? Were there any problems with integrating the work that each of you is doing?

[DM8954]

I thought I replied to this the day after you posted it. Sorry for the delay. I guess I never pushed enter, or something.

     Well, the work on the heightmaps didn't work out as planed. After I lost a couple months worth of work because of a major mistake on my part, I tried to output what little I had left. It didn't work as expected. There were many more glitches (overly tiered landscapes with random huge spikes and holes) than I could easily fix. I could have probably tweaked the process, with a bit of help, and gotten it to work well enough but considering the amount of work it would have taken in the end, I decided against it. Instead, I'm taking the time and effort to build the land entirely from scratch in the render view.
     I realize that this is quite a slow process but in the course of helping to redesign the entire landscape for the Eagles Reach mod I learned quite a few tricks for doing it better and faster. When I started using this method, the paint-style landscape editor in the CS was giving me trouble so I went without but this seems to be working fine for me. I'll probably give it one more chance, just to speed up the overall rough-in process but if it still doesn't work, it won't slow me down too badly.

     I'm not too sure about a public or even semi-public (exclusive to Tamriel Chronicles) alpha-preview but we'll consider it. I don't think we have enough done to really show anything in-game yet. We don't really want to become the Duke Nukem Forever of Oblivion modding.

     Right now, all we have are 4 nearly empty cities. Urtmas has a dock, a lighthouse, and a main gate. Citadel City has only a very rough mock-up for a potential Citadel (the palace/fortress) design. Iron Forge is a barren cliff with a couple of waterfalls and the river. I don't think Sundra has been detailed here, so I can't say what's been done without spoiling anything, but let's just say it's in a similar state to Iron Forge but with a few placeholders added.


As for having 2 people working on the CS at the same time, we haven't run into that problem yet. We have tested out a method for merging 2 mods successfully on another small project, so I'm not too worried about it. Essentially, I think you turn on both mods and keep the main one active in the CS, then manipulate items in the second mod ever so slightly so they register as work in the main mod and then save it. This method is mostly for importing interiors. [Just open the interior, select everything and move it over an inch. everything stays stationary in relation to each other piece, so it's seamless.] There are also some outside tools that Reep uses in a different process, which I'm not familiar with, that works out for him. Maybe he can give more detail about it.

I hope we can show you something pretty soon but I can't promise anything, since I hate to disappoint.

I'll keep you all posted whenever I can.

[pooshoe]

Would I be able to get involved myself. I have to say I've have always loved the Idea of making a brand new game out of an inital game editor. I also have a friend who's a big modding fan like me who may like to get involved? It all seems very nice and would I love to play some part in it all. Well anyways .. Thanks 

[Igiss]

I thought I replied to this the day after you posted it. Sorry for the delay. I guess I never pushed enter, or something.

Well, that happens, no worries.

Essentially, I think you turn on both mods and keep the main one active in the CS, then manipulate items in the second mod ever so slightly so they register as work in the main mod and then save it. This method is mostly for importing interiors. [Just open the interior, select everything and move it over an inch. everything stays stationary in relation to each other piece, so it's seamless.]

I'm afraid I don't have a clear understanding on this. So, you have one large mod that's a shared work. And you create some sort of new mod to include the changes that need to be done for the main mod, right? But what happens then, how do you transfer content from the 2nd mod with changes into the large mod?

Never tried anything like that so I may misunderstand something here.

[DM8954]

Well, I've only used this method a few times a while ago. I think the reason it works is because of the system of setting an "active file". Oblivion is the master file by default but you must also select an 'active file' in which to save any and all changes made during a modding session. You can't have a mod that edits another mod (or if you can, you absolutely shouldn't - I can't remember which is true.), so if any other mods are open while you're working, they're usually just there for reference. However, if you move or edit objects that have been added to a scene by another mod, they are still recognized as changes to the scene. When it comes time to save those changes, they will be saved into the 'active' mod that you've selected. If you move an object that doesn't exist in the vanilla version of Oblivion, it's as if you've placed it into the game. If everything from the non-active mod has been modified during the course of your session, when you finally save the file the non-active mod should be obsolete, since all information is duplicated into the active mod file.

This is the major drawback of the method, though, because if you forget to edit every single object or spell, or whatever you want to import, it may not be carried over. I'm only pretty sure that it works with in-game objects but I've only had limited experience with the technique and I have no idea what else it works on. Theoretically, it should work on just about anything but you have to be able to trick the CS into thinking you've changed the item in question. In some cases, that might mean changing the properties of an object, saving the file, then moving it back. This means it's only really good for small mods involving in-game objects, especially interiors. Landscaping and heightmaps are probably a bad idea to attempt this on, since you'd probably have to move every single node in order for it to register. This would be almost impossible to get right.

I'm not sure if I made it any clearer but I'm no expert on it, myself.

Would I be able to get involved myself. I have to say I've have always loved the Idea of making a brand new game out of an inital game editor. I also have a friend who's a big modding fan like me who may like to get involved? It all seems very nice and would I love to play some part in it all. Well anyways .. Thanks 

Well, there's still nothing else to do yet. Unfortunately, I'm holding up the process with my landscaping work. Until that's done, we won't be doing many (if any) exteriors, much less interiors. We feel that, as far as the story and lore go, things are coming along nicely. We manage to find nice compromises when a conflict arises and neither of us has a writer's block that would require new ideas or a fresh perspective yet. I realize we're being a bit exclusive about it all but we really want to protect the project to maximize the surprise and impact it will have when things are finally ready to move forward.

When the time comes to ask for help with the modding, I'm sure we'll consider you for the job. In the mean time, feel free to help other people out on their mods and make small mods of your own to practice. It will be easier for us to trust any modders who apply to join the team if they have some previous work to show us.

[Igiss]

Yes, thanks, I understand how it's done now. And what about landscape? Maybe moving one node could be enough for it?

Still, if two people are working on the same area in the same time, sounds that it won't be easy to merge their work into one...

[DM8954]

True. It's never really a good idea to have multiple people working on the same area of any file at the same time... except maybe if you're using this new program called 'google wave' but that doesn't really apply to modding.

I don't think moving one node would be enough. I'm pretty sure, for the efficiency of file saving, it only updates changes, therefore, if you only update 1 node, it only saves that one node. I haven't tried it yet but there's a small chance you might be lucky and it would update the landscape work for the entire cell but I'm guessing this isn't the case. So, I imagine that if you move a few nodes, they'll be updated but everything else will be where it was, sometimes causing little 'spikes' and holes to develop.