Exterior Changes around Othrensis

Developing the city of Almalexia. Currently on HIATUS.

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Yeti
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Exterior Changes around Othrensis

Post by Yeti »

I mocked up this image as a basic plan for how we could finalize this area, based off my [url=http://tamriel-rebuilt.org/old_forum/viewtopic.php?t=24460]Alt Orethan plan[/url].

[img]http://i.imgur.com/V5Ty72g.jpg[/img]
1. Viran Meran's House - Velothi hut moved from outside Othrensis

2. Serrus Dravyl's House - Velothi farm hut moved from outside Othrensis - Remove connection to bandit cave and Old Mournhold ruins in basement and reuse those ints elsewhere.

3. TR_i3-338 - Indoril manor moved from Othrensis

4. TR_i3-333 - Indoril manor moved from Othrensis - need major detailing.

5. TR_i3-334 - Indoril manor moved from Othrensis

6. TR_i3-340-Ind - Indoril manor moved from Othrensis
Thoughts?
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Post by Yeti »

Nobody liked my pretty picture? ;(
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Post by Gnomey »

I liked the pretty picture, which is why I replied to the 'Region Plan: Alt Orethan' thread. As the current plan appears to be to significantly alter the Alt Orethan region, I'm not sure whether there is too much point in discussing the specifics until we have all of the assets lined up.
How the farmlands will be handled is a particular question I think needs to be addressed.

As you ask, though, I will comment on a few specifics:

1. I assume the small stream in the southeast continues (as it does in the most recent file) to the bottom of the map? Otherwise, its flow direction wouldn't make too much sense.

2. would most of the outlying Velothi buildings be new interiors?

3. looking at Othrensis itself, I do think its layout could use a bit of tightening up in places. It's a little spaced out and unnatural, in my opinion.

4. TR_i3-333 - frankly, the lack of windows or anything on the exterior bothers me more than the amount of detailing.

5. TR_i3-334 - isn't that a clothier?

6. TR_i3-340 - this one's an odd one. Looks like a pawnbroker, maybe.

7. the Othrensis eastern guard tower could probably use windows or a trapdoor to the roof or something. Also, why is it full of scamps?

I'm not sure if that many manors are necessary anyway; I'd consider just using the TR_i3-334 and TR_i3-340 interiors elsewhere.
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Post by Theo »

The solitary hill with Othrensis looks a little bit out of place IMO as it stands out in otherwise flat ragion. There should be several similar cliffy formations in the region, although significantly smaller (Largest of them could maybe serve as a foundation for solitary building or manor, but not too many of them).
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Post by Yeti »

I imagine the stream ending in a small pond, or something of the kind. I don't see how the flow direction is a problem.

Most of the Velothi huts would be new additions, but I might have gone overboard adding homes to the wilderness. Some of the manors can probably be cut.
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Post by Gnomey »

No, there's no problem if it ends in a pond. It looked like it just petered out for no real reason.

I think the number of Velothi huts is fine, it's just the Indoril manors I'm unsure about, which is why I suggested leaving out TR_i3-334 and TR_i3-340, which don't appear to currently be manors anyway.
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Post by Yeti »

Sounds good to me. Thanks again for your commentary, Gnomey. I'll take a closer look at your Alt Orethan work-in-progress file when I'm done with finals this week.
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Post by Yeti »

What should we do with Othrensis?

Continuing discussion from [url=http://tamriel-rebuilt.org/old_forum/viewtopic.php?t=24560]Indoril Settlements Thread[/url]:
Gnomey wrote:one stands out like a sore thumb: Othrensis, the only significantly large Velothi settlement in Indoril lands. Why does it exist? Unless it has a good reason to exist in its current size and tileset, I'd suggest either shrinking it into a Velothi hamlet (perhaps still on the larger end) or changing it to MH architecture.
Yeti wrote:Othrensis isn't that large once you cut away the MH architecture. If we're going to build the Alt Orethan up as a densely populated area, having a larger village at the center of a large tract of fertile land doesn't seem out of the place to me. It should stay Velothi to be a nice change of pace from the overabundance of MH architecture in central Morrowind, and because it's a nice underutilized set.
Gnomey wrote:Othrensis is the third largest Indoril city after Akamora at the moment going by interior count. And that's not counting the MH buildings. It currently has 28 Velothi interiors. The thing is that Indoril buildings are so imposing that towns made with the set look larger than they are, while Velothi buildings are so unassuming that cities look smaller than they are. The fourth largest city is Roa Dyr, which currently has 21 interiors not counting the shacks and 25 with the shacks. The others don't reach 20 interiors.

And changes of pace for the sake of being changes of pace usually don't work well in the grand scheme of things, in my opinion. If we establish that rural serfs live in Velothi buildings and city-dwellers live in MH buildings, Othrensis comes off as confusing things for no good reason. Unless, again, a good reason is supplied.
Edit: it may be possible to break Othrensis off into several large-ish hamlets scattered around the valley, though, which would remain consistent with the convention of Velothi buildings in Indoril lands while still providing a reprieve from MH towns.
I personally think there needs to be more Velothi villages on the mainland, seeing as the set is supposed to represent traditional generic Dunmer architecture. Breaking Othrensis into Hamlets could work, but we should keep a significant gathering of them at the current site, including the service interiors and the Temple, as a centerpiece of the area's rural peasant farming.
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Post by Gnomey »

Sload, and likely others, had the idea of either adding or replacing some Telvanni settlements with Velothi villages whenever we redo Telvannis. I'd personally go with that. I certainly want to see the Velothi tileset used to its full potential somewhere, I'm just not sure if Indoril lands are the place for it.

If we want proper Velothi towns, I'd personally be for having several of them and making them an intrinsic part of their region, or making one really spectacular one. (In aesthetic, not size). And, again, giving it a reason for existing.

As far as Othrensis is concerned, I'd personally wait on the Indoril Settlement thread. It is there to establish what the standard is for Indoril settlements. Once we know what the standard is, we will be able to judge whether Othrensis fits that standard or not, or consider how it could reasonably work as an exception.
But I do think it needs to follow Indoril rules to some extent, even if it becomes an exception. Otherwise you end up with a situation similar to giving House Hlaalu a Redoran-style town because the locals prefer to live in bug-shell houses to rectangular houses because it's different.
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Post by Yeti »

But I do think it needs to follow Indoril rules to some extent, even if it becomes an exception. Otherwise you end up with a situation similar to giving House Hlaalu a Redoran-style town because the locals prefer to live in bug-shell houses to rectangular houses because it's different.
Totally different situation. House architecture is distinctly unique to its Great House. Velothi is a universal Dunmer architecture style. It can exist anywhere in Morrowind.
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Post by Gnomey »

Not really different, in my opinion. All architecture sets signify something about their inhabitants, and the Velothi set is no exception. The Velothi set is generally associated with non-(strictly-)House affiliated Dunmer. Having a town in the Velothi set implies a certain degree of local autonomy of its inhabitants. It is no coincidence that, on Vvardenfell, the only places Velothi was used for settlements were Temple settlements and Vos, and the latter was being enveloped in Telvanni roots. If the local autonomy weren't there, the MH set would be used, because the sole purpose of the MH set is to indicate that a place is controlled by Indoril.
Velothi towns work rather well for the Telvanni, whose wizards generally avoid all forms of administration. The set also works for the farming hamlets, which have a very limited population of almost exclusively farmers who have something like a feudal contract with the local lord. Those have an established structure.
Othrensis, containing not just farmers but also service providers, falls outside of that established structure. Why does it do so?
It could, for example, be a Temple settlement. But then the question would be why is it owned by the Temple rather than House Indoril. It's also possible that the valley Othrensis is in is in some way set up differently to other Indoril lands, resulting in a different settlement pattern, but then the question would be how it is set up differently, and why.
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Post by Yeti »

I think you're over thinking the Othrensis's velothi architecture existing in Indoril lands. Not everything needs to fit into a universal mold when it comes to Great House settlements. The MH set doesn't work for peasant farmer housing, thus we should use Velothi in this area.

[url=http://tamriel-rebuilt.org/old_forum/viewtopic.php?t=21391&highlight=velothi]This discussion reminds me of an old thread from back in the day.[/url] Even if Hemitheon overdramatized the issue, I think he's right in thinking Indoril lands are a logical place to find ancient Velothi settlements.
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Post by Gnomey »

Peasant farms and service providers are different matters. Peasant farmers will live in Velothi interiors either way, just in small, scattered settlements. I would also argue that the MH set could work well for peasant farmers if correctly utilized, but that's beside the point. It would be quite possible to have a small MH town on top of the cliff surrounded by Velothi farming villages, for example.
While I am somewhat exaggerating the issue, that's because I feel there is an issue that needs to be discussed. Simply saying that something looks good tends to lead to later reworking, because people later down the line don't think that thing looks good. I'm sure Dondril's palisade has been sporadically discussed back and forth for years. As long as content relies on subjective favour, it will be prone to reworking later on.
I think the natural solution to that is to have fleshed out content that fits in seamlessly to the world we are trying to present. If there is a way to make Othrensis add to what we are trying to portray rather than distract from it, then its existence becomes worthwhile. I'm not really arguing against Othrensis, I'm arguing against a random Velothi town existing in a place that may have Velothi hamlets but otherwise exclusively MH towns.
Of course, the settlement discussion is ongoing, and maybe we'll decide that Indoril should have Velothi towns (I'd assume alongside MH towns). I'd think that adding new interiors wouldn't exactly be a big deal at the moment, not to mention the fact that TR probably has quite a few unused Velothi interiors gathering dust somewhere.

Say, for example, that the valley Othrensis is in, as the source of the Orethan, contains inhabitants who are almost a Dres level of conservative. In that case, the abundance and size of Velothi settlement could act as a visual cue indicating that the local inhabitants are a little different from other Indoril.
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Post by Yeti »

You raise good points, Gnomey. I think I might have been a little snappish yesterday, for which I apologize. We should return to this topic once we have a better idea of handling Indoril settlement distribution and the Alt Orethan region in general. At this point, I'm on the side of splitting the town into various Velothi peasant hamlets and repurposing the service interiors elsewhere. Perhaps the Temple, and a few other buildings, can remain on the mound to mark a shrine site related to the source of the Orethan River, or something.
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Post by Nomadic1 »

I'm getting the impression that some people are getting too carried away with making sure everything follows the set narrative. To me that gets boring. Some shit is just like that. I don't think anyone playing would care that there's one city with some Velothi buildings. No player is going to think that Othrensis with Velothi buildings just doesn't seem like an Indoril town. How many people raised a stink over Vos in the Telvanni lands?

If you want to explain it you could say its an ancient Temple city, turned over to the Indoril a few centuries ago. The inhabitants of the Velothi section of town could be given the more ashlander-y sounding names whilst those in the MH section have more Indoril-y names. Then I doubt you'd need to do much more beyond touching up the physical design. I can't see all that many people going to ask 'why?'.
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Post by Aeven »

I agree with Nomadic on this, except that there shouldn't be a MH section. In my opinion we should spread these out across the Alt Orethan.
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Post by Yeti »

[url=http://tamriel-rebuilt.org/old_forum/viewtopic.php?t=24420]We settled the fate of the MH buildings a few weeks ago.[/url] We'll re-disperse some of their interiors throughout the Alt Orethan and probably axe the low quality ones.

I'm inclined to agree with Nomadic1 in principle about not everything needing to follow the norm, but Gnomey's points about the city standing out too much compared to the other Indoril settlements still stands.

Ugh, I think I'm turning into a flip flopper with this. It goes to show why we need a finalized Alt Orethan plan and a set guideline on the character of Indoril cities before settling the fate of individual towns.
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Post by Gnomey »

As I said, I'm not against diverging from the norm. The thing is, pulling that off well is a lot harder than creating something that follows the norm, and we don't even have a norm to follow yet.

I'm for establishing a norm and then consciously deciding whether something should diverge from that norm or not, and how.

So in the case of Othrensis, first we need to figure out how the standard Indoril settlement looks like. Then we need to decide whether we want Othrensis to break from those conventions. And then we need to make that divergence add to the world we are trying to build rather than distracting from it.
It's the same for exteriors: Uld Vraech was planned to be a snowy region with sinkholes and a sprinkling of TR's new Uld Vraech plants. Then it was decided that the valley in the 5-9 claim would be an exception, and would be warmer due to volcanic activity. So you end up with a lush green valley in the middle of all of the snow, yet it clearly has its place there. I then chose to give the steam pots in the claim a look similar to the sinkholes, to invoke that particular convention.
That is much better, in my opinion, than having half of Uld Vraech be a barren snow-scape and the other half a lush green forest for no reason at all.
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Post by Swiftoak »

It goes to show why we need a finalized Alt Orethan plan and a set guideline on the character of Indoril cities before settling the fate of individual towns.
I haven't been following this discussion (you people write so godddamn much!), but yes to this.
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