Queue:
Proposed Agenda
Future Releases
The main purpose of this meeting is to discuss long-term planning. The main goal is to remove roadblocks from the TV-SH-OW-CM path, and to make the development process as smooth as possible. DOD has suffered from us not following the proper development pipeline (assets-exts-ints-npcs-quests), so hopefully we can avoid falling into the same trap in the future. The viability and desirability of opening up Sundered Scar for parallel development with TV will also be a topic of discussion. Make sure to read the notes at the bottom of the prior meeting.
- Sorting out which cites have which guild halls
- Thieves Guild
- Morag Tong
- How much do the Temple and Cult need this?
- Resolving more Imperial Cult issues, perhaps up to a Template Meeting
- IC shrines start appearing in Thirr Valley and need a better overarching characterisation
- The faction endgame
- Same thing for the Psijjic Order.
- Requires Infragris and a whole lot of lore-aware people.
- Thirr Valley NPCing preparations
Future Releases Part II
- Where should the low/mid/high level quests go?
Tamriel Data
- Discussing cross-province armor and weapon stats
Meeting Notes
Priorities on the website
We discussed how to organize and rationalize priority assignment on the website, so that developers know what needs working on. Improvements to the claims and asset browsers to make them more usable were discussed later in the meeting, along with use of the Dashboard (very much recommended).
This image shows Jani’s original proposal, with the priorities listed up top and current examples for each priority listed below. Note that the examples don’t fully apply to the approach decided on in this meeting.
This image gives an idea of what we would be working on in each region (left column) during any given release (top row)
- Use critical priority claims as rarely as possible, so their importance is clear. If everything is critical priority, nothing really is. Critical priority indicates that something is holding up progress on the current release.
- High priority claims give people a sense of what TR needs the most at the current time, in order to keep releases on schedule. (MVP content for the current release)
- Redos and Mainland additions are assigned medium priority in all categories, so the people invested in these projects can easily find something to work with. Optional content for current releases should also get medium priority.
- Low priority claims are made available to future-proof TR. People who claim these are working ahead of schedule.
On the basis of those standards, especially the second image, TR is mostly on schedule with its releases, with a few bottlenecks that need sorting. Having gotten that out of the way, we ran through the upcoming releases:
Dominions of Dust
Andothren, which has recently had its exterior and interiors finalized, was merged into Roryn Bluffs shortly after the meeting. Our progress and the roadblocks involved in DoD are clear. We did discuss a few more specific aspects of the release:
With Ascadian Bluffs being palette swapped to Roth Roryn with some differences in greenery and flora, the prospect of keeping the region under a different name to allow for different weather settings and region sounds was brought up again. It was decided to not have such a region and just have these cells assigned to Roth Roryn given the existing region has good rain settings and that TESIII tends to take a simplistic approach to region sounds. (So attempting a distinction between coastal and inland zones would be too subtle to be worth the trouble). Roth Roryn still needs to have region sounds added, and one idea was to give it the same sounds as West Gash but with the falling rock sounds as well.
Imperial Telvannis Overhaul
ITO is very far along. We discussed how ITO would be prioritized based on the standards established below. While in theory it could be set to medium priority as bonus content, everyone in the meeting (and past meetings) was in favour of setting it to high priority (with critical priority for bottlenecks) same as the DoD release, with the prospect of releasing it this year as a TR 20th anniversary release (and before DoD gets merged into TR_Mainland which will significantly increase the size of the file). There was a general agreement that DoD is not being held up by ITO and changing the priority of ITO would not change that.
Thirr Valley
Cicero says the current TV exterior work is roughly 70% complete. Notable issues include the underwater content that was never implemented and areas like that around the Hlaalu Ferry that are very sparse. Several dungeon interiors need a look over to make sure NPCs can navigate them properly. Cicero will compile a list of what changes and improvements need to be made. A few assets are needed, notably the Othmura manor will need some work and the Ald Iuval council hall interior will need a shell to fit the skar exterior. The settlements are otherwise largely complete, and dialogue design claims can soon be set up for them. (Ud Hleryn and the wilderness will take a bit longer for the above reasons).
Sundered Scar
In the end, Sundered Scar was not discussed at length as there was no strong opposition to working on it after DoD in the meeting. The discussion that did happen was (again) rather one-sided.
Arguments from prior discussions were brought up, such as players being more excited for new release areas, but considering that Sundered Scar is currently heavily lacking in playable content and the redo will transform it into a unique region with new visuals (prominently the purple-ish flora matching scathecraw, the yellow sulphur pools, and assets like the vent worms) the redo would probably be perceived as a new area, not that different from releases like DoD and CM that work off existing of TR_Preview areas. It would also be developed concurrently with Thirr Valley, a smaller release which adds a new region.
The fact that it is clear Sundered Scar will get redone at some point acts as a deterrent to questers and others who might otherwise want to add much-needed content to the region.
How enthusiastically Sundered Scar would be received will be easier to judge after the release of ITO, which will happen first, but both of those projects have generated a lot of interest and development among TR developers and people following the project so far.
There have been bottlenecks with the number of available exterior and interior claims lately (that is, having any available claims, let alone having a variety that developers are able to pick and choose from depending on what catches their interest and how much time they are able to invest in the claim) which Sundered Scar would help alleviate.
Shipal-Shin
Work on Shipal-Shin is progressing nicely. All remaining exterior claims in the section file are claimed and have had substantial work done. Caves and those interiors that include cave-ins are waiting on final edits to the cave set assets, but many others can be opened up for claiming.
Othreleth Woods
Land textures and rocks are merged. Once the remaining 13 flora assets are merged (only two are still unclaimed), exterior testing can begin. This can be done in the Othreleth Woods test area in the south-west of the Armun Ashlands section file. Some Shipal Shin and Velothi mountains region exterior claims can probably be opened up sooner than that, given the current lack of unclaimed exterior claims, along with the two remaining TV claims that transition into OW.
Clambering Moor
Set to be another “rework region” like Roth Roryn. The exteriors in the section will be redone as separate claims, in contrast to the Roth Roryn approach. Given the number of releases slated to come before, current progress on the Clambering Moor (i.e., conceptualization and the template meeting) can even be considered ahead of schedule.
Website QOL Improvements
Asset browser filters are unintuitive. We should discuss our options with Slepana and/or Magamo. Filtering could be made similar to the claims browser (hotlinks to writing/audio/models/bug fixes).
There are also general quality of life improvements to consider (alternatives to the PM spam, adjustments to how the claim browser filters work, queues, etc.)
Generic Container Loadouts, Levelled Lists, Enchanted Items etc.
Tamriel_Data is very lacking in containers with generic content (especially new Tamriel_Data content). This should be fixed, and future assets should take generic container loadouts into account. (Such as the .esps for new armour sets having generic containers containing them if appropriate, or new container assets having some basic loadouts set up, creature assets having the basic levelled lists etc.). We should also have more regional or specific levelled lists, eg. for food, rather than tossing everything into a small number of giant levelled lists.