Some random little screenshots

Gez · Post by **Gez** » Wed Dec 17, 2008 8:52 pm

I've been exploring Map3 with MGE and taking some screenshots. Since my computer isn't powerful enough, I'm taking these screenshots in 800x600 with most options set quite low, so they're not exactly promotional material -- sorry, I can't run in 1600x1200.

Looking at Old Ebonheart:
[url=http://img396.imageshack.us/img396/3738/mgescreenshot4tx5.png][img]http://img396.imageshack.us/img396/3738/mgescreenshot4tx5.th.png[/img][/url] [url=http://img99.imageshack.us/img99/3834/mgescreenshot8xj9.png][img]http://img99.imageshack.us/img99/3834/mgescreenshot8xj9.th.png[/img][/url]

Looking from Old Ebonheart:
[url=http://img178.imageshack.us/img178/8992/mgescreenshot5mb2.png][img]http://img178.imageshack.us/img178/8992/mgescreenshot5mb2.th.png[/img][/url] [url=http://img178.imageshack.us/img178/8070/mgescreenshot6sa5.png][img]http://img178.imageshack.us/img178/8070/mgescreenshot6sa5.th.png[/img][/url]

And a picture of Almalexia! Guess what I did...
[url=http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/248/mgescreenshot9nr7.png][img]http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/248/mgescreenshot9nr7.th.png[/img][/url]

Aeven · Post by **Aeven** » Wed Dec 17, 2008 9:08 pm

You added Mournhold to the exterior!

Or at least you added buildings to fill the gap

Nemon · Post by **Nemon** » Wed Dec 17, 2008 9:35 pm

Just lovely... the distant land/static stuff is just killer awsome!

daedren · Post by **daedren** » Wed Dec 17, 2008 11:45 pm

Wow...! Very nice indeed Gez!

I never used MGE... only tried it once, and it gave me an error, long time ago, so I dropped it.

But as I see you all tend to use it, perhaps I should give it a try. What do ya think?

Post by **Haplo** » Wed Dec 17, 2008 11:54 pm

I would suggest using it if possible.

Chin Music · Post by **Chin Music** » Thu Dec 18, 2008 2:59 am

How exactly is Mournhold handled with regards to the exterior?

I know that they are kept separate and that I think the plan is for Mournhold's gates to "unlock" when the Tribunal MQ is completed, but in the surrounding cells what is there in place to stop people levitating/jumping over the walls?

Oh and just as an aside: I've tried using MGE before but it slowed the game down to pretty much unplayability. Wasn't just a framerate hit, it literally slowed the game down. I have a relatively modern computer too.

Post by **Haplo** » Thu Dec 18, 2008 3:06 am

As has been repeated here and at the Elder Scrolls forums, we are going to disable levitation. We are not planning on providing some kind of barrier, other than perhaps the script made by a fellow modder of yours. Why are we not putting in place a barrier? Because if you can jump high enough to not only cross almost a whole cell of water, but also the wall of Mournhold, to get in there, you are cheating. And using a Scroll of Icarian Flight counts as cheating.

Chin Music · Post by **Chin Music** » Thu Dec 18, 2008 3:10 am

Is the inside of Mournhold actually going to be modded from the exterior so even if you can't get in there you can still "peek" in?

And it's not possible to make a jump spell powerful enough to get over the walls?

Post by **Haplo** » Thu Dec 18, 2008 3:13 am

It might be possible to create a spell that powerful, I wouldn't know. But I do know that it would unbalance the game. The inside of Mournhold will be lightly detailed so that from far away it looks to be normally integrated.

Chin Music · Post by **Chin Music** » Thu Dec 18, 2008 4:51 am

I ran some tests and a sufficiently powerful Jump spell is indeed able to clear the walls of Mournhold quite easily. Furthermore, such a spell is quite easy to have in regular gameplay.

A 100 magnitude Jump spell with a short duration of a second or two is very cheap to create, not even breaking 500 gold. It can be casted quite easily by a character of average Alteration skill (around 50) provided they have high fatigue, and can be casted easily in any circumstance by an expert in Alteration (around 75 or higher). With a short enough duration, only modest Intelligence is required (30 for 1 second, 45 for 2). The Jump skill itself (so buying the spell initially) is also cheap and readily available.

Even heavily weighted down and with a low Acrobatics skill, such a spell can quite easily clear Mournhold's walls. Although someone with low acrobatics can easily die from the fall.

Mournhold in Tribunal has some form of barriers in place which prevent you from jumping over, but the Jump spell is still more than powerful enough to do so if it were allowed.

Thrignar Fraxix · Post by **Thrignar Fraxix** » Thu Dec 18, 2008 4:54 am

I have said this many times already, if people want to try and go where they know they shouldn't then it is their own fault when the illusion is destroyed.

Chin Music · Post by **Chin Music** » Thu Dec 18, 2008 5:02 am

A fair enough point.

Just one last thing regarding that. What happens if you are already levitating when you walk into the cells where it's diabled? Drop right out of the sky seems the likely effect.

Post by **Haplo** » Thu Dec 18, 2008 6:10 am

Cast levitation on Morrowind and then coc into Mournhold and see what happens.

Bloodthirsty Crustacean · Thu Dec 18, 2008 9:31 am

Chin: for the jumping, check [url=http://tamriel-rebuilt.org/old_forum/viewtopic.php?t=17934&start=120]this thread[/url].

Chin Music · Post by **Chin Music** » Thu Dec 18, 2008 10:31 am

Thanks, BC. So as well as diabled levitation there's also a "barrier" at a certain height? Just like inside Mournhold then.

In the case, what happens if you enter the area with the barrier at a height already above the "forbidden zone?". This would really be getting out of hand though, you'd have to REALLY want to get in to do go to the trouble of essentially leaving the area and jumping so hard you manage to clear the walls. If the barrier was applied to the cells around Almalexia as well, you would essentially require a well-aimed Scroll of Icarian Flight to get in without cheating.

On a somewhat related topic, on entry to Mournhold, is it really going to be that you can't get without special permission? It seems like access to it should be free, considering how heavily defended and highly secure it is, but more prominently, it has many people who don't seem like the kind to be granted extra special access to a holy city, like the rowdy bar drunk or the naked Nord. Especially considering it features a trade market, residential area and various attractions such as stage performances and a museum of artifacts.

The player was given special permission to enter because he/she was pursuing the Dark Brotherhood, and the only reason they required special permission is because they are from Vvardenfell which is under quarantine (which doesn't stop you from going anywhere else on the mainland).

In any case, I don't know the current status, and I've gone way off topic.

Gez · Post by **Gez** » Thu Dec 18, 2008 11:22 am

Almalexia (or Helseth, either one) decided to block the city until further orders. People who were in at the time got trapped inside. People who were out were trapped outside.

Chin Music · Post by **Chin Music** » Thu Dec 18, 2008 11:43 am

Makes sense. And I would guess Almalexia seeing as she is quite mad. She probably wouldn't need much of a reason to have the city closed.

Bloodthirsty Crustacean · Thu Dec 18, 2008 2:42 pm

Gez, I really want you to source that. I can find it nowhere.

I'd say the doors should be open at all times, even if if there is some one-liner that says they've been shut (which I can't find).

It would just be lame to not have them be open, and the only things this will cause conflicts with are things that add areas outside Mournhold. If people want to have both those and TR, they're kinda trying to have their cake and eat it.

Anyway, we've been over this kind of territory a million times before.

MMMowSkwoz · Post by **MMMowSkwoz** » Thu Dec 18, 2008 8:16 pm

Chin Music wrote:Thanks, BC. So as well as diabled levitation there's also a "barrier" at a certain height? Just like inside Mournhold then.

In the case, what happens if you enter the area with the barrier at a height already above the "forbidden zone?".

You can use this to get over the walls. I couldn't think of a way of preventing that without obvious reality breaking. I tried it and it's possible either by a custom jump spell or scroll of Icarian Flight - you have to be quite high. That got me inside, but then the game crashed.

Zalzidrax · Post by **Zalzidrax** » Thu Dec 18, 2008 9:54 pm

Well if you wanted to be fancy, you could script a number of unique collision barriers that would teleport you to the approximate correpsponding location in the Mounrhold interior cell on collision... that would be a lot of painstaking copy pasting and the like. Also, I'm not sure what effect that many scripts, albeit simple ones, would have on game speed though.

Faalen · Post by **Faalen** » Thu Dec 18, 2008 10:27 pm

@MowSkwoz- I suspect your game crashed due to the well-known Almalexia crash bug rather than because of anything you were testing (unless of course you've already accounted for said bug, in which case ignore me).

@Zalzidrax- Numerous scripts running simultaneously, even if they're small, can have a massive impact on game performance. A single script with 300 lines will have far less impact on performance than 100 scripts with 3 lines. Even if that weren't the case, though, detecting the player's position and teleporting them into Mournhold would be a massive amount of trouble for very little gain. I'm in favor of a solution similar to what Beth does to keep the player from getting out of Mournhold.

Zalzidrax · Post by **Zalzidrax** » Thu Dec 18, 2008 10:38 pm

Actually, now that I think about it, it might not be very much work at all. You just need one script for each zone that detects the colliding player's position, adds/subtracts to get the new coordinates in the correct Mournhold exterior-interior, makes sure they are within appropriate bounds, and then teleports the player to those coordiantes. At least I think the teleport to interior function can do coordinates. The only thing would be to have appropriate invisible collision walls for the exterior to stick the scripts on and that can't be that hard.

At any rate it could be a project for someone who's bored. Hey, I'm bored... now if I can only get stupid nifskope or the blender nif export scripts working. I haven't figured out how to get blender to recognise my python install. I blame windows vista.

bnelo12 · Post by **bnelo12** » Sat Jan 17, 2009 3:38 am

Why don't you just put collision boxes around. You need levitation for parts of the main quest.

Gez · Post by **Gez** » Sat Jan 17, 2009 9:16 am

Collision boxes aren't infinitely tall.

Aiwyn the Breton · Post by **Aiwyn the Breton** » Sat Jan 17, 2009 10:04 am

what about addig a "ghostdome" over mournhold? You know, with mad Alma and paranoid Helseth I always thought that was the reason the core of the city (which was concentrating all the "sensitive targets") was protected with something like this... invisible from the inside (for how she's mad and how he's paranoid, nobody wants to feel the prison she/he's in...) but visible from the outside, because you - little commoner and pauper scum - don't have to even DARE to put your eyes over the mighty city of light and magic of the holy bright mother of mercy and the powerful king!

Ah, why Barenzia didn't spank him once or twice more when he was a child? Dr. Spock made damages even in Tamriel...

Anyway, about the MGE, anybody knows if on a not powerful computer can run? Has some minimum requiring?

Nemon · Post by **Nemon** » Sat Jan 17, 2009 10:20 am

Gez wrote:Collision boxes aren't infinitely tall.

How about stockpiling, and then putting a lid on it?

TheGooch · Post by **TheGooch** » Sat Jan 17, 2009 10:25 am

I run a Asus F3JC, with a 7300go. 1gb of ram. and with MGE i get about 15 to 25 fps.

Quote from PES:

The gui requires .NET 2.0. Also, using any of the DX9 dlls requires the DX9.0c december 2005 update to be installed. (Only DX8.1 is required if you don't want to use the DX9 only features.) Some features of this utility require bloodmoon to be installed, but most will work with vanilla morrowind. See the dll version page of the readme for a complete list of features which require bloodmoon.

/quote.

if you have a GFX card better than mine, you will be fine. if not.... ouch. it doesn't say that you will need extra HDD space. 150 - 1gb extra. (possibly more.)
thats for the LOD models and stuff.

bnelo12 · Post by **bnelo12** » Sat Jan 17, 2009 9:55 pm

Its just you need levitation for quests. Especialy Telvany. (Forgot the name.)

Gez · Post by **Gez** » Sat Jan 17, 2009 10:09 pm

Fortunately, there is no Telvanni quest requiring that you levitate in Almalexia's city.

milne · Post by **milne** » Sun Jan 18, 2009 12:13 am

its quite hilarious how off-topic this is

nice pictures by the way, I can't wait for Map 3

Aiwyn the Breton · Post by **Aiwyn the Breton** » Sun Jan 18, 2009 12:29 am

milne wrote:its quite hilarious how off-topic this is

I've seen worst, in this forum too...

milne wrote:nice pictures by the way, I can't wait for Map 3

I totally agree. Finally a real "city of light, city of magic"... I got so turned down when I saw the entire mournhold was an interior cell ÃƒÂ§_ÃƒÂ§

Anyway, where's out in Morrowind the Clockwork City? I don't recall if I see it in the maps... Because there IS a clockwork city, somewhere out there right? Is not an out-of-space interior you can reach only with the mazeband...

michaleson · Post by **michaleson** » Sun Jan 18, 2009 12:35 am

I thought the clockwork city was part of Sotha Sil (the place) and Tr is not doing it as the enterance to it was "lost".

Aiwyn the Breton · Post by **Aiwyn the Breton** » Sun Jan 18, 2009 12:43 am

Bwaaaaa... ÃƒÂ§_ÃƒÂ§

oh, well, I can live with that, "Greater Mournhold" shall be enough...

Gez · Post by **Gez** » Sun Jan 18, 2009 12:50 am

michaleson wrote:I thought the clockwork city was part of Sotha Sil (the place) and Tr is not doing it as the enterance to it was "lost".

The real reason, of course, is that the Sotha tileset is quite limited in its applications, and has no corresponding exterior pieces. Making the Clockwork City would be very interesting, but unfortunately require too much modeling work.

RelinQ · Post by **RelinQ** » Sun Jan 18, 2009 12:57 am

michaleson wrote:I thought the clockwork city was part of Sotha Sil (the place) and Tr is not doing it as the enterance to it was "lost".

Thats right, if you read the lore, mainly book "2920, Evening Star"

"In the smoky catacombs beneath the city where Sotha Sil forged the future with his arcane clockwork apparatus, something unforeseen happened. An oily bubble seeped from a long trusted gear and popped. Immediately, the wizard's attention was drawn to it and to the chain that tiny action triggered. A pipe shifted half an inch to the left. A tread skipped. A coil rewound itself and began spinning in a counter direction. A piston that had been thrusting left-right, left-right, for millennia suddenly began shifting right-left. Nothing broke, but everything changed.
'It cannot be fixed now,' said the sorcerer quietly."

It does actaully mention a city, but it clearly say the city was lost or hidden which is why we are not making it.

{the quote is from [url]http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Gods_S#Sotha_Sil.2C_Mystery_of_Morrowind[/url]}

Aiwyn the Breton · Post by **Aiwyn the Breton** » Sun Jan 18, 2009 2:46 pm

RelinQ wrote: It does actaully mention a city, but it clearly say the city was lost or hidden which is why we are not making it.

Why this lore-quote sound like a Bethesda version of what Gez said?

Maybe is near the sunken shrine of Boethiah, who knows... mysteries of Morrowind...

Gez · Post by **Gez** » Sun Jan 18, 2009 3:08 pm

We knows where it is, really. Deep in the Argon Jungle, in Southern Morrowind, maybe actually so deep as to be in Black Marsh technically. But when the Tribunal went into seclusion, after Dagoth Ur's servants seized the tools of Kagrenac, Sotha Sil stopped receiving pilgrims and other visitors and the road to his city was no longer trod. The luxuriant vegetation soon claimed all tracks back, and may have completely overgrown the city itself now. You won't find it...

Nemon · Post by **Nemon** » Sun Jan 18, 2009 3:22 pm

Yeah, he won't find it because we're too lazy to create it

Aiwyn the Breton · Post by **Aiwyn the Breton** » Sun Jan 18, 2009 3:25 pm

I supposed it was in the southern morrowind (if Vivec's in the north and Almalexia is in the central part...) I was just kidding about the Boethiah's shrine (too close to Vivec). Anyway, as Sotha Sil lived alone surrounded by fabricants, no complain about that: a fabricants-only populated city is not a place to visit more than once (unless you don't want to loot fabricant elixir, but I'm not so fond of that...). I had just the curiosity to know how the city looked like from the outside, I've also found a mod that rebuilds Sotha Sil (and Almalexia as well), but I have to say I really don't like it (breeding fabricants??? Are you kidding me?) and I know now is not so lore-proof (I never read "2920, Evening Star", I mean not reading-reading, just "oh, good, a skill book... close!"

).

Nemon wrote:Yeah, he won't find it because we're too lazy to create it

LOL

But if you are too lazy, that won't mean somebody else is... you can mod a mod, right?

greendogo · Post by **greendogo** » Mon Feb 16, 2009 6:00 am

You know, at some point after the release of Southern TR, some group of modders is going to make Sotha Sil. I think you guys should make sure there isn't anything stopping a modder from making it in the future. Perhaps leave an expanse of land in a forest, mountain area or valley for a hidden city. Just leave it open for the future denizens of the modding community to fill in. Just an idea.

The same goes for Almalexia. People will definitely not like the limitation of the interior "exterior" cell. They didn't like it when Beth made it that way. Someone will definitely release an exterior version of Almalexia at some point, and make the scripts and stuff compatible. The "ghost dome" idea would be the feasible, since they could still limit travel between Mournhold and the other areas of the city until Alma is deathified. But still, this isn't something for the TR team to do, since it falls outside the scope of the project. However, I hope the team leaves some room for easy compatibility with those mods (meaning those modders that make this stuff won't have to break things to make these inevitably wanted changes).

As a last point to the people asking about stuff that changes the original game. The scope of TR specifically limits them from changing the original game. This is very helpful because it raises the level of compatibility, and lessens the work load and time to release. Some people just have so many mods loaded that changing too much would break a lot of good mods and perhaps parts of TR. This is my justification for this "scope". They're reasoning might be different, but I think mine is partially justified as well.