An Almalexia Proposal

Sload · Post by **Sload** » Sat Jun 07, 2014 10:53 am

Summary:

This is a proposal to overhaul the high-concept structure of the exterior of Almalexia to achieve these goals: a) make the size of the city more manageable; b) improve the city's internal logic, both for player-navigation and narrative representation; c) preserve the scenic beauty that the city's present exterior has achieved. It achieves these goals through somewhat drastic measures, including most notably the complete removal of the version of Mournhold depicted in Tribunal.

Reasons:

Notwithstanding its inarguable scenic beauty, there are several issues with the present version of Almalexia. They are listed below in this spoiler tag.

[spoiler]1. Almalexia+Mournhold is ~25 exterior cells and ~250 interior claims (a significant portion of which are large buildings with 5+ interior cells in them). This is about four times as large as any other city in the game; while this obviously is intended to be the largest city in the game, its current size presents concerns about the play-feasibility of the city and about our ability to provide quality interior purposes to its many enormous buildings.

2. Very little internal logic makes Almalexia navigable. The only navigation feature baked into its design is the existence of a raised Mournhold to give the player an idea of which direction to head as they circumnavigate that object. Some neighborhoods have been instituted ex post facto based on what already exists, but these are not strictly followed and do not form a logical whole: Sandil Manor, home of the most powerful living Indoril, is tucked in a corner in the foundation of the Imperial Quarter; the Gates of Symmachus open onto a small, unimportant, non-descript wing of the lower-middle class section, far from the palaces and temples of the outer city; there is a vast, industrial waterworks between the major Temple and Indoril neighborhoods; there is no clear Ã¢â‚¬Å“main streetÃ¢â‚¬Â through the different neighborhoods, allowing the player to navigate from these far flung different parts of the city.

3. There is no high-concept for Almalexia. It is just a big and beautiful city in the MH set, with a raised inner city because that inner city was depicted in Tribunal. Compare this to Baan Malur, an example of a city with a very clear high concept: Baan Malur is surrounded by craggy rocks which create a feeling of spears and a shield, it is a visual metaphor for the Redoran's role as border warriors of Morrowind.[/spoiler]

Proposal:

[img]http://i.imgur.com/3MrwXPg.png[/img]

This is a schematic, topological representation of the proposed structure for Almalexia - it represents the city concept, not the layout for the city, and it could be translated into an actual worldspace in many different ways. Put simply, Almalexia is a model for the Indoril universe: triune and hierarchical. Almalexia is actually two cities: the high city of the elite, built on large platforms connected to one another by bridges; and the low city of the commoners, tenement housing built into the foundations of those platforms, with streets in the spaces between them. These two distinct cities overlap in the same space, but are not cross-navigable (that is, you cannot easily move from one to another), representing the inseparable class divide. Meanwhile, the high city is divided into three main districts: Godsreach, which is of the Temple, Kingsreach, which is of the Monarchy, and Moon-and-Star, which is of the House Indoril. In the center of these three districts is the High Fane of the Mother, the temple of Almalexia herself.

[spoiler][img]http://i.imgur.com/ZcLrTQN.png[/img][/spoiler]
This is one possible implementation of that schematic; it is based heavily on the present exterior. Two branches of the high Orethan converge in Almalexia (the Merelag and Othrensis branches). The Temple of Almalexia is on an island in the river, connected by bridges to the three districts.

The light grey in the background of the image is the footprint of current Almalexia+Mournhold+Taythonis, giving a representation of the size difference.

The orange arrows represent entrances to the city or transitions between the low and high city.

The major locations which have been identified in this image are:[spoiler]A - The High Fane of the Mother, Almalexia's personal temple.
B - The Grand Ascendant's Cloister, home of the head of House Indoril.
C - The House Indoril council hall.
D - The Cathedral of the Alma Rula.
E - The Ordinators' Keep.
F - The Strider Port.
G - Plaza Brindisi Dorom & the Gates of Symmachus, the greatest entrance to the city.
H - The Island of the Imperial Proconsulate.
I - Mournhold, the castle of the King of Morrowind.
J - The Almalexia city docks, the only major location on this list which is actually in the Low Quarters.[/spoiler]

Implementation:

This is surgery.

The first challenge will be preserving the scenes of the current Almalexia while restructuring the city's layout. While this is a considerably challenge, it is at least an obvious challenge that doesn't need a lot of pre-discussion.

The second challenge is more prickly: integrating Tribunal locations without (significantly) breaking functionality. Exactly what Tribunal elements we consider essential to keep when playing with our mod could be debatable: if we delete Glarthir, for example, is it really a great loss to the game? What about the naked nord in the Plaza Brindisi Dorom whose just sunbathing lol? Perhaps more difficult: the stage play quest? Players like that quest, but a) is it even in keeping with our tone? b) do we need to have it? To add another complication: even if we want such-and-such ultimately implemented, what needs to be implemented now? This is a conversation that TR needs to take seriousl.

I feel obligated to raise the particular functionality issue which is most pressing, because it is both rather difficult and rather essential: the fight in Plaza Brindisi Dorom between fabricants and high ordinators. Even ignoring the toughness of re-implementing this event, it might bonk up peoples' games if it takes place in the overworld. We'd need to have a workaround for players whose computers can't handle it in that case.

Assets:

Lastly, we are left with the question of new assets. This plan calls for a significant lower-class presence in Almalexia, in a visually separate space from the upper class. We've recently had conversations about how unhappy people are having the lower class use the MH set. They certainly can't use the vel set here.

What I would propose is something very very limited: a small handful of lower class MH exterior and interior pieces for the purpose of making these foundation tenements. I do not mean a tile set, I mean something akin to the cavedwellings in Gnisis (the in_velothicave pieces). One or two exterior pieces intended to jut out from platform foundations and rocks; two to four single-mesh, one-room interior pieces, and a load door. This should be in a style that works with the platform pieces of the MH set, so dark bluish tones. We can deal with this more at length.

Responses?

There's going to be a lot to discuss in terms of implementing this proposal if we decide to go with it, so let's try to avoid using this thread for those nitty-gritty details. Let's keep the responses to a) good or bad design or concept aspects of this proposal and b) implementation issues that would be impossible or very costly to resolve.

Aeven · Post by **Aeven** » Sat Jun 07, 2014 11:04 am

I've been chatting with Sload about this idea quite a bit, and I think this is a good vision for what the city can be.

Sure, it'll be tricky. But it also provides us with a chance to create an integrated city, and improve upon various things. The Temple in the middle makes for much better design than inexplicably having the Palace there. And the Palace becomes the actual 'Mournhold'. And think about how shitty the original 'Great Bazaar' was. In my opinion, this is a place we could do in a great interior hall, akin to cire's bazaar in Narsis.

And the Moon&Star as the Indoril reach is a symbolically nice thing. The Council is the moon, and the Ascendancy is the Star. Just as Nerevar was the star of the Indoril.

These are just some random musings of mine, but I do like this proposal.

gro-Dhal · Post by **gro-Dhal** » Sat Jun 07, 2014 12:13 pm

If you guys are in agreement, then so am I.

Yeti · Post by **Yeti** » Sat Jun 07, 2014 3:04 pm

I absolutely love the concept of an upper and lower city for Almalexia. It strikes me as very atmospherics, reminding me of Taris from Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.

Nemon did beautiful work on Almalexia, but I agree that the lack of internal logic gives the current city an unwieldy design. If we can keep and shift around the best parts of Nemon's work in this redesign, I'm all for it.

Should we still implement a foreign quarter in the lower city for outlanders who can't afford living next to the monarch?

I think we should work to integrate all vanilla content in some way into our mod. It doesn't necessarily have to be implemented in the same place, if there are problems with tone. [url=http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Tribunal:Gaenor]Gaenor[/url] , for instance, shouldn't spawn in full Ebony armor right next to Almalexia's Temple.

RyanS · Post by **RyanS** » Sat Jun 07, 2014 4:05 pm

I have a few questions concerning this topic:

1. How many interiors will we delete if this plan carries out?
It would be quite terrible to see interiors like these go:
http://tamriel-rebuilt.org/old_forum/viewtopic.php?t=24072
http://tamriel-rebuilt.org/old_forum/viewtopic.php?t=12106
http://tamriel-rebuilt.org/old_forum/viewtopic.php?t=24067
http://tamriel-rebuilt.org/old_forum/viewtopic.php?t=24054

2. Exactly why do we have to completely change Bethesda's Mournhold?

3. Why delete any npc or quest connected with vanilla Mournhold?

4. Lastly, why are we planning this now? This is the second complete remake, and 3rd design of Almalexia. We've already released videos, screens, and information to the public. People love the current layout. And why would we wait for years of hard work to go by to finally say, "Lets redo it again!"

Don't think I'm all that against the subject. I actually really like the proposed layout of the city. Just I view this as another complete redo that will slow work in other sections, and get people questioning why we spoke of a possible release for 2014, when really, it is gonna be like 2018. Also keep in mind that we are going to ruin alot of great ideas for the city.

Sload · Post by **Sload** » Sat Jun 07, 2014 4:38 pm

The problems with Almalexia's current worldspace are summarized in the first post and seem pretty intuitive if you're familiar with the content under discussion in this thread. Every why do we have to? question in your post is answered thus: we don't have to. This proposal does not make the argument that removing content or releasing later makes the mod better! (Though there is obviously an argument in favor of removing certain content - I think if you review Tribunal content objectively this argument really does apply to a lot of that content, but I am not claiming that at the moment).

We do not live a world of decisions in which one option is constant, exclusive upside. Every question is a cost-benefit analysis. You have effectively identified some "costs" of this proposal. The "benefits" are that it resolves the ways the Almalexia worldspace is currently unsatisfactory.

So can you come up with a proposal which we would evaluate to have equal or greater benefits and lesser costs? That proposal would be better! Do you believe that the costs you have identified are greater than the benefits of this proposal? We could have a conversation about why that seems highly improbable to me even if we don't take questions of taste into account.

But please do not frame the conversation as why do we have to? No one said we have to, its just the best thing I could come up with.

EDIT: As to the interiors you linked to, any interior which is already completed and which is of outstanding quality would obviously receive high priority for inclusion in the final project.

EDIT2: I guess I never said it, but Mournhold in itself is a huge contributor to all of the problems listed in the first post. Encircling Mournhold is what makes the city so big; encircling Mournhold, which has only one entrance, contributes to the city's limited internal logic (though poor planning is a larger factor there); Mournhold is not consistent with the high-concepts we're going for with Indoril, having zero Indoril in it and a really high outlander presence. Mournhold is basically the worst part of the current Almalexia+Mournhold.

RyanS · Post by **RyanS** » Sat Jun 07, 2014 5:24 pm

Very sorry if I sounded stupid there. I suppose I went a little too far with my post, as I was just a little disappointed at the moment. Again, it would be a little sad to see such work go, but at the same time, I really do like the new concept of the city. Please forgive me if my post was not in the proper thread.

Sload · Post by **Sload** » Sat Jun 07, 2014 5:32 pm

Your post isn't stupid, its just important not to confuse the bitterness that goes along with something with that thing's purpose. No one likes having to redo things, but if it has flaws..

Post by **rot** » Sat Jun 07, 2014 7:11 pm

Technical issues of an exploded Mournhold; based on the assumptions that
- Tribunal content is to be kept or adapted to a large extent (don't really like any of it so wouldn't personally mourn the loss, but comparing the play it provides to TR's own quest output rate, it'd be irresponsible not to)
- there'd be people with the time and willingness to work on that

also I'm not very familiar with tribunal so this may not be exhaustive.

_ savegames: compatibility with Tribunal saves is lost.
Might be possible to somewhat mitigate on cleaned saves that have no unfinished business (script teleportation, moving data from within the game instead,...) but all awfully hacky and probably not worth the effort

_ mods: TR becomes hard-incompatible with Tribunal mods.
I know most peeps here don't see mod compatibility as a concern, but most peeps here are also severely disconnected from the players' mindset. FWIW.

_ performance: anything cpu-heavy in the fake Mournhold won't play well in Almalexia exteriors, probably limited to fighting. (plaza attack: advise adding corpses and signs in the exteriors but moving all creatures into interiors)

_ quest/script/dialogue adaptation: quests and dialogue have to be reviewed and fixed, because, remember mod incompatibility? You can't rely on the "unofficial patches" anymore. This has to be done at best: for everything related to any place that has its cell name changed (it's really as stupid as that - if anyone ever does this, don't be a hero, just keep Mournhold in the cell names whenever possible), at worst: that, PLUS you then have to isolate everything Tribunal-related in the patches, remove it, then review and merge all the remaining vanilla and bloodmoon fixes into TR. To avoid that worst case scenario at least in the short term, don't rename any cells, duplicate them instead and then duplicate all related refs and dialogue. There'd probably be no getting out of reworking the sewers.

tldr: player reaction would accept the costs of moving Mournhold in the exterior, but not fucking up all of Tribunal just for the benefit of spreading it around. Necessary measures all technically doable, but a sink for work that could go into making new content, proportional to how much Tribunal stuff needs to be adapted. If started without guarantee of having the resources to do it, serious risk of it being left half-arsed and/or full of bugs.

Aeven · Post by **Aeven** » Sat Jun 07, 2014 7:17 pm

A suggestion in regards to Tribunal: don't alter anything, except the script that initiates everything. Keep all the original crap intact, but clone and adapt it for our own needs. This should solve true incompatibility, and allow us to alter everything to our own vision.

Post by **Gnomey** » Sat Jun 07, 2014 7:40 pm

I was about to suggest the same as Aeven for consideration. I am by no means knowledgeable about mod conflicts, but if the only change we make to Mournhold is to completely bypass it I would think the worst conflicts would be avoided, though that would make Mournhold a large, tumor-like mass the game always insists on loading even if you can't get there.

That would mean we would either have to find a way to duplicate or recreate any content from Tribunal we consider worth keeping.

Edit: I almost forgot: I am completely in favour of this proposal for Almalexia.

daedren · Post by **daedren** » Sat Jun 07, 2014 8:20 pm

I also like the proposal. But, as the others have stated, I'm not sure about the Tribunal content part, not because of itself, but because of the problems it could possibly create.

Adanorcil · Post by **Adanorcil** » Sat Jun 07, 2014 8:52 pm

I'm a proponent of this plan. I don't really have much to add that hasn't been said before. It gives to Almalexia the Indorilness it needs and simultaneously makes it more manageable.

With regard to technical implementation it also seems to me that leaving the original Tribunal cells untouched is the smartest course of action. That way, we can also use them for all kinds of script magic that can redirect players to the correct scenes upon entering the old ones. At any rate, I think a serious beforehand analysis of how we go about this is called for. We should get some heads together on this.

alex25 · Post by **alex25** » Sat Jun 07, 2014 9:24 pm

I agree with the proposal (not that anyone needs my agreement or should pay attention to it anyways).

For the old Mournhold- new Almalexia compatibility we can still use most of the old vanilla interiors and add scripts to the NPC that are going to be moved to the outside. As long as people don't drop items in the old fake exteriors then the transition shouldn't affect their saves.

Post by **arvisrend** » Sat Jun 07, 2014 9:30 pm

rot has said much of what I was intending to; I'm just commenting on some details. I really like Sload's concept, but I have to say I cannot imagine it *not* requiring changing and fully reviewing Tribunal. We need to review it because our changes will necessarily introduce new bugs, and because we are robbing players of the possibility to use existing Tribunal patches (we will be 100% mod-incompatible) so we should be so kind as to make our own.

[url=http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Tribunal:Quests]UESP's list of Tribunal quests[/url] is a good way to estimate the amount of work needed to make this all work. We can get rid of lore-breaking quests such as Gaenor or the naked nord (no Beth, you are not good at jokes), but most of the quests are decent and people will want them to stay. Some things we'll have to do if we go this way:

- Change the way the Tribunal questline starts. This actually is something I'd be happy to do either way, but it's a nontrivial amount of work.

- We will need to change the geometry of the sewers, if only because their current design connects them directly to places like the Temple, the Palace and Godsreach, which won't work if said places will be several stories above. Serious changes to quests will be needed. Quests like "[url=http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Tribunal:The_Thief]The Thief[/url]" actually rely on a manor connecting to sewers; I have no idea what to do about that one (and it's a quest I'd like to keep). "[url=http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Tribunal:The_Shrine_of_the_Dead]The Shrine of the Dead[/url]" will definitely have to be reworked -- it involves a sewer escort path which probably will be different.

- "[url=http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Tribunal:An_Attack_on_Mournhold]An Attack on Mournhold[/url]", of course. rot said enough about that.

- Some quests such as "[url=http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Tribunal:Speak_to_the_People]Speak to the People[/url]" involve scouring the whole town. This will get way more annoying with a bigger Almalexia, so we'll have to add directions.

This is only the quests which we will have to change significantly. A lot of technical changes (as I said, totalling to a review of Tribunal) are not in this list and will probably contribute the biggest pile of work.

Yeti · Post by **Yeti** » Sat Jun 07, 2014 9:44 pm

I don't see any reason to get rid of fun easter eggs like Gaenor and the naked Nord. They are harmless and I don't see anything inherently lore-breaking about them, besides the locations they currently occupy.

RyanS · Post by **RyanS** » Sat Jun 07, 2014 9:59 pm

There is no reason to alter the beginning of the Tribunal questline - it's on Vvardenfell. And what's the point of deleting these classic questlines? I once played just about all of them. And from what I see, none of them are lore-breaking at all. (And if you think about it, how could they be lore breaking, when they are being made from the lore makers themselves?)

Aeven · Post by **Aeven** » Sat Jun 07, 2014 10:08 pm

RyanS, what is meant by disabling the script is that it's what allows the player to reach the original Mournhold in the first place. We'd create our own version which doesn't transport you there.

RyanS · Post by **RyanS** » Sat Jun 07, 2014 10:15 pm

Understood. I thought he was saying that the questline itself would change. My bad.

Post by **arvisrend** » Sat Jun 07, 2014 10:39 pm

The current Tribunal hook (the DB attack) is halfassed (it breaks the balancing and feels like an intrusion into the game from a mod) and doesn't take into account the possibility that the player could be on the Mainland to begin with. It's best to change it even if we keep Mournhold as it is. If we do, all the more so.

Gaenor is simply a WTF encounter that never gets explained and stretches the suspension of disbelief, apart from plainly being an annoyance. Sure, we could give him his own manor, but why bother for something that doesn't take the story anywhere? The naked Nord is an injoke, but I guess it's fine -- let's have him help fending off the fabricants.

Yeti · Post by **Yeti** » Sat Jun 07, 2014 11:42 pm

Gaenor doesn't need any explaining. He works great as an amusing stand-alone insane character and challenging encounter for high-level players. He doesn't need to take "the story" (whatever that is) anywhere in particular, just exist as his own separate thing. Stretching disbelief isn't bad in small doses. His quest is simple, making it easy to re-implement, and if you made a thread at the official Morrowind forums asking if we should keep him, you'd likely get an overwhelmingly affirmative response.

I for one think's there's room in Morrowind [url=http://fc01.deviantart.net/fs8/i/2005/331/6/6/Morrowind_days_by_SnowSkadi.jpg]for a few fun random oddities[/url] to balance out the complex lore concepts and alien cultures.

Concerning the Tribunal quest hook, we need to keep the "Dark Brotherhood attacks the player" part at least, seeing as a big plot point of the expansion is that Helseth was trying to assassinate the Nerevarine.

We probably should make a separate thread for discussing how to adapt Tribunal content. I'm not against cutting [url=http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Tribunal:Robot_Arena]some things[/url] from the expansion in our mod, but I'll generally be against it as a matter of principle.

Tes96 · Post by **Tes96** » Sun Jun 08, 2014 12:07 am

Why not just wipe out Bethesda's interior Mournhold altogether and copy and paste all the scripts, dialogue, assets and functionality from it into TR's exterior Mournhold?

Aeven · Post by **Aeven** » Sun Jun 08, 2014 12:09 am

It might almost seem as though that was the suggestion. Except not almost, but most literally...

gro-Dhal · Post by **gro-Dhal** » Sun Jun 08, 2014 12:33 pm

Cutting any Tribunal content will inevitably piss somebody off. I'd advise against that.

On the other hand, invalidating savegames is an acceptable tradeoff for a ton of new content IMO. Just so long as we make it clear to players.

Terrifying Daedric Foe · Sun Jun 08, 2014 1:16 pm

I always thought that it doesn't make sense for the Tribunal MQ to start before you've completed the Vvardenfel MQ. Isn't the fact that you're the famous Nerevarine the reason Helseth tries to kill/recruit you? And the destruction of the Heart of Lorkhan the reason that Almalexia goes crazy? I think making the Tribunal MQ reliant on completing the Vvardenfel MQ would be a sensible change to make.

Aeven · Post by **Aeven** » Sun Jun 08, 2014 1:18 pm

That would be a consequence of our retooling anyway. This discussion is not about the Tribunal quest, but about how we'd go about integrating the good stuff.

Post by **arvisrend** » Sun Jun 08, 2014 4:30 pm

Having Tribunal start after the MQ is definitely one of the possibilities; another is a reputation requirement or a mix of these.

Gaenor might be a "challenging encounter for high-level players" but given where he stands it's not just high-level players that will encounter him (he will become even harder to avoid in an ext cell). I'm fine with him appearing in a different place, but IMHO it's just a wait of time. I don't recall anyone speaking good of that quest.

Anyway, of course, it's way too early to discuss details like this; sorry for this tangent. The way I understand this particular thread, the main questions are (1) what would a perfect (or even "right") Almalexia be, and (2) how much work would it take for us to get there, as opposed to more conservative ways of dealing with it such as cutting out the slack from current Almalexia. IMHO Sload's plan is a very good answer to (1), but I cannot help answering (2) by "an extra year for the quest department unless we get a lot of motivated new hands".

Sload · Post by **Sload** » Sun Jun 08, 2014 4:59 pm

I think right now what we need is a review of what specific Tribunal quests would be a fairly simple copy and paste job and what specific Tribunal quests would not be. Just in general a thorough review of what this means taking on.

Tes96 · Post by **Tes96** » Sun Jun 08, 2014 7:00 pm

gro-Dhal wrote:Cutting any Tribunal content will inevitably piss somebody off. I'd advise against that.

On the other hand, invalidating savegames is an acceptable tradeoff for a ton of new content IMO. Just so long as we make it clear to players.

Honestly, you're going to piss off someone no mater what route you take; that's human nature. Completely axing interior Mournhold and making it exterior as it is intended would upset a lot of people who use mods for Mournhold. On the other hand, it would make a lot of other people, like me, very pleased to see it function as an exterior. Plus we could finally levitate in Mournhold.

I'm wondering if it would be a good idea to alter Ebonheart so that you don't teleport to interior Mournhold but have to travel there on foot since the mainland will finally be accessible to get there.

And if it invalidates saved games, just have people start new games.

alex25 · Post by **alex25** » Sun Jun 08, 2014 7:27 pm

Tes96 wrote:
gro-Dhal wrote:Cutting any Tribunal content will inevitably piss somebody off. I'd advise against that.

On the other hand, invalidating savegames is an acceptable tradeoff for a ton of new content IMO. Just so long as we make it clear to players.
Honestly, you're going to piss off someone no mater what route you take; that's human nature. Completely axing interior Mournhold and making it exterior as it is intended would upset a lot of people who use mods for Mournhold. On the other hand, it would make a lot of other people, like me, very pleased to see it function as an exterior. Plus we could finally levitate in Mournhold.

I'm wondering if it would be a good idea to alter Ebonheart so that you don't teleport to interior Mournhold but have to travel there on foot since the mainland will finally be accessible to get there.

And if it invalidates saved games, just have people start new games.

I'd really like to try and keep as much compatibility as we can without disrupting our own plans. We can keep things mostly save game compatible with some simple scripts.

Post by **arvisrend** » Sun Jun 08, 2014 8:24 pm

Sload wrote:I think right now what we need is a review of what specific Tribunal quests would be a fairly simple copy and paste job and what specific Tribunal quests would not be. Just in general a thorough review of what this means taking on.

In my view, the part that will require the most work is not making the changes, but finding out what changes are necessary and reviewing all of Tribunal once the changes are made (almost every quest will be touched to at least some extent, most often harmlessly, but this won't ever be clear a priori without looking). Oh and we'll also have to extract the Tribunal edits from the Morrowind Patch project and merge them into TR.

@alex25: Sorry but I don't believe that we can maintain compatibility :/

Bero · Post by **Bero** » Sun Jun 08, 2014 8:59 pm

I really like this proposal. Mainly because divided TR/Vanilla stuff seems very moddy as many pointed out, and as long as we salvage all salvageable stuff we already made. But, do we have enough workforce? I mean I don't want to see us die from too heavy load.

Post by **Gnomey** » Sun Jun 08, 2014 9:10 pm

So as I see it, there are several possibilities for handling Mournhold that have been mentioned so far:

1. Simply drag the bits of Tribunal's Mournhold exterior we want to keep into our exterior, link everything up, and then try and figure out how to fix anything that breaks along the way. This would make a lot of things incompatible.
The main work here, other than dragging stuff over, would be relinking interiors and squishing bugs.
2. Consign Mournhold to its inaccessible cell, copy all of the building and other stuff we want to keep from Tribunal's Mournhold exterior to our exterior and link the old interiors to the new exterior buildings. This would probably create a few incompatibilities.
The main work here, other than copying stuff over, would be relinking interiors and squishing bugs.
3. Consign Mournhold to its inaccessible cell and copy or recreate everything we like/are willing to, leaving the original Mournhold effectively untouched. The only changes we would need to make to Tribunal would be to the bits of its mainquest up to getting teleported to Mournhold. This should create very few incompatibilities.
The main work here would be recreating or copying all of Tribunal's content, except for the stuff we actually want to cut.

A bonus with the last two options is that, if we do cut something and players want it in their game, they can just coc to the original Mournhold cells. With the third option, players could probably play through Tribunal without any problems using that method.

I favour the third option, but others might be able to judge better than I how much work that would involve.

RyanS · Post by **RyanS** » Sun Jun 08, 2014 9:11 pm

Bero wrote:I really like this proposal. Mainly because divided TR/Vanilla stuff seems very moddy as many pointed out, and as long as we salvage all salvageable stuff we already made. But, do we have enough workforce? I mean I don't want to see us die from too heavy load.

TR will never die from this redo. But I do see much of your point. We may easily struggle with our current workforce. I suppose we should possibly plan what to do and when to do it, because too much work at once (the Indoril Problem, the Almalexia Redo, Heartland, and Veloth) could definitely slow us down. I am all in favor with the Indoril/Almalexia redo's now, by the way.

Sload · Post by **Sload** » Sun Jun 08, 2014 9:13 pm

[url=http://i.imgur.com/CGMJlQW.png]this is an updated version of the worldspace proposal from the first page[/url]

RyanS · Post by **RyanS** » Sun Jun 08, 2014 9:15 pm

Cool! What is the House of Keys?

And yes, Gnomey's third option sounds the best.

Post by **Gnomey** » Sun Jun 08, 2014 9:20 pm

The House of Keys is the manor of the Seneschal of House Indoril, one of three advisers to the Grand Ascendant of House Indoril according to [url=http://tamriel-rebuilt.org/old_forum/viewtopic.php?t=24011]Sload's pdf[/url].

RyanS · Post by **RyanS** » Sun Jun 08, 2014 9:28 pm

Cool. Just finished reading the document, and I have one quick question. I know that the Seneschal of the House is Alveth Sandil, but who would the Seneschal of the City be?

Post by **Gnomey** » Sun Jun 08, 2014 9:34 pm

Probably nobody yet; I certainly don't know of any plans for that NPC, but that may just be my ignorance speaking.

Sload · Post by **Sload** » Sun Jun 08, 2014 9:35 pm

Nothing has been done for that character yet.