An Almalexia Proposal

[Bero]

Yup daedren is right. I would prefer new set.

[Envy123]

Finally, as a recent ex-gamer (stopped 3 months ago when I joined TR), if you kill my savegave I probably will not play. I've already played Tribunal - I've played the whole game at least 4 times. I currently have a good character - nice house/base of operations - plenty of stuff - I don't think I'd want to have to start all over again.

If we follow Sload's proposal (and for the record: I'm all for it), then nobody's savegame will be killed. All you have to do is move your stuff from Bethesda's fake exterior to TR's real exterior and (maybe) do some quests again.

Speaking of, it's actually trivial to add a global script to our mod which checks for finished Tribunal quests and e.g. disables Almalexia and other important people if the player already finished the Tribunal main quest.

Again I'm all for doing it Sload's way: it's not that hard to copy (and modify) dialogue/scripts etc. and we can surely do better than Bethesda. Their Mournhold is just badly thought out.

Honestly, I'd prefer to have an option to move the important people in Mournhold to Almalexia. It maintains the illusion that Tribunal's Mournhold is another part of the city, although hidden.

In terms of LC Almalexia, I agree that a new set is needed. It's an Indoril city so Velothi architecture would IMO look very out of place.

[Ironed Maidens]

Why?

[Sload]

Honestly, I'd prefer to have an option to move the important people in Mournhold to Almalexia. It maintains the illusion that Tribunal's Mournhold is another part of the city, although hidden.

TR will not do this.

[Envy123]

Honestly, I'd prefer to have an option to move the important people in Mournhold to Almalexia. It maintains the illusion that Tribunal's Mournhold is another part of the city, although hidden.

TR will not do this.

I meant I'd prefer moving the important NPCs to the new Almalexia than just disabling them.

Ideally, I want Tribunal's Mournhold to be completely untouched by TR, except for editing the startscript for the DB attacks. Anything else - I can mod it on my own, if need be.

[Aeven]

You seem to misunderstand us. We would not disable anything aside from the DB attack script. We'd duplicate/remake anything from Tribunal as we see fit.

[Sload]

Honestly, I'd prefer to have an option to move the important people in Mournhold to Almalexia. It maintains the illusion that Tribunal's Mournhold is another part of the city, although hidden.

TR will not do this.

I meant I'd prefer moving the important NPCs to the new Almalexia than just disabling them.

Ideally, I want Tribunal's Mournhold to be completely untouched by TR, except for editing the startscript for the DB attacks. Anything else - I can mod it on my own, if need be.

Both of these things are what is going to happen.

However, while there will be a time for which TR will enable players to opt-in to Tribunal, once TR is finished Tribunal's version of Mournhold will be inaccessible without another mod or using the console while playing TR. This will not be optional (once TR is finished).

[Envy123]

TR will not do this.

I meant I'd prefer moving the important NPCs to the new Almalexia than just disabling them.

Ideally, I want Tribunal's Mournhold to be completely untouched by TR, except for editing the startscript for the DB attacks. Anything else - I can mod it on my own, if need be.

Both of these things are what is going to happen.

However, while there will be a time for which TR will enable players to opt-in to Tribunal, once TR is finished Tribunal's version of Mournhold will be inaccessible without another mod or using the console while playing TR. This will not be optional (once TR is finished).

Thank you for clearing it up

I have made a mod which gives me access to Mournhold from the mainland already

[roerich]

I agree that Velothi and MH looks weird together, but a Velothi inspired (design) lower class set in the proper colour scheme along with cave dwellings would look great.

[Aeven]

A practical idea, to be performed by someone who is good at such things:

Split A6 into an Othrensis and Almalexia file. In the Almalexia file, duplicate the city/move it to the area where Othrensis actually is, so work can be done on a new version while the modder can drag stuff from the 'old' version into the new version of the city. This allows us to keep scenes we like, and also to remember where certain interiors are. Quite a number of interiors are likely to be reusable.

[Theminimanx]

I love how, in a perfect act of defiance, the player will be constantly levitating to move between the two city levels.

As for the idea itself, I really like it, but it'll be up to the devs to decide if the extra work will be worth it.

I have to agree with Abot. I really don't see a problem with the current Alma. Why not add more quests to get the player more acquainted with it. It is my opinion, that it is the quests that make or break the game, not exteriors, nor interiors. Ext's and Int's may be cool to look at for awhile - but if I don't have anything to do, then I stop playing. This is why I joined TR - I ran out of TES mods to play and wanted to help you get more stuff out faster.

But if the player keeps getting lost, it'll take them longer to actually find and play these quests. Long periods of non-engagement are things you really want to avoid.

All I ask is that if important discussions are held on IRC - please copy and past the discussion to a forum. Not everyone is on the same time schedule/nor stays logged in 24/7 with an infinite log - but we'd like to be kept in the loop. And if the details aren't here, then where are they?

Also this. So very much this. I basically only lurk here, but I find the design discussions to be a great read.

EDIT: While I like the idea of the city having three main areas, devoting one of those areas to the Empire seems odd when you consider that they took over a good 3000 years after the Tribunal rose to power (I'm using that as my timeframe, considering it's named after a member of the Tribunal). It'd probably a good idea to hint at it's former function (possibly the ruling center of all of Morrowind at the time too, but now taken over by the Empire.) Someone with more history knowledge might want to have a look at this.

EDIT2: Now that I've actually gotten around to playing Tribunal, I feel like an idiot for saying this. My apologies.

[Dormichigan64]

I just wanted to shove my opinion in there, how I feel about all this.

I understand that Almalexia might be a little hard to navigate, but I don't understand why we have to change it completely. Sure it may need a few tweaks to make it easier, but I think the general layout is fine.

As for the people living in Mournhold, they may not be dunmer, but most of them are rich, and can afford to live there.

One last thing. Mournhold is the capital city, and therefor important. It's a walled city in the centre of Almalexia because it's important. If we make the two cities into one, there's not going to be a real point in Mournhold and it's going to lose it's grandness, and going to seam like it's not as important.

Sorry if some of this was already said, but I didn't want to bother reading all 3 pages.

[Why]

Since I'm here I might as well add my 2ct to this thread, even though it seems we've pretty much reached a consensus already.

I'm not looking forward to us having to port what is essentially the entirety of Tribunal to TR. However, vanilla quests typically aren't terribly complicated from an implementation perspective, and at the very least the content is well-documented (uesp etc), so I don't have any real practical issues with this plan. Important hurdles seem to be the Plaza fight and the sewers. The Plaza fight will probably bring lots of older machines to their knees - but so will the Velothi Mountains and the Lan Orethan. The sewers will need some careful restructuring but the deeper levels should be unaffected.

As for the actual plan, I'm in the same boat as gro-Dhal. I definitely like the new concept, but I'm also rather fond of most of the existing stuff. Carrying over a lot of the older scenery and giving them a bit of a vanilla twist, separating them into clear districts, sounds like an ideal solution. I'd like to suggest we try to incorporate both the TR Mournhold-Acropolis and the vanilla walled-districts approaches when designing the higher city, creating a series of walled districts-on-plateaus, sticking to clean outer geometry in the spirit of the oval Mournhold wherever possible (but as we all know, I'm hardly the best exterior guy, so take my advice with a grain of salt).

Content-wise, I worry that we might end up unconsciously putting too much A-list content (think faction hubs, quests, important NPCs and locations) in the upper city, leaving the lower city underdeveloped. Clearly there is a lot of stuff that can only be in the upper city, but I'd love to have a bit of a discussion about what important content can find its home in the lower city. For instance, could it be a good idea to *not* put the FG in the upper city and instead give them a prominent place in the lower city somewhere? Can the Imperial Cult have a role in the more diverse poor parts? How can we make the lower city a place the player will want to *be* and engage in/with, rather than just a place you get *sent* to every now and again for errands given by upper city NPCs?

[gro-Dhal]

FWIW I meant the quest content should all remain. The actual layout of Mournhold is rubbish and could stand to be altered and compressed.

[Why]

Oh, yeah, that's also what I meant. I'm completely fine with extensive restructuring/compressing as long as we can still find appropriate settings for the vanilla quests and stuff ties together properly.

[Aeven]

That sort of stuff is very much possible with this proposal. It merely gets rid of the Tribunal layout and allows us to put it along an integrated line in the City.

[hollowtreestump]

Personally I'm not too big on this alteration, I'm sure it'll turn out amazing, like the rest of TR has, but I feel the split platforms and lack of a wall would make Almalexia lose its capitally feel. I therefore propose something more along the lines of this: http://www.imagesup.net/dm-614079089221.png
Green representing the city walls and cliffs
Orange the rich merchant areas
Red the temple
Blue unaffiliated
Purple Hlaalu
Yellow Indoril
and mix between Purple and Violet outside the central city representing the Imperial districts of the greater city.
The violet square representing Godsreach.

This'd only be the main central city, outside areas would generally be far more impoverished. The city has two main street complexes, that do well to show the general powerstruggle in the city, the darker road being patrolled by Helseths guards, the lighter one by Indoril guards and Ordinators. Helseths gates would demand a monetary charge upon entry, while the Temple/Indoril gates would only grant entrance to people with high standing in either group.

Outside Helseths main gate lies the poor bazar, a lawless area filled with pickpockets, people selling false lowquality wares, drugdealers, and various other bad types of people.

My idea of Almalexia is heavily based on the concept of a threeway powerstruggle. First there is Indoril and to a lesser extent the Temple, who are trying to preserve their old ways, keep foreigners and peasants outside of the city, and limit Helseths control. Then there is Helseth, trying to strengthen his grip on the city, gain full control of all parts of the wall and streets, and keep the legion out whilst filling the insides of the walls with rich imperial traders. Finally there is the empire, they seek to reduce Helseth to a puppet king, establish the imperial cult within the city, widen the Imperial districts, get imperial districts within the walls, and generally just promoting the empires values.

The Imperial districts of the outer city are selfadministered, they're the only places the legion has any authority, there is a significant hidden blades operation going on, countered by Helseths own vast spy network.

I mean no offense in disliking your suggestion, it just doesn't feel like how I've always envisioned the city.

[Theo]

Let me guess where you draw your inspiration from. Jerusalem?

[sasquatch2o]

Almalexia needs a lot more planning before it is worked into the redesign. IMO that planning should also be very low priority compared to the the rest of the work ahead of us. Since Almalexia is still in conceptual stage I searched through the forums to repost select posts made by sasquatch relevant to this discussion:

"Almalexia does not have enough areas to get lost in or have a storied feel. It is one dimensional in many places. The city may also not be large enough if it is not built with a greater amount of depth than any other city. It should have areas that are more vertical and more have depth. There needs to be more cramped enclosed or covered spaces and more of the detail and life that has been poured into the interiors needs to spill into the exterior. I do not want to see Almalexia scrapped. The exterior is simply far what I'd like it's finished state should be. The city also needs an underground in each quarter, even if they are modestly sized with most corridors being blocked off somehow, and a central network of tunnels connecting them. Also, I don't want to see any of the many completed Almalexia interiors to be repurposed or unused.

Almalexia needs to be reimagined as a massive urban jungle. Hills and valleys of buildings and maybe hostile areas even in the exterior where the player has to battle off street thugs. Almalexia needs urban "caves" too even on the exterior. Spots where the player can get back into dark gritty off-the-beaten-path spaces under bridges in back alleys etc.. Almalexia dungeons should include large interior complexes that are perhaps designed in a diff exterior cell with a door from main exterior that takes player into systems of back alley ghettos with roving bands of thugs etc all with their own interiors.. Should include brothels, taverns, drug dens, but mostly boarded up unexplorable buildings.

-----

There are many other things that need to be done to bring a city of this size to life. One of these needs to be adding a whole menu of ambient urban sounds. We need ambient sounds for outside taverns or ambient sounds for market places.. ambient sounds for every type of experience that is occurring in the exterior or in and interior that is spilling into the outdoors. There are plenty of free resources out there we could use for inspiration or material. Doing this will help us imagine how spaces are used and experienced by the NPCs and player. http://www.soundsurvey.org.uk/

Next we need more maps. Right now we have maps of physical geography. We need to map how NPCs and the player will experience the area and how buildings relate to each other. This is most important in Almalexia, because of its size.
-----------
Examples:

http://www.inclusionmark.co.uk/blog/?p=51
The first image there highlights important locations. We should be doing the same. We need maps that mark important locations for the player and the most logical routes they will take between them these paths. This is important for tweaking the layout of the city.

http://vimeo.com/16398803
Anyone who is working on the organization of Almalexia needs to watch this video entirely.

---------------------------

We need to understand how cities are formed AND how different NPCs will use the space and be distributed in the city. (see 1:20)
We also need to understand how subregions should are formed in cities. Almalexia's current layout is very mechanical rather than organic. We need enclaves in this urban jungle that are distinguished from other locations by how the space is being used in the exterior. The subculture of each enclave should be apparent on the exterior. Rather than just different color banners NPCs should be wearing certain types of clothing colors/value, use of diff overhangs, have different statics outdoors (pottery or basket. Such an enclave should also have characters that shape the area, a VIP list or characters with depth. Many of whom are engaged somehow politically or socially related to each other.

NEXT

The wealthy areas are probably fine as the city is, but in poorer areas we need to see that the local community is really connected. There need to be communal spaces on the exterior. The poorer an area is and the greater the cultural identity they have the greater the informal economy needs to be in that place and it should be reflected outdoor. This means shared outdoor markets, shared gardens, etc.

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Most people are unlikely to read all that and whether it makes sense is unclear so here are some bulletpoints.

-Do not remake Almalexia
-Do not make major changes to further integrate Mournhold
-Postpone release of Almalexia
-continue development and make minor adjustments and major additions
-Reimagine the city as an urban jungle rather than a city
+areas of limited interactivity based on NPC & player paths
+creation of creative enclaves that are reflected in exterior
+create "urban dungeons"
+create "urban caves"
+more usable height and depth
-large emphasis on detailed use of sound to create atmosphere
+expand our sound data and use of sounds to add atmosphere
-bring interior spaces to the exterior
-creation of a visible informal economy on the exterior
-create an expansive partially inhabited underground for questing and interconnection"

-sasquatch

------------------------------
I removed some irrelevant sections and may further edit this down later. I also want to say I like hollowtreestump's mention of a hostile area. As mentioned previously adding more of these could create some very interesting entirely unique locations in the city. This should be done as I explained before in a false inaccessible exterior.
------------------------------

Further explanation of exterior caves. I will edit this down later:

"I think it is doable. If outdoor areas of high detail or exterior urban dungeons are impossible because of frame-rate issue make them in another exterior cell with a gate and block off the crowded area on the top with newly created overhangs/ board statics to prevent players from getting in from the top as seen here:

http://www.1st-art-gallery.com/William-James-Muller/The-Carpet-Bazaar-Cairo-1843.html

http://www.1st-art-gallery.com/Louis-Claude-Mouchot/The-Carpet-Bazaar-Cairo.html?s=20x16&gclid=CLzHvvemtrwCFYpaMgodCU0AlQ

This would create really interesting and dark outdoor urban spaces that could be assumed to be outside control of the city and on fringe of society making them perfect for combat and questing.

Almalexia needs more areas of interest and depth. I am proposing that we focus our efforts on making smaller hubs of activity throughout the city. These should be areas of interest with high amount of detail and interactivity with much of the rest of the city having generic NPCs and locations.

It is important that the city not be approached as others have because of its size. Almalexia should be handled not as a traditional city but instead as an urban region as I proposed in my above post. To make the city exciting it needs more highly detailed locations of interest just like all our other exterior regions. A city of this size will not be interesting simply having buildings and lifeless NPCs. It needs hostile locations as well as social hubs of activity for NPCs where the majority of the quests happen. Other quests should send players out to explore "urban caves" and "urban dungeons" of interest. In this way we could not only limit the workload of attempting the near impossible task of having detailed, interesting NPC and quests throughout the entire city and assume that the majority of the urban environment will just be scenic in between spaces like all the other exterior spaces in Morrowind. I don't think attempting to treat Almalexia like any other city is doable.

I should also explain that by urban caves/ dungeons I mean areas that are somehow excluded from high traffic areas but very detailed and interesting. Instead of handling the city in its entirety we need to make small areas of high interest and the paths between them fun to explore."
-sasquatch

We need to add more depth and variety and character to Almalexia in the very distant future.

[Bero]

I agree with sasquach that almalexia should be urban jungle and all that stuff about poor areas but I think that we should remake alma since vannila mournhold is unacceptable.

[Dormichigan64]

I do not agree that we should remake Alma for a few reasons: it is going against lore, Mournhold would lose it's capitalness, and we are supposed to make TR as Bethesda would've, and Bethesda obviously didn't care about such small things in mournhold. I think we should keep Alma as it is.

[st.Veloth, The Repenting]

just an idea here, perhaps there could be an area with representatives from the other great houses here, just as vivec, also, could almalexi have some redoran-velothi influences in it's architecture, along with some older styles, once again, due to the fact that it is the capital of morrowind.

something like having a telvanni tier, with unique telvanni architecture, and one for redoran dres and hlaalu, and embassies for each, culminating in the grand council hall, in which all the houses converge to direct morrowind and argue about land and stuff

[StaticNation]

I object to cutting the tribunal content, I'd rather see it as a "forbidden city" and the new content around where doors lead into its "world space" ala skyrim. no conflicts, proven to work, tribual is self contained and outside world space is used for the outer city, and if people try to levitate in block it with invisible walls/scripting

here is the forbidden city in china
[img]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fb/Beijing_city_wall_map.jpg[/img][img]http://us.cdn281.fansshare.com/photos/theforbiddencity/forbidden-city-over-view-beijing-china-1288484584.jpg[/img]

[Theminimanx]

We won't actually be cutting any of the Tribunal content, we'd just recreate it in the new city.

And while the idea of a Forbidden City-style layout isn't an inherently bad one, the inner city would need to somehow look more exclusive, which Tribunal's Mournhold certainly doesn't.

[Rats]

what StaticNation said

This is more or less how our Almalexia currently is / was going to be. One of the problems that the city surrounding Mournhold was, though admittedly very cool to look at, insanely huge.

[st.Veloth, The Repenting]

so... will my idea of representative sections for great houses in almalexia be included? this even leaves room for things like a haunted old dagoth section of the city... that would make one hell of a quest.

[Telvayn]

this even leaves room for things like a haunted old dagoth section of the city... that would make one hell of a quest.

Such a section would be a part of Old Mournhold, ruins deep underground.

[benthelucky]

I made an account here because I am a huge fan of Morrowind and the TR Rebuilt project. I for one would be thrilled if you just cut and pasted the Mournhold cells into exterior cells, added outer walls and tops for the city walls between cells, re-linked everything, and fixed script bugs.

Yes, it would break saved games and Tribunal mods, but those can be patched by the user as needed. Maybe provide a page with cell offsets (x, y, z). I would not mind creating a new character and game.

Also as Almalexia is the largest city, using real urban research, it should either be twice the size of Vivec, the largest city, or half the size of Vivec. Since Almalexia is the capital, it should probably be twice the size. So 25 exterior cells sounds about right.

These are just my thoughts.

[Dormichigan64]

25 cells, eh? Vivec is, what, about 10 cells? Alma should be bigger, but not two much. Vivec is still a large city.

And I do agree on the city being as originally planned. Or close to it.

[Gnomey]

I tend to be someone who prefers for Almalexia to be as large as possible, but there are certain concerns such as performance. The city of Vivec was originally not planned to be placed into those massive canton buildings; [url=http://michaelkirkbride.tumblr.com/image/73282127881]here[/url]'s an original concept and [url=http://40.media.tumblr.com/d761d9afa5b863d05918dee4506cf41d/tumblr_mz1n1pMvGN1t3fruoo5_r1_1280.jpg]here[/url]'s an extremely early mock-up build. It ended up as is for the same reason Oblivion and Skyrim use closed cities: to avoid performance issues.
As a result of it construction, Vivec also has a ton of dead space. A city that covers much less ground than Vivec can still seem larger than Vivec, if it's simply denser. Conversely, if you make a city as large as Vivec but with, say, standard Velothi buildings rather than cantons, its would be megalithic and its population density would probably make the rest of Morrowind look practically deserted in comparison.

I'm afraid real urban research doesn't really apply to TR cities, though I wouldn't mind seeing the research you reference as it seems really hard to believe. I don't see why the largest city should be either twice or half the size of the next largest city, (did I understand you correctly there?), and capitals like Ottawa, Brasilia and Washington DC are by no means the largest cities in their respective countries, let alone being twice the size of the next largest city.
Which is admittedly pretty irrelevant: those cities were more-or-less arbitrarily designated -- in the case of Washington DC and Brasilia created -- to serve as seats of government while Almalexia, like Rome and Athens and Beijing, has developed into a strong capital over time, and has always been one of the most important -- in not always the most important -- cities in Morrowind.
That being said, if, as we should, we take the specific world of Morrowind into account rather than our real world, we'll find that [url=http://www.imperial-library.info/content/thirty-six-lessons-vivec-sermon-twenty-four]the city of Vivec is supposedly the netted corpse of one of the children Vivec had by Molag Bal[/url], so urban planning doesn't really come into the equation.

[NathanJ]

Hi, I just read the topic and though it doesnt seem to be the right moment (and I dont know exactly in which state of development Almalexia is right now), I want to share an idea of mine: why not build Almalexia with more than one levels into the ground (anyway its standing on dwarven ruins - EDIT wait that idea was mentioned before ) and towers on the ground level, linked by bridges (like the towers in the realm of mehrunes dagon in oblivion)?

The towers+bridges between them gives the city a "Skyline" to make it look really majestic.