the true vivec

[st.Veloth, The Repenting]

hey everyone, i know i already made a post today, but i couldn't resist!

let's face it. vivec is bland. it could have been one of the best cities in the elder scrolls. but they dun goofed. rather than following the concepts, they got lazy and copy-pasted the same model a few times, changed up the color scheme a bit and voila! bland.
i know this isn't exactly about the mainland, but, since we're redoing mournhold, why not vivec too?

the concept art suggested a huge complex of cantons, with large bridges and gondoliers. the place would've been morrowind's equivalent of tokyo. the art speaks for it'self. i don't know how to use the creation kit, but, if anyone else would even consider this, than i would hop on to it.

this is a long-shot, and rather off-topic. hell, we could even do this after tr is finished. i don't mind. all i want is to see vivec as it should have been.
art reference: http://images.uesp.net/thumb/0/0d/MW-concept-33.jpg/300px-MW-concept-33.jpg

http://images.uesp.net/thumb/b/be/MW-Screenshot39.jpg/180px-MW-Screenshot39.jpg

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/File:MW-Screenshot28.jpg

[Theminimanx]

There are already a few mods that attempt to do this. I haven't tried them myself, but they seem pretty decent. That said, if we end up overhauling Vvardenfell anyway, we may also overhaul Vivec as well. But that's so far into the future that it's not really worth discussing yet. Let's finish the mainland first, shall we

[Dragon32]

Here's some:
PirateLord's Redesigned Vivec
Degor's Vivec Open Cantons (included in More Detailed Places 2013 by Ragox & Zaldir)
Archibald TK's Open Vivec
Szazmyrr3's Vivec Replacement

Could've sworn there were more, but I can't find them easily.

[st.Veloth, The Repenting]

thanks! i'll keep that in the back of my head for now.

[Doom_Carrot]

To be honest, it wasn't the architecture of it that bugged me, its the quietness of it. I pictured it as a bustling ciy with markets lining the cantons, gondoliers carrying passengers to and fro, and hundreds of tourists and pilgrims trying to make their way around.

But it was none of that. It was deathly quiet and orderly, didn't feel like a city at all.

[Gnomey]

I can agree with that; I think if it were full of life, even the terrible ergonomics of the city probably wouldn't have bothered me.

[Biboran]

There is a lot of Mods on Vivek and on all cities Vvardenfell, but rhey not good like TR cities... why not?
I had some ideas to vivec city and castle ebonheart..
It was suggested that the castle Ebonheart village is Nordic village Yscadia or soething...why not add small nord district on a land across city, whis Talos statue and nordic castle. Here player can start questline for separatist nords in mainland.
In vivec hallalu canton can be like Almas Thirr, if you understand what I mean. Beoynd Telvanni can be some
mushroom towers and mushroms on canton like on this art: [url]http://chaos-heart.ru/forum/uploads/gallery/category_3/gallery_456_3_6029.jpg[/url]
On land around Foreigh Quarter can be small poor district and port.
Foreigh, Olms and Delyn. They must be filled. Balcony, more large flags, stalls, NPCs and other stuff.

If TR plain do hallau manor in other place, on old place can be small hlaalu village with port.

Expand Balmora also possible.

With regard to the fact that it has other mods. Morrowind had a lot of mods. The modification is already incompatible with a large number, such as those which added islands. And it is impossible to make compatible with everything. If the modification will be popular, the people themselves will make mods on TR. And the concept of TR is too wide, you can not to not affect vvardenfell or soltsheim.

[Gnomey]

It remains to be seen if we fiddle about with Vvardenfell settlements; our current tendency seems to be not to.
Turning Ebonheart into Yscadia is one of Swiftoak's ideas, (he really dislikes having Ebonheart and Old Ebonheart coexist), but I personally think Ebonheart works better as is. I don't think it should be a Nord village like Dagon Fel, and certainly not like Dunkreath, which is the base of the Nordic separatists. I think we should maintain a distinction between Imperial settlements, Nord settlements (technically Imperial, in that they're Imperial subjects and guarded by Imperial guards, as with Dagon Fel) and Nord faction settlements (possibly only Dunkreath).
If we're going to touch Vivec, I don't think half measures will really cut it; we either would need to switch Vivec to open cantons or heavily build over the cantons until they look open.
As for the Hlaalu stronghold, a current idea is that it will remain a stronghold that gets 'built' during the game, but will not belong to the player, but rather an NPC ([url=http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Raynasa_Rethan]Raynasa Rethan[/url]) that acts as the player's puppet, just like some of the Vvardenfell councillors are puppets of Orvas Dren.
Expanding Balmora is possible, though that may well break compatibility with more mods than any other single change, which needn't necessarily stop us.

[Biboran]

My opinions about Vivek and Ebonheart o picture. This is the minimum where possible to avoid conflict with the majority of mods. [spoiler][img]http://i.imgur.com/9JzRusT.jpg[/img][/spoiler]

[aRenfrow]

I think the highest priority for redoing Vivec would be Vivec's Palace. It contains one nearly empty room, and puzzle canals. The outside is quite bland too. There is a lot of potential here.


http://michaelkirkbride.tumblr.com/post/73228726965/vivecs-palace



https://tesrenewal.com/forums/project-v ... vivec-city

[Dormichigan64]

I think a harbour would make more sense near the temple, not the foreign quarter. But then again, it would be better near the entrance... How about opening up the water at the entrance? Other than that, I think if we are going to fiddle with Vivec City, we should focus on expanding the city from within, and making it more open.

I think that, if we are going to altar Vvardenfell in any way, we should create a separate file; we shouldn't have it and the rest of the project together for compatibility sake.

PS: Isn't this what Morrowind Rebirth is for? Except for Vivec, of course. Vivec is a different story.

[aRenfrow]

I always thought a harbor would make more sense to be by the foreign quarters because I always viewed is as a buffer zone (for lack of better words) for all coming into the city.

[RyanS]

I think that, if we are going to altar Vvardenfell in any way, we should create a separate file; we shouldn't have it and the rest of the project together for compatibility sake.

I definitely agree with this. If we are ever going to alter Vvardenfell as heavily as this topic suggests, we should allow for the changes to be optional.

To be honest, I'm not a very big fan of us making these changes at all. It's not what our project is meant to do, and we probably shouldn't be focusing on it for years to come, if ever. We already have dozens of more urgent matters to discuss and deal with, and other projects have already succeeded in making most, if not all of the modifications brought up.

If we pull through with these changes, it is also inevitable that we will lose a portion of our audience, something that'll grow more and more fragile over the years. Not everyone is going to like revisions like these coming from our project.

Overall, I'm not necessarily 100% against making changes on Vvardenfell. However, I personally believe that if they must happen, these alterations should be very small, and perhaps almost unnoticeable at a first glance.

[aRenfrow]

Somewhat related to what RyanS was saying. It doesn't have to be Tamriel Rebuilt even if developers from here are the only does that do it. We could always do this now if that was a desire, and go somewhere like Project Tamriel or make a different forum all together.

[Melchior Dahrk]

There's also [url=http://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/43385/?]Dramatic Vivec[/url] which is unique in that the author went for making a lot of new meshes for the city. This one helps make the city feel more alive in my opinion.

I'm also of the opinion that the real problem with Vivec was that it felt so empty and dead. But I don't think it should be a priority for TR unless something specific comes up where the current Vivec would need to change in order to realize the vision of TR. Unless I am mistaken, there's nothing like that right now? Unless the size is too small compared to Almalexia.

[Gnomey]

Yeah, for the time being I certainly don't think any Vvardenfell settlement -- or content in general -- is a priority. Which doesn't mean we can't discuss it, of course. There's a chance that, as our planning advances, certain shortcomings in Vvardenfell will come to light -- in the faction questlines and dialogue is pretty much a given, but perhaps even as to how settlements are presented -- and that we might then consider fixing them, but we're a long way off from making those decisions.

[Glisp]

A harbor in Vivec would be a little redundant with Ebonheart nearby, ignoring the fact that it's an imperial settlement.

Also, Vivec was originally going to be more interesting.

[img]http://www.imperial-library.info/sites/default/files/imagecache/node-gallery-display/gallery_files/mwind_web23B.jpg[/img]

The open Canton idea was dropped because performance if that hasn't been mentioned already. Actually, the open Canton mod for Vivec still delivers quite a hit on the FPS from what I understand. There's other fun things going on in this screenshot but they're off subject somewhat. It's been discussed extensively in the IRC chat anyway.

Following up on what someone else said about the city not being lively, well I'd assume that was done so PC's in 2002 could handle the game. As you start adding new actors and things to a map (be it interior or otherwise) the framerate starts to drop. Especially if certain actors or objects are running scripts.

[Anonytroll]

Ebonheart is a relatively new city cranked out at best 12 years ago. Chances are Vivec has a harbour (or two). One's already mentioned in dialogue.

I tried to do one, but ran into asset issues. [url=http://i.imgur.com/UC8eE2W.jpg]Actually does fit somewhat.[/url]

[st.Veloth, The Repenting]

why have telvanni towers in vivec and not almalexia.

[Biboran]

Some of the NPCs in Vivec says that telvanni can not build a
mushroom tower in the city because lord vivec forbidden this.

Edit: oh i read you post "why have telvanni towers in almalexia and not in vivec."

Because the hate politics maybe. In vivec they have because they wand vvardenfell territories

[Anonytroll]

Telvanni towers in Vivec are silly, for the reason above. Vivec is still inherently a temple domain, with cantons rented away and appartment within the non-house cantons rented away seperately.

Allowing a Telvanni tower, which might grow higher than Vivec's lofty abode - heresy!

[aRenfrow]

I always found it odd how there as no Dres (or Indoril although the Indoril can be explained) cantons.

[Dormichigan64]

Well, Vivec is the temple capital of Vvardenfell. Since House Dres has nothing to do with V,they don't really have the need to have a canton.

Also, I've working on a Vivec mod for a while now. Unfortunately, I have to start over now, but at least the conceptualization is done. I'm trying to use all vanilla assets. I know there are tons of other mods out there, but I just want to make one that is of my own vision. I'll upload pics when I get to (re) creating it if you'd like.

Anyways, there's no real reason we should be discussing it now when we have other things that are of greater priority, especially when we aren't even sure we're doing it. But... what evs.

[Gnomey]

When it comes to these topics that have no immediate relevance, I think the enthusiasm they can generate is valuable in and of itself. I also think there is a certain advantage to discussing things so far in advance, as people aren't so preoccupied with coming up with viable ideas and instead just come up with whatever ideas they find most interesting. We are likely to go a far less radical route with Vivec -- probably not changing it at all -- but the more appealing the alternative is the more difficult it will be for us to make that decision, and therefor the better thought through and justified that decision will need to be, which I consider a plus.

The question, of course, is whether anyone will remember this topic when it does become relevant, but I'm not too worried on that count.

For a Telvanni tower growing in Vivec, I think there are several considerations. On the face of it, I'd say the absence of roots and dominance of the Velothi style imply a complete hold over Vivec by the Temple. The presence of roots might imply that the Telvanni are defiant even there. Some way of representing resistance to the roots could then further symbolize a struggle between the Temple and Telvanni. So there is that angle.
On the other hand, looking at practicality over symbolism, the Telvanni build root towers in sites with no preexisting structures; if there is a Velothi tower, they tend to just occupy that, and the Telvanni canton has a Velothi tower. Tel Vos is not an exception, of course, as the Imperial structure was (half) built as part of the construction of the tower itself. Vos, in contrast, is a preexisting settlement invaded by roots, but not as part of the tower itself so much as, apparently, just to mess with the locals. But the source of the roots is still almost certainly the crystals that form the core of Tel Vos, and if the tower weren't there the roots wouldn't be either.
In short, as far as remaining consistent with how the Telvanni are presented in the vanilla game, I see no reason why they would bother growing a tower in a perfectly functional canton, but as we do want to expand on House Telvanni beyond what little of them is shown in vanilla Morrowind that would be a perfectly legitimate direction for us to go, if we wanted to.