I know this has been asked before but I need an estimate

Master of marrowind · Post by **Master of marrowind** » Sun Dec 12, 2004 5:28 am

Yes I know, im positive this is has been asked before. But I don't know, what im asking is for an estimate. How long till this game is done? Im eager to play it, how many years do you guy's working on it think it will take. A rough estimate perhaps? 2-3 years?

Eraser · Post by **Eraser** » Sun Dec 12, 2004 5:44 am

Oye Vey

Morrowind Province, I'd say May depending on how things go. All of Tamriel:(if we stick with TES3, 10 years) (if we switch to TES4, ~4 years depending on how the editor turns out)

All of that completely unofficial though.

Master of marrowind · Post by **Master of marrowind** » Sun Dec 12, 2004 8:49 am

So your saying if you decide to use TES4 it would take about 4 years to complete. But if you used TES3 it would take a decade?!? That's a long time man, chances are by then my computer wouldnt be able to run a game so old. About how many people are working on it?

Majra · Post by **Majra** » Sun Dec 12, 2004 9:03 am

Eraser those numbers are speculation completely. We can in no way say how long it will take. Firstly being down with "morrowind" by May is ridiculous, morrowind is more than landscaping. We dont even have a completed map 1, and you are calling for may to be the end of morrowind. Secondly there is no way you can say it will take 4 years to complete tamriel in es4, we dont even know if completing tamriel in ES3 is possible yet, let alone in ES4. Its that kinda comment that tee'd me off about ES4 convos pertaining to TR in the first place. Long story short

Morrowind is looking good in ES3, we dunno what ES4 can do, we will take the path of least resistance to complete tamriel, it will take very long (longer than you will be around most likely, longer than I will be around possibly), and as far as people working on it, it is ever changing, such is the way of an open mod.

Stalker · Post by **Stalker** » Sun Dec 12, 2004 12:52 pm

Completing MW on ES3 engine is NOT possible. Somewhere near Argonia borders we will have one CTD per frame or so. So I doubt we will be able to make Skyrim also.
And TES4CS sounds like TES3CS+randomization feature+utilization of TES4 engine features.

Colostriph · Post by **Colostriph** » Sun Dec 12, 2004 3:30 pm

Hm, I was wondering. Someone said that the Morrowind Game could not take such a big mod. But coming from the ESF, I doubt that it's true. However, if this was the case, I thought, perhaps, that inbetween each province, there would be like a rest stop, where the PC would save in and Interior, log off, restart the game, except that you shut off the other mod, and turn on the new one. Per example:

Todd wants to cross into Skyrim from morrowind. He goes along the road and finds a tavern on the boarder. He goes in, saves, logs off morrowind. He then, goes to his data file base, and shuts off the Morrowind Rebuilt Mod, and plugs-in the Skyrim Rebuilt Mod. He then loas his saved game, and he is in the same tavern, on the same boarder. Except Morrowind isn't there anymore, but Skyrim is.

Would this work? I know it would be a bit weird walking out of a tavern and then suddenly a whole country was gone.

Stalker · Post by **Stalker** » Sun Dec 12, 2004 3:39 pm

You're forgetting ingame map. The cells should be futher that visible borders meaning far away from 0,0. So no, it won't work.

Colostriph · Post by **Colostriph** » Sun Dec 12, 2004 4:05 pm

Is that not just for the ingame map? I mean, I seldomly use that map. Local has always workeed for me.

Stalker · Post by **Stalker** » Sun Dec 12, 2004 4:09 pm

But wouldn't it be strange to see Skyrim and Morrowind on the same place on the map ? Plus many people (like me) actually use global map.

Colostriph · Post by **Colostriph** » Sun Dec 12, 2004 4:15 pm

Um... That wasn't my point. As you know, the global map for Morrowind doesn't function anymore when you are outside a certain peremeter. It doesn't mean you can't build land, it just means th eland won't show up on the global map. I can buil an Island about 1000 cells south of balmora and nothing will hapen. It just wont show up on the global map as a land mass. TR, apparently, is going to be using actual map books to guide the player.

There is no problems, except that outside Morrowind, the Gmap will be useless. I've played mods that added large (not as big as Morrowind but still pretty big) a few hundred cells west of solstheim and I never encounter problems, except for the Gmap not showing the land mass.

Stalker · Post by **Stalker** » Sun Dec 12, 2004 4:31 pm

I understood your point. Let's say my English knowledge won't let me explain MY point correctly

The thing I'm trying to say is that if you have explored the area before you'll have it's map revealed on you local map. After you have visited it with Skyrim on you'll have a part of Skyrim plus a part of Morrowind on your local map. Plus we won't be able to make multiprovince quests.

Colostriph · Post by **Colostriph** » Sun Dec 12, 2004 5:09 pm

Hm, good point. But I don't see why we would use my idea. The size of the mod isn't going to affect much. I mean, wasn't that just a rumor?

Majra · Post by **Majra** » Sun Dec 12, 2004 6:29 pm

hmmmm I heard there was jiggling and a little bit of slowness when you get really far out, not sure if it is mod crippling. There are ways around things using innovation and Im sure whatever happens TR will continue.

G.M.K. · Post by **G.M.K.** » Sun Dec 12, 2004 8:47 pm

I forget who made it, but one of the members created a village out where daggerfall would be. There was very little problem and yes stuff does shake, but not very noticably (took me a awhile to notice it).

Eraser · Post by **Eraser** » Sun Dec 12, 2004 9:12 pm

Majra take a prozac, I am just speculating already.

Rediculous, no. I think we could do it if we really wanted to. Entire mods for games have been made in that timeframe with less intuitive editors. The problem we have is people disappearing and work being stagnant. We could have been done with landscaping long ago, probably interiors too and could be exclusively working on npc's and quests already.

After everything I've read, I really think that TES4CS will help get things done faster. I've read every interview and preview I know of and it all sounds like setting everything up will be easier. If TES4 is going to have all of Cyrodiil(I read that they had to build for several miles into surrounding provinces to cover what people could see) which is the largest province, the engine would probably be able to handle the entire world.

Lord_Gallant · Post by **Lord_Gallant** » Sun Dec 12, 2004 9:23 pm

Alright, I just did this to see what all the fuss is about. Here is a simple mod that makes 4 named cells at (-50,0), (-100,0), (-150,0) and (-200,0)
The names are "Fifty", "Hundred", "Hundred Fifty", and "Twohundred". Each has a patch of land with a large static of Molag Bal and a Khajitt.

Results:

At (-50,0)- Just into Skyrim- No visible effect at all.

At (-100,0)- The middle of Syrim- A visible jitter. This only occurs in the animated objects, however, not in any statics. Also, projectiles and magic animations remained unaffected. At this point, I didn't find it bothersome.

At (-150,0)- Just into High Rock- Elevated jitter. Again, only on animated objects and not on any projectiles or magic animations. However, by this point, I did find the jitter a little annoying. It was most noticable in the fingers of your character in first-person mode. Also, since I was using better bodies, the formerly invisible seams of the bodies became obvious due to the vibration of the body parts. It is important to note that there was no effect whatsoever on gameplay. The jitter is such that it might be mistaken for lag, but it doesn't have the adverse effect on gameplay that lag does. In other words, if you can look past the jitter of the character, the game is still fully playable. I personally had a hard time looking past it.

At (-200,0)- Daggerfall vicinity- I saw no difference between the level of jitter here and the jitter at (-150,0).

Colostriph · Post by **Colostriph** » Sun Dec 12, 2004 11:00 pm

I just tried it out. There was hadly any difference for te first two cells. The third was a bit buggy, but nothing I was worried about. The last was a bit buggy too, basically the same, but I only noticed it a bit.

Morden · Post by **Morden** » Mon Dec 13, 2004 8:39 pm

I ran the same sort of test, last spring, and posted it here in the Tavern. I created a town in Highrock, which was the eastern-most cell of Tamriel (maybe not including Summerset Isle..i can't remember).. Anyways, the jitter was like you said... you can notice it on NPCs, particularly where the different bodyparts are joined, but the game was still totally playable. It didn't really bother me that they were shaking a bit. When I get home I'll repost the test as well.

If we create a world, which extends all the way to Highrock, I'd be willing to forgive some jittering

The scope of the world would outweigh this bug.

One thing I would like to know is if the shaking is dependent on a game variable. I've heard that your character's Speed stats or your FPS rate may affect the shaking. Has anyone tested this?

Morden · Post by **Morden** » Tue Dec 14, 2004 7:01 am

Here the test town I made a while ago. It is located in cell 239, West of Morrowind.

The cell is named "High Rock".

Stalker · Post by **Stalker** » Tue Dec 14, 2004 10:24 am

But now please create a village (the copy of Seyda Neen will do) with NPCs and a few running scripts and quests to complete.

Darth_Blade · Post by **Darth_Blade** » Fri Dec 17, 2004 2:39 am

Stalker's got a good point. Besides, chances are in 10 years the average PC just won't be able to run Morrowind. I'm really looking forward to doing Skyrim in TES4CS, and, if we're very lucky, some genius will find a way to convert TES3 cells to TES4. IF we're lucky.

Sniper4 · Post by **Sniper4** » Fri Dec 17, 2004 5:16 am

We don't know enough yet to even think about what we are going to do in the future. This discussion seems to come up over and over again.

Some of my personal ideas and crap:

-If we can find modelers skilled enough to texture, mesh, and animate with the same quality of Oblivion, and we can get past that "barrier" then I say "hell yeah" to building whatever we can of Tamriel in TES4 (maybe finishing off our MW first though, giving us time to get used to Oblivion CS and lore).
-If we are unable to get such high quality models made, then we honestly have no choice but to continue building TR in TES3. It's either that, or we build all of skyrim with Cyrodillic style architecture, land, and plantlife.

Honestly, what else can we do than the above two? It's obvious that if we continue with TES 3, the game will one day be too outdated for our future operating systems. However, we can't go on to TES4 without equally high end models..... all we can do is hope.

Anonymous · Post by **Anonymous** » Fri Dec 17, 2004 5:49 am

I find it odd that so many people think that comps in ten years won't be able to run morrowind. the only way that would happen is if we had another major shift in OS programming, or everyone on the planet suddenly got a mac or linux. Almost every OS now made is backwards compatible. the only reason we can't play games that were made ten years ago is because comparing DOS to windows XP is like comparing a mud hut and the Sistine Chapel. Ten years from now, if anything, morrowind will run so well that you could probably see six or seven cells distant without any resolution loss.

Kothloth · Post by **Kothloth** » Fri Dec 17, 2004 11:03 pm

I think a lot of the difference between TES3 and TES4 models will be in the textures. Texture quality aswell as texture effects. And this is where one of the main problems are, since many the textures in TES3 isn't highres enough to work in TES4. It isn't something that we can simply convert, we would have to find new textures and retexture loads of models. Also, a TES3 to TES4 exporter, no matter how good it is, would still procude sucky land that we would need to improve a lot anyways. I would say to start a province from scratch for TES4, since exporting from TES3 will take just as much time as recreating everything if it's even possible.

Colostriph · Post by **Colostriph** » Fri Dec 17, 2004 11:37 pm

Modeling was my main concern to. I've always wanted a 3D Studio Max like programme, but only for a certain TES. This would make it alot easier and we'd have more modelers. They could make it so that it only worked for a TES, and was in-exportable to other programmes. But, heh, not sure if that would ever happen.

Kothloth · Post by **Kothloth** » Sun Dec 19, 2004 12:35 pm

gmax is something like that. 3dsmax, but stripped of many functions but has enough functions for making models to different games

Colostriph · Post by **Colostriph** » Sun Dec 19, 2004 2:50 pm

What is gmax? I'm interested. Of course, if it costs, it isn't Colo friendly. What functions are striped? Capabilities?

Master of marrowind · Mon Nov 14, 2005 10:06 am

It's been nearly a year already, WOW! How about now?