Tamriel Rebuilt

I mean we can just not call it "plains" and then we can make it whatever we want. Deshaan stands on its own, I think.

I need to clarify, the picture posted was just a selected few rocks and textures I quickly made last night, of the border ridge.

The shape of the area is a bowl, so to say. Rising hills from Lake andaramanandmandamn, steep and uninviting. Then lo and behold, a laaarge bowl shaped area, salty plains (see the cracked earth ground retex) with salt formations and sudden deep crevices, some not wider than a guar's butt, all deadly with toxic stuff in the bottom.

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but this area is considered both arid but also the food basket of Morrowind? Our river map has a couple of river arms starting in this area, running into lake andarnadnardamn. How can we make that seem not weird? Water emerging from underground sources? I plan on having the same type of rivers running here as in map 5 Gargen Huul. A pain to create but awesome in every way.

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but this area is considered both arid but also the food basket of Morrowind?

Yes, the wonder is to be in the apparent contradiction of looking like the most inhospitable hell-hole end of the world, while actually being very economically important to the Dunmer in their bizarre-abide-no-obstacles sort of way.

You do understand that said 'wonder' you say you want isn't really of a visual nature, right? That is problematic, since in a game players always approach the environment visually.

Something that totally looks like an inhospitable hell hole is - as far as the player is concerned - an inhospitable hell hole. Since environments are primarily experienced visually, simply narrating the 'fertile' aspect of Deshaan in dialogue or quests or whatever is not going to be enough. I suspect that if you present the apparent contradiction in that way, it will create confusion rather than wonder.

My two cents.

Then you must create ways to visually represent the contradiction. Perhaps focus on ways that nature, itself, has flourished in the area in addition to the Dunmer.

However, I think if this place is going to be a bread-basket, it's not going to look dangerous and barren. If the land is poisonous, then the plants and animals will certainly have adapted to it and so it will still look completely bountiful and full of life.

I always imagined the dry salts holding tons and tons of minerals/resources for plants to grow on they are properly inundated and the salts dissolve in water. I'd love to see an oasis somewhere, or lush vegetation along the chasm-rivers Nemon described.

I'm a bit puzzled by the bowl thing, I'd still like to hold on to the "broad southern plain which gradually slopes down into the dismal swamps of Black Marsh" thing as described in PGE1, but I suppose the two aren't mutually exclusive.

On rivers, I'm not actually sure if we should have any. Maintaining fertile farms is so much more challenging and exciting without a natural water supply. I suppose a few could run through the plains, but if the plains are properly dry, the rivers certainly shouldn't originate here but come from Black Marsh instead. All in all, maybe it's best to leave out rivers altogether here. Though if we have any, I do agree that you should take the Gargen Huul approach. But again, I'd much rather see Dres slaves carry giant jugs of water from the lake / the sea into this region. Dunmer foolhardiness etc.

I've read what I think is a fan-lore-thingy that described water flowing uphill from Black Marsh onto the plains, which is a silly idea that I like, but it'd probably look mighty stupid. Maybe it's a periodic thing, like a salt-flats-version of El Niño, where the entire place gets flooded with upwards-flowing waters from Black Marsh, leaving a fresh supply of minerals and draining through what usually are dry riverbeds/cracks in the area, into Lake Andaram. That way, we won't actually have to portray it in-game but can mention it in dialog / books. Anyway, just what I was thinking.

I wholly agree with Myzel's point - the fertility of the region has to be demonstrated visually somehow no matter how awesome the arid flats concept is. Again, oasis.

Why wrote:I always imagined the dry salts holding tons and tons of minerals/resources for plants to grow on they are properly inundated and the salts dissolve in water. I'd love to see an oasis somewhere, or lush vegetation along the chasm-rivers Nemon described.

I'm a bit puzzled by the bowl thing, I'd still like to hold on to the "broad southern plain which gradually slopes down into the dismal swamps of Black Marsh" thing as described in PGE1, but I suppose the two aren't mutually exclusive.

On rivers, I'm not actually sure if we should have any. Maintaining fertile farms is so much more challenging and exciting without a natural water supply. I suppose a few could run through the plains, but if the plains are properly dry, the rivers certainly shouldn't originate here but come from Black Marsh instead. All in all, maybe it's best to leave out rivers altogether here. Though if we have any, I do agree that you should take the Gargen Huul approach. But again, I'd much rather see Dres slaves carry giant jugs of water from the lake / the sea into this region. Dunmer foolhardiness etc.

I've read what I think is a fan-lore-thingy that described water flowing uphill from Black Marsh onto the plains, which is a silly idea that I like, but it'd probably look mighty stupid. Maybe it's a periodic thing, like a salt-flats-version of El Niño, where the entire place gets flooded with upwards-flowing waters from Black Marsh, leaving a fresh supply of minerals and draining through what usually are dry riverbeds/cracks in the area, into Lake Andaram. That way, we won't actually have to portray it in-game but can mention it in dialog / books. Anyway, just what I was thinking.

I wholly agree with Myzel's point - the fertility of the region has to be demonstrated visually somehow no matter how awesome the arid flats concept is. Again, oasis.

Yeah, the chasms could be nice with rich flora. And they don't need to be poisonous as I first proposed.

Bowl shape still works with gradual slope into Black Marshes. Remember we have the argon jungle south of this so that's the region forming the border.

Small rivers, okay? Deep crevices with water originating from the deep, moisty underneath the dry salty plains. They won't litter the place so one have to make sure water is provided over long distances.

Lets skip the upward flowing thing, it is nice with a little weird but this is imho too weird. What I need to work with concepts is some salty looking formations, whether they are retextures of vanilla stuff or new items. The former is nice if it's viable, I have myself made some shrubs, rocks and land textures.

Also, there are certain things I just want

Yeah I was just throwing raw thoughts onto the interwebs right there and it's one of those things that's probably best shot down. Your direction seems good. I have nothing against poisonous plants (but I'd rather not script them to actually hurt the player). Maybe the water down in those streams is acidic? That'd be easier to pull off I think.

How would you make the water acidic? Create custom models similar to swamp water or lava and script them to dissolve armor and weapons and damage the player?

I always imagined the Deshaan plains like karst fields in the Balkans - small patches of fertile soil surrounded by mountains (in the case of Deshaan the mountains could be replaced by desert or semiarid terrain). In my opinion, small rivers in deep crevices are a nice concept. To spice things up, there could be deep cenotes here and there, just to make up for the lack of rivers. And now for something completely different: the cenotes could actually be connected to the few rivers by elaborate underground tunnel systems, mostly flooded, with a few bigger caves here and there. So instead of grottos and caves there would be a massive cave system that runs underneath a significant portion of the Deshaan plains.
The cenotes and small rivers would obviously be the focal points of agriculture in the Deshaan plains, and it would explain how the Velothi settlers were able to survive in such a hostile terrain.

As for the "upstream flow": this wouldn't be easy to accomplish, but I think it could still be incorporated into dialogue to explain the fertility of the Deshaan region. There are examples of this phenomenon in real life; the Tonle Sap lake and river system in Southeast Asia, for example.

I love all of the ideas being thrown around here. I'm really psyched for the Deshaan!

An idea came to mind some time ago. I'm no artist and concept art is hardly needed for this concept, but it dawned on me that the Dres might use Argonian skin in the same way guar skin is used on Vvardenfell. If there will be tigerstriped guar for the Deshaan a simple tigerstriped guar retexture for the guarskin statics would also fit nicely!

Edit: Oops, forgot to add a top and bottom bar on the drawing. It was just a three-minute sketch anyway.

I was thinking about rivers again. This 'upwards' flowing water strikes me as weird and, like Nemon says, not weird in the good way.

However, I do like the idea of water at the bottom of chasms. I ended up with the same idea yesterday evening before reading Nemon's last post. My vision is something like this: surface water in the Deshaan is sparse and when it exists at all, brackish and briny. Other 'liquid' surface features are often slightly caustic, alkaline pools that provide a habitat for certain extremophile plants, but that don't allow large scale agriculture.

The Deshaan does have flowing water, however, but it's deep underground/under the salt crust and only surfaces in certain locations in dangerous, steep chasms. The Dres use such chasms (or artificial shafts if the course of the water can be predicted) to lift a steady supply of water to the surface. Descending into the crevices in search of water is dangerous work, because they are often unstable.

The rivers and chasms do follow the pattern of a river, even if that is not immediately apparent on the surface. This can tie into Why (or was it someone else?)'s wish for a larger cave system that connected various places. Under the surface, the Deshaan rivers can have hewn out jagged, winding passages. Abandoned or dried-up chasms are sometimes used as bandit hideouts or provide shelter to runaway slaves.

Myzel is of the opinion that the main characteristics of the Deshaan cannot be expressed in a visual way. Coming from a Head of Concept Art, I find this a bizarre statement, even more so when this -in my opinion quite successful- thread has already delivered good visual concepts for both the inhospitable nature of the Deshaan and its paradoxical agricultural exploitation. If we don't think we can do the Deshaan justice visually, why are we having this thread in the first place?

That said, the 'wonderful' paradox is of course largely in the contrast between the area's natural state and all the adjustments the Dres have done to make it into a goldmine. The former is largely expressed through landscaping, land textures, static objects, flora and fauna. The latter is the domain of furniture, clutter, canals, waterworks, wheels, farms, crops... It would be silly to make the Deshaan entirely one or the other, since that would be both more boring and a lost chance at expressing something far cooler.

To illustrate the ideas some more, I've quickly doodled up some pictures. Ignore the smudgy lines and blithe disregard for perspective. I had to draw this with a bad writing pencil.

[url=http://www.majhost.com/gallery/Vahiku/stuff/Concepts/deshaan_plan.jpg]Deshaan top view[/url]
Schematic overview of what I described above.

[url=http://www.majhost.com/gallery/Vahiku/stuff/Concepts/deshaan_farm.jpg]Salt pan farm[/url]
You get the idea, not much to see here.

[url=http://www.majhost.com/gallery/Vahiku/stuff/Concepts/deshaan_saltcontainer.jpg]Salt container[/url]
Container with dispenser for salt, to keep field salinity constant. Agricultural accoutrements like this would help a lot in giving some substance to Dres agriculture. Ideally it should be alien agriculture, of course (e.g. throwing salts on your crops is generally not a good idea).

[url=http://www.majhost.com/gallery/Vahiku/stuff/Concepts/deshaan_bandits.jpg]Bandit lairs[/url]
Also described above.

[url=http://www.majhost.com/gallery/Vahiku/stuff/Concepts/deshaan_waterlifting.jpg]Water lifting mechanism[/url]
Needs to be more Dunmer-like in style. This is just to show the idea. Smaller heights should probably be covered with the wonderful saaqiyah wheels Roerich posted, because their design is indeed too awesome not to use.

I do like the idea of crevices and an underground cave / river system.

I also like all the pictures you've done, Adan.

Wouldn't it be great if the whole irrigation system of the Dres relied on a few artificial water pools used as reservoirs?
(Of course those pools must be fed by canals/waterlifting devices/etc)

The whole politics/influence/wealth system of that area could be expressed by having access to more pools or controlling the access to one or more pools or having salt rice fields in close vicinity to the pools and so on.

It'd open up so many possible quest ideas...

I had a little idea this morning for a Dres water purifier that would take the place of a well in a Deshaan village. It is essentially a solar still:

[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_still[/url]

There would be a deposit for salt water that would be filled daily. The profession of "well keeper" or... "solar-still-keeper" would be an honourable title bestowed upon the most respected elder of the village. It's sort of a cultural tradition derived from the importance of fresh water in the region.... Or, alternatively, it could be run by an Argonian slave

Here's a little sketch I made:

[url]http://img40.imageshack.us/img40/7017/mobileuploads002.jpg[/url]

It's a basic pyramid shape, with a rectangular mud/clay salt water deposit, then with a structure supported by four pipes made of [insert weird Dunmeri material] that run along the corners. Between the pipes are stretched the "plastic sheets", which in this case are a bunch of intertwined insect wings. At the top of the structure there is a metal platform to be hit with a hammer to loosen the droplets left over after the deposit has dried out.

So basically the water evaporates from the salt water deposit from the sun's heat passing through the transparent wings, it then condenses on the wings, and naturally tend to flow with gravity along the veins of the insect wings towards the pipes at the corners, and then the fresh water flows down into a closed deposit on the floor, at each corner.

These fresh water deposit's could be owned by specific families, or some of the villagers would have to pay a tax to the local Dres noble for it's use. (Could probably make for some quests involving the distribution of fresh water..)

Nice ideas Adanorcil!

On rivers:
Perhaps you should have trees and larger plants follow the underground rivers. This could add a bit of dialogue wherein some advice given to the player would be that the clever traveler knows to follow the trees if he wants some cold and clean water. Also, some of the rivers could be used as roads between cities if they go on for long enough. A city could even be build into the caves of an underground river, with access to the plantation fields above ground.

On plants:
There are more examples of Halophyte higher plants (salt tolerant) than Halophile ones on wikipedia. I'm not suggesting that you make them Halophyte in-game, stick with Halophile, but you could use them for inspiration for their looks: [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halophyte[/url]

Date Palms and Barley are known as moderately Halphytic plants. By no means would you feed them salt; but I figure not all the crops would be Halophiles, would they?

Here are some screens of the Deshaan area that I set up to make a Dres land holding. The green rocks are leftover from what it was before as I did not want to do them all over again...yet. There is a model I used as a "waterhouse"/tower/resevoir. It was originally a model to be a smelter for use in Oblivion but I converted it/retextured it for Dres/water. Found it at TESnexus. Not sure who made it at the moment. Various modder made and my resources used all around.

Wow, where'd you pull all these resources from? Impressive. I'm not too keen on the idea of Baobab trees for the area but these are the sort of hills I can get behind - though I'd put the fertile stuff in the lower parts and the dryer stuff on top. Remind me where I can find your resources - they look like things we can use!

Wow, that's an impressive amount of work for a proof-of-concept. Do you think you could take a picture of the scene from deshaan4.jpg in-game? It would look way better with proper lighting, terrain rendering and all that.

I believe Vurt did some of those models for his own proof-of-concept a few years ago. Where did you manage to pull them from?

We sort of need to start allocating resources for this area, I think. Lots of good stuff has already been made like those salt formations and I really love some of the mushrooms https://dl.dropbox.com/u/75781212/mushroom1.JPG https://dl.dropbox.com/u/75781212/mushroom2.JPG

I've been trying to find vurt's stuff earlier in the thread but it seems those images have disappeared, and the links in his showcase thread aren't working either.

Ashtaar, could you post a .zip (or .rar, or whatever really) with those models you used, just to make sure we don't lose/forget them?

Well, I managed to dl Vurt's stuff some time ago and the other stuff is from various places and just some retextures and mesh editing by me. I will post some in-game screens sometime soon and try to gather together Vurt's resources also. Someone else might have them as well? As for the texturing of the landscape I figured if it's very "salty" then the rain would wash the salt into the lower areas leaving the higher areas able to be "grassier"/greener and strange flora would spring up in the dry/salt lands. Sort of a reverse of things. Anyway, here is another screen of a resource I like. Lamp fungus. Not necessarily in the Deshaan but maybe in a more jungle like area.

Can we decide on a color-scheme? This looks all very plastic with all the colors. Nice getting something together to show what we have.

Awesome! I absolutely love the little water resevoir.

Now there are two new light types. This fungus one, and the worm/larva ones.

Mwgek wrote:Can we decide on a color-scheme? This looks all very plastic with all the colors. Nice getting something together to show what we have.

A long time ago, it was decided there would pale colors. Pale brown, pale white,...

This thread has nice sreens!

Mwgek wrote:Can we decide on a color-scheme? This looks all very plastic with all the colors. Nice getting something together to show what we have.

If stuff matches this: http://i.imgur.com/0nhIH.jpg
...that makes me happy.

That fungus lamp color looks a bit too artificial and saturated. Can some definition be added around the edges of the light source?

Salt Plains: [url]http://www.forumseyahat.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/salt-plains.jpg[/url]

That's pretty awesome.

Vurt's tree/plant meshes from his Deshaan concepts.

sorry for the bad quality, it's only a rough sketch of this idea I had

so, this tree extracts the salt from the water and it crystalizes in crystals of various sizes which grow outward through the bark

the form and foliage could end up more alien than in this sketch

I know this thread is old, and that perhaps Deshaan Plains is already complete, but while waiting to see what happens with my showcase thread, I got excited and just started doing stuff for Deshaan Plains. The plains look a little too big haha, but I could do new concepts for the plains if need be.

You can see higher res of the image here:
Daytime:
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-J8sh ... ain_TR.jpg

Nighttime:
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-O0QC ... ght_TR.jpg

Wow, I love it.

I think we could definitely use some more concepts for this area, even though Nemon has quite some nice ideas for it already. Wouldn't hurt to talk with him about them!

Wow seancruz! I'm very impressed!

That is amazing, and when condensed into a Morrowind-sized view, I think it would offer a view quite unlike anything we've seen yet. I'm excited for this region, and for more of your art as well!

I also really like the look of your dres buildings, particularly the lighting. Dreadful from the point of view of slaves, I'd imagine, yet cultural and refined by Dunmer standards.

Long time, no write. Stuff happened, and I currently don't have the drive to become active again with TR, but I might sprinkle a few concepts here and there or somesuch.

Anyway, that being the case, I'm rather out of the loop. I realize that this is an old thread, and that Concept Art is more or less slumbering, but I felt like dropping a not-quite-concept and this seemed like the best place. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Basically, it is a fishing ship I cobbled together with -- I think -- 344 objects which I think would look good alongside the Dres tileset without retexturing and could add some of that Dunmeri flavour, along with some variety, to some of TR's ports.

[url=http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/266/dresshipfar.jpg/][img]http://imageshack.us/a/img266/5738/dresshipfar.th.jpg[/img][/url][url=http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/593/dresshiptop.jpg/][img]http://imageshack.us/a/img593/8633/dresshiptop.th.jpg[/img][/url][url=http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/209/dresshipside.jpg/][img]http://imageshack.us/a/img209/5209/dresshipside.th.jpg[/img][/url][url=http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/690/dresshipstairwell.jpg/][img]http://imageshack.us/a/img690/9026/dresshipstairwell.th.jpg[/img][/url][url=http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/526/dresshipbelowdecks.jpg/][img]http://imageshack.us/a/img526/1330/dresshipbelowdecks.th.jpg[/img][/url]

The reason I call this a concept is, first of all, because it's a little unpolished with a casper here and a bleeder there, nothing I couldn't fix; and second of all because a modeller could, without -- I think -- too much trouble simplify the ship into something that does not require hundreds of objects, an excessive number of polygons and which can be conveniently rotated. If, of course, there is need or interest or both.

For a more in-depth description, it is a smallish chitin (siltstrider shell) ship that can hold four hammocks and, probably, two or so slaves in the storage with the goods. It is light compared to a (purely) wooden ship and has a low waterline, meaning that it can traverse shallow waters but would be tossed about to bits by a storm. I kept the upper hold in the exterior while the lower hold -- which is below the waterline -- might not get an interior; the trap doors in the screenshots could just be copious containers.

The inspiration for it, along with the fact that the siltstrider shell basically looks like an up-turned ship, is this line from the Wolfqueen v4 about a ship from Pyandonea:
"[...] it looked less than exotic. Insectoid, certainly, with its membranous sails and rugged chitin hull, but she had seen similar if not identical seacraft in Morrowind."

By the way, is there a place where I could post ideas for Dres modulars and the like? I have some ideas for more rural villages.

That's a very creative use of statics, Gnomey. I really like the overall look of the boat and how you tied it into something that was mentioned in an in-game book. Dunmer-style ships would certainly add an unique Morrowind flavor to many of our ports. Of course, if we used your design, it would have to be compiled into one model to make it easier to move and rotate into place.

I particularity like the circular tarp area you created at the bow and overall curved look of the design. Recycling dead siltstriders to make boats also sounds like something the Dunmer would totally do. With this idea in mind, the fact that the boat looks like an upside down siltstrider should be seen as a plus rather than a minus, at least in my opinion.

Could be a replacement for River Striders, which I think some people were considering removing?

As well as a boat in other places, not just Telvannis.

Nah, I think the River Striders should definitely stay, if only to give Telvanni lands a mode of transportation that highlights their weirdness. With that said, our River Strider model could use some touch ups. Mostly, I want the bright purple shell texture replaced with something a little more muted.

[quote="Gnomey"][/quote]This thing is cool.
I'm not the most experienced modeller, but I gave it a shot. It's a little different and I probably overlooked a few things but anyway...