Blue Elephant's Showcase

[Blue Elephant]

Well... after about a week or so of lurking I've finally decided to come out of hiding! Long story short(er), I bought Morrowind for the PC due to the rising nostalgia in my heart (Old Xbox days). I have Oblivion for the computer as well, and have been modding that for a little while now. But the Oblivion CS and Morrowind CS have some significant distinctions that I'm still getting used to. Anyway, my friend said that if I liked Morrowind I should check out Tamriel Rebuilt. I did, and I absolutely love what I am seeing so far. So I said to myself, "Hey, I love modding Oblivion.. and I love Morrowind... so I should love modding Morrowind too, right?" And that's how I ended up here.

I'm probably losing you by now (sorry), so let me get to the point. I'm working on a Quest showcase, because I love programming and scripting.. and quest writing in general. I would say it's about 70ish% done. But I did feel the need to post something here and now (dont ask why, I don't know either).

I wanted to eventually get promoted for Interior design as well, it will probably end up that I go in opposite order. So, to test my interior skills, I whipped up a little two story Hlaalu house. There is no exterior cell, and the light setting might be off (still not exactly sure what those should be set at), but other than that it should be good to go.

And finally, to wrap up this novel, let me recap. I am making a showcase for Questing. But I have also submitted a Interior Showcase because that is already done. I guess I'll just wait to get promoted for Interiors before I post the quest to minimize confusion (I dont even think I can get reviews for 2 different style showcases at the same time anyway, right?).

Thanks for taking the time to read my ridiculously long post. (:

[Why]

Heya, welcome! I'll take a look at your interior shortly, and if you have any questions regarding scripting or whatever else you need or feel like knowing, just post them here and we'll answer them for you. Good to see someone wanting to take up questing, I'm a quester myself so if I have time I'll probably do a review for that showcase too

[Blue Elephant]

Awesome! Thanks for the speedy reply too haha

[Thrignar Fraxix]

Welcome to the project. We always need interior makers, but we always need questers more. I also started on the X-box back in the day, and it really is quite the upgrade. I look forward to reviewing your showcase myself. (I only check ones with recommendations)

edit: lolninja

[Why]

A quick review:

File: Clean
Northmarker: Yes
Fits exterior: Kinda. It technically fits the exterior quite perfectly. However, it's a manor exterior, so that means the interior should generally be a bit larger than the exterior. At least, that's the way vanilla Morrowind did it. I'm not entirely sure what our take on that is. Anyway, as I said, it fits. Which is good.

General remarks:
There are quite a few things that float. Most obviously being the candle in the bookshelf, but also some things like furniture and crates. Many objects need to be "F"'ed twice in order to touch the surface perfectly. Set your camera zoom and camera pan to low values (file -> preferences) and see if your objects touch the ground perfectly.

Rotation! Many objects are unrotated or anglesnapped. You did a nice job, but try to rotate more and more freely. Objects on de_p furniture often need to be rotated quite diligently to match their surfaces. Also try to rotate the rugs a bit so they don't all seem so orderly laid down.

Style mixing: here at TR we don't want to mix different styles. That means an interior is either de or com (dunmer and "common", imperial, respectively) and only of one quality level (p, rm, r). Most of the items you used are de_p (which is exactly what we like to see for a showcase) but you included a com chest and bed, and silverware. Those items are for com interiors only. There are a couple of exceptions for this, like crates, sacks, barrels and baskets which you can use in de interiors too. As a rule of thumb, only use com items in a de interior if there is no de alternative for them. That means the crates and other storage things are fine, but the chest and bed, candles and silverware need to be replaced with their dunmer equivalent.

Bowls, sacks and similar items sometimes have pointed bottoms. Bleed these into their surfaces a little so they look more natural.

Architecture: there are some weird wooden beams missing in the ceiling near the entrance, you might want to try out a few different architecture pieces there. Mainly the ones near the stairs could be switched, I think. You used two center room pieces while they touch the walls with one corner.

All in all this is a nice interior and I'm sure you can get a promotion once you fix up these errors. Go over each object you placed, see if it matches the set you're using, see if it bleeds and/or floats, fix them and you'll be fine.

Looking forward to your other work!

[Blue Elephant]

Alrighty, finally got a chance to work on this.

+Fixed all the floaters. (Cant believe I missed that candle.)
+Rotated rugs and a bunch of other misc items.
+Replaced silverware with wood and com chest with de_p.
+Bled bowls (Cant believe I missed those either.)

-As for the size of the interior... I can make it bigger if you would like? Just add what... another row or two of cells to the top and bottom floors and fill with more random objects?

-Also, I am having a lot of trouble fixing those ceiling beams. My gridsnap is being stupid and making the new piece I want to put in just a bit higher or lower than the piece I'm trying to connect to. Anyone know a fix for this? Or why it's even doing that in the first place? Am I allowed to manually line them up? (that would suck haha)

Other than that though, this should be mostly good. Uploading again.

Oh and on a side note, Black Ops is fun as hell. Thank you haha.

[Why]

It appears as if though you didn't snap your original architecture to grid. Also you didn't replace the com bed like I asked, and there are still quite a few objects that need further rotating or moving because they're not resting properly on the de_p furniture. Also some of your furniture still needs further lowering to be positioned perfectly..

I'd advise you to wait for a reviewer to take a look at your latest file before posting a new one though, because you'll have to make a new int after three tries.

I think the size of the interior is fine. You did a good job fitting it to the exterior, just keep in mind that different rules may apply to manor exteriors and next time when you see a manor exterior ask if you need to fit the interior like you did now or go with whatever vanilla morrowind did.

edit: to fix your gridsnap problem, drag your mouse so you select all objects in your cells, enable gridsnap, click and hold one of the architecture pieces, and move the entire interior to a proper place in the grid. That should fix your architecture problem, and make individual pieces easier to replace.

edit2: Oh, do you have Tribunal and Bloodmoon? Your file needs to be dependent on those too, if you don't have them you won't be able to work on files from our project in the first place.

[Blue Elephant]

Alright, I'll wait for a full review then.

Also, yeah I have the expansions, I just didn't add them for the showcase.

[Why]

ok, be sure to make your next file dependent on those .esms too then.

[Blue Elephant]

When I make them dependent, I get a ton of warnings.. any way to fix?

[Thrignar Fraxix]

all you can do is add AllowYesToAll=1 to your morrowind.ini file. Those are conflicts between tribunal and bloodmoon.

[Haplo]

all you can do is add AllowYesToAll=1 to your morrowind.ini file. Those are conflicts between tribunal and bloodmoon.

And adding that line will enable you to click "Cancel" once the error messages appear, which will skip them.

[Blue Elephant]

Alright thank you. Is that normal, or...?

Also worked on interior a bit more, but yeah, I'll be waiting for a full review.

[Haplo]

Yes, while tiresome after a while, it is perfectly normal.

[Blue Elephant]

Alright, I'm requesting that my Interior showcase be put on hold due to the fact that I'm now finished with my Quest showcase and would like to focus on that since that is what I'm mainly joining the team for. Nonetheless, if someone still wants to do a full review on my interior, that would be greatly appreciated too.

Anyway- the quest starts in Hla Oad, just ask around there. It's a pretty simple kill quest. I would say this specific one focuses more on my dialogue skills than scripting (got away with only needing one death script for the whole thing, thought I was gonna need more). So I already have an idea for a more scripting heavy quest, I'll start working on that straight away. It's probably good though, because this gives me a bit more time to keep learning more about this language, but I'm picking it up pretty fast (too used to Java since that's what we've been focusing on in school for the past semester haha).

Oh, and one question; Is there a way to make a quest not startable if you're a specific race? This quest is called "Orc Problems" and it would only make sense that the quest giver wouldn't ask an orc to take care of another orc problem.... or would it since they are the same race and maybe she thinks he could reason with him... ahh so many decisions.

Anyway- everything of mine is labeled BE_"name" except for the topics which you find on your own

Sorry for the wall of text.

[Jonaman8]

First of all, welcome to the project! (I already said that via pm, but now in public)

I looked at your quest showcase and tried to write a review (my second review ever and also the second this day), here it is:

Clean: Check
Dependencies: Check, although you or I had an old version of Bloodmoon
Story: Too simple

Well, your quest was good, although it was too simple (same happened at my first try). Things you could improve are:
-Add the possibility to help the orc cleansing the town of corruption.
-Maybe you could place him elsewhere, so you have to "hunt" him. If you arrive at the camp it could be that he left some scamp skin or something, or some daedra standing at his camp. The player will then know to search in the nearby daedric ruin.

Grammatical errors:

-I have heard that the people of Hla Oed are having trouble with an orc.
It should be Hla Oad

You should also use TR naming conventions, they are somewhere at the forums, I only don't know where.

So, you made a good mod, only one spelling error, so I conclude you're a native speaker? Just spice it up a little by adding extra options and you should be alright.

You should probably wait for someone else to come by because I just started reviewing.

Good luck and I'm looking forward to see you getting promoted.

[The Greatness]

Just to add to what Jonaman's said, some more scripts would be good too. Knowledge of scripting is vital and although your short script is fine so more showing off will be needed. Remember to give us a shout if you have any problems .

[Blue Elephant]

Thanks for the review, I'll fix that spelling error. And I really like that idea of hunting the orc down, I might have to use that.

Do you guys think it make sense to expand on this quest or start a new one? I'm not sure if there's a lot of opportunity for scripting here...

EDIT- Meh, screw it. I'll keep expanding this quest and try to add some scripted traps/events/etc. I'll think of something

[Blue Elephant]

Just wanted to let you guys know that I'm still alive. I've had a ton of work to do for school, especially now that finals are coming up pretty fast. I haven't had a lot of time to work on the CS... or do anything fun related for that matter, so yeah, my quest is coming along kinda slow.

I'm writing a new one by the way, I had a really good idea and I'm going to see if I can make it work.... it's going to be hard though. If it works it should be pretty cool though

And I leave with a question: Is it normal to be making a lot of the exteriors/interiors for your quests? Because this idea I have will probably have to have at least some interior/exteriors created... I don't know how detailed I have to make them, if I have to make them detailed at all. Anyway, let me know.

Thanks in advance.

[Haplo]

It is quite uncommon, but not unheard of, that quests require new interiors/exteriors. For the purposes of a quest showcase, any interiors/exteriors created have to be detailed enough so that the quest works. There's no requirement otherwise, so if the quest works properly with a 20-reference interior, don't feel the need to detail it any further. Interiors and exteriors will be created by interior and exterior modders, respectively, as needed for quests.

[Blue Elephant]

Alrighty, thank you. But already I've hit a bit of a snag...

I'd rather not give out too much information, unless I really have to, but an element of my quest is traveling somewhere, and while on your journey, something happens. But I can already see people coc-ing/flying/levitating/etc to get to the spot and the event not happening. I could just run a script to test if they are in range of the area they need to go and then have the event happen when they get in range, but it wouldn't make much sense if you were flying through or coc-ing to the area...

If anyone can think of a fix for this, please let me know. Or for showcase reasons should I just assume that people are going to be running there?

[MSam]

But I can already see people coc-ing/flying/levitating/etc to get to the spot and the event not happening.

For the sake of the showcase, just specify that you want people to walk there. But as you've said, it'd be more practical to have the script trigger once you get within a certain range of a particular location (a la Genda Relvel).

[Blue Elephant]

Re-Uploading my interior because the quest is gonna take some time. Especially since I have absolutely no time to work on it... stupid finals.

Anyway- I believe this needs a full review and I have one more chance to get it right. If anyone in their free time would like to review this I would be most grateful.

Thanks

[SamirA]

OK here goes. I have read the above conversations regarding this interior file and will give you my full review.

TESAME: Clean

Fits Exterior: Yes


Northmarker Set: Yes
Loading Errors: No

Review:
active_de_p_bed_04 is bleeding into the bottom floor I think this is because you replaced it.
bk_ConsolationsOfPrayer matches the surface oddly
bk_darkestdarkness floats
bk_HomiliesOfBlessedAlm bleeds into chair
chest_small_01_gold_25 both float slightly
com_sack_01_ingred bleeds unnaturally into the other sack
furn_de_p_table_01 bleeds into the floor
ingred_rat_meat_01 fits awkward in the bowl
ingred_saltrice_01 fits awkward in the bowl
misc_com_bottle_01 floats slightly it could have been f'd once more
potion_cyro_brandy_01 is floating horribly this could be an error caused by something other than placement. Looking at the rest of this interior it is hard to imagine you missed it.

Comments: This is actually a pretty decent interior. It is slightly bare, but mostly well filled with well rotated items. There are a couple of large flaws that I feel were done in making changes Why called for as they are far different than the other very minor errors you have here. Overall good work. Next time you make a building interior try to remember to check the illegal to sleep here box.

Having said all of this and noting the prior reviews I am willing to send this to TF for a further review to see if he thinks it is good enough to pass. I personally think it shows good skill in rotation and decoration. As long as you note the two large flaws and can fix them I will recommend for promotion.

[Thrignar Fraxix]

sunlight is a bit high, fog too, though not as bad
You should have a railing on the top of the staircase

I didn't find anything else apart from the errors samir mentioned.

Very sorry that this review took so long. I'm also sorry, but I'd like to see an interior with fewer of these errors before I promote you. Since this was your last chance for this file, that means a new interior, however using what you learned here you should have no trouble in creating a new interior that will pass muster on the first try.

[SamirA]

snip
You should have a railing on the top of the staircase
snip

I knew I was neglecting something in there...

Anyway, just make sure you take care when you are placing items and make them match their surfaces properly and you will be able to pass this showcase Blue Elephant. You do a fine job of rotating items.