Removing Indoril parts of Othrensis

Yeti · Post by **Yeti** » Tue Feb 25, 2014 6:47 pm

EDIT: It has been agreed upon that the Mournhold parts of Othrensis will be removed, and that the settlement will remain as a modest Velothi village.

Swiftoak Woodwarrior and I have been talking, and we both agree that Othrensis needs a comprehensive review of its purpose in the mod. Neither of us is satisfied with its current use of mixed architecture, finding it ineffective and illogical. Half-this-half-that towns are a bad idea in general. We need only look at Helnim for an example of one failing epically. It has also made coming up with a compelling identity for Othrensis immensely difficult. I can personally attest to this from my extensive work on the city's preliminary [url=http://tamriel-rebuilt.org/old_forum/viewtopic.php?t=24221]NPC planning[/url].

There is simply no satisfying in-universe explanation for why this town should contain two architecture styles. The Indoril colonizing an older Velothi settlement makes no sense, and my attempts to justify it in the thread linked above come across as fanfiction. Swiftoak and I also think having a settlement of this size only a few cells away from Roa Dyr and Almas Thirr is superfluous to the 10th degree.

At the very least, we both agree that the Indoril half of the city needs to go. I'd like to see the town kept as a standalone Velothi religious hamlet, with some modest farming going on where the Indoril part of the city now stands. This would help further drive home the Indoril approach to land management, with villagers working on communal land under the watch of the nobility. We could also always use more purely Velothi settlements on the mainland, in my opinion.

Everyone is free to chime in on this, but I'd particularly like it if all Othrensis-Thirr Section Leaders commented on this issue. I personally don't see it as a controversial alteration to make, seeing as it probably lessens our workload in this area, if anything else. Othrensis's Mournhold interiors could also possibly be re-worked for Almalexia, if anyone is concerned about wasting work.

Post by **rot** » Tue Feb 25, 2014 7:04 pm

Agree that Othrensis is too big, and that the Indoril half is both part of that problem and hard to justify.

Post by **Swiftoak** » Tue Feb 25, 2014 7:08 pm

Agreed with at least killing the HI parts. Be sure to consult the Master Plan though, particularly the parts regarding settlements.

This is my opinion, that if Othrensis should exist, it should be at most a Tier IV settlement. Adan was working on some guidelines regarding settlement planningEven the Velothi parts would probably need to be trimmed down, the town compacted. One cell at most.

I think some other exterior changes should accompany this (changing the flow of the river, etc to make sense according to geography.) I imagine Othrensis would be the source of the River Orethan, which could make it a site of minor significance. I will discuss this at another place/time.

Yeti · Post by **Yeti** » Tue Feb 25, 2014 7:22 pm

Swiftoak Woodwarrior wrote:This is my opinion, that if Othrensis should exist, it should be at most a Tier IV settlement. Adan was working on some guidelines regarding settlement planningEven the Velothi parts would probably need to be trimmed down, the town compacted. One cell at most.

The Velothi part of Othrensis is already contained in a single cell, but I agree that it could stand to lose a few houses. I'm also perfectly fine with making it a Tier IV settlement.

Swiftoak Woodwarrior wrote:I think some other exterior changes should accompany this (changing the flow of the river, etc to make sense according to geography.) I imagine Othrensis would be the source of the River Orethan, which could make it a site of minor significance. I will discuss this at another place/time.

I agree on all counts.

Hells · Post by **Hells** » Tue Feb 25, 2014 7:29 pm

I know I'm not an "Othrensis-Thirr Section Leader" (:P), but I would like to throw my 0.02.

How about moving the Indoril part of Othrensis somewhere further south, near the Deshaan border and the Dres - and repurpose it as a city that focuses on doing business (or something) with them? Something like a "gateway" to the Indoril lands (nothing big similiar to Ayemar and the Telvannis). Right now, I believe, the first Indoril city north of Deshaan is Almalexia, so...

Nomadic1 · Post by **Nomadic1** » Tue Feb 25, 2014 8:11 pm

At the moment Alt Orethan is bare of interiors and largely uninhabited outside the cities. How about trying to repurpose those interiors unneeded for Othrensis to populate the AO?

sasquatch · Post by **sasquatch** » Tue Feb 25, 2014 8:46 pm

Im pretty shocked to see the extent to which things are about to be redone. As such, I want to go on record again to say that I do not think waiting 2 or 3 years to say "hey that doesn't look right" is a practical or ethical way of proceeding with development on this mod esp when hundreds of hours of volunteer labor are involved. I think this all shows a huge lack of communication and planning.

gro-Dhal · Post by **gro-Dhal** » Tue Feb 25, 2014 9:12 pm

sasquatch wrote:Im pretty shocked to see the extent to which things are about to be redone. As such, I want to go on record again to say that I do not think waiting 2 or 3 years to say "hey that doesn't look right" is a practical or ethical way of proceeding with development on this mod esp when hundreds of hours of volunteer labor are involved. I think this all shows a huge lack of communication and planning.

Yes it does. You've joined at a transitional period for the project when we're partway through tightening our processes and improving our advanced planning. Most of the areas under discussion at the moment haven't been subject to widespread scrutiny until now. Othrensis and other areas currently 'active' are in the pipeline for our next release, so any changes made to them over the coming months will be the last revisions for the time being.

sasquatch · Post by **sasquatch** » Tue Feb 25, 2014 11:28 pm

I'm afraid that most of the "tightening of processes and planning" will only be a continuation of past mistakes on this project and may only stunt creativity and shutdown new ideas until the core problems at TR have been dealt with. This would mean valuing contributors and all contributions, ideas/work, and more in depth reviewing by peers and leadership during and at the end of the production of all content. Lore people need to weigh in on interiors and exterior etc. Any masterplan needs to be a guide and asset to developers rather than a way to shutdown discussions and innovative ideas which is what I fear this possible reorganizational facelift is moving towards. My apologies in advance if this is misplaced as I am unsure where else to add such comments.

Thrignar Fraxix · Post by **Thrignar Fraxix** » Tue Feb 25, 2014 11:49 pm

I feel like if you listed all of the issues in a thread specifically designed to discuss them, preferably made in Internal discussion, people would be better able to respond to them, talk about them, and notice them, while discussion threads for planning can remain on topic.

Post by **Gnomey** » Wed Feb 26, 2014 2:19 am

First of all I would like to mention the fact that, at the time in which Morrowind is set, Indoril lands are probably the most densely populated in the province. Far more densely populated than Vvardenfell, which was only recently reopened for settlement. I don't think it's really a problem for the Indoril to have a lot of big cities.
That being said, in this particular case I think Othrensis would do well as a smaller settlement. Mixed-style villages tend to look moddy and unnatural, and despite some effort to make it work for Othrensis I do not think this settlement has managed to avoid that trend.
I'm for cutting out the Mournhold half of the city and replacing it with farms, shrinking the Velothi half a little and making some additional exterior changes to lend the area greater geographic credibility.

I would like to discuss the more general topic of House Indoril settlement planning, perhaps including the question of where to put Othrensis' Mournhold interiors, in future, though, perhaps on the basis of Adanorcil's guidelines.

Yeti · Post by **Yeti** » Wed Feb 26, 2014 3:11 am

Thank you to everyone who has responded in the thread so far. Sasquatch, I believe you raise some good points, especially in regards to not wasting work produced by talented volunteer modders. However, TF is right to say that your concerns could be better addressed in a separate thread.

In the meantime, do you have any particular arguments on why you think we should keep Othrensis the way it is? I'd prefer everyone to voice their opinions on the issue sooner rather than latter, so that we can come to a speedy conclusion. This is extremely high priority stuff we're dealing with here.

sasquatch · Post by **sasquatch** » Wed Feb 26, 2014 6:48 am

I looked at the area and must agree it needs to be reworked. The combination is strange visually and the organization of the city into two fully segregated architecture types and cultures doesn't make sense unless there is a well defined reason for it. Hopefully any interiors can be salvaged and better planning and communication can prevent this in the future.

Yeti · Post by **Yeti** » Wed Feb 26, 2014 4:51 pm

Hells wrote: How about moving the Indoril part of Othrensis somewhere further south, near the Deshaan border and the Dres - and repurpose it as a city that focuses on doing business (or something) with them? Something like a "gateway" to the Indoril lands (nothing big similiar to Ayemar and the Telvannis). Right now, I believe, the first Indoril city north of Deshaan is Almalexia, so...

Currently, we do have plans for an Indoril city south of Almalexia, last time I checked. In fact, we might re-use an area cut from the current version of Almalexia as the basis of its design: the "Kowloon" neighborhood, for those who don't remember.

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Even though it seems like we have something of a consensus on this already, I'd like for more people to weigh in before we pick out someone to handle the actual exterior work. What geographic changes should be made to make the area more believable? Do we want to make some of the Mournhold interiors from Othrensis standalone manors in the surrounding wilderness?

Theo · Post by **Theo** » Wed Feb 26, 2014 6:34 pm

I agree with removal of the Indoril parts completely. The interesting feature of the town is its location on a cliff and the Indoril part is completely superflous.

To make the are more belieavable, however, this cliff should not be a random landscape feature in otherwise flat region. I would say implement more cliffs of the same set with more levels of elevation in the area to create small canyons and passes with streams.

This cliff set used here is very versatile, offers a lot of potential, fits with the AI landscape nicely and is generally quite underused throughout TR landscape.

Using it more extensively here would make this location look quite unique and intricate while still seeing geographically related to TRV at the same time.

It also hes meshes for waterfall and caves and could be used to create a lush area full of little springs, streeams waterfalls, ponds and tributaries to the river.

You may see how I tried to use this set in 5-10, for inspiration. Gnomey is currently working on this claim, so he probably knows what I intended to achieve.

Yeti · Post by **Yeti** » Thu Feb 27, 2014 5:08 am

I'm going to go ahead and lock this thread, seeing as how its purpose --deciding on whether Othrensis's Mournhold buildings should stay or go-- seems to have been achieved. For further discussion on desirable alterations to the landscape surrounding the now entirely Velothi village of Othrensis, please see [url=http://tamriel-rebuilt.org/old_forum/viewtopic.php?p=320689#320689]this thread[/url] in the Master Planning section.