Markarth (Sky_xRe_Mk) [berry]

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worsas
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Post by worsas »

It's difficult to judge based solely on the screenshots. I think that we should avoid overly intended terrain features, even if they are impressive on players level. But one would have to see the actual file to judge it better.

Those screenshots feel very rich and detailled. I hope there aren't too big performance issues, though. When I tested it last time, the fps dropped significantly.

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Post by roerich »

I have tried to implement the changes.

The fps drops with me as well, but it helps when I delete more lights. I can always trim the clutter a bit.

How would you feel if I started the Falkirstad road in the westernmost part of the claim? I'd like it to curl along the mountain. If we wanted a few lesser mountainous/rocky formations to complement Mt. Snowhawk, some of them could be placed as on my map here, creating quite a large nature area with the Falkar Foothills theme seen in the foot of Mt. Snowhawk.

Image

Here's a file. It's a bit messy and I haven't renamed all the custom objects yet. But there's loads of changes to check out!
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Post by Luxray »

The area around the CotV now looks much improved. Good stuff! I haven't tested this file ingame yet, but it would surely lag less than Karthwasten.
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Post by worsas »

I think it would be great, if you did initial work on the areas you marked on the map, but they should be worked on more in detail in their respective claims. So basically that you would stretch out towards those cells to do preparation work in whatever amount of detail you wish to ensure that the overall picture will fit in the end. But for the sake of orientation it would be better to stick to the current claim borders otherwise.

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Post by roerich »

Just to be clear, I'm not proposing any claim border changes. My suggestion is simply starting work on the Falkirstad road within my claim border, and a proposal of the road network in this area. :-)
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Post by worsas »

roerich wrote:Just to be clear, I'm not proposing any claim border changes. My suggestion is simply starting work on the Falkirstad road within my claim border, and a proposal of the road network in this area. :-)
In that case I'm 100% behind you anyway. The file looks great to me, btw. I haven't checked ingame yet but luxray is probably right about saying that it's not going to be any worse than karthwasten, performance-wise.

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Post by roerich »

Good to hear.

Here's a bunch screenshots of some of the changes
[spoiler2]The changed area behind CotV:
ImageImage

The manor of Thane Heigyl, a loyal vassal of King Barda and very high in command within the walls of Markarth Side. The task of public execution of criminals is maintained by the household of Heigyl. The practice of being the king's executioner is very honourable among traditional Nords.
ImageImage

The busy Markarth docks, and the local seedy tavern.
ImageImage

Some looks along the western bend of the river Karth. A dried out tributary stream, and a few Horkers basking in the sun on a sandy bank.
ImageImageImage

A large (and largely unfinished) farmstead on the southern end of the Markarth pensinsula. An impoverished Reachman mother and daughter work on the farm. Herbs and produce from the garden are sold on the Markarth market.
ImageImageImage

A merchant in Markarth Side, importing wares directly from Haafingar (and thus beyond)
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Scenes from the market. The sides are covered with fabric.
ImageImageImage
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View on Markarth Side from Tsunholm, a sacred duel island since the dawn of time.
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The ancient and overgrown Angrbode Sanctuary is overlooking the Falkirstad road on top of a rocky hill.
ImageImageImage

First steps toward the Falkirstad road, with some lovely cell border errors.
Image[/spoiler2]
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Post by berry »

Awesome teasers. :) It's damn impressive how well-thought everything you make is.

I haven't checked the file that thouroughly, but I especially like how you congregated the services in the newest iteration of the city. It creates great atmosphere and will be really handy to the players too.

I'm in love with the marketplace area overall. The fence basing on pracitce mats is cool, but it needs inviso walls to get a collision. There is also a misc_com_tankard_01 floating behind one of the mats.

I dig the changes you did to the Elfstone Keep (I can see now what the prince means about it, in Karthwasten dialogues file) and the CoV as well. About the latter, my only complaint would be how the Diamond within Talos statue is hardly spottable now. I'm wondering, how about putting a nord sconce in that hole (the way that only the wax part is visible)? Or putting there something like In_icesheet, illuminated with a bright light bulb? Dunno, really. On the other hand, it would be easy to get this overdone too.

edit: quick proof of concept illustration; icesheet with "red 256" light:

Image

Great work with the city altogether, Roerich. You are on fire. :geek:

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Post by worsas »

the vertex shading around the roads is a bit too strong at the moment.

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Post by roerich »

Update.

Started the final detailing process on parts of the city and made a few minor adjustments as usual.

I'm having a hard time making the non-city landscape as well made as the surrounding claims. I'll give it a go, but perhaps berry or worsas would help me give it some final touches, securing that we have a coherent quality in our exteriors.

[spoiler2]ImageImageImageImageImageImage
Image
Detailing

ImageImage
A few overview shots

ImageImageImageImageImageImage
Image
Elfstone Keep with a new courtyard[/spoiler2]
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Post by worsas »

if you feel that you are bogging down with wilderness detailling, I'd say just drop the file and ask one of us two to handle it.

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Post by berry »

I'm getting an error loading Altmer floor land texture. It's path in bsa points to main texture folder, not Sky subfolder, I think.

I'll try to provide more constructive feedback soon. Telling at first glance though, I so approve the makeshifting around the keep. Direnni set utilised at it's finest. :) Yay for another escape tunnel!

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Post by roerich »

Thanks for the feedback thus far. Yes, I know about the texture. The CS said the filename was too long, so I renamed it and put it in the main folder I think.

I will let you know then when I'm ready to pass it on.
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Post by Yeti »

Lovely work as always, roerich. I don't know (and don't want to think about) where we'd be without you.

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Post by roerich »

Thanks for the encouragement!
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Post by berry »

I gave this an in-game run, and there's literally not a single thing to pick on here. Great job, I support that concept of the city and yours execution of it wholeheartedly. :)

I wrote down all quirks and error I noticed, though I suppose you are aware of/have taken care of most of them already:
  • furn_de_rope_07 sticking out of guildhouse in -101, 20
  • floating chimney of guildhouse building
  • there are still some bleeders and alike in garden in -102, 20
  • bleeding dirt grass past Olav's stand, behind the wall. There' a sharp landscape there that could use smoothing
  • practice mats creating the market wall should be made colliding with inviso walls
  • despite how cool the makeshifting around the marketplace is, I still think some of these merchants (especially Jette - with her way blocked by a bench, but Olav and Imperial Cult trader) are too much stuck now in their stalls
  • floating objects, including 01_03 grass, in -101, 20, by the armorer, as you're going to the upper quarter
  • caspering 04_006 rock in the cave passage by the mystic's cave
  • floating grass in small forest in -102, 21, by the docks, but you're probably leaving this for us to take care of
  • Sky_Terrain_MT_04_cliff_02 in -104,19 is caspering through a boulder above. There are more other oddities in this part of wilderness too
I can take care of the wilderness here, if not fully (that's not a small area after all I think) then to some extent at least, but not before 01.09. Worsas, if you feel like it, you might start the work here and I'll be able to take it over then.

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Post by roerich »

Thanks for the feedback and error finding, Berry. I agree that the stalls should be altered a bit, I'll see what I can do. There's still some work to do before I hand it over, but you're very welcome to take it then. It probably won't be until late September.
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Post by roerich »

Dropping this.

Here's a patched version. Nothing new otherwise.
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Post by berry »

May I grab this for finishing the wilderness part?

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Post by roerich »

You most certainly may! (It's what I hoped for when dropping this)

Welcome back!
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Post by berry »

Yeah, I thought this might be a fun job for me right away the moment you dropped it :) I've been enjoying it a lot so far.

Here goes the first update with a crude changelog (in random order):

- redesigned the Haafinheim forest's borders for less abrupt transistion
- added some places of interest and eye catchers, especially east of the city
- scrubbed Cascabell Hall
- slightly altered the cliffs to be more dependent on cliff/mountain meshes and the landscape, rather than huge
- fixed some floaters etc in the city
- equiped some of the dummy npcs with names as well as recently added faces/hairs when appropriate
- added some more dummy npcs myself
- added sounds to the placeholder Markarth region
- added more horker beaches
- added some more bottomweed canyons
- filled Markarth Bay with coastal ice creeks
- adjusted entrances to the waterside grottos to be more noticeable
- added a lighthouse between Tsunholm and the docks. I wasn't sure if Markarth needed a lighthouse in the first place, but then this cool rock occured when I was covering the canyon and I decided to play along with the idea. Seyda Neen got one, after all, and not only it's much younger (if we discard ESO:Morrowind crap take on lore, that is) and smaller than Markarth Side, but also the Inner Sea in TES 3 scale isn't wider than Markarth Bay, while the latter contains a plethora of tricky rocks, not to mention much more severe weather condition. Anyway, that's just my reasoning. I'm rather happy with how the lighthouse turned out, but I wouldn't necessarily weep over it.

Oh, and disregard the -106, 19 cell. I have no idea what the hell transpired :D I'll clean the file and grab that cell from roerich's file; haven't done any work on it myself yet.

As always, welcoming feedback and suggestions. Pretty much everything is still WIP here.
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roerich
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Post by roerich »

This is looking good! It's great to see some work on this after so much time, and this should really just be finished off finally.

Initial thoughts while looking through this:

- Wayside shrine in -101,18 - about 95% of those lights needs to go. Ideally replaced with a travel lantern, as this region sees rain and snow, and it looks weird having rain and a free standing candle. I also think the number of offerings is a bit much, sometimes less is more with these types of locations.
- The forest transition has become much better!
- The road which the shrine makes me a bit unhappy, as it would now need the wall set to extend all the way to the Direnni ruin in order to protect the city. This was something I tried to avoid, as mixing the castle set and the Direnni set looks hideous.
- All non-unique creatures should be replaced with levelled list variants. I know I've done the same. This is properly done in the npc'ing stage. Also, the number of horkers should be toned down a bit. But that will be fixed in a later stage either way.
- What happened to all the grass? Is it in a seperate file? A lot of grass meshes I've placed are gone. Could be an old fault at my end.
- the "underground" passage dwelling in -101,20 should be scrapped. That whole tunnel should just be rock. I tried something and it didn't work, so please remove this for me.
- I don't care much for the lighthouse, sorry. I think the inner sea is implied ingame to be bigger than what makes sense with maps (or TR). IMO it's disrupting the scenery a bit, and if we add a lighthouse it shouldn't be the retextured vanilla version.
- We shouldn't use Lamias at all here (T_Glb_Cre_Lami_01). Perhaps we could have some in the ocean, but not here in a lake.
- I'd remove the T_Sky_TerrRockRE_RockArc_05 in -100,20. Generally I'm not too fond of these arch rock types as they remind me of a different type of landscape than Skyrim. I think they are fitting in West Gash, but not as free standing rocks here. I think they are best used in connection with other rock statics, like creating bridges or exterior cave entrances
-The light green area in the southeast I've actually pictured (and I think we might have discussed?) to be a seasonally flooded lowlands. Which might explain why there's no settlements or farms here, but that it could be used for grazing cattle. I like the shrine in this area (same point about candles), but perhaps ruins here should be added at the highest points? Also, feel free to add a few shallow pools here to add to this. Flooded barrow could work here, it's looking nice

As said, good work on this. There's a lot of things about this claim that I'm unhappy about on my end, so that's hardly your fault. Sometimes I want copy the city to an interior cell and start all over, but I think that would give worsas a heart attack. Also, I just want to get on with different cities. Having the landscape fixed and putting it in relation to the surroundings might help on how I view it.
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Post by worsas »

First off, it's absolutely epic. I wonder if we are ever going to outmatch this piece of exterior work in future.

The nord ruins you added are all gorgeous.

What's the reasoning behind changing tsunholm? The previous setup with the barrow objects was far more impressive-looking than the current stone ring. Or was that done by roerich already?

What is the plan with the diagonal river in the eastern part of the claim. Our plan was to remove it entirely. Do you plan to keep some of it for eye-candy - reasons now? It gives a nice feeling around the nord ruin, but I'm worried about how this strange waterway will look on the worldmap later. I would just level it all for now, even though it'll be a loss in some respect. Or.. well keep it if you like. It actually looks pretty cool, I'm just worried about the worldmap is all.

Image
-The light green area in the southeast I've actually pictured (and I think we might have discussed?) to be a seasonally flooded lowlands. Which might explain why there's no settlements or farms here, but that it could be used for grazing cattle. I like the shrine in this area (same point about candles), but perhaps ruins here should be added at the highest points?
--- okay, now seeing roerichs post, I think we can do a good compromise. We can indeed remove the river but keep the pond of water around the ruin + add further ponds of water around these parts. I don't agree that the shrine needs to be put to a high part. It feels perfect where it is and it's a different kind of nord ruin from the fortresses or most other tombs, I think.

At some point in future we've got to make youtube footages of all the exterior work and generally playing in our lands.

Oh another thing: The four cells of haafinheim forest.

What points of interests does it contain at this point, apart from the house and a cavern entrance? We also have to discuss what we'll do in haafinheim forest generally, especially with regards to container plants.

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Post by Scamp »

Glad to have you back, berry. I agree the claim looks absolutely splendid so far.

A few remarks:
  • I actually like the underground passage in [-101, 20], although of course you may feel free to remove it as requested by roerich.
  • I sort of agree on rock arches (although I've used quite a few of them as standalones in the wilderness myself). In any case, the one with snow on top looks super weird. I don't know what it is about it, but it kind of puts me off - especially if it's partially underwater.
  • Some complaining and maybe some insights. Roads are the player's ticket into the world. They are our way of guiding players through the scenery and hinting at interesting locations. A road should always be clearly distinguishable from other terrain.
    Right now, the only way roads in this claim are set apart from other terrain is the vertex color outline. I would like to see all the roads sunk way more into the ground.
    This is a problem that all of the roads Lestat made have. I'm not a fan of it. The argument that "roads should only be sunk if they are a main traffic route" is valid, but I insist that sinking roads and paths is something we should always do in order to emphasize what's a road and what isn't.
Another thing. The land tears you're experiencing in cells [-106,-19] and [-106,21] are unfortunate to see and a very unwelcome guest in Skyrim. I was hoping for this phenomenon to occur only relatively close to [0,0], but alas, we're out of luck.
Land tears occur when releading your .esp. The only way to recover from tears is to completely cut the cell from the file, and insert an older backup. Trying to smooth these terrain fuckups has only ever lead to more fuckups. PLEASE do make backups, multiple ones, while working on your claim. There's nothing more frustrating than losing work over a land tear.
Nemon once mentioned that land tears seem to occur more often when a claim has epic land drop offs near its borders, so raising some terrain around the claim or using cells from other claims (just delete them through TESAME afterwards) might help. There's no clear indicator on what exactly causes tears, however. It sure does seem to happen a lot more frequently in the Velothi Mountains; maybe your two cells are false alarm.

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Post by Yeti »

I keep forgetting how great this claim looks. Markarth is a masterpiece. As for the surrounding wilderness, here are a few observations/suggestions.

- For some time, I've thought Markarth Bay could stand to be narrower/smaller in places, but it doesn't seem to need shrinking in this claim, at least. Those little islands and rocky outcrops really help it seem less unreasonably huge.
- I don't have strong feelings about the lighthouse, but I'd lean on removal, if only because mods tend to overuse that model. Reusing it here also takes away from the uniqueness of Seyda Neen's "Grand Pharos" even if it doesn't look much like one. :lol:
- The diagonal river in the eastern part of the claim could be changed into a thin pond to keep the nice eye-candy Worsas mentioned. It could extend into the next cell beyond the claim's borders, but not go farther than that. Otherwise, we end up with an awkward-looking river that doesn't flow naturally with the landscape.
- Are we keeping the lime-green grass texture in the claim's southeastern corner? It looks kinda... I don't know... ugly? Is that just me? Maybe it would look fine on its own, but it clashes with the muted greens used in the neighboring cells. The transition between them is too abrupt.
- I don't think the portion of Solitude Forest in this claim needs many more notable landmarks (it is only a few cells big), though this would be a good place to experiment with tree density to see what might work best for the region overall.

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Post by berry »

I'm glad you like it and thanks for the huge feedback! I'm taking all of it into consideration (== will do without a need for nagging about it first in the forums :P ) and I'll refer to the major points below.
- Wayside shrine in -101,18 - about 95% of those lights needs to go. Ideally replaced with a travel lantern, as this region sees rain and snow, and it looks weird having rain and a free standing candle. I also think the number of offerings is a bit much, sometimes less is more with these types of locations.
I agree, I think I'll only keep these almost burned out variant, replacing the rest with static burned out candles.
- The road which the shrine makes me a bit unhappy, as it would now need the wall set to extend all the way to the Direnni ruin in order to protect the city. This was something I tried to avoid, as mixing the castle set and the Direnni set looks hideous.
Tru dat. I eventually slightly altered the cliffs here, leading new road to a new gate in mercantile district:
Image
As an extra bonus, the city now gained this appealing X layot, with two main streets (Falkirstad-Haafinheim road and the docks-marketplace-Midkarth way) meeting in the middle.
- What happened to all the grass? Is it in a seperate file? A lot of grass meshes I've placed are gone. Could be an old fault at my end.
Hmm, don't really know. I have removed plenty of grass indeed, but I'd wager 90%+ of it were Lestat's leftovers, on what used to be the banks of right Karth branch - as the terrain was extremely spikey in there I figured it would be easier to remove the grass and then regenerate it. I don't recall removing grass from the isle or the city itself, though.
- the "underground" passage dwelling in -101,20 should be scrapped. That whole tunnel should just be rock. I tried something and it didn't work, so please remove this for me.
I actually like the underground passage in [-101, 20], although of course you may feel free to remove it as requested by roerich.
I'm with Scamp here, to be fair. I don't mind the passage, it's very handy when walking around, and the very concept of a mystic figure dwelling in a cave in big city sounds very Nord-like to me. I can imagine some interesting plot hooks between the Nines chapel and the shaman, each aspiring to become a coryphaeus for the citizens' souls, too.

At any rate, I left it for now, only slightly altering the passage for more savage feel.
- I don't care much for the lighthouse, sorry. I think the inner sea is implied ingame to be bigger than what makes sense with maps (or TR). IMO it's disrupting the scenery a bit, and if we add a lighthouse it shouldn't be the retextured vanilla version.
- I don't have strong feelings about the lighthouse, but I'd lean on removal, if only because mods tend to overuse that model. Reusing it here also takes away from the uniqueness of Seyda Neen's "Grand Pharos" even if it doesn't look much like one. :lol:
That's fair, the lighthouse is a goner. For a test, I put some fishermen shacks on that rock instead, and I'm in love with how adorable it turned out;
Image
I might get an emotional distress if you ask me to remove these little guys as well, so feel warned. :P #blackmail
What's the reasoning behind changing tsunholm? The previous setup with the barrow objects was far more impressive-looking than the current stone ring. Or was that done by roerich already?
Yes, the undoing of the isle was done by roerich, I haven't touched Tsunholm myself. I too think the current setup is too modest, perhaps some kind of middle ground would be optimal? For one I think we should replace the overused bird pillar from the old make-up with one of the pillars brought with barrow fort assets, preferably with some chains hanging from it for more grim vibe.
@roerich and worsas on the lime grass region
I pretty much have the same feelings about the area, perceiving it as a wild, soppy grasslands. I actually call it in my head the "Hjaal frontier", a halfway point between the Midkarth/Haafinheim and the Hjaal, both geographically and socially - since the ponds, but also the stuff like the bridge using palisade assets, slightly more savage wayshrine or the presence of berserkers/giant shepherd.

Personally I think these flooded cairn-like barrow structures would make a great landmark in this subregion, though given a small size of the area we would need 2-3 more here, tops. On the other hand, don't ask me what exactly was the purpose of that ruined structure (a barrow variant, maybe?), as I simply roughly tried to recreate the ruin type seen in TES V.

I agree there ideally should be another pond just next to this claim, probably east of the wayshrine.

I think a settlement of barbarian houses would be a nice touch somewhere east of here as well.
Oh another thing: The four cells of haafinheim forest.

What points of interests does it contain at this point, apart from the house and a cavern entrance?
Yeah, there's also the hunters' camp, but I suppose that's it. Personally I think I agree with Yeti that should be enough for these few cells we have in the claim, as there are lots of interesting stuff all around the forest (the city, the ruin, farmlands, even the river), though we should probably remember to throw in something (Potema ruins?) right along the way outside the claim boundaries.
Some complaining and maybe some insights. Roads are the player's ticket into the world. They are our way of guiding players through the scenery and hinting at interesting locations. A road should always be clearly distinguishable from other terrain.
Right now, the only way roads in this claim are set apart from other terrain is the vertex color outline. I would like to see all the roads sunk way more into the ground.
This is a problem that all of the roads Lestat made have. I'm not a fan of it. The argument that "roads should only be sunk if they are a main traffic route" is valid, but I insist that sinking roads and paths is something we should always do in order to emphasize what's a road and what isn't.
Well, I hate to agree. :) Road making is a pet peeve of mine, and as a matter of fact I haven't gotten to it in this claim - always leave it for the end, just before the grass generating. But yes, I'll try to make these more sunken.
Another thing. The land tears you're experiencing in cells [-106,-19] and [-106,21] are unfortunate to see and a very unwelcome guest in Skyrim. I was hoping for this phenomenon to occur only relatively close to [0,0], but alas, we're out of luck.
Land tears occur when releading your .esp. The only way to recover from tears is to completely cut the cell from the file, and insert an older backup. Trying to smooth these terrain fuckups has only ever lead to more fuckups. PLEASE do make backups, multiple ones, while working on your claim. There's nothing more frustrating than losing work over a land tear.
Nemon once mentioned that land tears seem to occur more often when a claim has epic land drop offs near its borders, so raising some terrain around the claim or using cells from other claims (just delete them through TESAME afterwards) might help. There's no clear indicator on what exactly causes tears, however. It sure does seem to happen a lot more frequently in the Velothi Mountains; maybe your two cells are false alarm.
Yes, it's been a while since I did some CS work and without a second thought I simply tried to smooth over the land tear :P no wonder the whole cell went all shitty. I'll treat the area with TESAME, I recall having similar issues working on the Druadachs, so I know the drill.
- Are we keeping the lime-green grass texture in the claim's southeastern corner? It looks kinda... I don't know... ugly? Is that just me? Maybe it would look fine on its own, but it clashes with the muted greens used in the neighboring cells. The transition between them is too abrupt.
Well, I don't mind the lime grass myself, especially given how small the area will be before the forest/swamps kick in. In my opinion it's a nice change from the browns and dark greens of the Reach, some cool diversity.

As for the transistion, yes, I'm trying to reach some decent one here, and I think it doesn't look bad already in-game (CS render window often distorts the in-game mood). It certainly is kind of tricky, as there is a hell-load of (sub)regions meeting around the Markarth peninsula - the lime grass area, the Midkarth, the Falkar Foothills, the Mount Snowhawk and the Solitude Forest, and I have to say, most of these are still half-baked design-wise. :)

Thanks again!

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Scamp
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Post by Scamp »

I am actually about to start detailing the areas west of your claim, which make up most of the transition between Druadach/Midkarth to the Falkar Foothills. It looks like some of that is in your claim, too. I will open some claims later today so that this is a little bit more transparent :D

I'll probably start working on that near my latest mesa claim, so feel free to work on the transitional parts in this and I'll match it later. Alternatively, I wouldn't mind yanking the westernmost column of cells (the land tear cells) from your claim, but that's up to you entirely, especially if you've already started to work on it. The basic regional concept for the southern Falkar Foothills is already in Skyrim_main, so that's where you'd need to look for inspiration/copy pasta.

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berry
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Post by berry »

It would be much appreciated in fact, I'm quite overwhelmed with the amount of work east of the city already :) If I recall correctly, as far as that area is concerned I only added that one horker bay next to the main bridge (and two dummy bandits in roerich's camp, that can be scrubbed right away), but nothing since the last update I posted, so feel free to grab whatever suits you from that file.

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roerich
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Post by roerich »

Tbh I'm not so sure about using those shacks. To me at least, they are instantly recognizable as heavily inspired by de shacks - it doesn't look like something a coast dwelling Nord in a cold climate would want to live in. The concept of these types of shacks on wooden stilts looks much more suitable for a warmer climate (Niben/Bravil?), or a marsh setting like Hjaalmarch, which is more sheltered from bad weather and where there's not really any alternative as reliable dry ground is precious and rare. Also, we don't even have interiors for them yet.

The stone foundation versions (T_Nor_SetShack_X_House_03-07) can be reworked into something more usable, if we replace the roof with either wooden shingles or thatched roofs. Also, possibly scrapping T_Nor_SetShack_X_House_03-04. The texture should look more worn and weathered. All of this would of course just add another farm house set. I think we're long overdue for some serious discussion on what settlement sets are needed in the future.
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berry
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Post by berry »

To my mind the shacks are distinct enough from the de_ shacks, with planks rather than thatch, but I can definitely see where you're coming from in regards to the climate. If anything, they probably should have some kind of classic peak-shaped roof, not to be crushed from all that snow. I second the plea for more weathered textures as well - they should receive similar treatment to the one received by Nord boat recently (ie. like two years ago probably :P ), ideally. Good point about the interiors, I totally didn't realise that. All above considered, they should probably go, yes, at least in this instance and for the time being; personally I'd love to see some vertical fishermen villages like that one as we are getting closer to the Obsidian Coast. I agree we need some profound settlement discussion.

Long due update with a changelog below:

- added southern gate to Markath Side, as described above;
- replaced lighthouse with the shacks, as mentioned above;
- reworked Elfstone's outer courtyard for more majestic feel;
- added "lanterns" to the city for 1) more epic feel 2) the "look how Imperial we are" vibe . To cope with the fps loss, now guards have 1/3 chance of not carrying any light;
- reworked the "shaman passage" fore more cave-like feel; tbh, I'm not really happy with it as it is - I think the stalgs need to go, CS perspective is being tricky in this case, and in game it feels way too dense;
- altered Tsunholm;
- replaced the "mole mound barrow" in -98,19 with another, similar structure, inspired by new Tsunholm look. The new barrow looks more realistic and less ridiculous, and more like the TES V structures I was inspired by anyway;
- led the Solitude forest road to the edge of this claim. I had to axe some finish forest to create a small ravine along the way, next to the hunters' camp, but that on the other hand allowed me to save even more forest further north, as the road now enters the valley between two hills, and no landscape had to be harmed (it's easy to notice using shift + C in -99, 19 cell). I'd also suggest we moved the cave from -98,19 here - we have this thing for caves that are too hard to come across, plus as it is it's probably too close to the mole mound anyway;
- last but not least - I renamed one of the roerich's Thorvalds the hunt buddies to Thorvald the Bald. :P The idea is the couple would be a comic relief in this grim forest, with the baldie in his Backstory complaining they've been friends for years, and yet he is always the one getting a (pejorative) nickname, with his buddy always being addressed the original Thorvald.

Cheers
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