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
) 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:
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.
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;
I might get an emotional distress if you ask me to remove these little guys as well, so feel warned.
#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
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!