Project Tamriel

Thanks guys. I'm really happy with the current direction. I finally feel like the walls are in place, and the houses as well.

St. Olms will be missed.

And Berandas, you're probably right. They're hung that way from the start in the CS though.

Wow! Has it already been almost 5 months? Anyway, here's an update.

Decided to give Elfstone Keep a much needed makeover.

I was never really satisfied with the former version. Neither from a exterior modder or a lore perspective. The giant boring structure would've been a hell to interiorize properly, with lots of empty or superfluous rooms that would add nothing to the player experience. The exterior looked a bit moddy as well. Lorewise I never thought it made sense that the Direnni built their, in the Reach, grandest fortification/palace right on their literal border, far from the Direnni heartlands and even the heavily fortified Western Reach. So, now Elfstone Keep is more of a keep than the palace-castle it used to be. But I think it looks much better already, even in this WIP version:

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I built it so that most of my already half-finished interiors can be reused.

I'm not opposed to this modified version. But what about this dirt path? It looks good for sure, but wouldn't be a plastered way more appropriate for the seat of the King?

The gravelroad isn't final, but either way I'm going to include some Direnni ruins and Markarth banners along the road, perhaps stairs as well.

That looks pretty good, but I agree the walkway up to it needs to be more fortified/impressive.

Like this? The smaller building is barracks and armory. With training grounds outside.

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That's super

I didn't know everything could look so much better! Nice work on reintegrating the fortress with the rest of the town.

Thanks for the kind words. I feel like the city proper is nearing full completion! And without any future revisions

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Behold, a screenshot. I tried out something today, I removed the mostly empty upper section of the town in favor of a rocky path going up to Elfstone Keep. 2/3 interiors have been relocated. I think it looked more harmonic with the curved wall (from this angle at least), I'll see if I can do something about that. The revised Elfstone Keep is going nicely, with barracks and training grounds as well as a royal stable.

I don't really like that huge tower in the middle of the Markarth wall toward the front of the shot. The rest looks pretty good.

Don't worry, I have my eye on it. Now that the city guard has gotten their quarters at Elfstone, that big ugly mess of a tower is due for some ... demolition.

That new fortress looks great, but I'm a little worried it might not feel grand enough, not in comparision to the town, but other Direnni ruins in the Reach. But it's probably unjustifided fear from my side, it looks damn epic on this last screen. I'll miss these big towers from the file you updated - that was some genius makeshfiting there. But they probably resembled vanilla dwemer towers too much, too.

I don't know how relevant these points would be now, after this rearrangement you did, but here are some thoughts I had when I looked at this file in cs and in game:

First, Tsunholm is fantastic, it reminds me of one of earlier Thorgal comic books, vikings there had dueling sacred isle like this. Good call if you ask me. We should of course set here a quest where PC is hired by some noble to represent him or her in a trial by ordeal; all the more because there was that kind of quest in Daggerfall. I know the altar is meant to be pasted elsewhere, but looking at it I thought it would be cool to have barrow construction like this sprouting somewhere from the water, too. Maybe some pillars with chains hanging from them, creating a ring around the Tsunholm isle? Also: please, let's have some sunken Direnni ruins (or just Nord ruins, if we want to save that idea for the North Coast) in this vast depths between the isle and the docks. It's just begging for it.

Garden in -102, 20 is neat, but maybe in place of floor tiles in one or two places you could use this small dirty boulder, for more natural feel. I also had some problems walking around the fences.

There used to be a lone fishing post in -104, 18 that you covered with rocks in this version. I always thought that was a cool addition, personally, a little gem, like this camping isle with a waterfall near West Gash coast in vanilla.

There will be another entrance to the grotto in -100,21, right? Or maybe you designed this as a secret route to palace dungeons? Otherwise it's way too concealed. Neat exterior cave-in, though!

I think you could replace some of "ruined" walls around the town with these vanilla walls you used for the marketplace. It would not only result in better diversity, but also help with "crowding" the townspace. It might add the framerate too, as I think those are easier to tile.

There is a small backyard in the docks using cave doors. You could maybe change rotation on them, so they would open outside, not towards the backyard, how they do now. When both of these doors are open at the same time it's kind of hard to walk around. But that's a nitpicking, really.

I overall love this town and what you keep doing with it.

Thanks for the feedback, berry!

berry wrote:That new fortress looks great, but I'm a little worried it might not feel grand enough, not in comparision to the town, but other Direnni ruins in the Reach. But it's probably unjustifided fear from my side, it looks damn epic on this last screen. I'll miss these big towers from the file you updated - that was some genius makeshfiting there. But they probably resembled vanilla dwemer towers too much, too.

I felt the former version was too grand from a lore point of view, as I stated formerly. But it's probably mostly in comparison, the current one looks pretty mighty in itself - especially because of the location.

berry wrote:First, Tsunholm is fantastic, it reminds me of one of earlier Thorgal comic books, vikings there had dueling sacred isle like this. Good call if you ask me. We should of course set here a quest where PC is hired by some noble to represent him or her in a trial by ordeal; all the more because there was that kind of quest in Daggerfall.

I don't know, the island still needs some changes for sure - and perhaps a more elaborated concept. I've already been thinking in that direction. A quest here is unavoidable of course. Also we're gonna have a large Direnni seaside ruin on the North Coast, yeah.

berry wrote:Garden in -102, 20 is neat, but maybe in place of floor tiles in one or two places you could use this small dirty boulder, for more natural feel. I also had some problems walking around the fences.

Agreed, it needs some alterations.

berry wrote: There will be another entrance to the grotto in -100,21, right? Or maybe you designed this as a secret route to palace dungeons? Otherwise it's way too concealed. Neat exterior cave-in, though!

Haha, I really didn't know where to go with that one. The exterior cave just came naturally, I don't even know if it needs an interior.

I'll look into your other suggestions as well, thanks for testing it out!

I really like the new fortress.

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First outline for interior plans. Give feedback please.

I'm not sure what to use the central section (#36) in the guild hall for. Initially I thought of an Imperial consulate or something to that effect, but we already have the Imperial manor in #16, and I don't want Markarth to feel too Imperialized - we already have the College, the Consul, the guilds, the Cult Shrine etc. Eastern (Western?) Empire Company wouldn't be much better in that regard, but having something like a Nordic temple would also feel out of place, sitting between the two Imperial guilds. Any ideas?

Is it necessary to give all those guard towers interiors? Seems like overkill to me. Plus, guard towers are usually pretty boring places to visit in the game.

Otherwise, this looks like a good plan. I'm afraid I can't think of a solution for the unoccupied interior at the moment, but I'll see if an idea comes to me.

I think we can just make one tower interior and then reuse with some minor variation in clutter, a crate here, a bench there. Boring indeed, but I think they should be there, so you can get up on the wall.

Version 11.

Fiddling a bit around with the new interior parts.

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This is all looking absolutely brilliant, especially the additional stuff around the guild house.

But for fairness sake towards berry, I shall ask you to try to bring this tweaking process to an end. There will always be possibilities of improvement, and even worse, you will feel the urge of going back and fixing your past stuff in future no matter how long you have been tweaking it before. We just need to put an artificial end to these things in order to get anything done.

By the way, don't forget to fix the ids of your custom objects to say Sky_xRe_Mk_****, so we get rid of this old underscore-id-mess.

Sure, I agree on that. But I'm still far from complete with the city, though it's mostly minor stuff and then cluttering and flora by now. But no more major changes!

I'll remember that, haven't really used the new naming scheme for anything other than the file name yet.

That looks great. Digging the balconies and the statue especially. Maybe add some stuff to the roof of the barracks, that new exit worsas created for glassdomes, for example? The roof could be used as a training grounds/watch terrace by the guards; this area feels rather vacant now, at least in CS.

The interiors sound good, as far as I can tell. I'm with roerich on the towers, after all that's the Morrowind convention, with no hollow exterior shells, and we should stick to it. But yeah, without overdoing these interiors.

About the guilds house... maybe some kind of a hostel for Imperial travelers? With a canteen and a common room for members of both guilds?

roerich wrote:I think we can just make one tower interior and then reuse with some minor variation in clutter, a crate here, a bench there. Boring indeed, but I think they should be there, so you can get up on the wall.

I suppose this could work. At most, only the gate towers should have full interiors, I'd say, with areas for the guards to hang out. The others should only have very basic staircases, leading up and down, with doors linking the top floor with the walls, and perhaps a few crates and barrels here and there.

Agreed, exactly what I was thinking. Which tileset to use for the interiors? How about a retexture of the vanilla Imp tower set? Too cheap? The Sky_Impruin set would need a spiral staircase, but either way I think we're reusing that set for the Nordic fortress set.

I would retex the Imperial set, yes. Not worth putting any further work in, if you ask me.

I agree very much on that. At first a retexture might even be needed until more pressing issues have been dealt with.

With the possible threat of Worsas having me whipped for further polishing, I decided to implement some changes for Markarth I've had in the back of my head for some time. Some building placements (like the guild hall and especially the area behind it), had been bothering me a lot. It's mostly fixed now, though there's still some work to do on the upper city and of course the final detailing.

I completely changed the area behind the CotV, which I was never satisfied with. Now it's a rocky outcrop with a narrow canyon leading to the western gates and the stables.

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I started the final detailing and cluttering of some areas, most notably the street going from Hralgar Hall to the west gate.

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The market saw revision no. 804, with a new wooden structure surrounding the marketplace and the rearrangement of some of the marketstands. More importantly, the guild hall was moved to a more natural placement next to the market. As was the tavern by the south gate.

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Finally there's been changes all over the city, implementing the new interior meshes to create balconies and other additions.

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I will upload a file soon.

I mentioned in IRC that I was dubious about the height of that rock formation behind the CotV; unfortunate to say, I still think it is too high. I think it should be consistent height on each side of your canyon. It makes the CotV look somewhat like it was built tall only to compete the natural terrain features. It doesn't look so bad from npc-level though. I guess the portcullises should be more central in that valley too. But, that's just to my eyes, I'll suggest you wait again for the word of these developers with a better eye for exterior design. I don't like to be critical, when from experience most of my suggestions in this forum are decidedly prosaic.

Other than that, your changes look pretty good. That house with the extended basement is especially innovative. Hopefully the city can be wrapped up soon, and interior claims put up.

Thanks for your feedback, Luxray. I will try and see how it would work out. No worries about being critical

Interior claims could potentially be put up now; any work done on the houses will be minor at most, and the NPC planning is already happening.