Gold Coast Exterior: GC_01 [chef] [Anvil]

[worsas]

1. Redo the wall textures (again) using native Anvil textures.

Horrible idea, unless you make the walls (models) from scratch

You are free to do whatever you wish with my version of the city walls, though. On the dibella temple, I agree that it looks too much like a church, but I think that the round window is more faulty of it than the circling steps, which I have adopted from a different legion structure to create more continuity. i made the temple without the tower and I don't know who added the latter, so I don't have any strong feelings about it.

[Saint_Jiub]

worsas, you mentioned disliking the Anvil house textures in another thread.... what do you think about something like this?



I personally really like the Anvil walls - one of the things that everyone complains about in Oblivion is the use of very similar looking castle walls for every city so I guess I'm concerned about treading that same ground, especially because our Anvil isn't that visually different from Oblivion's as it is. My eye doesn't see the disconnect between the Legion stuff and this set, especially now that we've consolidated the textures, so I don't really see the problem.

As for the church, my only suggestion would be to drop the tower (I think Prae added that when he first put the city together) and make it so the round window is only on the front, since the back should be the big window showing Dibella herself.

[R-Zero]

Damn, this looks nice! Really brings warm and variety to Anvil color palette making it a bit closer to what we have in Brina Cross, and also bridges the stark contrast between the darkish walls and bright streets!

[worsas]

worsas, you mentioned disliking the Anvil house textures in another thread.... what do you think about something like this?

That is definitely more eye-pleasing. From the distance it looks a tad clean, though. It should also reveal holes with those clay bricks, to show that these use the same clay bricks seen on the gold coast common houses. And Anvil generally should have a slightly worn-down look to it being a port town with the shaggy alleyways and such.

Yesterday I've been experimenting with an alternate version of the dibella-temple btw. but I'm still struggling a great deal with it.

Edit: Should we still add those sewer entrances to the city?

[Infragris]

About the temple: it would be cool if it could be used more like a temple complex/monastery type of situation, combined with the property walls and secondary buildings. The way the building is currently set up, it's difficult to envision the interior as anything other than a big boxy worship hall, without an inner sanctum, living rooms for the priests, etc. Something like a Roman temple plan, but with slightly more interior chambers and divisions (and options for assymmetry). Ideally, I would like to combine the temple and the holy brothel into one compound.

@Saint_Jiub: I like the new texture, but as worsas said it should be a little more worn. Perhaps also a bit too orange, I'm not sure.

Sewer entrances: it would make some sense given that Anvil is a relatively new city, but I believe we decided against it in the end because we don't have a sewer tileset.

[Saint_Jiub]

What about this?



You're only going to get so much detail out of stucco from a distance, otherwise it's going to look really rough and noisy at close range, but I did add the brick elements back to the white stucco areas.

[Infragris]

That looks very interesting. Could you post a closeup of the texture?

[Infragris]

Here's a map of Anvil as it is right now:


A couple of places are still unaccounted for, indicated below. Some places, like the shrines at 36 and 56, are not actually interiors, just places of note in the exterior space.

Garden Quarter
1. Castle Umbranox
2. Lighthouse
3. High Temple of Dibella/Sacred Baths/Brothel [Imperial Cult]
4. Praetorate [Imperial Curia]
5. Garden House
6. Colo-Nordic Manor [Free Estates Movement]
7. Saint Amiel Maritime Circle [Imperial Legion-affiliated]
8. Colo-Nordic Noble Manor
9. Wealthy Merchant Manor
10. Retired Navy Commander/Colo-Nordic Manor
11. Wealthy Merchant Manor
12. Wealthy Merchant Manor
13. Expensive Armorsmith
14. Merchant Manor
15. Expensive Alchemist
16. Expensive Jeweler/Perfume Seller
17. Expensive Clothier
18. Expensive Weaponsmith
19. The Count's Arms Inn [Beds]
20. Merchant Manor

Gateway Quarter
21. Saint Naharine Circle
22. Stables and Caravan Stop [Fast Travel]
23. Fighters Guild [Fighters Guild]
24. ???Emperor Zero Temple?
25. Loan Shark & Pawnbroker [Thieves Guild-affiliated]
26. The Abecette Gambling Palace & Hotel [Beds]
27. Mages Guild [Mages Guild]
28. Middle-Class Apartments [3 places]
29. Morvayn's Peacemakers [Middle-Class Smith]
30. Middle-Class Apartments [3 places]
31. Poor Herbalist Shop [Apothecary]
32. General Merchant/Pottery Shop
33. Lower Class Apartments [4 places]
34. Poor Clothier
35. ???Shop?
36. Shrine to the Market-Saints
37. Middle-Class Apartments [3 places]
38. Census & Excise Office
39. Middle-Class Apartments [2 places]
40. ???General Merchant?
41. Abandoned Warehouse
42. Harbormaster's Office
43. Warehouse
44. Warehouse

Harbor Quarter
45. ???Large House?
46. Middle-Class Apartment [3 places]
47. East Empire Negotiator Manor
48. Merchant Captain Manor
49. Briricca Company Offices
50. Abecean Trading Company Warehouse
51. White Scarab Cooperative Warehouse
52. East Empire Company Warehouse
53. Silk Merchant Offices/Silk Exchange [Silk Weaver Guild & primitive stock exchange]
54. Middle Class Apartments [3 places]
55. Ship [Fast Travel]
56. Shrine to Kynareth and the Sea-Saints

Sailor Quarter
57. ???Guard House?
58. ???General Merchant?
59. Poor Inn/Gambling House/Thieves Guild Headquarters [Thieves Guild]
60. Poor Pawnbroker [Thieves Guild-affiliated, Fence]
61. Poor Apartments [4 places]
62. Poor Apartments [3-4 places]
63. Poor Apartments [3 places]
64. Poor Flophouse
65. Poor Flophouse
66. Poor Apartments [3 places]
67. Poor Apartments [3-4 places]
68. Poor Flophouse [Placid Drowner Cult hideout, quest-related]
69. Poor Flophouse
70. Poor Flophouse
71. Orc House [quest-related]
72. Poor Apartments [4-5 places]
73. Poor Apartments [3 place]
74. Poor Brothel/Gambling House
75. The Flowing Bowl [Beds]
76. West Navy Headquarters & Barracks [Imperial Legion]
77. West Navy Storage
78. West Navy Watchtower

[worsas]

Just uploading my unfinished attempt from sunday. I don't have the needed motivation to continue on it or scrap it in favour of something more akin to your current vision. Those awkward things on the roof were intended as flower beds, btw. Feel free to use this or make something different.

[Saint_Jiub]

Closeup of the Anvil house.

I think your temple looks cool worsas

[Infragris]

I think the most important question considering the temple is: do we want Imperial Cult architecture to have its own, unique style, or do we want each temple to adhere to the dominant architecture of the local town?

If we do the first thing, we would need to make (and continue making) unique temple buildings with their own design language (in doors, pillars, ornament etc.) My preference does not go to this: the Cult is a heterogeneous institution, and there is little reason for each convent to use a similar style, nor is this the way that Morrowind towns are usually set up. It would also be a lot of work.

If we go by the second option, we do not need a completely unique building but simply an edited version of one of the other Anvil houses made to look more grand. It might even be possible to make the temple using only existing assets (look at the temple in Stirk for comparison). Your recent house addons with the galleries are well suited for this purpose. I realize that it is frustrating to see lots of work being overhauled again and again (I feel the same way about those dock pieces), but 'm afraid that's simply the nature of iterative design. We can't always get it right the first time.

[worsas]

The way I see it the temple should always stand out in some way. It would be best to formulate the requirements it should meet before anything else is decided. If everything can be created in the needed quality with the existing pieces, there doesn't need to be a spare building. But I assume that in most cases there will be need for extra tiles and additions or even a spare building to make it right.

Closeup of the Anvil house.

It needs more contrast and grunge. It would be better to make it match the stirk textures, except that the color tint is made yellower. Three different plaster colors also seem a bit too colorful all in all (+ the trims that have yet another color). I hope you don't mind my nagging.

We can't always get it right the first time.

"Right" is very subjective. (edit: <--Forget that dick-shit) In my point of view, we cannot only steer for the ideal. We must find suitable compromises that also adhere to many other needs there are. To me it feels like we have run into a heavy misbalance, partly my own fault.

Edit: Considering that the imperial temples were cathedrals in Oblivion, I'm not sure why the slight basilican church is so problematic. Opposedly, thinking about a temple built from regular houses feels underwhelming.

Sorry for the heavy critics here.

[Saint_Jiub]

Not at all worsas I always appreciate critiques, especially because I agree with you that it's far from ideal when stuff has to be redone. I would rather know what everyone thinks and get something that we can all agree on, than have everyone say it's great and then 6mo later realize it's a trainwreck lol. I'll keep playing with it and see what I can come up with.

Regarding the Cult assets, I do agree that the most elegant solution is probably going to be to use the town assets rather than having a unique building. For instance, this is just a super quick mockup but we could have something like this:



Where it's more like a monastic temple complex than a church. We can supplement the town architecture with some of the fort pieces (since the trim of the chapel windows uses this anyway) to give it a slightly more impressive look too. In the above picture, imagine a low wall around the whole thing, so you have a publicly accessible "church" area up front, a brothel tower off to the left connected by a skywalk, and then a private residence surrounded by gardens.

Going this route is going to make our lives a million times easier down the road too, versus having to make a unique temple building for each city.

[Infragris]

Looks like you beat me to it. Here's my quick mock-up:


Couple of arcades at the back, space for a private garden, and probably one of the biggest buildings in town. I agree with Saint_Jiub that this should be like a monastic building: it's Cyrodiil's center for Dibella worship, so there should be plenty of place for worshipers, initiates, libraries, etc. Garnish this structure with temple windows, banners, flowers and ivy and it will look plenty impressive.

I think a basilica would be very appropriate for the cult of Zenithar: the first Roman basilicas were not churches, but covered marketplaces. The Imperial Cult functions fundamentally different from christian-like religions: the convents ae hermetic, inwards-looking orders with little concerns for the life of the poor or social affairs in the mortal world. A church-like space would work for some of the popular lower-class cults, like the Esha Cult, but I don't see them as appropriate here. In my opinion, the cathedrals in Oblivion were probably the worst design choice in the entire game.

[worsas]

I'm fine with discarding the previous temple. However, looking at the above complex, I wonder if it wouldn't be better to create a more spread-out property with an enclosed garden area (possibly a pool in it) with statues of dibella and other pieces of artesy (paintings, etc). Wouldn't that fit better with the nature of the cult?

[Infragris]

I'll keep that in mind. The design has to be adapted to the surrounding space anyway. I'm going to use a couple of Saint_Jiub's fresco's for the garden walls: that should get the message across.

[Saint_Jiub]

OK, I think this is going to be the final iteration of the Anvil house textures, if everyone is fine with it:

[Saint_Jiub]

I have a proposal that I want to make now, before we unlock interiors and start serious work on quest and dialogue design:



The ones marked red are all buildings that I think we can live without - several of them don't even have a function yet, and some feel like they've arbitrarily had a function assigned just to justify their presence (I don't think we need separate interiors for the upperclass weaponsmith and armorsmith, for instance).

I'm not going to pull a sasquatch and insist that Anvil needs to be rebuilt from the ground up- but it does badly require pruning - Look at the poor quarter - even with the ones I've marked for removal, each building has 3-5 functional interiors within since these are apartments and flophouses so we're still looking at between 30-50 functional interiors for that area alone.

I'm also proposing we scrap the garden house and expand the Dibella temple complex into that southern area around the gardens instead.

I think this is going to be the easiest way of making Anvil more manageable with the minimum required work. But we have to do something if we ever want to release this biz.

[Infragris]

I've already removed a fair number of houses compared to the previous version. I'll review your suggestions (especially in the temple quarter), but I think you're removing a bit too much on this map. If we go by this, there would be barely anything left of the poor quarter. Flophouses and apartments do not require separate cells for each family unit: look at the Stirk apartments for comparison.

[Infragris]

Couple of things:

First: I like the last texture you posted, Saint_Jiub. I think it'll do fine for Anvil.

Second: here's a shot of the platform/docks tileset I've designed for Anvil:


Pretty straightforward, basic set, but with enough versatility to make something interesting. Compare with the Hlaalu docks tileset. Now, for the finer details, we have three options visible on the left: first is to use the GC town docks tileset (the Stirk set) with alt textures. Would look kind of like this:


Other option is to just leave the Stirk dockset alone and do all detailing with the wooden docks tilesets, which might be visually more appealing and lead to less data bloat. Problem: there are also two wooden docks: the common GC one (visible far right, weathered and poor looking) and the Anvil one (visible in the middle, cleaner, but less versatile. Also not sure about the texture). I'm not sure which option would be best.


Also, here are two shots of the new walls I've been working on:

The exterior is more or less unchanged, save for the Imperial crenelation on top which ties it together visually with the castle and navy HQ.


The back is smoothed out, making it look less intrusive and out of place next to the less detailed city assets.

[worsas]

Now, for the finer details, we have three options visible on the left: first is to use the GC town docks tileset (the Stirk set) with alt textures. Would look kind of like this:

I like these progress screens very much. Regarding that lighting issue on the walls: See, if you can split the wall from the horizontal strip again to reproduce the clean look from before.

This gets my vote, because solid stone docks in a port like Anvil seem preferable to me over just poor wooden ones. I don't think it's a bad precedent to use special dock tiles for a significant harbor. The wooden docks I would just use for some special locations (poor quarter or at the "boating club" eg.). Just my two cents, however.

and the Anvil one (visible in the middle, cleaner, but less versatile

In my opinion, it would be better to discard that additional variant of the wooden dock and stick with the common gold coast set.

[Leon]

I like what I see, looks awesome!

[Yeti]

In reply to Saint_Jiub's map, I feel it would be a shame to do away with Anvil's crowded urban layout and its atmospheric alleys.

Great work on this, guys. I would have been far too wishy-washy to make these significant, but necessary changes.

[Infragris]

Question: do we want to completely replace the Stirk dockset with Anvil-textured ones, or make two sets? This would only affect the Stirk harbor. Personally, I think the texture mismatch between Stirk houses and Anvil docks is negligible.

[worsas]

do we want to completely replace the Stirk dockset with Anvil-textured ones, or make two sets?

My vote goes to option 1.

[roerich]

Are there any plans for a cargo insurance company? I figure it would be a good diversion from common "Rich Merchant" interiors, and it could play a role in local quests as well. It would be a very wealthy business. Might be connected to a particular wealthy merchant family.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_insurance#History

With piracy on the rise in the Abecean, insurance prices have probably increased a lot lately. It could also be a way to show corruption; if a merchant isn't insuring his cargo, the insurance company might have contacts to pirates that raid that particular ship (too similar to Stirk main quest perhaps). Corruption and bribery in the Legion Navy could also ensure that those merchants who pay insurance are more secure, as navy patrol routes could "coincidentally" align with the merchant ship routes.

[Leon]

We need an update on this one, three months has passed.
Also, moved this thread to Unclaimed, because nobody is claiming this claim at this moment.

What needs to be done with this claim in order to call it finished? If it's something minor, then I'm willing to claim it.

EDIT: Do we even have a Head of Exteriors at P:C? Haven't seen him/her/it in years.

[Infragris]

Right, sorry. I still had to bring some of the file things in line with the latest data update. I'm afraid there's still a lot of work on this claim: the new dockset is only half implemented, lots of changes and updates still need to be smoothed out. I've implemented some of Saint_Jiub's suggestions on houses to remove, and reduced the bulk of some other buildings (a lot of structures consist of two or three house meshes mashed together, which looks kind of moddy). This can be countered in the wealthier parts of the city with larger gardens and property walls. The temple also needs to be re-implemented, and I'm playing with the possibility of removing unused space on the far south end of the city by shortening the city in general and implementing the park in/around the temple.

We should probably re-elect a dedicated head of exteriors if we want to open claims on the north shore, although imho most decision-level stuff could be made by any project lead, similar to how TR does it.

Does anybody object if I keep hold of this claim for a while? I'm afraid I'm in deadline hell atm, but once that clear up there are a couple of things I would like to implement in the city. If anybody else is ready to start working on this right now I'll step aside, of course.

Alternatively, this claim could be cut up into two:


All areas in gray are part of this claim: the area north of Anvil is pretty much finished, and could be lifted from the claim and finished easily. The parts around Anvil and (I think) west of Brina Cross still need a lot of attention.

[Leon]

Does anybody object if I keep hold of this claim for a while? I'm afraid I'm in deadline hell atm, but once that clear up there are a couple of things I would like to implement in the city. If anybody else is ready to start working on this right now I'll step aside, of course.

By all means, go for it.

All areas in gray are part of this claim: the area north of Anvil is pretty much finished, and could be lifted from the claim and finished easily. The parts around Anvil and (I think) west of Brina Cross still need a lot of attention.

Yeah, that's the problem; we have zero exterior people at P:C. If (maybe) somebody from shotn could lend a hand at making the remaining few Anvil cells, that would be awesome. But even then, the exterior development and department in general is already dying. We'll see.

[Infragris]

I think Scamp was interested in picking up some exteriors on the northern shore. But we can't open those up until we have at minimum a couple new assets.