Roryn's Bluff Section

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Atrayonis's picture
Atrayonis
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Section File is here!

Okay, this is the one where we have more interiors than exteriors, as well a couple dozen interiors on the old forum (and Seneca's calc file) that need merging.

I had some issues with cutting out dialogue this time around, but I tried to clean up the scripts.

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Aeven
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This has the potential to be some of our coolest work yet!

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Atrayonis
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It does. Not only do we have more interiors than exteriors, but we also cooked up a new Vampire clan (mostly Orcs) and it's the only region so far that went through the Region Evalutation Process (tm).

Belated link to the queue for RR (the Bluffs were next on the agenda, but with new topics popping up every week, their evalutation never happened): http://www.tamriel-rebuilt.org/queue/roth-roryn

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Indeed. This whole area is full of great ideas and intriguing locations. I believe our old loremaster Sload even wrote Bodrem's dialogue. I'm sure he put a lot of careful thought into each word.

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http://tamriel-rebuilt.org/old_forum/viewtopic.php?t=23791&highlight=

confirmed

there's also some dialogue written for verarchen which I believe is just slightly outside of the claim, but something to remember for later :)

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I have been working on the section file recently, upgrading some of the visuals I found lacking and correcting some "old TR" clichés.

  • Roads, make sure statics aren't scaled up above 1.00 (except for grass, these things works pretty much no matter the scale) and sunk both roads properly into the ground as well as almost floaters (the rocks statics 01-04 must be properly sunk into the ground in order to not look dumb. Road detailing should look like this.
  • Hills. 5-6 years on, I find the constant repetition of T_Mw_TerrRockGL_Rock_20, T_Mw_TerrRockGL_Rock_24 among others as somewhat bad looking. Using a new retexture of the iceberg mesh, the (not placed in data for ground usage?) gl_rock_03 texture with scrub plain on top, plus the T_Mw_TerrRockGL_CliffRRS_01 - 05 set I've created a setup that in my opinion creates a brand new visual we haven't put together before. Side thought, I'm not 100% content with the look of these cliffs. The texture seems off, and I rarely see them utilized to an acceptable standard visually, and the shape is difficult to work with. I often find that these things has to be masked by so many other statics that I'm not sure they serve a purpose in this region.

My proposal is to do a complete pass through the Roth Roryn region, remaking hills and cliffs while keeping the general structure of the land intact so that few (if any) interiors has to be moved much. Either way I'll note any changes in a changelog. Most of RR looks alright, but it can be elevated to great with some work. We often fell for the temptation to lump as many statics together as possible to create hills, cliffs and mountains back then, and it looks moddy and dated now, and I'd like to fix that now. Which brings me onto the last point...

2nd Proposal: The Armun / Roth Roryn border. Here's an example of just throwing statics on a slightly raised ground and calling it a day. I'm not content with letting this pass as TR standars these days, and in my opinion it desperately needs fixing. Creating borders between two so different regions isn't easy, but as I mentioned on discord earlier, and which has been the basis of the Armun since '11-12, is that it has this "bowl" shape functioning as a natural border. My proposal is to have some of the southern RR cells gradually raised a little (perhaps to match the current WIP raised land creating a three region border between Aanthirin, RR and Armun) and wrapped up at the AA/RR border with steep cliffsides running down into the dusty ashlands below. We already have some decent elevation close to the border so it won't shoot up like Hrothgar. 

Requirements:

  • I've so far only faffed around with some retextures, these need to be verified and checked by someone capable so that I don't do something dumb with data, as well as the naming scheme (the t_mw_terrrock... prefix doesn't leave many characters left). Also a retex of the cliff meshes for usage at the AA side of the border. This one looked great, but it's not our own and this is as close as I got...
  • This will require editing both the RR section file and the indev file, so helpful tips to avoid a mess goes a long way
  • Work, time and a healthy dose of insanity.

Last thought, not important right now but what the heck. Is the GL trees especially heavy on the engine? I can have a fuckload of rock, grass and whatnot meshes in range visually with no problems, but three of those trees puts syrup on the CS. Slow as hell.

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Nemon

cliffs.

I don't know about anything else but thought there were new cliffs meant for RR, was that abandoned or are those it?

Nemon

Armun / Roth Roryn border

An idea for Armun was to add the Hive to them. Not sure how well that would go, but raised land may be relevant to that project since talk was it would need downscaling not to dominate the landscape.
 

Nemon

Is the GL trees especially heavy on the engine?

I don't know, but try with these cleaned vanilla meshes - EDIT: if anyone else downloaded this before, they were the unmodified vanilla meshes

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Update: The plans discussed earlier in some meetings will of course be incorporated, most of them seem to affect other areas than proposed by me now (as per the recent postings on discord). For instance, the temple Iliath (sp?) on the cliff south of Bodrem. A cliffside I envision changing a bit due to its lumpy nature. Also there are a few ints that needs placement in the wild. As mentioned on discord a few cells from Indev will need to be incorporated in this section file for practical reasons.

If approved, I believe I can have it done by Jan-Feb '18.

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Atrayonis
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Well, my reply got eaten when I closed the tab by accident.

In general, I'm in favour of your edits, as long as they don't run roughshot about the RR region meetings on 2016-11-13, 2016-11-20, 2016-11-27, and 2016-12-04 specifically).

Cutting cells out of InDev is no problem anymore right now, and I didn't include them in Roryn's Bluff in the first place because they needed a lot more editing than I was comfortable with and capable of.

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I'm generally in favor this, so long as we keep in mind some of the new interiors to be added (cliff dwellings, possibly Iliath, other dungeon entrances).

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Nemon
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Here's a little post on stuff to consider during this pass.

  • http://tamriel-rebuilt.org/claims/roth-roryn-shipwreck-1 shipwreck (very old) from the flooding of Morrowind. I'll make sure it's properly ruined.
  • Iliath temple http://www.tamriel-rebuilt.org/claims/iliath 
  • Ints without ext placement here. Long list with ints as described in next point...
  • Meeting thread 16-12-04 with a map with placement of a Velothi tower and a settlement+roads as well as summary of earlier meetings.
  • Meeting threads 16-11-13, 16-11-20 and 16-11-27 serves as further guidelines for geography, politics, demographics etc.
  • Bodrem, note that tr_travels has an ext edit there for silt strider purposes. I'll get back to that, rather worried about making edits that reverts due to loading such and such.

Is that about it?

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I've already mentioned some of this on IRC, but for posterity's sake:
-my original plan for Roth-roryn was simply to scale back some rock usage in favour of terrain and vertex shading, and where convenient replace the old T_Mw_TerrRockGL_Cliff_0# assets with the newer T_Mw_TerrRockGL_CliffRR_0# assets. I am all for your more extensive approach, though.
-your sketch of the raised cliff border looks rather drastic, but I'm sure you'll make it work.
-as far as GL trees are concerned, honestly, I'm not especially keen on having them in the first place; to me, Roth-roryn seems like it should be an arid, dusty region with sparse, low-lying vegetation, preferably new TR stuff. I'm not sure if the trees create a special strain on performance, though; alpha mapped textures do have a greater performance impact, I think, but I'm not sure how large the difference is.
-as I said on IRC, I'm personally not too worried about your edits getting in the way of adding velothi caves and towers and the like, though all the better if you take them into account or even add them. I'm all for Iliath Temple's promontory getting a visual upgrade. The main features that spring to mind that need to be accounted for is far northwestern Roth-roryn (which I think is outside of the area you intend to work on), which is intended to get a Daedric ruin; the eastern river bank of the Pryai, which should stay relatively low-lying and broad; and the iron mine in a crater, which will be home to an Orc vampire clan. (The edges of the crater could probably use some touching up).
-beyond that, your list looks good to me.

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Cookiemonster16
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I was curious on what peoples take of the little Bitter Coast Region? It seems out of Place?