What happened to Old Narsis?

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Tyermali's picture
Tyermali
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Hey TR, I have a more or less archeological question about the Hlaalu capital since our Tamriel has a thing for disappearing cities.

Back in the day, screens of a much more refined Narsis were floating around, but the current TR_Preview only has an (earlier? reduced?) placeholder. Now of course Hlaalu and Narsis is not in your workflow right now, but I wonder what happened to the old Narsis as seen in this screens here, here, here, here  or here (2, 3, not sure if this is even the same build). A quick search brings up some even more impressive examples, but as a visiting foreigner, I'm not sure what happened. I found some old claims and a thread from 2007 which said that it was quite unplayable, "however magnificent to see". So this old Narsis might be not up to date with your 2017 standards, but it had a nice oriental vibe with hanging gardens and representative luxury fitting for a Hlaalu merchant city. I also found that there are still some unique designs for Narsis in the Data (mosaic floor, special rugs, a full Hlaalu arena! etc).

So I wonder what current state about Narsis is, and if there is any chance that someone still has those old files for curiosity, pre-alpha visits (as in Almalexia) or future concepts of the city. 

Gnomey's picture
Gnomey
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Have you tried the files here?
I haven't checked to see if the models are included; if they aren't, I might be able to dig them up, but that will probably take some doing.

Edit: as far as the current Narsis is concerned, it looks a lot rougher than it is because its ground textures were wiped along with most of its surroundings. It's not really in a presentable state as you can tell, and it will be a long while until we get around to sorting it out. It is quite far along, though; most if not all of its interiors have been made long ago.

Tyermali's picture
Tyermali
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Ah, this are good news, and it's just the right link to get an impression in CS. I just wondered because there were those nice screenshots, but no more news from Hlaalu Prime. Good to know that this work is at least safe and still there. It has some really nice touches, but then it feels exactly like something in between modern TR (nice unique stuff and style) and early Silgrad (golden nix statues), so to say. In any case, thanks for digging this up, and I'm glad that this version of the city is not totally forgotten. 

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Ragox
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Holy moly that thread is so depressing and it's a perfect example of why there were so few unique things in TR before.
Why were the statues of Nix-Hounds and Slaughterfish considered lore-breaking? Civilizations have always made statues and reliefs of animals, why would this be any different in Tamriel?

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Kevaar
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I would make a guess that the fauna in Morrowind is deformed by Red Mountain's corrupting influence, and so animal reverence may not be a thing among Dunmer. Like in many sci-fi-ish settings (which Morrowind adopts a lot of atmosphere from), many of the animals are scavengers (nix hounds), highly dangerous (kagouti, alit), pests (cliff-racers, rats), or dim-witted livestock (guar, kwama), and don't have many characteristics to admire artistically, spiritually, or in songs and tales.

Just a guess though.

Gnomey's picture
Gnomey
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To say they're lore-breaking is going a bit far; the long and short of it is that they were over the top. Performance issues, consistency issues with other settlements, impracticality in gameplay terms (a lot of the old cities weren't exactly easy to get around in or find ones way in, which more often than not is a bad thing, and often important buildings and stuff were scattered at random), and general dubious construction in places (neon vertex shading, often the settlements gave the impression of not having been tested in-game).
I do think the counter-movement of scaling down settlements generally went a bit farther than it needed to, and made the settlements look rather mundane, Old Ebonheart being a good example. But lately, as with Ebon Tower, I think we've been striking a better balance.

Aeven's picture
Aeven
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Part of the issue is that "automatic" region re-assigning has caused the city to be sparser than it was around 4 years ago, when we made all the interiors. Nothing a good amount of exterior detailing can't fix though! :)

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Atrayonis
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The region revamp had nothing to do with it. The two new heightmaps were responsible for half of it sinking into the ground, but it's been that size and layout since 2015, when I became an active dev.
Whatever happened, happened before.