Landmass

[hircine]

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/23495823/OpenM ... hot000.png

Shiny!

A combination of both of these styles of images (heightmap/overhead) to give an update every now and then of how its progress. I'm going to start work tomorrow on the bottom right hand corner, which includes flattening those islands (except one)

Giving the area where I plan to put the town some decent ground.

[hircine]

Current: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/23495823/OpenMW/OpenMW.esm

[Greendogo]

Hey, I'm happy to see you taking initiative with the terrain texturing. It's looking good. I'll be on IRC later.

[hircine]

the path, needs to be at most 3 wide. I did go a bit liberal. looks a bit messy. but the basicness of it is there

[Greendogo]

The mountain is taking up a lot of space, there isn't a lot of room for a ruin and forest, which should be the main focus of that space. Perhaps if you moved the mountain more towards the south and left as much room as the mountain takes up north of it that would be enough.

[Greendogo]

Actually, Hircine, how would you do the ruins around that mountain, if we kept it as prominent and central as it is currently? I can imagine the city's ruins surrounding the mountain, and perhaps having been the focal point of the city before it's collapse. The current town just pushes past the ruins to get at the ore in the mountain.

[hircine]

I have edited it a bit already.
Currently, I have reduced the overall height of the mountain.

Making it more of a hill and a raised platform, so you will be able to put a bit of a forest directly ontop of the mountain, which I would only do partially and put tree stumps and lumber working gear RIGHT next to the mine entrance.

My work is only basic and temporary. Those who get the claims will do the massive work of precise landscaping

So even if I left the hill as it stands now, it could all be flattened.
its looking a lot better.

I will have screens and what not of my progress later on..
I'm not far off experimenting with cutting up the terrain for claims.

btw how goes the BSA packing??

I'm itching to work on the town....

[Greendogo]

We're waiting on Tarius to finish some stuffs; I don't want to have to update the BSA so soon after releasing the first iteration. We'll have to wait a bit. But that's ok.

Do you think you could download TESFaith and figure out how to create single celled exterior ESPs? We won't need to do "single-celled" exterior claims, obviously and hopefully, but having the knowledge about how to do it, nevertheless, stuffed inside your head would be convenient. Did you read Arvisrend's comment about TR's claim strategy/organization?

[Lightwave]

Do you think you could download TESFaith and figure out how to create single celled exterior ESPs?

A single cell ESP is really simple in the Morrowind format, the ESP file consists of just a header record (standard in all ESPs) and a single cell (CELL) record. The X and Y value for the cell location is stored inside the CELL record. It's quite easy to create such an ESP in the Construction Set just by starting it up (no need to load any Data Files), opening the render window, panning the camera slightly, then saving the file. The saved ESP will consist of a header (HEDR) and one or more CELLs (the others can be deleted using a hex editor). If you have rendered landscape, it's all in a single separate record called a LAND record; that contains the heightmap gradient data, the vertex colour map (dark and sometimes coloured painted bits on the land, often used around tree bases and building positions) and the placed textures.

To relocate a landscape cell in Morrowind, all TESfaith has to do is change the X,Y value in the CELL record and the X,Y value in the LAND record. That's really all there is too it. It doesn't need to understand the contents of the LAND records themselves, just the X,Y bit near the beginning.

Obviously if there are cell dependents, such as NPCs or placed statics then each of those also needs updating, also scripts, AI co-ordinates, doors etc which TESfaith takes care of. But for a new landscape, you don't need any of those.

The question is what would you like to do with a single cell ESP? Are you looking to carve up an existing landscape in to single cells or block of cells for people to work on individually?

[Greendogo]

... or block of cells for people to work on individually?

That one. Hircine is crafting the landscape for the entire project before we start working on anything else.