[WIP] Enderal (SureAI)

[SureAI]

http://media.moddb.com/images/articles/1/104/103851/auto/enderallogotext_en01s.png

 

Greetings to everyone!

 

I somehow realized that we let our first WIP-Thread here go down the abyss – and I somehow can’t edit my first post there. So since it’s been almost two years since that post and because we’ve made quite a lot of progress since then, we’d think this would be the perfect opportunity to start a new thread. :smile:

 

Summary:

 

"Enderal - The Shards of Order" is a total conversion mod currently in development for Bethesda Softwork's Skyrim. The story of Enderal is not set in the Elder Scrolls world of Tamriel, but takes place in its own universe, creating a new, interesting world completely unrelated to Skyrim.

Enderal is being developed by volunteers from the dedicated modding community SureAI, best known for their acclaimed Oblivion total conversion Nehrim – At Fate's Edge. Nehrim was awarded “Best Singleplayer Editor's Choice” by moddb.com and “Mod of the Year 2010” by PC Gamer, downloaded over 700 000 times worldwide and has been translated into 8 different languages – All by fans.

The continent of Enderal is the stage for an extensive, completely new and epic adventure. Enderal is not only the sequel to Nehrim, but also takes place in the very same universe, just a couple of years after the events of the Nehrim story line. It aims to continue the tradition of the intensive and complex storytelling introduced in Nehrim.

This basically means: What we do here is fantasy for adults, it is dirty and immersive, and there are no fairies. Nehrim's storytelling had some flaws that we want to get rid of – there will be more player decisions and deeper characters. In addition, the skill system will differ a lot from the one in Skyrim. Enderal will feature the known XP based skill system from Nehrim, improved with a new class-based system that will help players to specifiy their characters in a more detailed way, thus intensifying the connection between player and avatar. Long story short, Enderal will be a classic RPG with alternative storytelling. Be excited!

We do not yet have a release date and will not include a progress bar, but Enderal has now been in development for 22 months in total.

 

Features:

•An entirely new continent set in the world of Vyn
•Different climatic regions– Venture through dense forests, tropical deserts, desolate wastelands, snowy mountains and lush heathlands!
•An overhauled leveling and skill-system combining sandbox-elements and classes
•A complex main quest that differs from the conventional story-patterns of fantasy-games.
•Companions and characters with interesting, multifaceted personalities
•Self-composed soundtracks and ingame-music

 

This time we’re also aiming for a full, English synchronization in addition to a German one.

Screenshots

ENB-Free, visit our gallery for higher resolution!

http://www.sureai.de/gallery/_data/i/upload/2013/12/17/20131217010938-c8057767-sm.jpghttp://www.sureai.de/gallery/_data/i/upload/2013/05/10/20130510161644-783643ee-sm.jpghttp://www.sureai.de/gallery/_data/i/upload/2013/12/14/20131214194737-6411ae36-sm.jpghttp://www.sureai.de/gallery/_data/i/upload/2013/04/21/20130421173914-71b7ef5c-sm.jpghttp://www.sureai.de/gallery/_data/i/upload/2012/10/24/20121024102330-4575dd6a-sm.jpghttp://www.sureai.de/gallery/_data/i/upload/2013/12/16/20131216010302-b6ce05fa-sm.pnghttp://www.sureai.de/gallery/_data/i/upload/2012/12/16/20121216174045-346953ae-sm.jpghttp://www.sureai.de/gallery/_data/i/upload/2013/11/10/20131110214924-cf65c678-sm.png

 

 

 

 

 

 

Videos:

 

Landscape-Teaser: A little outdated by now, since we made a lot of improvements regarding the flora, but still good to get an impression!

 

Devblog, 1^st Episode: Explains our (fully implemented) class-system in detail, showing examples ingame

 

 

Music (Playlist)

 

Click me

There are a lot more news and material on our official website as well as on our page on moddb.com. Follow us on our Facebook-page to stay tuned! (And no, we didn’t sell our soul to anyone, it is simply a good way to stay in touch with our fans. :wink:) For those eager to learn more about our project, here’s an FAQ on our official website

 

Finally, if you like our project and would like to support us, we would really appreciate your vote in the Mod of the year awards 2013, where we have been nominated in the category “Best Upcoming”. There is no registration necessary – Just click the link below and press vote! We are grateful for every voice we can get, since it shows us that our work is appreciated and will maybe help us to convince more, professional voice-actors to support our project with their voice!

 

http://media.moddb.com/images/groups/1/13/12303/profile/moty-125.png

 

Best wishes,

 

SureAI

Edited December 17, 2013 by SureAILatiro

[shawnikaros]

You'll get my vote! Waiting to hear more news :smile:

Good luck!

Edited December 17, 2013 by shawnikaros

[smedennils]

Yay! :)

This looks great! I really like the class system and talents.

And when looking at the screens and video i get the feeling that it has the same level of detail as Nehrim, which was pretty amazing.

 

Alot of questions though, perhaps I could start with a few easy ones:

How big is the world compared to Skyrim?

I understand that the mod is in development and alot could change but perhaps you could give me an estimate number of gameplay hours? 5? 50? 100? 200?

 

Anyways great work as always!

[SureAI]

Sure! I'd say that the world is around the 3/4 the size of Skyrim, probably a little more. We didn't want to get to overambitious (since overambition seems to be what makes so many mod projects fail) and wanted to avoid the Nehrim problem of ghost cities. The gameplay-time may vary. Some people rushed through Nehrim in 30 hours, which will be possible for Enderals mainquest, too, and some spend 200 hours exploring the world. I think it'll be the same in Enderal, since there will be a lot to see. So I'd say a fair guess is: Between 40-85 hours. But like I said, just a guess. :)

[SureAI]

Greetings,

Fitting the current time of the year, we'd like to show you a new screenshot of Enderal's north - The Northwind-mountains. Secondly, we have decided to release the first chapter of an ingame-book called "The Butcher of Ark". It's the autobiography of a notorious serial killer, who died half a centurye before the beginning of Enderals story - It will introduce you into the lore of Enderal, will give you a sense of the overall feeling of Enderals themes and attentive readers might also spot how some interesting connections to the mainquest. Hopefully it will be a good read for everyone enjoying dark, mature fantasy!

Finally, we'd like to tackle a topic which has been on our mind lately. A lot of users have suggested for us to use ENBs in our screenshots. However, we won't and never will. There are three reasons for this: First of all, it would falsify the end product. People whose machines aren't strong enough for the ENB would simply get something looking entirely different (and probably a lot worse). We want Enderal to look awesome on every machine, even on weak machines. Secondly, most ENB-programmers do not allow modders to include their ENB in the download. It would overcomplicate the installation progess. And finally, we consider it to be an easy solution to getting impressive results. Someone once said that a designer’s true skill shows when making something look great and immersive, even without dozens of graphical enhancements. We want our work to be genuine, and we want it to amaze you due to the hard labor and passion we put into it. Of course, people are free to use whatever ENB they like and installing it themselves after Enderal is released, thus enhancing their experience even more - We simply don't want to make it obligatory or call it our own work.

That being sad, I hope you enjoy these new insights into the world of Enderal! :smile:
 

~~~
“As requested, I have brought you Jaél Tannerson’s biography. The Steelcrabs surely did their best to keep it locked away from the public eye… Suppose they’d rather live in denial than face the fact that one of their own was behind those gruesome, pattern-less killings. Typical, isn’t it? Anyway, I expect my payment of one thousand pennies to be in vault 1012 by next week. I will hear from you.”
- A Letter

“The Butcher of Ark – Chapter One” – Englisch

~~~
“The Northwind Mountains are a region situated in the far north of Enderal. Though being inhospitable due to their extreme cold and perilous fauna – Lost Ones, Frost Myrads and Glacier elementals, only to mention a few -, they used be well-travelled in the past. This fact was due to the Northwind-mines, where the valuable Northwind rocks were mined, which are rumored to be close to indestructible, thus making them a highly sought-after material for the construction of castles, treasure chambers and fortresses. After the closing of the mines, however, the region was left abandoned, leaving behind ghost villages and dangerous, semi-collapsed mineshafts, which still attract adventurers and treasure hunters. […]"
Lexil Merrum,
High Arcanist of the Holy Order

http://www.sureai.de/gallery/_data/i/upload/2013/12/18/20131218123820-5ec57661-sm.png

 

[smedennils]

Worldsize seems great, better to have higher quality living landscape then an empty desert. Quality before quantity anydays (except for beer :) ).

 

The Butcher of Ark was quite well written and I want more. Nao! :D

 

Have you guys thought of a system like this for combat talents? http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/29137/?

I am sure there are alot of animations that are set free when you scrap the Skyrim storyline so there should be no real problem making "special moves" like leaping or whirlwind attack or well i guess you could make all kinds of fancy moves. I understand that you want combat to be more tactical than in Skyrims so this would for sure give it some more layers. How about the chaingrab from ESO, or "get over here" from Mortal Kombat. Pretty easy to make and could be insanly useful, grabbing that mage out of his crowd of bodyguards and desposing of him before he could unleash hell upon you. Or the other way around, for i guess that the NPC:s also will use these special talents?

Well just an example, but what do you guys think ot the idéa? Perhaps you already have something similar planned?

 

About ENB, wise descision to not bundle it with Enderal, to much performance issues and people would for sure use their own config anyways. And screenshotting something with Enb is kinda like retouching your self-pic at an online dating site, not the best of ideas :D

[SureAI]

This combat mod surely looks nice! We'll think about it. Maybe not all of the moves, but the Dodge idea seems interesting as well. The problem for us is that it requires SKSE. They don't permit packing their script extender into mods, and we don't want to force our players to download and install the extender from an external source. But I surely like the idea! We'll see about that if we have time at the end of the development. :)

[SureAI]

Today's the last chance to vote in the Moddb.com-elections! If you like our project, we'd be very grateful if you'd vote for us: we're running for the category "Best Upcoming". A high ranking might help us to get more voice actors onboard (Even English ones) and show us that all of this hard work is actually appreciated. :)

 

You can vote here: No registration necessary!

 

http://www.moddb.com/mods/enderal

[Avanzchel]

Elected (~._.)~

 

Can't wait for the release of this mod, just seeing the screenshot makes me eager to play it!

 

...

 

btw check your messenger ~(._.~)

[SureAI]

A lot of things have happened in the past twelve months – Both in the development of Enderal and in our team. We have worked a lot, we overcame obstacles, and we grew closer together through team meetings and the fact, that a lot of us now live in the same city – Munich.
It would be a lie to say that mod development is always easy, because it isn’t. Realizing the vision of a mod project of such great scale doesn’t only require creativity and a whole lot of passion, but above all a lot of stamina, reliability and an eye for the feasibility of one’s own goals. It is so easy to get lost in the invention of countless, unrealizable features!

So now the year has come to an end, and with new experiences under our belt and many miles closer to our goal, a new year is awaiting us – hopefully as productive and insightful as this one! The constant support of our fans, the commitment of our voluntary voice actors, and tokens of appreciation such as achieving the 2nd place in this years “Mod of the year”-awards (Category: Best upcoming) will help us a lot with that. The last one wouldn’t have been possible without your support, and we sincerely want to thank you for all your votes. As well with these words as with a “end of the year”-bundle we have put together to express our gratitude as well as to grant you new insights into the game Enderal will be. We were actually planning to release the second episode of our devblog, but we postponed it since we wanted to give you all something “special”, which you will find at the end of this post. We were unsure on whether to release it or not, but we did – and we hope you will all like it.
That being said, we wish you both a merry Christmas and a Happy New Year 2014!

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http://www.sureai.de/gallery/i.php?/upload/2013/12/26/20131226202030-4c192cb2-sm.jpg

The Sun Temple - Work in progress

http://www.sureai.de/gallery/i.php?/upload/2013/12/26/20131226181111-da46be78-sm.jpg

- Vyn: From the archives of the Order

http://www.sureai.de/gallery/_data/i/upload/2013/12/26/20131226182223-7ec79b96-sm.png

Oorbaya - Concept Art

„There are two ways to deal with the magic that has broken free inside you. The first one: Turn to the Holy Order. They will take care of you, and if you perform well, they might make you one of their own. In their ranks you will learn how to control this raw, undirected power inside you. And the stronger your will, the purer your meditation, the more the magic will bend to your will… and ultimately serve you as a companion, much like a faithful steed which possesses its own will but is in a state of perfect harmony with its rider. If you decide against the Order, you will become one of the pathless men or women we call Wild mages. And even though you might rise to great power this way, this power will be like a rabid Shadow wolf, who possesses the ability to devour anything in its path, but who will ultimately turn against its master. And someday, my son, when your soul has been completely torn apart by the magic in your veins, it will dispose entirely of your bodily shell… and then you will become one of the beasts, which bards and poets alike call “Oorbaya” – or the “Blue Death”. The choice is yours.”

http://www.sureai.de/gallery/i.php?/upload/2013/12/26/20131226181013-67f9be41-sm.png

Story Teaser

Since very little has been told about the story of Enderal (Apart from the first chapter of the „Butcher of Ark“, we decided to change that. This is a short teaser aiming to provide a small insight into the themes and the general feel of Enderal’s story. We have been trying to create a world that is both beautiful, fantastic and humorous, but also dark, cruel and deep. But: Don’t tell, show.

Best wishes,

SureAI