Matth85

Klein, I believe you are mentally challenged. YET AGAIN you say the same thing. Here goes: You are saying you don't like MMOs, and how ESO is a MMO. NOT that ESO is a TES game. They are TWO different things. Stop being a fanboy, and get out of here. ESO is a TES game. In EVERY way possible. It is not a sandbox game. But if you expected that, it is your fault -- nobody else. Geez, you are starting to annoy me. It's like you prop a finger in your ear and yell "lalalalal Can't hear you! lalala!". If you don't like MMOs - fine. Go away. And no, you don't. Everything you say is how you hate what MMOs are. But don't lie about it. Go whine on some other forums about how sad it is. If you expected TES6, then wait for TES6. This is not that game, and was never meant to be. Did you do any research at all?

If you get "friends" that leave you behind, I suggest choosing friends better. At least I got a core of friends in MMOs. If I went back to WoW today, for instance, I would have a easy time once I hit level cap. I got 9 people that would carry me through whatever content there is, just so we all can progress together. They are rare to find, but they do exist. And a MMO is build up in 2 phases: Levelling and endgame. Most MMOs focus on endgame. If we take WoW as an example: Yes, you will be left behind if you take a vecation for 2 weeks at level 32. Since by the time you are back everybody else is level 90. However, this does not slow you down in any way, shape or form. If they are good friends, they will help you. If not, you make new friends and keep going. But, again, it's all about perspective. MMOs are good for what they do. If you want to achieve, and progress, you will. How fast depends on you. If you want to enjoy it with friends, there are no barrier stopping you. @Klein I'd take a 10 man raid, or a 40 man raid, over anything. That means that your decisions got a outcome in the battle, and that your skills can tip the favor. That said, what does that have to do ANYTHING with the current discussion about MMOs, ESO and TES? o.O That is what MMOs are?... You PROGRESS: Progressing takes time. Time you spend grinding. You say you like MMOs, but dislike grinding. That is like saying I like food, but hate eating.

But that, kleinstaff, is you not liking MMOs. It got nothing to do with how ESO is a TES game in every sense of the word. ESO is a TES game. It is in Tamriel. It contains lore, it contains stories. You meet known characters. You fight known enemies. You see familiar landmarks. You see familiar races. Don't flap lies around that. ESO is NOT a open-sandbox-game. ESO is NOT a graphic-masterwork. ESO is NOT a singleplayer game. ESO is a MMO. You level up. You progress. You grind. You get gear. You raid. You PvP. You turn the graphic to minimum to perform better. TES single player games and ESO are two different worlds. HOWEVER, they are two worlds in the same book. If you expect an improved Skyrim, then you will be disappointed. If you expect a story-filled adventure with a community, then you will be surprised. I say: Give it a chance. It wont hurt you to try. When you buy the game you most likely get a month free. Use that to test it. Problem solved.

It is your choice. I don't see the problem to be honest? ESO will not run dry any time soon. At least a year will pass before anything might happen. And if your internet connection is bad, I feel for you. That said, you are not forced to play with anybody. You can play a MMO perfectly fine alone, as long as you got a connection. Again, it is your choice.That said, you pay very little, and you are not forced to sign any kind of "Play minimum 1 year!" deal. You pay monthly, so if you quit, you stop the supscription.Again, you do not need to wait for people to get online. You can play solo. And you ARE never the only one wanting to go online. Even if you logg on in the dead of the night, there will be people there. To the other poster: I hear people say that. I just never understood it. If you are in a good guild, in any MMO, it matters little if you are gone a week -- or a year. You'll get back, and you'll progress.MMOs are progressive games. So yes, you will be left behind if you stop playing. it's is a matter of perspective. What are you left behind of? Getting the best of the best?If you play for story, or for fun, there is no problems in being "behind": If you play hardcore, then yes -- 1 week off is bad. But plying hardcore is like being a proffesional gamer ( ew...) -- you need to prioritize gaming. But yes, it is a personal question you answered too. So I will not argue around it. It is your opiniom after all. @Kleinstaff:What? Are you high or something?You are right that it is not made by Bethesda, but it contains areas of TES, story of TES and is just as much a TES game as anything else. The only different is the time period and game-type. You don't lose anything if you don't play it. It is not the "next TES game". But spreading lies all around is lame, Kleinstaff.

Working on big projects is the same no matter what it is. The best way to deal with it is simple: You get a base layout. You work with the base until happy. You detail is. Why is this the best? Simple: When you work in details, you will quickly see yourself blind on your own work. This happens to everybody, and is why everybody seeks feedback on their work. In their mind it looks either good, or terrible. They can't tell why though. Hence it is a lot easier to get a base layout done. If something bothers you at point A, you can go to point B. If something is odd in point B, go to point C. Go back to Point A or B and flush out the problems. How I would tackle any big project, no matter if it is modding or IRL: - Get perspective. What is it that must be done? - Break it down into pieces. What things must I do? - Look at each piece and map out how and what. Do I know what I should know? Can I use placeholders untill the end? - Get a base done. Look at every piece, choose a starting point and simply base it out. * For instance, for a model you would make a base mesh. For a custom mesh I would make a 5 min sketch in photoshop. For a custom dungeon I would make a overhead view in Photoshop. Other options are using placeholder models/dungeons/NPCs inside the CK and just get something out there. - Look at what is there. It is raw, but it is something. It went fast. Does this work with what I had in mind? Should I change something? - Start somewhere. Layer it. With the base, add some custom NPCs. Add some secret rooms. Maybe some big clutter. Does this look better? Can I work with this? - Keep layering. Change between parts. Dungeon is done, but lacks clutter. Move on to another piece. Perhaps this NPC needs a story? Perhaps I could outline my quest? - Go back and forth between the pieces, keep layering. You'll eventually get to the end. - Details, details, details. The whole idea is to not tunnel-vision yourself. You work in layers, you work with pieces. That way you can change back and forth when you get frustrated or bored. If something looks wrong, instead of working for 5 houres figuring out why, you work on something else. Perhaps that makes the first thing look better? Perhaps you got a new idea now? Perhaps you know what is wrong? Matth

1. Have you ever tried any MMOs? I just wonder since you hate it, but doesn't know about it. 2. I doubt TheNexusForums would get it, seing as ESO got nothing to do with mods. But ESO got a official forum. 3. You pay a small monthly fee. This pays for: Server uptime, patches and anti-hacking softwares. It's worth it. 4. If the company stops they usually die out. By that I mean you might get 1 server online, with minimal people playing. That said, about every MMO made is still active, even though most can be considered "dead". 5. A MMO usually don't build around a "MQ". It builds around end-game content. Which is most likely raids. That means you will never really be affected by others. The only effect if you start late is that you got little people to level up with. And even that is not too bad. Don't worry about that. You make friends quite easily, and will always have help. You join some sort of guilds and have plenty of people there. 6. MMO is safe, of course. The screen consist of many familiar elements: A minimap, toolbars for action skills, toolbars for stuff like inventory and journal, and a chat box. In the chat there will be different kind of chats that you can filter through. Whispers are personal to you, you get a general area chat, for everybody in the zone. 7. People are not really rude. At least not in the start. It's when a MMO goes F2P, and when things get competetive( WoW ) people start getting rude. But in general people are all right. 8. I see none. Why hate something before we've tried it out? If anything, you can hate MMO and how they work, but not a specific game. If that's the case: You spend a lot of time developing your character. You invest a LOT of time, and might get attached. That leads to the big "addicted to X game" hysteria. Though that is a luxury problem really. You spend as much time as you want to yourself. 9. You can play as much as you want. If you want to do dungeons and/or raids, you must group up with other people. Chances are there will be thousand of thousand of people online at every single moment. So you are never really alone. You should google, or watch some WoW on youtube, if you are really afraid of MMOs. EDIT, to above poster: You make it sound like a bad thing. The economy is made by the people, and it makes sense. A rare item costs a lot. And chances to drop items will make it feel like you achieve something when you get it. Say there is a 0,3% chance to get a super awesome weapon from Miraak. Wouldn't you feel awesome getting it? Feeling better than the next dude who uses another, lame, sword that got a 25% chance to drop? And "casual" gamer rant is such a weird thing to bring up. People just recently started using it. Why? You spend less time, you are behind those who spend more time. ... How is that a bad thing? If you and I got the same job, and I work overtime as much as possible, should we get equal pay? Should we be equal good after a year? The economy is as friendly to casual as hardcore, and everything in between. If you spend time crafting, and working on your character, you get just as far as you want. It might mean you won't get that sweet staff the first week, while some others will. But you will get it. I hardly see the problem in it. TL;DR: Casual is a word flinged around too much. Every MMO out there are TOO casual friendly by now, so I don't understand the complaint. It takes no effort in any MMO these days, compared to.. say... Everquest. Oh, and the economy is player-made. So "Hardcore" and "Casual" can not be used there. It is only "Human". Matth

Fun fact of the day: - Porting is not allowed. Fun fact number 2: The site itself says "DO NOT POST THESE MODS ON THE NEXUS OR STEAM WORKSHOP" Fun fact number 3: Don't link site like that. Please.

I'd recommend you learn more about 3d and textures before you try to get them into the game. Half the fight is versus nifskope and the way Skyrim handles meshes. You do yourself no favours trying to get things to work if you are unsure of how everything works. That said, try google. Most of the thing you ask are discussed before. The way we do things is the same as in Oblivion, so a google search will help.

I'm heading to bed now, so I can't really check anything now: But if it is within a .nif, it is not hardcoded. We got all the values we need there. Of course, half the values are "Unknown" or horribly complicated to work with, but it's there. If nothing else, make a new .nif and replace the old one. That way you are certain the .nif is not the problem. Again, I will not be able to do any research myself at the moment. If nothing comes out in between, I'll check it out tomorrow. I've always enjoyed fighting with nifskope. Been doing it since Oblivion. It's actually quite interesting how complicated it makes easy things.

You should not avoid tris in a finished model. Only when working on a high poly model. The game engine makes the whole mesh tris anyways. For the game mesh you want as little polygons as possible, while keeping the shapes. Only thing to avoid is N-gons. A optimized mesh will be almost all tris, with quads where it is needed to retain the shape. To be honest, if you want the mesh to look less boxy, make it high poly, then bake it down. Don't waste polygons on chamfering edges.

Okay, here goes: 1) The metal looks a little too much like rock. When you make a metal texture, try to get minimal details into the difuse map. If you study metal, you see only some detail sits on the color itself. Most is seen via the metallic shine, which you will make via specularity and reflection map. 2) The texture itself looks very dark, for no reason. As in the dark spots all over. I am not sure what they are meant to be. 3) The wood looks.. not woodish. Wood got grains, and chances are they are running down/up. On your tetxture it looks like they are going neither. 4) The texture itself in combination with the low polygon count, makes the model look very boxy. As you can see every polygon in every curve. You should either round it more out, or get something to take the eyes away from it. 5) From a realistic standpoint, the handle would break quite quickly, due to the size of the blade. * That might be what you look for, but know that the brain automatically calls out stuff that looks unrealistic. So that might be why it might look odd. 6) Just to end the texture part, it lack definement. There is no different between the metal and wood. What should be happening is that the wood would not shine, and have a low specularity, while the metal should shine and have a high specularity. That's all I got for now :p Got to run to my exam! Good luck! Matth

Just taking a wild guess: The jarl does not rebuild it because he fears it will bring more mages to the college and it would end with the history repeating itself. Hey, the Nords are quite stubborn and short sighted. So it's a possibility, I guess.

*texturename.dds - Difuse map. The color information. In the Alpha lies the trnasparance map. I.E. have it at gray, and you got glass. *Texturename*_n.dds - Normals map. In the Alpha lies the SPecularity. I.E. the level of shine. *Texturename*_m.dds - THe reflection, or environment, map. It decides what, and how much, of the texture will be reflect. *Texturename*_g - Glow map. The level of glow the object have. *Texturename*_e - Cube map. Made out of the sides of a cube, and is what is being reflected by the environment map. What is most used: Difuse Normals with specularity ( In the Alpha ) Environment(_m) Cube maps(_e) I am not sure if Skyrim supports Gloss maps, so I'll leave that out. It's quite easy really. Info about the maps. ----------------------------------------------- Difuse - colors. In the alpha we can put the transparency, where white means invisible and black means fully visible. Normals - Blue/purple/green kind of texture. Made via baking a high poly to low poly, or by using a plugin. Can be edited by hand, but the only really work we do on these maps on hand are tweaking errors and adding new details via filters. Speculariy - Normaly a colored map that decided the shine, and what color is being shined. However, Skyrim uses the specularity inside the Normals alpha, which means it is grayscaled. So the easy way is to grayscale your difuse, then edit it to get the desired effect. White means shiny, black means not shiny. Environment/Reflection - Kind of like specularity. Grayscaled. White means it will reflect fully, black means it will not reflect. Example: Metal would have a very bright contrast, while wood would be all black. Cube Map - It's a little more complicated. But think you got a box, and the box got a texture on it. You then fold out the box to be flat. Though we usually only use the cubemaps alredy in Skyrim -- they are good enough. It is unnecessary to make your own cube map. Glow Map - Contains the color you want to glow. So the texture is all black without the specific spots you want to give a glow. quite easy to make. For reference, if Skyrim actually does support gloss map, and I am not aware: Gloss map - the level of width the particularity has. The specularity map controls the intensity, the gloss map controls the glossiness/width of the shine. Math

I wrote that before the edit, but yes. Though doesn't that nulify what you said in the first place? Either it is lore friendly or not. The lore decides, not us. Tamriel got quite a lot of lore. We speak of the evolution, creation and destruction. There can't be a random new race that we can make up. We can use the existing races, or bi-races made via experiments or different branch of evolution. For instance, we got elves. There are tons of different elves, all deriving from the old High Elves. There are bound to be a kind of elves we do not know about, that will be shown in future games. We can't do that though. What we could do, is to let existing races such as Maormer ( Water Elves ) or Lilmothiit ( vulpine-man-creature). So we got a lot to work with. But the line is clear. I'll stop now though, as this thread should be used for the OP to get the help he needs, not for me to rant on :) Matth

You have the right to your opinion. Does not give you the right to say it out loud behind his back. That is disrespectful, no matter who it is. Gopher IS a public person when the topic os Skyrim though... So people are BOUND to talk behind his back. If someone like MedivalGuy says he doesn't like Gopher's materials, he isn't doing anything wrong... He's just expressing his opinion about a public person. Just like you can say bad things about Obama's government without he needing to be in the same room. Neither am I denying anybody to do it. I say doing it for no good reason at all, in contrary to Obama's government, is being an asshole. You are all welcome to s#*! on people as much as you want, but don't get all surprised when somebody like me comments back. That's all I want to say. I guess it's about respecting the people you do not know, yet helps people. I mean, if you said something about Ghandi, I bet my hat somebody would rise up against you. Is this really any different? Gopher is a good youtuber. That is not an opinion. Wether you, or I, like him or not. If people dislike him for various reason -- okay. Sure. I won't try to get into your head and force you to say "Okay, I love him now!". However, I will try to get you to stop shitting on random people. Just to put it blunt. By the way: It is not "wrong" of anybody to speak s#*! of Gopher. Since you are entitled to your opinion. However, is is wrong to speak s#*! of people, if we go on a moral stand point. But I think I will leave now. I'll end up making this thread bigger than it needs to be :) My point is there. Good luck finding your youtuber though, mideval guy! Matth

Not quite. If you care about making something lore friendly, you got guidelines. TES got QUITE the story behind itself, so you can't just say "dude, fantasy and magic. These shark people are lore friendly 'cause..." TES series is a story being told in such a way we decide the story, but the guidelines and structure is not ours to decide. That is the developers. By the way, your "Devs can do it, but not modders" comment is rather weird. Can I also write a book called "Harry Potter and the 2 towers" and say "You know what, if they can write it, I can write it too!" and say it is the sequal to Harry Potter and Prequal to the Hobbit? There is a big difference between Lore friendly and non-Lore friendly. Modders are not limited to either, but making 1 and claiming it is the other is wrong.

You have the right to your opinion. Does not give you the right to say it out loud behind his back. That is disrespectful, no matter who it is. Nothing said in any posts here demands you needs experience in anything. Good for you! Still doesn't change anything. Just about anybody could become a millonaire. As long as they took the time to earn how, and were devoted to it. How come so few have? Yes, people could find all the information they want themself. heck, why go to school? It's all on the internet. But you know what? It's easier. And Gopher does a good job with it too. You can't question the quality of the video, and his sooth voice. First off, I am not sure why you feel the need to defend your opinions. I have never tried to change them. They are yours, and I don't want them. I got plenty of my own. Secondly, I never questioned your attitude towards him. I don't think you hate him, just feel it is rather unfair to disrespect him, and then go all defensive about your opinion. No, you do not need to be respective of Gopher, or anybody you do not know. However, it is a wise thing to be. So yeah, you do not need to defend your opinion. But you could be a little more careful how you talk about people you do not know. It's simply not nice acting up for no reason.

In that case, I recommend you take it even slower than that. As in, learn your software package. This is how I would do this: In your basic 3d package - make a base mesh. Importing it into my sculpting software - Flush out the anatomy and details. Back into 3d package - Fit it to to the argonian skeleton, and get it rigged correctly. Tweak every animation to fit Tweak every vanilla armor sets to fit Other options would be to edit an existing race. Though that would require a lot of tweaking, but if you'd rather tweak than create, that's fine. Now, what I am going to tell you is more of a rule than a tip: Use reference. As much reference as possible.

I must ask: Have you done ANYTHING similar to this before? I ask because, you know, this is no easy task. Making a mesh is one thing, making a good mesh of a character will take you months to learn. If you have no experience in 3d before, we talk years to get anything of quality out. If you got experience with character creation, animations and rigging, I say: Good luck! If you got nothing of that, I say: Start small! I bet you won't find any architect in the world that started their job by making a skyscraper. But you are right, the few of us left on the forums are a helpful bunch. It's all the matter of asking the right question, and somebody will always know. Good luck! Matth

Okay.. this just got weird. Let me just get this straight: - You insult Gopher - Because he plays a fantasy game as he wants - Because he doesn't play it as you want - Because he helps out others - Because he shows basic knowledge in a systematically, and orderly, fashion - Because his videos are of quality - Because he is actually a modder that shows how to install mods cleanly, not randomgamerxx24 who uses mods, but never made one. Am I getting this right? That, my friend, is how the world works. Majority of the people out there made a name for themself doing things that are not new, or super exciting, but they did it in such a way it becomes good. As for Gopher, he is: - Calm - Got a good voice - Is not biased -Got knowledge of what he speaks of - Modder, so he knows the underlying mechanics behind things - He does thing systematically and orderly. Take the modding videos: He starts at the basic, he gets a base of mods and then he starts moving on. Give the man some respect. He is one of the youtuber you simply get in a good mood from watching. Now, to address the issue here, leaving my bias opinion behind: Going TOO hardcore is something you will not find youtube videos about. For the simple reason hardcore = Hard/Slow/throughout. And the majority of people does not want to watch any of that. People in general does not want to see a guy spending 1h+ walking over a mountain, where he dies in the end due to freezing. Stuff like that you can see in movies. Or see the person leaving all loot on the floor, because he can't carry anything. SInce, you know, a 2 hander, a full set of armor and a potion is about all you could pysically carry. Or to know he can only use his bow for 12 arrows, then it's out of juice. The majority would not want to watch that! No, people want to see action, they want to have fun. So, getting more hardcore than Gopher is not easy. I don't even know of anybody.

The only problem I can think if, is making it clean. It would consist of a lot of scripts, and a lot of global values. Making it all work nicely together might be problematic. But again, it does not seem like there are enough people around to really care, so I will hold this idea for another TES game.

I take it the forum have died out. Okay then. I'll save this project for the next TES game.

I still need some opinions regarding the 2 questions I asked :/ 1) Force the lore/history down the player through the quest, or let majority of the story be through optional stuff/side quests/books. 2) Have it be a "grindy" quest, with lots of random chances involved. Making you really work for your weapons. Or simply do is Skyrim style: Quest - kill - loot. Nobody got any input?

Nothing?

http://img833.imageshack.us/img833/7343/q18e.png Hey all! I am currently working on a series of quests, related to my 2 released sword mods. It's quite a lot, to be honest, so I need some help before I start digging in on scripting. First off, Would you like to be spoon fed the story, or keep the juicy details in in-game books and what-not? Letting the interested get the lore, and story, while everybody else can just rush to get the weapons. Second, how much work would you like to put into a sword, or two? The idea is to make this feel "legendary" and make you feel like you gain them. I speak of adapting the MMO-kind-of system. Random chance for a piece, random chance for a note, random placement of an item inside a random dungeon. Let's say I got 2 options, which one would people go with? 1) Little random, just named enemies. Done rather quickly. You move on, done. 2) Random loot chance. Lots of exploration and work. The rest of the post is info on what I plan to do. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Just to set the stage, let me explain what the deal is, and what you gain: Reward: 2 swords. Tiamat - Enchantement consist of you gainaing health on excecution, chance to fear the enemies on hit and every kill gains you a attack speed, and armor-penetration, buff for a few seconds. Stacks a few time. Anghelm - Enchantement consist of a chance to drain magicka, and as the magicka is drained the enemy loses health. The wielder also gets a magicka buff. Considering other bonuses if the player have 100 in a magic school. Short on the story: Part 1: Player finds pieces, can only gain 1 sword. Player finds one of the brother, does a quest for him, gain a "Power Essence( a gem ) Player finds a way to reforge the ancient sword. Player gains the forged blade, and enters a trial to use fuse his/her power with the power essence. Players gains the enchanted weapon and Player House( Anghelm) or Companion (Tiamat) Part 2 ( Not complete. Depends if I ever get done Part 1): Player follows the story to gain the other sword. Moving the plot forwards a little. Part 3: Player helps the brothers, story ends, player get a small permanent buff. What I seek to do is making the story focus on the brother and their swords, and make the player really feel like the swords are powerful, yet not game-breaking. My goal is also to keep it lore-friendly, so i will work on adapting it more towards the lore. Most of the story involving the brothers will be found in game books, and through optional NPCs, as they are quite the mystery! What I want to do: - Give my 2 swords a story. - A series of quests. - 1 Companion, Blood Mage/Battlemage and/or gaining a Player Home - Let the player "visit" a small area of Coldharbour. Want to capture the feel of it as well. - Custom enchantements for the weapons. - Give certain NPCs the ability to make the weapons 1h or 2h, or to take off the enchantment. More freedom for the player. - Custom effects. A lot based om "Blood magic" for the Tiamat questline, and "Pure, blue, elvish, magic" for Anghelm. Well, let's see what happens! For now I just need to know how much work people would actually like to put into a quest for "legendary" weapons. Updates ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The scattered pieces of the swords. As of now planned to be divided into 3, + a gem. I might work the texture a little too, to make it look more "out of order" http://img850.imageshack.us/img850/8028/astf.png Matth