Jermungand

I just listened to the podcast. That is pleasing to hear. This Eurogamer article says it's been in development for two years: My link This went all over the internet a little while before the game was officially announced. You could Google "Elder Scrolls 5" and this very same article would appear in the search results on a hundred websites. It still would if it hadn't been outshone by the actual announcement of the game, which now occupies the better part of your search results. It may be that the team's been designing it all this time, but only started taking it off the paper and turning it into reality two years ago. It's also very possible that all the waiting has made me too bitter, and that my opinion may carry some negative bias. That said, we knew there was going to be a TESV, but that doesn't mean we knew they were working on it this whole time. That was just wishful thinking, even if it was correct.

i wonder where you're getting 3 years from, since todd said they started after oblivion was done.... hector530, remember the article about the Eurogamer journalist? A few weeks before Skyrim was announced, Bethesda revealed to this guy that they'd been quietly working on a new game for the last two years. Together with the time remaining before Skyrim's release, that makes less than three years. They didn't get to work on Skyrim right after Oblivion, they had to make Fallout 3.

I'm thinking either: A) This game will be a minimalistic improvement over Oblivion because it has a production period of only three years (the shortest yet!!). ...or... B) They rebuilt the construction set so intuitively and so well, that an enormous amount of time (which otherwise would have been spent putting things in place) has been shaved off. I think this is the more likely explanation. If I were a developer, there's no way I would submit myself to such ongoing tedium again, not when I could spend more time designing the game. ...or... C) An ambiguous combination of the above, possibly. The developers completely skimp on changing some important areas of gameplay while cleverly revolutionizing others in ways that stand out. And we all get a better construction set.

Well, yes indeed. What I need to know, however, is how I can get a mesh and texture file from a face I make in facegen (without paying $300 for a registered copy). Thanks for the continuing support!

Thank you very much! And yes, actually. Given how many people are desperately seeking help for this mod on a fairly regular basis, I'm really surprised this question wasn't already up there with the other common concerns. It has every right to be there.

Where can I get reliable directions about how this is done? You know what? Could an admin just permanently stick this question at the top of the forum?

I intend to replace the game's basic racial face textures and head models with a new set. For this I need to retrieve the data from my facegen creations in the form of texture and mesh flies.

Atmora is north of Skyrim.

A little Norwegian fiddle maybe? :) The Rohan theme from LotR was done with one.

You would only need to slow down/stop time if the enemy were some distance away and you were shooting him/her. In melee, targeting body parts would be easy enough without any VATS-like system. Really, it's all about wether they choose to include location-based damage. A particular strike that inflicts location based damage could be cool.

I have another idea. When you import a face from facegen into Oblivion, where does the data pertaining to that face get saved? The way I figure, Oblivion may be seperating the texture from the mesh, conforming the faces' data to the way face data is normally configured within the data files. That way Oblivion can actually load the information. If this is the case, could the converted face files be retrieved?

You know what would be unsurpassingly more awesome? Multiple, smaller, old school dungeons scattered across the map.

Let's not ask for preset faces PLEASE. We should just ask them to make a better character creator.

I kind of hate being the one saying it, but dragons arriving after centuries of being absent is a pretty cliche problem in fantasy, isn't it?

Hmm... no. I just talked to throttlekitty. He's not even aware if it's POSSIBLE.

What is AoE, and what is cleaving damage?

Anything I make with facegen is saved as a single facegen file. Do I need to purchase facegen to produce facial textures and head meshes as seperate files?

I imagine there will be throwing axes. Bethesda clearly loves nords (as do I), and I have no doubt they chose Skyrim because they could nord things up to the Nth degree. It wouldn't be like them to pass up anything as iconically nordic as throwing axes for a nordic themed game, of course.

Remember how geologists from the University of Maryland were hired to help Bethesda create the algorithms for creating terrain in Oblivion? Can you imagine what they'll be doing with a post-glacial landscape? It's going to be like before, but to the Nth degree, applied on a more massive scale. This landscape will not be boring. Doubtless, it will be awesome to behold. New Zealand is a post-glacial landscape and it's famous for it's awe inspiring geography. I'm actually hoping they overdo the method of applying their calculations to the point where the beauty surpasses anything on Earth.

Oh! ...and mounted combat (of course)!

Stealtrecon, thank you so much for doing this. You are too kind. My greatest concern: THERE SHOULD BE NO LEVEL SCALING. I cannot stress this enough. There has to be CHALLENGE in this game for it to be enjoyable, and there actually has to be an incentive for levelling up. I think I speak for a vast portion of players when I say this. I would not be playing Oblivion of this colossal misfeature of the game hadn't been fixed by Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul. I'm honestly kind of shocked that EVERYBODY hasn't already said this. Other than fixing this glaring issue, I'd like Bethesda to simply do a better job all round. I'd like them to take all the things that made Oblivion good, and take it to another level.

You have a whole world of thinking left to do, before any constructive feedback can be made on this one. I don't mean to strangle the baby in it's crib, but you seem to have left off with, "How would you like me to reskin Oblivion for you to make it Japanese?" as if making something feudal Japanese is all you would need to do make it a good mod :dry: , and,"How about I get rid of magic?" I hope you weren't thinking, "Oh, a Sengoku Jidai themed conversion of Oblivion would be cool because then it would be FEUDAL JAPANESE!!" You have to try thinking along the lines of "How am I going to make this an enjoyable experience (theme being what it may)?" On another note, you might want to hold any total conversion dreams you have, for the release of TES V: Skyrim, in any case.

Does one have to actually purchase facegen to produce a head mesh and texture independently from a facegen file? I'm asking because I want to change the game's base racial meshes and textures. This way I can make nords look more nordic, have imperials look more italian/roman, and make bretons look more french. The work required to make these races depend on seperate head meshes and textures, already exists as a modders resource, so I shouldn't have a problem as far as that's concerned.

That sounds like a good idea. How would I do that? Where can I find an extensive explanation of how that is done?

The controls are plenty precise enough. It's that really, between them and the face model I'm given, no implement exists that can make a face anything like mine. Last time I tried was a total disaster. I'm about as white as they come, so I picked a Nord, but ended up looking like an Asian/Semitic guy with down syndrome by the time I'd finished with the sliders.