snapmoderator

Obviously the ultimate would to be to have children, young, middle age and old for each race. Well at least for human and elves. A person would need to make each a new custom race, then make sure that all the actors are assigned to each one appropriately. Same with body types, have children, adult and old (probably excessive having middle aged as well).

Head on over to tesrenewal.com, we have basically sorted out the technical. Maybe you could could help in some way?

Just in case anybody else gets this problem try deleting the "Data\Interface\map.swf" file. SkyUI installed this and my machine did not like this configuration one bit. This solved it.

I am going to tentatively say that we have a master scripter who will look at the technical side of making this possible. We are working on the same big new world together, so until that project is more completed, work will be more about feasibility of aspects of this mod, including dynamical changing the LOD.

So I was pointed towards a video of a mod being made for Skyrim called "Andoran". Check out the first 7 seconds, they have dynamic seasons working. Its years away from a release, its a huge new world mod. The thing is that I'd be 99% sure that they wouldn;t want to release their methodology for it, they'd want to release it with their game.

Hi siola, once again I'll direct people looking to help with textures towards joshezzel and soolie. If you want to look into scripting in general then that is a good way to get into Skyrim modding.

Hi ArtMurder, Ask joshezzel and soolie about how you can help with textures.

Yeah, this will be a long term project. Unfortunately we all have big projects that we are currently working on. I wasn't really expecting any official development to start until next year. I have not heard from Tinymight however, who was going to experiment with the scripting part, and obviously a lot hinges on the success of that. If we don't get any volunteers for scripting, then I wouldn't be able to look at it for several months, I really am committed to other projects. Calling all scripters....

Hey, glad to still see Saviik City is being worked on. Without completely knowing, I'd say asking to "render" an object on the fly (after load up) is probably not possible. You might be able to hide it (make invisible) but it would probably still be loaded, thus no performance difference. Also if you were to succeed with this method, you are only really delaying all the objects to be rendered, so eventually it will the same problem after awhile of running around, unless you also unload other objects further away. I think if it was doable in the way that you want it, the game creators would have developed it for the engine. In a way they have with LOD. Of course LOD is used for larger objects at bigger distances, but same theory that you can have low detail turn into higher detail as you get closer. There is nothing to stop modders from making invisible lod models so that they pop into existence up close, but we cannot determine the distances that this happens. Obviously this methodology was never intended for smaller objects like clutter.

They are almost 2 different types of mod really. Seasons of Skyrim changes textures and models, and CoT is a weather mod. So you'd use them in combination for best effects I'd say.

Its entirely possible that its just too high poly to export to a NIF. I've had this problem in the past where 3ds max just hangs forever when trying to do a large model.

Well at the moment the poll requires you to make them all :-P Are these models yours and is it a case of getting them Skyrim ready with lower poly and possible lower res textures? They look mighty fine wherever you got the screenies from. [edit] Oh snap, these are real swords!!! Yeah might have to lower the poly count from atoms to pixels - lol

I see Soolie has released a HD distant terrain mod, well done, much better sir :) Kind of brings it home that we need to make at least 4 versions of textures LOD. Then we are going to have to get custom SKSE functionality to see if we can override the textures. As an absolute backup plan to all this, and I not going to pull the wool over anybody's eyes, is that we might have to have an external tool which copies the files. Radical I know. Optimal no. Desirable, not really. However when push comes to shove, if gamers want a seasonal change system then this might be something to solve LOD. We can aim for 4 change overs for LOD. We either create a new Skyrim game launcher, which can check the last save game and find the date and then start copying the seasonal files to the appropriate directory. This is a last resort type thing and only for the LOD files, both the models and textures. But cross finger that we will be able to find some functionality to do this. I know we have all been busy working on our own things, but it would be nice if you guys post once in a while just to know that you are still keen :)

You're in luck. Some punters have spent a good amount of time to do this for you, its called G.E.M.S http://www.skyrimgems.com/ You'll still be hoarding but it gives you a good guide to immersion mods

Start reverse engineering the game engine. Then you can open up some of the restrictions that are imposed on a lot of the features. Seriously however, your best bet is to help out with the SKSE project.

Would be a shame not to release a mod of sorts as it looks very promising. If you got the license go for it!

You'll need to be careful about the source of your assets if you plan on advertising on Nexus, as there is a policy of not discussing or distributing resources without permission. As you've said they are from other games, so would pay to check the permission of the game makers. I only forewarn you as I've been in this boat before. Unfortunately with the detailed mesh walls, they probably won't be lod once you are say within city walls, because of distance. Cities usually being the most cluttered and detailed areas. So performance will be an issue. I've done quite a bit of experimenting with poly counts in cells and certainly there are thresholds that you want to limit yourself to. I did some analysis on Skyrim a while back for a big game mod I'm working on and Riverwood04 has the highest ploy count at 130,000, which doesn't include grass and maybe even trees? (sorry can't remember) The do look good however :)

Haven't looked at scripting yet. Tinymight should have some time to look at it in a week. Hopefully the idea is to find events that happen before the textures actually get loaded.

On naming conventions and general approach to programming when transitions happen I think we should base it off the exact calendar for Skyrim. http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Calendar Our folder structure can be done in a format "meshes/css/category/month/day/" and "textures/css/category/month/day/" So if you have something that you would like to transition on the Mid Year Celebration which is on the Mid Year 16th, then you'd put changes into: "meshes/css/landscape/6/16/*.*" and "textures/css/landscape/6/16/*.*" This goes against what I said in an early post as I thought it was important to try and make it flexible to have seasons transition faster as an option for users. As some people will want to see changes quickly for curiosity and testing. But for sanity and general easy its better that we have events hard coded. A person will have to change their calender (set date) if they want to view a particular time of the year.

More slightly wacky ideas. Joshezzell and I were talking about leaves in full autumn being kicked up into the air similar to how the mod "Footprints" works, http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/22745/? But I was also thinking that we should change the snow blowing effects, so that they are more seasonal. At the moment they are models that continuous have a windy snow blown effect. We could change the textures or look at the animations themselves. Obviously just changing the textures will be easiest but I have noticed with the NetImmersion functions in SKSE that we might be able to slow down or speed up the animations. It means that we can slow them down once out of winter and also even change them to a dirt blowing effect instead. Also there is the possibility of adding a new type of model to a few extra areas, which are leaves blowing. Should make them subtle, but will really help bringing autumn to life. Again these can be transitioned to dirt and snow for the other months.

Soooo, I'm guessing you didn't look at the thread !!THIS FORUM IS NOT FOR MOD REQUESTS!!

Checked out the Climates group. Anybody a Nirn astronomers? Lol, but in theory we can have the Moons phasing with the seasons and we can even change the Sun to be brighter/bigger for the summer months. Another one I thought of potentially changing is the water types. Have them still and more transparent for summer and then more choppy for winter. One thing that we will want to do is to place frozen blocks of ice on some of the water surfaces for winter. Same with icicle's on rock surfaces. I'll just put a reminder that this is a project that require many tasks and hence as much help as possible. The above is a classic example of how a pretty small task can be done by individuals. You can start out by making a climate mod. Developers should aim for what they feel will give a good experience. You might decide that changing climates once per month is good. So then you can set up 12 different climates to reflect the seasons. We don't have the scripts to change these at the moment, but as you can see this doesn't bottle-neck work that can be done. You may then find that 12 is not enough and go bi-monthly, or weekly, or even daily. As long as they have been set up that's the key.

Absolutely need to keep communication going, for general progression. We still need to do a few proof of concepts, but at the moment RL is preventing me from spending much time to look at the scripting side. Hopefully tinymight will get some time soon to look at possibilities with SKSE, etc. But I'm 100% sure that we can do everything that we have already talked about. Not important really, but does anybody know if you can change the times of sunsets, sunrise, etc? Would be good to be able to change them with the seasons. [EDIT] I found this mod on steam for longer days and another for longer nights http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=14458

No problem, you'll need to upload somewhere which host files, I doubt nexus has anything other than actual mods. I use google drive personally, but whatever you like. It does not have to be the skyrim data folder, as long as you specify to nikskope where it can find textures, and that the paths are correct. But ultimately you will want them in Skyrim data folder, after all that will be the end product for you final version.

With those vertex colours controlling grass wave amplitude, does anybody know if trees also use this technique? I've always wondered why some meshes move and some didn't for some modder resources.