Galandil

December Update; I have just finished my last exam and I now have three and a half weeks of Christmas break. I will do my best to spend this time as productive as I can though I should press certain advancements to the mod which may change development from here on out. During my time studying for my exams I just couldn't help myself, the sections of the Solitude sewers that I wanted to finish before the first iteration release are now finished. The remaining portions of the sewer system will be implemented in future patches along with the two factions that dwell down there, will update the guild feature on the frontpage with some information concerning these. I have also finished navmeshing the Whiterun Water Canals and after allowing a fellow developer from the Nexus to test out the mod, I have been given plenty of feedback which made me carry out a few changes to the Solitude Entrance tunnel. The changes are merely superficial and made to make it a little less confusing and perhaps a bit more of a representative entrance for the richest city in Skyrim. I have also slimmed down the Solitude walkway, essentially the extended city area outside of the entrance to Solitude which was previously too open. It is now a little more huddled together at one point making it look more natural and better at using the space. While I did not agree with all of the feedback I was given, I was given enough to make me confident that the level design process of this mod is finished. I will try to finish up creating the LOD meshes for the new buildings, which will in the first iteration be rather simple, square and triangle shapes to form somewhat of what the building looks like and yet cost as little as possible on your system. I will, or rather have already started working on the three new outfits for Holds. I also wish to devote some more time to writing books and notes that I will scatter around the world. I also wish at sometime during this break from school to release the final trailer for Holds which will feature the new district in Windhelm. Merry Christmas :smile:

Thanks a lot as you can Imagen its a constant struggel whit critics, but I usaly Spellcheak the importent texts whit a brittish friend, spelling and gramma is the easy bit for most, its telling a good story and creating belivable characters thats the real art! If your intressted we could use some Bate-testers we constantly make updates of smaller things and could need some opinions of the changes that are made! Thanks for your supportiv post! I'd love to beta test your mod if you want :smile: I have a bit of a busy November but I should be free around mid-December when my exams are finished.

Your dyslectic and a writer? That's wonderful! I applaud you for not letting dyslexia be an obstacle for you to do what you want to do :smile: Many people struggle with insecurities concerning dyslexia and it becomes an hindrance for people to do what they want to do because they are afraid of negative responses. Looking forward to trying out your work. Good luck with your mod.

Minor Update; I've started working on the Solitude Sewer system. Essentially I've had a week with modding spark and been working non-stop. I'd say I am about halfway done with what parts I want to include in the first iteration. What will be included will be a maze of tunnels, something reminiscent of the Imperial City sewer system. I doubt however that I will create an opening for the sewer system outside of the city walls, so unlike the Whiterun Water canals this is not meant as a sneaky way to get into Solitude. If people feel strongly about it I will of course create that sort of entrance as well though I did some testing and it just felt very out of place. As far as story development for the sewer system I have done some brainstorming and come up with what I think might put some depth into an otherwise rather bland and hollow city. Once the sewer system is finished I'll need to make the guards dynamic in the civil war and I believe I will create two more outfits for the mod. One with a vest, variate belts, variate type of vest and how thick it is as well as clothing and color, and one with a jacket with the same variations. Then its all about distributing this outfits to the characters in the mod along with permission armors and clothing I have been granted by the community here on the Nexus. I will also need to create LOD for the new buildings though I think I could use the original meshes that I worked out from, reduce the polygon count and use vanilla LOD textures instead, and then I'll need to create the LOD for the world map. I have tried this as practice on a test esp and it constantly crashes. I did contact a fellow on the Dark Creations forums who said he could help me out, but I sort of eluded to that I would contact him at the end of September to do this, however at that time I hadn't gotten to that point. Hopefully he will be will still be willing to help me out. I also have a slight problem with dragon flight path. As I understand it you need to generate a maximum and minimum height for your world-space but this does also crash. I will see about contacting someone who've worked with this previously and see if he or she will be able to help me out, as users like myself of the Deadly Dragon mod will find it rather strange seeing Dragons behaving like Gophers. I can make no promises of having this ready before Christmas, like I've said in a previous update, November will be a fairly busy month for me. I have two hand-in assignments due next Sunday and I have two weeks of group project afterwords. Then there's my exams. However after the 14th December I should be free for about 2-3 weeks which I intend to devote to hopefully finishing this project's first iteration completely. Hope people will still want to play with this despite Fallout 4 coming out ;)

Minor update; .. Alright. It has taken the better half of my weekend but I've made sure that every character added by this mod gets a coffin or an urn in a hall of the dead in the Hold that they live in if they are killed. On one hand this means that every characters inventory can be collected later if they de-spawn, it means that they will de-spawn which they wouldn't do earlier, and that every character added by this mod is kill-able. I do intend to add quests in the second iteration but I don't want to limit a players freedom while playing. If you make the decision to kill a quest target before the quest then the quest should react to that in a natural way, instead of artificially keeping that character alive until all of its quest involvements are resolved.

October Update: I have decided to remove two settlements from my mod. Granitehill and Oakwood. I've removed these two because they serve no purpose, they stick out and ruin the vast feeling of being in a forest far away from civilization. I placed them in bad locations making them visible anywhere near Lake Illinalta and having them there potentially created a choke on memory. Oakwood was also the first settlement I created in this mod and because of that I found its design flawed. However going back and repairing previous work is easier when your working on a separate cell like Falkreath, with Oakwood it would've meant creating an even larger choke on the memory. I know now also some of the lore regarding lake Illinalta and having a town there conflict with this. I have also removed Granitehill which was located near the Hunters Cabin, it just didn't feel right and like Oakwood created an unnecessary strain on the memory. I hope people will understand, and if people still want these two settlements I'll consider adding them as separate mods. @Edit; Actually. I feel like I need to press the point that the mod became a lot smoother after removing these two settlements. It had an impact on area's that isn't even in Falkreath either which tells me there may have been problems in these area's. Oakwood was after all my first settlement. And Granite Hill was the third. I did not have the sort of know-how I do now and removing these area's was definitely the right thing to do. I have also moved three families out of Whiterun, freeing the place up making it look less huddled together in certain places and thereby preserving the Open Scandinavian design that the town is supposed to have. I have not removed these families completely, they now reside outside the city walls by the Pelagia farmstead and I feel like this works better. The AI is intact though and they will on more then a few occasions venture into Whiterun. We now have proper AI in the Arena Lobby for Windhelm along with proper lighting. I have added the remaining plot characters to the mod along with their necessary AI. I have also added the FaceGen textures and the mod feels so much better, despite the ... two and a half hours it tok for the Creation Kit to process these. I have some busy work left to do, I have to add proper factions to the many warehouses and guild locations as well as replace the guardsmen in this mod with proper faction related guardsmen which will switch between Imperial and Stormcloak whether the hold has been conquered or not. I will also have to make more use of the permissions I have been given to better diversify the characters added in this mod. I have started this process already where it feels natural to do so. I also have some LOD resources I need to create before I can set up proper LOD for the mod. I feel like I also need to take some time to flesh out the world a bit. What I mean by this is to add unique names where I can, add some more Easter-eggs (can never have too many of these :smile: ) as well as add more books and letters. I also have the large bundle of work ahead of me concerning finishing the Solitude Sewer System.... Absolutely hate working on this and as I've mentioned in previous updates I am considering dropping the sewer system from the first release all together. I have a pretty tough November ahead of me. School sadly comes first. I will try to get time when I can. :smile:

Small update; I have edited every character added in this mod, adding unique faces, and voices, as well as adding classes and proper stats and levels. There are still some plot characters I want to add, but these will not move around much outside of quest plots. I have free'd up some memory in the Solitude docks, no longer does the crewmen of the Worm, a ship docked at the harbor waltz around the docks, with the exception of the captain. This has free'd up considerable memory, as well as making the whole area smoother. I have also re-applied my ENboost, which has also even more so made everything smoother and I am now completely free of memory related crashing, hopefully the last time I run into these problems as they seem to appear when I get not-so-bright idea's and add stuff I should know by now I shouldn't, which creates a choke on the memory. I have added details to the Falkreath caves, a small smuggling tunnel which will be involved in the Falkreath plot story-line. Have removed some of the chickens and one of the dogs in Falkreath for sake of memory. So what remains now is to add more unique outfits, properly fix the specularity on the outfits I have/will create myself, add some remaining plot characters to the game which will be mostly stuck in their original cell location, fix the remaining navmesh, I have fixed most of it, but there are still some remaining deleted navmesh, that needs to be properly overwritten, if they simply can be deleted that would be fine, but best if the ID is overwritten to avoid problems, and finally add proper navmesh. I have yet to finish the Solitude Sewers and I doubt I will before release, it is supposed to be a huge network of tunnels with various corridors and halls. I am not happy with what I have so far and will have to sit down and try to re-think the design of this area. Unsure if this will be included in the first iteration of this mod. I am also considering removing entirely two settlements added by this mod as they serve no purpose, does not sit well with me, and ruin the vast-feeling of Skyrim's Pineforest.

Hello Gunslinger6792. Ehm! Its a shirt / Tunic and it is actually blue. I will be making many more color variations and shape/design variations as well. The reason it may sort of look grey is because the normal map isn't entirely perfect. Sort of still learning to get the hang of this. :smile: As for chainmails, I have been given permission by numerous mod authors to use their work in this mod, and there will be a few chainmail wearing characters but the chainmail itself wont be made by me, perhaps that is for the best in a way. Thank you for your kind words, I hope the mod will be satisfactory when it is released :smile:

http://i.imgur.com/VYhOWl5.jpg http://i.imgur.com/q3wDxGL.jpg I have some work that needs to be done on the diffuse texture, need to make the seams and folds look more realistic, but beyond that. How does it look? Does it look okay? :smile: (My first outfit, will make more of course as well as various texture variations, belt variations, and jacket / pelt jackets / fur cloak variations :wink: All this to make each person added by this project to look like an individual and not a cropped copy paste of a character you can already find in the vanilla game! Will also look into making clothes that make each Hold feel different. Clothes will look very different on people in Solitude, then on people in Falkreath, for instance.) Also: If you like what I've made don't hesitate with asking if you want to use it in your own modding project. I'm not opposed to handing out permissions and the files to people who ask!

Your more then welcome to use them if you want to Mattie! As is any other developer who asks :) Thank you :laugh:

Just when you think Skyrim modding is on the decline another epic project turns up :) Looking forward to the release!

Small update. I am working on the new outfits for the mod. I am having some problems rigging. But over all creating various outfit designs that I feel is needed to create more diversity both in the cities between characters, and between the various Holds. I have been talking with other developers and been given a great deal of advice on design and how to go about implementing this. Rigging like I said still remains a complete mystery to me but I'll manage eventually, in the meantime I will try and create as many outfits as I can. Here is what I have so far. Once I can get the mesh into game I can easily make color and detail variations, I have also created a version without the belt, one with a leather belt, one with short sleeves and will also be making variations with with a fur cloak and with various fur vests and coats. http://i.imgur.com/K9YLgkO.jpg I will be looking into texture design this weekend and try to make the texture look better, I will be following this image here created by Vaultman30 who has been giving me plenty of helpful advice :) http://i.imgur.com/C31XmBy.png?1 If you know your way around rigging armor from Blender and wish to help guide me through the process please do let me know :)

Minor update. I've fixed a few minor issues, added proper emittance lighting to interior windows, done some more stress testing and will be finishing up the final LOD meshes tomorrow before starting to work on the NPC's appearance in game. I don't know how important minor details as whether or not one character in Solitude has the exact same face as a character in Whiterun, but it is me, I've been testing the mod as I've been developing and it does tend to bother you after a while, I suspect editing in details might take longer then just this weekend, but hopefully people will appreciate the effort :)

Small update. I have fixed my mods navmesh, well.. mostly. I have followed a tutorial which I'll link here; http://afkmods.iguanadons.net/index.php?/topic/3337-skyrim-fixing-navmesh-deletion-using-tes5edit/ While I couldn't overwrite every single deleted Navmesh with my own which are added in this mod, I see much more stability, stable FPS and much much much less stutters, practically zero(for some reason), and characters actually going where they are supposed to, and not everywhere else. Having worked on this project since November 2012, I'll admit I felt overjoyed when finally characters that have fought me tooth and nail not go where I wanted them to go, actually went there. Characters who've previously entered a vanilla interior, and been incapable of leaving until I show up are suddenly a problem whisked away. This weekend a fellow developer here on Nexus will be testing out my mod, hopefully he will have an over all good experience and will run into minor problems. I am in the midst of testing as well and so far I've had a pleasant trek. There are still some vanilla deleted navmesh that I haven't overwritten yet, I have bumped into a few area's that I recall has them and how the characters behave is very different from in area's where it is fixed entirely. I will fix this with time, either be through making new navmesh paths and overwriting that way, or undeleting and sinking the old vanilla navmesh -into hell, where it belongs-. Another fellow developer has agree'd to see about helping me fix the LOD for the mod, seeing as how easy it is to break your game by doing it wrong I think it is best to leave that to the expert. He will be available to do this around the end of September and hopefully he will have no problems creating proper LOD for this mod. There are some other stuff I found while cleaning the mod with Tes5Edit, problems that are brought up in Holds, but are caused by Dawnguard and Hearthfire colliding with each other. I cannot clean these two, hopefully the unofficial patches have fixed this, if someone could clarify me on this that would be great :smile: Next week, on Tuesday to be exact I will be going back to school. I've had a wonderfully productive summer, and while I don't want to slow down development now that I am so close to wrapping this project up, I fear school and real life has to come first. Hopefully this second year will not be more stressful and tough then last year, leaving me an opening of about 2 hours a day to work on the project. Hopefully I'll have enough time a day to look into adding the remaining NPC's, micromanagement and tweaking. :smile:

Here is my seventh and eight trailer for the mod project. The first trailer shows Whiterun, the exterior might seem familiar to a lot of you, it is created from the work of Drakulux who is the author of the Whiterun Outskirts Market. I was given permission to create something I'd dare say is identical to his work, and I feel it really does make Whiterun feel less like a missed opportunity to make use of space, like the walkway towards the town main gate. In the market characters from both the inn, The Tundra Rest, the Courier's Headquarters and occasionally less hospitable groups who've gone incognito may be found buying and bartering for supplies. While it is not shown in the trailer there is also a nice feature in the mod. The first thing I did when I had started up Skyrim and escaped Helgen, was leg it towards Whiterun, and when I saw those water canals I wanted to access them. I thought this would play out sort of like in Oblivion, the Imperial City. A full canal of sewers and many enemies to fight and treasures to be found, but alas. It was not so. However now you can. You can access those tunnels and sneak in and out of the city. Very usefull for say a Werewolf, or someone with a bounty on their head? ;) The second trailer shows Falkreath. I have previously released a trailer for Falkreath, as you can see it looks quite different now, with updated meshes and an overall dirtier terrain. The reason for this change is because it never sat well with me. I realize the polls tells another tale but I just can't properly release something that just didn't feel right to me. For those who were looking forward to a very rustic and pavement-filled medieval town; If you are like me and you intend to play Skyrim for a while more yet, then no doubt you are going to try out the Beyond Skyrim project. Now I have had a few glimpses at what they are working on, and believe me you will get your fill of castles and European medieval level design. Atleast this way Falkreath wont feel redundant and feel like a less impressive carbon copy of something you will get in a much heavier mod project like Beyond Skyrim. I would really hate to work on something that I know people would want to disable since it would feel too much alike something you would find in High Rock, or Cyrodiil, and want the diversity and cultural stamp of what you'd expect in a Nordic town. I have tried to keep some aspects of Colovian Architecture in the design, hopefully people will enjoy this change, but please do let me know what you think of it :) I apologize for not updating the forums with more screenshots and updates on my work, it may seem like I've been slacking this summer but quite the contrary, I've been learning how to use Nifscope and Blender, how to create meshes and how to get them into Skyrim. I have created a full modders resource that I will be releasing for those who would want to use it for their own projects ;) And I have been adding content here and there on the mod. The Whiterun Water Canal is finished, the interiors are finished. I have begun working on the LOD implementation now, and will once thats done start looking over small issues. I have also allowed a few friends who I trust to try out the mod and report back on problems they may encounter, and whether or not this mod is actually an enjoyable experience, and if not how it can improve. I feel like a mountain of work has been done this summer, and to put it quite bluntly. There is not much that remains to be done before I'll have to see about releasing the first batch of this project :) Hope you'll enjoy the trailers and hope you've all had a good summer!

:wink: Already? Well done! Can't wait to try out your mod!

I can understand wanting a mod that adds dialects to the various races, whatever those dialects would so be. However making everyone speak different languages will, well in concept it may sound like it makes sense, after all they are culturally different from each other, why wouldn't the language be different as well? But in practice it will come off as odd, and it wont be very lore friendly either. As TX pointed out the Imperials language has become the common tongue shared between all races, it can be noted that races did not share one language back in the day, I've even heard that the Argonians have their own language they speak back in Black Marsh, but in the fourth era, after hundreds of years under Septim rule, the people share one language. Another thing that should be pointed out, if you have two characters talking to each other, one being Imperial the other being Nord, and the Nord starts speaking German to the Imperial, the Imperial then replies in Italian, would that come off as normal to you? To me it will look like two helpless individuals trying desperately to communicate with each other, or something as silly as Star Wars where everyone somehow understands the bug-faced alien and he understands English, but speaks his native bug language, and everyone understood the odd noise he made just as well as if he would've been talking English. It is kind of silly? :tongue: Edit; Maybe a cool idea to help people learn new languages? :)

Haha true! Thanks mate, I'll send you a test nif, along with a nif that a developer over at Dark Creations has actually managed to get to work. :)

Well, it fixed the ugly black background that is now transparent. The mesh itself is still invisible in the game. Hopefully I can resolve this before I go back to school at the end of August.

:facepalm: Fixed now. As you can tell Tlafloon, Nifscope is still a big mystery to me :sweat:

Late Update! Sorry for this being such a late update, I was hoping to make this update first after I had added the new Falkreath buildings into the world, but sadly I am having problems. The Falkreath meshes are sadly invisible when I put them in the world. I am getting help from an amazing modeler on the Dark Creations Forum, the ones who are working on the Beyond Skyrim project. She has helped me out with a fair amount of self-made guides and advice, even created an example, sadly when I try to follow these guidelines and replicate her example I still end up with the same problem, an invisible mesh. Seeing as how she is able to make the mesh she is working on perfectly visible, the problem is quite clearly that I am doing something wrong and need to figure out what that is so I can learn from that mistake. Hopefully I'll have the meshes put into the world soon. Once I do have the meshes in the world the plan is to make some changes to the layout of Falkreath, it has always bothered me, it has never felt right, and after getting a little sneak-peak on the models that are going to be used for Beyond Skyrim Chorrol, well, I doubt anyone will be upset that I have decided to make some changes. If you are like me and enjoy playing Skyrim, and intend to do that for some time yet, then you will no doubt be playing the Beyond Skyrim project as each part becomes available and hence it will be better that the two towns look more then a little noticeably different from one another, rather then look too similar to the point that you'd rather turn my mod off in your load menu. The changes are: Hay on the roofs in Falkreath, removal of a few buildings all together and replace them with new buildings made by myself. Replacing the pavements with wooden walkways, adding two farms inside of town, and over all making Falkreath feel a little less clean and feel more gritty and dirty. I will also replace the Falkreath Keep with a Longhouse that I have created myself. Reason for this is that this never really felt right to me either, the keep itself felt bloated compared to the other Jarls Homes around Skyrim, and so I've replaced it. The keep itself will not be removed from the mod however, it will be part of an update in the future as a part of the necropolis dungeon below Falkreath. Aside from working on meshes for Falkreath I have also spent quite some time this summer finishing off interiors, the Whiterun Water Canal is now finished so you can sneak in and out of Whiterun through the various water flow grates that you can find around Whiterun, I have also finished the Falkreath catacomb tunnel, the halls of the deads have been worked on. I have overhauled the entire Windhelm Halls of the Dead, giving it a unique look that better fits properly to the Windhelm design, and I have created a hall of the dead in Dawnstar which also has a unique look. I have expanded the Solitude halls of the dead with two cells and made sure that it no longer feels odd that you head in a straight line and end up exiting facing where you came from. I also asked a developer from the Dark creations forum to test out my mod, and while she only had a few hours it seems like she had a nice experience. It also made me aware of a few problems the mod might have for other users which need to be addressed before the mod is released. I am also wondering if there are any texture designers out there who'd be interested in helping me out a little with a texture I need for the plain farmer outfit I have created. If you are please do contact me here on the Nexus through PM and I'll provide additional info. :smile: I have a feeling that this project is on the right track, but as always, it is a massive undertaking and will take some time. Here are some screenshots of the buildings I have been working on this summer. Do let me know what you think about them! :smile: Falkreath Longhouse http://i.imgur.com/CqyR5Cf.jpg Falkreath Longhouse Northwing http://i.imgur.com/iUoPEx5.jpg Wolvesbane House http://i.imgur.com/4Y5MNsK.jpg The Seven Goblets Inn http://i.imgur.com/OdRhF7P.jpg

Your definitely off to a good start! Looking forward to seeing the finished piece :)

Who said anything about making money off of SCK ? that was more as a side note to donations if ppl even do that nowadays. Even if I were to ever sell my own work for things outside of Skyrim, as stated by SCK you can't do that even if it's used outside of their game, so that much is clear. I'm interested in the second part of my question, and that's if you keep all rights if you otherwise don't use SCK and can otherwise use it for whatever you please. Pardon me, perhaps I misunderstood you but it seemed like you were hesitant with starting modding because you disliked the notion that Bethesda would own your work and would be able to use and modify your work for their own purposes. Essentially its like this. If you modell an armor from scratch, you don't use any of Bethesda's shapes or textures in your work and you upload it to Skyrim. Bethesda isn't going to send lawyers at your door if you decide to say... upload it to Dragon Age, or Witcher. Or if you start your own gaming company and wish to use your own handcrafted work. The legal cases surrounding modding has to do with as I said, people wanting to charge money for the work they've made. Since people would be using tools created by Bethesda for a Bethesda game, it stands to reason that Bethesda would want a piece of the income, and without rules and regulations it is better not to allow people to charge money for what is being used in a Bethesda game. So like I said, don't worry about it. Create stuff and have fun. Edit; And no. If your going to mod, use the Creation Kit. I believe a few select people managed to mod without the Creation kit before it was released but... It does not matter. If you create something for Skyrim and upload it to Skyrim Nexus or anywhere else, the same rule applies, but in the end it counts for nothing as long as you don't try to charge money for your work on a Bethesda Game.

:confused: Eh what? As far as content goes created by Skyrim's Creation Kit your not allowed to charge money for your work. This is something they tried to change back in April or was it May, which was very unpopular and hence pulled back. The mod that you create belongs to you, the content you create be that a new armor or whatever is yours. But your not allowed to add it to Skyrim and then charge money for your ESP file, if that makes any sense. Essentially as long as it is in Skyrim, you cannot charge money for it. You can create anything you like, be it a Basket in the Drunken Huntsman or a wide scope project like Rochebere. Further more I wouldn't worry too much about Bethesda stealing your idea's or the content you provide in your mod. You really think modders here even scratch the surface of what they are capable of creating? Aside from encouraging angry Keyboard warriors on their website, it wouldn't be in their interest to steal from content creators when franchises like The Elder Scrolls survives largely on the modding community. I get it though, you don't like corporations, but please take off the tin foil hat and start modding. :)

I have checked out this modder's resource and I am using a few select pieces of it, it is very good! :) I'll send you a link to sendspace with the updated architecture on the Nexus mail, please remember to credit Ratji15 for the meshes and Breti for the collision fix! Compatibility patching is definitely something I could use a hand with! I haven't gotten that far yet though. I don't think this mod will be ready for release just yet though. It is a heavy load of work. I just finished the Whiterun Water Canal yesterday, I may have to put a few interiors on hold and patch it in later. Those interiors would be: The Solitude Sewers, the Solitude Museum, and the Falkreath Tunnel Entrance. This should not be the end of the world though, as the mod is released without quests initially it isn't much to do in these places :) As far as it comes to level-design though I would prefer to do this myself, it may take a little longer just having one man working on this but that way I am certain it comes out the way I want it to. I am sure you are an excellent modder, and maybe in the future we could work on something. In fact, if you have six weeks off and nothing to do, I would suggest you head over to the Dark Creations website and post in the recruitment section about what you can do, show off some of your work, and ask to help out. They are a tightly knitted community of hard working modders who are focused on creating the rest of Tamriel. The Beyond Skyrim Project I believe is always open to more workforce ;) http://www.darkcreations.org/forums/forum/141-recruitment/ I thank you for the offer though :)