Steampunk Oblivion - Recruiting

[phayze81]

Hi all. Still alive, just getting over a stomach flu. :sick:

 

The layout looks good to me, too. I'm looking forward to seeing some of the alternative buildings so we can get more of a feel for the place. Personally, I vote "yea" on the island lighthouse. I think it adds character, and would be important if the town had ever intended to be a major port.

 

As far as western themes in steampunk: it's something that I've seen discussed on Brass Goggles' forums as well. It's generally considered a kind of sub-genre called "Weird West", which is where things like either version of "Wild Wild West" would usually be logged (not that I've seen either, though I should probably correct that some day). Does anyone else remember a short-lived 90's show call Legend? Maybe I'm showing my age here, but it ran along-side ST: Voyager. Anyway, it was kind of similar - western setting, crazy gadgets, McGuyver with a mustache and Q. You get the idea. I'm sure The Google could turn up some interesting screenshots that might be good inspiration for the modelers. But I digress . . .

 

"Western" and "Victorian" typically mean the same time period, just different regions and degrees of sophistication/civilization. Ordinarily, I'd be a little concerned about urban/industrial buildings clashing with more rustic wild west architecture, but considering the eccentric nature of the townies and the fact that everything is likely to be retextured to hell and back, it would probably turn out to be pretty cool.

[stealtrecon]

I was just browsing some photos about steampunk and I'm sure many of you have seen this picture but I thought I would post it anyways.

 

http://www.scificool.com/images/2009/03/steampunk-spider.jpg

 

I thought that the steampunk spider looked pretty cool. I like this because it somewhat reminds me of the centaurians from Morrowind, if that is what they are called. Anywho, I just felt like suggesting it as a possible custom creature for steampunk.

[UK47]

Uk- we can definitely still use custom creatures, and can really fit just about anything into the context of the mod. If you feel like making anything specific, then by all means, it would definitely help the mod.

What kind of creatures then?

[Corthian]

I agree with UK47 on this we need specific monsters and stuff.

[Raathas]

Right,

 

well we could copy some of the dwemer models or ideas or we could create complete new monsters all together..

 

They are obviously going to have to be mechanical, so why not like hybrid humans? humans who have become too indulged in technology and have now began to become part human part android?

Im just trying to draft out some ideas so you modellers can try to create something!

[Tibato]

It seems like this is something of a small steampunk town, which is weird, because steampunk denotes industrialization and thus we have to assume this is imported technology, I would think? Regardless I think that having technologically-enhanced humans might work, though it seems like maybe it would be too small a village to support more than a few of those . . . Unless we want a whole underground colony of them which could be really, really nifty.

 

If anyone gets more work done on that windmill model and can let me have it at some point I can put it in, easy.

 

Additionally: how many houses/buildings do we want in the modern "oldtown?"

 

Additionally additionally: I was in a city (Ft. Collins, CO) recently that had a part of the city named "oldtown," so I retract my comment about there being no good reason to name a place that. It could be that that was the name it took after Anvil became more populated, or maybe even that they were once a continuous city and Oldtown became separated from Anvil as the wilderness crept in and Oldtown became less prosperous.

[Raathas]

I havent read the backstory to the mod yet, however i would suggest some sort of civil war, and then people colonized away from anvil - it would make very good questing for instances such as having to sneak into anvil and retract information about anvil's next plans to attack et cetera..

 

im just going with the flow here guys, i couldnt care less whether my opinions get taken seriously or not! :P

[Shredator]

Sorry I've been off. I live in a small town with only one isp, which means they feel like they can do whatever they please since people are forced to buy from them anyway. So, the internet has been down completely since yesterday, and they never apparently felt obligated to do anything about it until now.

 

Anyway, for filesharing- I have an account on a site called Mediafire, which is essentially the exact same thing as 4shared. Mediafire is just a hosting and sharing site with a single file limit of 200mb, but it seems like it would be adequate for what we'll need. We also have the option to upgrade an account for a month or two, or just fall back on the Nexus.

 

Very interesting post on the Weird West, Phayze, very informational, I'm guessing the WIld Wild West would definitely fit into that category.

 

I think steampunk cyborgs might be a little high-tech for this mod, but we can probably do magicly-possessed mining machinery within the mine. In the story the mages Layla and the antagonist are able to establish only one time portal each at relative locations to the present time, Layla's in the windmill and the antagonist's in the mine (which, I think, will be near his hide-out in the present day). Since the antagonist's influence in the past will be incidentally sealed within the mine, he puts some time into breaking through the doors created by the villagers to keep the beasts within the mine using the steampunk equipment.

 

From the distance between the village's location and Anvil, wouldn't a contiguous city be a little huge? That might be a little hard to fit into TES lore. I like the old idea of Anvil and Oldtown being business competitors though, with Oldtown industrializing to compete and Anvil sticking to more traditional methods. As the people in Oldtown begin creating new and original machinery for mining and fishing, they discover they have a passion for such creation and start to design machinery for many more elements of their lives. I wouldn't say industrialization has to mean a large city, since we won't be getting into factories or mass production much if at all. Instead, every piece to every machine is hand-crafted within Oldtown, to build machines designed for specific purposes. Hmm, underground steampunk culture... (ideas). We've discussed what happens to the people of Oldtown that makes the steampunk city of the past become the simple village of the present- the current idea is that the introduction of magic through the storyline inspires the people, and they go on to change the world in other ways (i.e., founders of the Arcane University). I'm suddenly wondering about the possibility of them taking their research underground- two hundreds years of magic-fueled steampunk creation could result in an incredible hidden modern-day city, which could be discovered as a sequel to this mod. The size and scope of the technology would be a lot greater than is planned for this mod, and would really open up some cool possibilities. Definitely a possibility, but I'll probably keep my attention on this for now.

 

Somewhere between 5-7 buildings in the modern villages should be plenty, within the story it's a fairly small and insignificant city to Cyrodil.

 

Finally, for the monsters. Within the story, the antagonist opens a portal to a plane of Oblivion to summon monsters to destroy the city, but is cut short when in response the people seal the mine shut. In TES lore, all of the Deadric princes have their own realms (as an example, the Shivering Isles are the Sheogorath equivalent of Dagon's Oblivion), all very different and relevant to the prince's personality. The antagonist opens a plane which isn't opened in the normal game of TES4, which results in monsters not yet seen in the game. Looking through what's known of the prince's realm, I think Hircine would work pretty well as the prince the antagonist follows. His realm is described as one huge hunting ground filled with all sorts of vicious beasts which hunt down trespassing mortals, so the villain opening a portal to that plane to cause chaos and destruction seems pretty logical. Hircine is also the god of Lycanthropy (people turning into beasts, most famously werewolves), so werebeasts of any sort would fit in really well. Essentially any predatory beast would fit into that context though, but here are a few ideas-

Cloverfield Beast

Sand Thresher

 

Here are tons more, if any of these happen to catch your interest.

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[Tibato]

All right. It occurs to me we would want foundries/forges for the "old" oldtown. I can start doing mock-ups of that whenever. Additionally I can make interiors for the modern oldtown starting now, particularly if you can give me any sense of the sort of people living in the village; I had poor farmers or fishermen in mind, maybe even people who work in anvil or elsewhere but are too poor for houses there.

[Shredator]

Yep, just simple people, farmers fishers and perhaps an innkeeper. I like the idea of an Anvil commuter too, we should be able to work out an AI path for them as well. There will definitely be a forge or two within the city, yes, as well as a big lava-powered forge in one of the puzzle dungeon's branches.