Underground City Mod

[Ghreandel]

First of all, this is indeed my first post on these forums. I have been visiting them for awhile now, and I'm a huge fan of alot of the work here. Particularly Exnem, NEC, Divine Avenger, and many others that I can't remember right now. On to the meat of the post: (and I apologize in advance for my horrible spelling)

 

I want to do a mod inspired by Forgotten Realms' dark elf city of Menzoberranzan. Before I get any flames about realistic goal setting and time requirements, yes I have read Bird from Hell's post about ambitious modding. I am not asking for help (yet), nor am I going to try to do anything that has not already been done in either the original game or one of the many excellant mods I've played.

 

Mod goals/ideas: (subject to criticisms/reality checks)

 

Very immersive story leading to the city, starting with assassination attempt on player

 

Portal similar to Oblivion gate leading to the underdark. I was thinking of using one of the many Ayleid arches with a portal script and graphic effect, as the real oblivion gate is too distictive.

 

Entry into the city itself (no it ain't gonna be called Menzoberranzan, just inspired by it). The city will be compartmentalized similar to the imperial city to cut down on performance issues on slower machines.

 

City to be populated by Dark Elves that use the Lineage II dark elf skin and Exnem's fabulous body. I just love those 2 mods.

 

Once in the city player can try to join one of a few differant (I'm thinking 3 or 4) great houses as either a guard (male) or an agent/assassin (female). Yes, this is due to the matriarchal nature of dark elf society. And yes, I know that this will increase the number of quests in the mod by an exponential amount. Looking like between 16 and 32 quests just counting the starters.

 

Once a member of the great house, player can work up the ranks doing various tasks unique to each house, eventually becoming either the house Matron(again female), or house Master of War(male). The differance will mostly be cosmetic, as both positions will in effect have the same privilages and quest hooks.

 

While working up the ranks, player will participate in numerous quests to raise their great houses' status and rank in the city. This will culminate after the player gains max rank in his house with the player leading his house to the highest position in the city.

 

Of course there will be shops/inns/homes and such in the city. I'm thinking each house will own it's own dictrict, with maybe a nuetral market area. Also a slave trade district and maybe an entrance to the underdark to be used in future mod additions. Not sure.

 

 

Well, thats the short version of it. I've got alot of images and ideas spinning in my head, don't want to bore people with all of them. I particularly want this to be true to the vision of Menzoberranzan given by Salvatore. It is supposed to be beautiful and frightening and alien all at the same time. Lots of glowie effects, statuary, gardens, and beautiful/sadistic themes.

 

On that note: Let the flamming begin! :thanks:

Ghreandel

[Triforce1]

That would be pretty cool. Part of the Mt. Archon Mod adds a city inside the mountain. I would love to see this. But instead of a portal, maybe pick a place in the Jeralls and add a small road and big stone doors carved into the mountainside? And perhaps a race of it's own (dark elf variation) ? And why begin with an assassination attempt? Simple questions, man, no harm done...I would aid in this progress, but I am already beginning a big mod of my own. If it is of any interest, check out the "Dragon City" topic in this same forum set.

[ninja_lord666]

If you're going to add in the dark elf social distinction, then there will be almost no quests, and definitely no rank raises. The dark elves of the Forgotten Realms don't simply consider females dominant; they consider high-born females dominant. Even then, they may still be treated terrible. All males and all non-high-born female dark elves are inferior and worth only slightly more than slaves. All non-dark elves are slaves. Simply put, if you add in the social distinction, the dark elves will attack the player on site to either kill or enslave him/her. Only adding in partial social distinction is just stupid. If all you want is an underground city which has architecture based off of the Forgotten Realms and populated by Dunmer, then it's better. However, you run into the problem of needing new and complicated models and textures for the architecture. The Vanilla stuff just won't cut it.

[FrozenFirebrand]

I think this sounds like a good idea, there were a few underground city mods for Morrowind that I played, that were among my favourites. I think if you do it in a clever way and build the atmosphere, it may be that a minimal amount of new meshes/textures are needed, there seems enough of a base to build on what is already there. I like the fact that the story will only be inspired by Forgotten Realms, this gives you more licence to do what you want with it and make it unique. A house system is a good idea, it's something I enjoyed about Morrowind and I think others would enjoy the depth in this area, that isn't as prominent in Oblivion.

 

Good luck with this mod and if you are looking for people at some stage, I would be happy to do some small jobs for you. (PM me as I don't often come to the forums.)

 

Good Luck and don't be burnt by flamers.

[Ghreandel]

As to the social aspects of Dark Elf culture, I intend to use a bit of creative license here. I fully agree that no Drow city would ever allow a non-drow non-highborn to lead a great house. Fortunatly, I'm not trying to exactly emulate Drow culture. Just pay a bit of homage to it and tell an interesting story at the same time. I see no reason why I can't make the dark elves of MY city less xenophobic than the Drow. Also, I was toying around with the idea of disguising the PC or something along those lines. Not sure yet.

 

The main technical problem I can foresee right now is the decoration and architecture. I totally agree that vanilla oblivion will not even come close to my vision of what the city should be like. If I use Shiv Isles it will help, but not enough. I'll probably have to make quite a few new models for the statues and/or buildings. But I don't think this will be too terribly difficult as they will all be STATIC models, no animations or fancy texturing required.

 

The reason I'm setting up the way into the city the way I am is for compatibility. I want to have absolutely zero affect on the outside/wilderness cells of vanilla oblivion, so my mod will work with anybody elses. It's supposed to be 100% self contained and not conflict with anything. Not sure how possible that will be, but I'll endeavor to try. This will mean packaging Exnem's models/textures and the Lineage mods with it, but full credit will be given to the VERY talented authors of those respective mods. I confess very limited modding experiance with respect to Oblivion. The CS has a pretty steep learning curve so far, but I was able to struggle through modding the original Quake, so I figure I can wrap my head around this eventually.

 

Suggestions/ideas are welcome :blink:

Flames are taken into consideration :confused:

Hot girls are leered at. :thumbsup:

 

Thankee, :thanks:

Ghreandel

[Triforce1]

You know, there are some very simple and straight-forward modding tutorials on the CS Wiki (if I knew how to link the site, I would). You can reach that from the elderscrolls.com utilities page. The main one goes all the way from building a house to creating a quest line for it. I went through it, and now the CS isn't so daunting. It doesn't tell you everything, but it gives you a good basis to start on, shy of scripting. That is one of the things I still can't do or understand...I can't find a good tutorial for that though...I think there is a list of scripting commands at the Wiki as well. Check it out (if you haven't already...:sweat:)!

[Ghreandel]

Yep, already done it. I found it much more informative than the My First Dungeon tutorial put out by Bethesda. I spent like 3 hours just trying to get the layout right for Bethesdas tutorial and then found it didn't matter. :wallbash:

 

No biggie. Gave me good practice with the cave and mine tiles I guess.

[Ghreandel]

Ok, this idea is shelved until I can figure out how to make a visually appealing cavern interior. I've tried everything I can think of, and looked at all the examples I can find from Bethesda and the community. I can't seem to find any way to make a LARGE interior cavern that feels realistic. The options I've tried so far are: Using Bethesda's cave tiles and scaling them up 3 or 4 time normal size and creating an external world with extremely high terrain to simulate cavern walls ascending high out of site..

 

My main problem with the interior tilesets is the ceiling. If there was a way to blot out the ceiling from the caves, then I wouldn't have to increase their scale. As it is, to get the ceiling hight I want I have to enlarge it by 3 or 4 times. And the tile looks like crap when it's that big. I've looked through all the tilesets packaged by Bethesda, and almost all of them have ceilings attached to their walls and floors. The few that don't are just single piece holders and don't have the variety that I need.

 

I put alot of time into making a very nice exterior world with very high cliffs simulating cavern walls. Everything was going nicely until I noticed that no matter what I put into the climate and weather settings, the daylight still cycles and the sky renders with clouds. Even with a pitch black JPG for the clouds and sky, for some reason sky shows through. I can't seem to get the daylight to stop cycling, which kinda kills the underground feel.

 

I've been beating my head against this for 3 days now, and I'm outta ideas. :wallbash:

I really want to make this work, and I've got a crap ton of time available to put into it. I just can't figure this out, and it kills the entire theme. :confused:

If anyone here is willing to tell me how to make a believable LARGE cavern-like interior (or better yet give me an example I can look at) than I would be most grateful.

 

Until then, I'll keep writing down the quests and cell layouts, but actual mod production is shelved.

 

Thankee in advance,

 

Ghreandel

[Abramul]

You might try some sort of fog or haze. I'm sure I've seen something along those lines used near the floor in some caves.

 

Come to think of it, there's a "bottomless pit" sort of thing I've seen used, which kills anything that falls into it. I'm certain there's a haze obscuring the floor in those.

[Ghreandel]

I was seriously looking into the fog/haze idea Abramule. But Septim741 has answered my prayers and shown me how to make the weather/climate settings do what I want. So my mod is back in the works :thumbsup:

Oh, and I already looked at the bottomless pit thing that Bethesda did for the Dreamworld areas for a quest in Bravil. They just placed solid tiles with no ceilings in open space and then lined the sides with "killboxes". The tiles they used would work for me, if they were about 10 times the variety they have. For now I'm happy that my initial roadblock is demolished. Onward till I find another. :biggrin:

 

Ghreandel