Empire of the Iguanadons

A lot of times in the modding community you see work that's been done as an early effort or as a first project that often gets left stagnate as time goes by. This could be due to any number of things but is most often because the modder simply left the community. Of those that haven't, who knows, but doesn't it pay to go back and revisit some of your earlier work to try and improve on it?

Case in point: Unique Landscapes Brena River Ravine.

Initially brought to full release in April of 2009, it was one of my earlier projects. Before this, Faregyl Village was about all there was. Brena River had a lot of content already present in the mod when I took over. I had never done any major landscaping, nor had I molded content into such a large area before. There were a lot of things done with the mod just to bring it to completion. Things I could have done better in retrospect. So I've been taking time to go back over it and improve on things with stuff I've learned over the last 18 months.

By far the biggest feature and probably the signature for it in general is Suicide Falls. While it was an impressive site then, it was only impressive as long as you were up close. Step back far enough and you have a disgusting looking mish-mash of floating objects in the distance and a sizable chunk of the cliff face laying bare. It looks even worse if you aren't using RAEVWD to fill in part of that. There was also a major hodgepodge problem with rock types. A lot of different ones there that don't really fit in with the surroundings that well. Something that's obvious in the screenshot I've linked. Not to mention the seriously out of place chunk of rocks on the upper left side.

What I've done there is clean up all of the ugly rocks, create some clones of existing rocks and placed those into the falls. The large mass of rocks on the upper left has been replaced with another large cliff piece. A couple of Ayleid towers have been added at the top, to accent the fact that it was once part of the Ayleid structures here. All of these new additions to Suicide Falls have also been given proper VWD assets to go with them. So you can be standing down at the end of the ravine and look back to see most of the scene in one piece. Including the water itself. The result there is a much better visual experience, despite the VWD water being unable to flow.

The next big feature in the river are the rock walls on both sides of the larger dam. These were constructed entirely from a grab bag of different sized rocks that don't fit the environment. Even this was a scaled back version of the giant mass of rocks that existed before I built the second dam. I've always felt it looked hideous but at the time I didn't really know what else to do with it and didn't want to disturb things. Even worse is that none of it displays at distance, so the entire complex pops in rather suddenly as you approach, creating a very jarring experience.

Now that I've gotten much better at mastering the CS and all its ills, I've gone back to this area and replaced all the rocks with one type. This allows less rocks to be used, since many of the replacements can also be oversized without sacrificing visual appeal. The entire complex on both sides of the river will have far less polygons to render AND will fit in with the surrounding rock types you find scattered everywhere. Since the rocks being used also have a VWD mesh to go with them, you'll be able to see this set of waterfalls from a distance for the first time. It should also help cover up some of the gaping holes in the LOD landscape.

Fans of the mod might also note that there was a quest embedded in with the bandits who occupy the area. This quest was done entirely without using journal entries, which at the time seemed like a good idea. It worked well enough, but if you've paid attention to forum posts and file comments, it creates a great deal of confusion since there's no record of where you're at in the quest. Something Dwip warned me about back then, but hey. Some things you have to learn on your own before they sink in.

The quest has now been converted into a proper journaled system with actual stages, and even a couple of quest markers. No, I'm not going to give you one for every last thing because part of the quest expects you to have to think and to do some hunting around. But at least there won't be any question as to what you left off doing should you happen to leave the area and return later. There's also been some shoring up of inconsistencies in the quest.

The biggest menace to my earlier modding efforts though has to be grass. The shit's everywhere. Try as you might, getting rid of it usually ends up requiring scorched earth tactics to purge all grass producing textures from a cell. Let me tell you, there are tons of cells in this mod that were crawling with grass, and most of it was obscuring good scenery. I've gone in and used said scorched earth tactic now that I know it's the only way to be sure it's gone. So no more grass growing up through stone objects. While this happens IRL, it looks like crap in the game due to grass always swaying in the wind.

The end result of all this effort is going to be a much better mod for everyone. Hopefully when it's all completed people will appreciate the effort.

Anyone got one of their own to share? Or shall we just start the ball rolling toward 400 posts right now
.........................
"It is pointless to resist, my son." -- Darth Vader
"Resistance is futile." -- The Borg
"Mother's coming for me in the dragon ships. I don't like these itchy clothes, but I have to wear them or it frightens the fish." -- Thurindil

Well. I guess that's that then.

Welcome to the world of Oblivion gaming. One of my test guys has a save that does the same, standing on the Brena River dam. Where the game ran perfectly fine before, because obviously he's standing on the dam. Can't load that save - and that save only - for some unknown reason, unless Brena River is deactivated. Which is utterly mind boggling because I can take any character there, run all over the place, kill bandits, help bandits, and nothing happens. I suppose that save could be due to a corrupt Brena River spawn and loads fine without it because the spawner is gone, but I've never seen a corrupt spawn issue hit only after you're in the cell with it.

Apparently, based on testing thus far, I have one very specific mod that's bringing it down, but apparently only on this character. It's not even this SAVE. It's this character. Without whatever that mod is, it works fine. With that mod, it all goes to hell. Crazy.

Well, solved that. It would appear that Imperial City Temple Clean is decidedly not clean, and cleaning it causes the mod to fail to work at all. And there doesn't seem to be another mod that cleans up the IC Temple District that actually works in a reasonable fashion.

I know how to fix that, of course, but god damn it.

I lol. Especially at realizing this is also something I've wanted to fix for ages myself, but never wanted to mess with because that district is a rat's nest.

Moved. Even though I'm not particularly fond of the idea, I'd be glad to help. I'll retex some UC clothes in between other projects (Yes, seems like we're all working on secret projects), could probably toss out random ideas here and there, and I love making NPC's in facegen.

Oh, I just noticed who the author on that temple district thing is. The guy has some great ideas, but whatever it is he's doing in the CS is generating assloads of bad edits. Same sort of problems with his beggars mod he did. It was so bad I stopped trying to fix it all. I wouldn't be surprised if he's never upgrades his CS to the new version.

@Hanaisse -

Was sort of hoping you'd volunteer. I was going to see if you wanted to do some UC retexes anyway, since I think I need a set for AFK_Arena. If other people start piling on, I'll start tossing out some NPC ideas for consideration.

@All -

AFK_ICTempleCleanup version 1. Includes LtPD version. Load after LtPD.

Restores Temple District 1 month after the end of MQ16 or immediately if loaded for a character who already got the Imperial Dragon Armor. Definitely works for pre-MQ16 and post-MQ16 characters. If anybody has a slightly pre-endgame or pre-Imperial Dragon Armor pickup character who wants to test things out, that would be great, since I have neither.

Makes a slight edit to MQ16's script, which might require a Bash tag. I defer to Samson's expertise on the subject.

Bad idea touching MQ16's script. I'll give you one guess which mod you'll be blocking on that one. This isn't something you can tag around either because there's no way to merge the compiled result code.

How about quest stage result scripts?

It's not a big deal to just have a random check script running, but I'd like to avoid it if I can.

Not as bad an idea to edit quests, though you can't bash tag those either. In this case MS94 would be impossible without a UOP dependency. So your check script is the only truly independent solution. Which I'd modify like so:

scn AFKICTempleCleanupInitSCRIPT

begin gamemode

if GetStage MQ16 == 100 && GetStage MQDragonArmor < 30
  AFKICTempleDistrictRepairMarker.enable
  startquest AFKICTempleCleanup
  stopquest AFKICTempleCleanupInit
endif

if( GetStage MS94 >= 100 && MartinRef.GetDisabled )
     AFKICTempleDistrictRepairMarker.enable
     startquest AFKICTempleCleanup
     stopquest AFKICTempleCleanupInit
endif

end

You're not going to murder anyone's frame rates with one little script that only fires once every 5 seconds.

Goes without saying, the MQ16 script edit would need to be deleted.

Uploaded a fixed version.

MQ16 edits removed, init script changed to:

scn AFKICTempleCleanupInitSCRIPT

begin gamemode

if MQ16AkatoshStatueRef.getDisabled == 0 && GetStage MQDragonArmor < 30
  AFKICTempleDistrictRepairMarker.enable
  startquest AFKICTempleCleanup
  stopquest AFKICTempleCleanupInit
elseif MQ16AkatoshStatueRef.GetDisabled == 1 && GetStage MQDragonArmor == 30
  MQ16PathgridRock.enablelinkedpathpoints
  stopquest AFKICTempleCleanupInit
endif

end

Which ought to immediately end things if the loaded character already has their armor, else starts up the cleanup timer at the same time the dragon statue is enabled.

That doesn't look right. Why would MQ16AkatoshStatueRef ever be disabled again?

Son of a bitch, how did I manage that?

Ok, ANOTHER fixed version up. Third time's the charm and all that.

Now, who wants to tell me why I'm getting endless loops in my AFK_Arena script?

Scripting makes my brain melt.

What. In. The. Fuck.

So, the arena door, right. Only opens to player if a variable called ReadyMatch is 1. If ReadyMatch is 0, it turns you away.

It's turning me away. ReadyMatch is most certainly 1, and I'm looking at a gamemode block spamming me with messages telling me so.

WTF.

(fixed the endless loop at least)

Gratz on the download count, figuring out that crash bug, and fixing that endless loop, Dwip. Been a busy day for you.

I grabbed a copy of the cleaned up IC Temple mod you uploaded.. is this latest version actually safe now or is there still some issue with whatever MQ16 is?

No, it's fine now. Go ahead and put it in.

Apparently making a minor nonsensical edit to the door script fixed that problem. Confusing. I wonder if my Bashed patch is fucking with me or something.

Now my problem is the announcer.

Ok, 'preciate that.

Alrighty then!

Just get Michael Buffer to do your voice acting.. "Let's get ready to Rumble!" would be nearly perfect for the arena.

@Samson; How soon do you think the UOPS update will be released? I'm just getting around to updating to 3.2.10 and will wait it out if it's a day or two...

@Dwip; I love you and all that, but that's one AFK_(insert name here) I won't be using. I love the destroyed Temple district.

Turns out that if you full clear The Ayleid Steps, among other things you get:

- The loot worth over 1k is ultimately worth about 1.2 million gold;
- 2,000 or so Welkynd stones
- 200 or so Varla stones

And all I had to do was clear...let me see here...*counts*...50 of the already existing Ayleid ruins, another 50 Lost dungeons, do 12 reasonably long quests, and kill god knows how many undead.

...and then right after that I walked outside and got killed almost immediately at the Dagon shrine.

That was exhausting.

Well folks want to test a difference patch against 3.2.10 due to the number of AI schedules being updated. So now that I've managed to actually get that created I'm going to post it to the thread and hope that folks actually intend to test it. If nobody gets back to me by next week saying it's busted or something then I'll push it out then. 3.2.10 only has one real thing it fixed, which was the guard patrols in Leyawiin. The other two things were incidental and would have waited had I not seen the guard thing as at least mildly important.

On the subject of the temple cleanup. If we've already finished the MQ and received our armor, are we still supposed to have to wait the 28 days for it to fix itself? Also, it needs tes4edit attention.

No, if you already have your armor, it should automagically fix up immediately. This has been the case for my test guy.

And it does? Seriously? I swear I ran it through there a couple times. *sigh* Get there after I attempt to find out how the hell the Arena is even functioning. These dialogue conditions don't make a damn bit of sense.

I'll check again, but I'm pretty sure Scales picked up his armor, even though it's been stashed.

Check the stage on MQDragonArmor. If it's 30, you should be good to go. If not, you get to wait.