Project Tamriel & Tamriel Rebuilt - Morrowind modders keep chugging along

[Sigourn]

You'll be back. They always come back.

I've been Morrowind free for many months now. Same thing happened with Skyrim. I would reinstall and reinstall and reinstall... until one day I never reinstalled it again.

 

[None]

So what? Is that why a bunch of quests were rewritten? Just asking. Daily reminder a mod that adds two words: "trans rights," to generic dialogue somehow became the most highly upvooted morrowind mod in recent history. Even the darkelfguy was one of the first five to upvote. Its a fact that discord attracts trannies, and weirdos in general. Gaming, too.

Jesus fucking Christ, good riddance I'm not playing that shit anymore.

You'll be back. They always come back.

I've been Morrowind free for many months now. Same thing happened with Skyrim. I would reinstall and reinstall and reinstall... until one day I never reinstalled it again.

You make it sound like you dumped a bad habit more than anything else. What you do with your time is ultimately your choice, but it is a shame to see one less reasoned voice around, especially in the modding scene.

 

[Sigourn]

You make it sound like you dumped a bad habit more than anything else. What you do with your time is ultimately your choice, but it is a shame to see one less reasoned voice around, especially in the modding scene.

Oh, for sure. I've always disliked modder drama, at first it is fun and entertaining, then you realize these are grown people behaving like teenage girls.

 

[dreughjiggers]

I actually disagree with Twin Lamps taking any presence at all in the Deshaan.

The writer is justifying it by wanting to write it as an "underground railroad" type faction.

I saw that, but I think its too on-the-nose. Underground Railroad works in the rest of Morrowind, but... how I see it, would an Underground Railroad work in Babylon, or ancient Egypt? No, it'd be so out of place to the point of breaking all immershun. I think a better angle of approach to slavery is from within the House itself, say a matriarch's thraldom slipping and her slaves just going haywire. So the player learns why. Or, maybe the slave trade is drying up, because the argonians are getting too clever to hunt. Plenty of other ways to keep it interesting, without turning Deshaan into Uncle Tom's Cabin.

 

[dreughjiggers]

The **smart** "anti-slavery plotline" would be one that subtly intimates that House Dres is slowly dying, even with player input. You could make it apparent that the Argonians of Black Marsh are making bolder and more aggressive offensives against Deshaan. The Empire is doing nothing to stop it despite the fact this is essentially a civil war between provinces. Make the Argonian rebels some of the most dangerous non-magic enemies the player can face. Have younger Dres members imitate House Hlaalu and suggest different forms of commerce to move away from slavery, maybe even have the player influence that.

That would be the smart and intellectually stimulating way to stick it to slave narratives.

But we know that wont happen.

Yes, that's a great angle of attack. Simple, yet can get as complex as the devs want. I would quibble on the immitating Hlaalu bit, but just the House rotting in a civilized world is enough to leap in all directions.

And I wouldn't depict the matriarchs as evil or insane, just unable to cope with new realities. Or at least getting that way. /lorewank

 

[dreughjiggers]

I also disagree with their want to not touch the base game. I believe that they should have at least some minimal Dres and Indoril representation on Vvardenfell because right now there's absolutely no reason to visit the mainland. There's nothing to point you to go there. Nothing.

Unironically, modders will fix it. I could make a mod where the player runs into a pack of slavers, like the ones RealAshstaar modded in, and gets "abducted" if I open dialogue with them. Wake up naked in a mainland slavemarket or a rice paddy. I think its already been done better with mwse. Someone could move the chargen to Firewatch, and Old Ebonheart has a Census and Excise office.

 

[Tenebris]

Someone could move the chargen to Firewatch

This actually existed. That mod broke when they redid Firewatch. The issue for me is more the narrative aspect. I had made a a chargen mod myself for personal use so it is easy to skirt around not starting there but it still would've been nice to have something. I understand why they're hesitant to do it though.

 

[Kalon]

thinking how if that's what they spend their time on, if they're that obsessive toward quality they focus on such minor details as the perfect Z-axis alignment of items on shelves when it has no impact on the quality of the finished mod in-game at all, this mod will never be finished

The Z-Axis alignment thing of misc items on uneven static items on is explicitly mentionned in their tutorials. While I agree with you that it can seem insanely autistic and counterproductive, I think that by enforcing that level of attention to detail they make sure that the modder will, a fortiori, pay attention to more visible stuff.

If it takes them three decades of working on the mod to get to Dres content

As someone else said, the complete lack of vanilla assets for Dres explains that, but also the fact that TR released maps in geographical order so they kept Dres for last.

I actually disagree with Twin Lamps taking any presence at all in the Deshaan

Same. I've always thought that the Twin Lamps was a Hlaalu subfaction, brought into life by the close relation House Hlaaly has with the Empire and also by the unique personality of Ilmeni Dren.

In general, one of the things I like about vanilla Morrowind is that the game presents slavery in a neutral way. It doesn't outright presents slavers as evil guys, neither does it covertly influences the choices of the player regarding slavery: the rewards you get for making an anti-slavery choice arenot sytematically better than whaty you'd get for making a pro-slavery choice.
In fact, I think the way Morrowind presents you the pro- and anti-slavery choice is not a moral one, but a "civic" one, i.e not a choice between "good" and "evil" but between lawful and chaotic. If you choose to free a slave that's neither good or bad, according to the game, it's just against the law of Morrowind as per the Armistice terms...but then slavery itself is unlawful according to the law of the Empire, which adds another layer to the problem.

 

[zool]

I also disagree with their want to not touch the base game. I believe that they should have at least some minimal Dres and Indoril representation on Vvardenfell because right now there's absolutely no reason to visit the mainland. There's nothing to point you to go there. Nothing.

Unironically, modders will fix it. I could make a mod where the player runs into a pack of slavers, like the ones RealAshstaar modded in, and gets "abducted" if I open dialogue with them. Wake up naked in a mainland slavemarket or a rice paddy. I think its already been done better with mwse. Someone could move the chargen to Firewatch, and Old Ebonheart has a Census and Excise office.

Well, there is always this if you want a RP reason to go to the mainland (Old Ebonheart) right from the start in Seyda Neen.

A chargen allowing you to start at the Census and Excise office would be simpler though. I used to use CREL to start in the Census and Excise office in Bal Oyra and it was fine but not sure it works with the newest TR.

 

[Theodora]

What's the state of things outside of creating the mainland? Did they start to integrate their work into the vanilla questlines?

Last I heard -- some years ago -- they'd made a decision to stop artificially separating their work from Bethesda's, i.e. no more giving every faction a practically unrelated duplicate outside of Vvardenfell. Have they made any progress with that? A lot of pretty pictures on their site, but it's hard to get clear idea of where things stand overall from simply looking at screenshots and the claims browser.

Edit: Also, what's performance like? Do they work with the expectation that people will use OpenMW?

 

[dreughjiggers]

All that means is mainland Fighters Guild is no longer a separate faction, so their quests count to your rank on vvardenfell. It used to be, the mainland Houses and guilds were their own things.

 

[Theodora]

All that means is mainland Fighters Guild is no longer a separate faction, so their quests count to your rank on vvardenfell. It used to be, the mainland Houses and guilds were their own things.

Does this not necessarily impact achieving the final / highest rank in those factions though? Would be strange to be given a trivial entry-level job on the mainland when you're already a top dog on Vvardenfell, and likewise would be strange to achieve the highest post for said guild/etc. for all of Vvardenfell without meeting most of those who would theoretically be your direct subordinates.

 

[dreughjiggers]

Play and find out.

 

[Tenebris]

All that means is mainland Fighters Guild is no longer a separate faction, so their quests count to your rank on vvardenfell. It used to be, the mainland Houses and guilds were their own things.

Does this not necessarily impact achieving the final / highest rank in those factions though? Would be strange to be given a trivial entry-level job on the mainland when you're already a top dog on Vvardenfell, and likewise would be strange to achieve the highest post for said guild/etc. for all of Vvardenfell without meeting most of those who would theoretically be your direct subordinates.

They tweaked it so that if you use the Factions add-on you require more reputation points to rank up now. It's a little annoying at times but it fixes that issue.

 

[thesecret1]

There is some mingling between vanilla and TR content. For example, Old Ebonheart Imperial Cult questline takes you to VVanderfel and has you talk with some vanilla NPCs etc. It's all very rare and minor, and vanilla NEVER requires any TR stuff for you to progress, but they're cautiously starting to merge them a little bit

 

[dreughjiggers]

I think that's a bad move.

 

[None]

Edit: Also, what's performance like? Do they work with the expectation that people will use OpenMW?

I wont bother going into the details, but it is better than it used to be. Where I once got 20fps looking down the main alley in Old Ebonheart, I get like 40fps now. OpenMW will generally be better on the performance side, but you'll miss out on the mods. TR also has a MWSE-Lua subcomponent that includes some minor nonperformance related things.

I think that's a bad move.

Examples I've heard aren't that wild. For example, the Census & Excise agent who is harassing one of the Vivec informants mentions heading over to the mainland once he gives up. The thought is to add him somewhere. Same situation with other NPCs who explicitly mention going to the mainland. If at any point it becomes more than that, I'd imagine an entirely new project will be spun off. Projects like Star-Wounded East already have a few TR/PT members working on them.

 

[thesecret1]

I wont bother going into the details, but it is better than it used to be. Where I once got 20fps looking down the main alley in Old Ebonheart, I get like 40fps now.

Ebonheart is one of the most performance intense places you can go in TR. They adopted some new approach to optimize their meshes that helps performance a lot.

 

[dreughjiggers]

I guess as long as TR isn't wasting time populating Vvardenfell with new clutter. That's the worst case. If its left up to modders outside the project, that's different.

 

[None]

I wont bother going into the details, but it is better than it used to be. Where I once got 20fps looking down the main alley in Old Ebonheart, I get like 40fps now.

Ebonheart is one of the most performance intense places you can go in TR. They adopted some new approach to optimize their meshes that helps performance a lot.

Most of my gains were actually from switching over to Vulkan. MOP and Project Atlas help quite a bit though.

 

[Tenebris]

I guess as long as TR isn't wasting time populating Vvardenfell with new clutter. That's the worst case. If its left up to modders outside the project, that's different.

I wouldn't worry too much. They'll be busy redoing old areas over and over again. I've seen some talk about wanting to redo Old Ebonheart at some point. Outside of their discord though I did see one of the team members talk about wanting to redo old content so they can weed out some of the more "problematic" content.

There is some mingling between vanilla and TR content. For example, Old Ebonheart Imperial Cult questline takes you to VVanderfel and has you talk with some vanilla NPCs etc. It's all very rare and minor, and vanilla NEVER requires any TR stuff for you to progress, but they're cautiously starting to merge them a little bit

Something light like that is what I wanted really. But I generally play with a chargen that starts me off in TR lands anyway so it's not a huge deal. I do think however that if they were to ever tackle on the Indoril and Dres House questlines it's going to be a little bit awkward going from Vvardenfel to the mainland for the later main quests.

 

[octavius]

What will be finished first? Tamriel Rebuilt or A Song of Ice and Fire?

 

[Gerrard]

So this mod now truly became the biggest waste of time in the modding community of any game.
Just think, it would've taken less than half of this time to remake Morrowind in proper scale instead.

 

[dreughjiggers]

If they get that far, and their current philosophy to meddle in completed content takes it's natural course, then they'll decide to add Dres and Indoril cantons to Vivec. There is no concept art cementing the number of cantons, only the paper map, and its only the concept art that really directs the mod.

 

[dreughjiggers]

So this mod now truly became the biggest waste of time in the modding community of any game.
Just think, it would've taken less than half of this time to remake Morrowind in proper scale instead.

What's it like to live in a world where you need to constantly bitch about things you only have an outsider's perspective over? If you aren't happy with it, play something else.