Forgotten Forest [Claimed]

[Razorwing]

Claimed by TheImperialDragon

[title]What is the Forgotten Forest?[/title]

It's a region of our landmass that can best be described as a 'dark, spooky forest'. How you choose to realize that concept is largely up to you, but you wouldn't go wrong if you used gothic horror influences such as abandoned manors and long-forgotten cemetaries. In our old mod we had a lone werewolf prowling the woods, and given their speed and the darkness of the forest it often managed to scare the hell out of the player - which was perfect in my opinion. You probably won't bring back the werewolf, and you don't have to either, but hopefully you'll be able to shock the player in other ways.

The region is situated northwest of Silgrad Tower (the city) and west of Deepen Meadows. Please consult the map for more detailed info.

[title]Info for region modders[/title]

See Information for Region Modders for important modding information.

[title]Generation Preset[/title]

¤) Choose a set of landscape textures for the region and use/generate them on the alotted land as appropriate. You can use landscape textures from the main game if you like, that wouldn't be a problem, but custom textures are better - not only because they'll give variety compared to the main game, but also because it gives such excellent control over them afterwards. If a better replacement for a particular texture appears six months down the line all one would have to do would be to switch files, without any need to mess up your work.

¤) Detail the landscape with the following assets:
[indent][/indent]- Forgotten Forest trees (From the Tree>SilgradFF list)
[indent][/indent]- Ascadian Isles rocks (from the Static>ST>Rocks list)

Note that the forest is supposed to be dead. That's why the trees lack leaves and why there shouldn't be any normal flora growing there. You can add 'knees' (treestumps) from the stock Oblivion assets if you like (Static>Landscape). If you really want to you can add toadstool and drogo mushrooms* from our mod and cairn bolete and wisp stalk from the stock game. You may notice a glitch effect on the trees, which can't be helped. Try sticking them into the ground, past the glitch.
(* If you use Drogo, only use the kind that doesn't have a fused dirt sheet under it)

[title]Roads[/title]

(Updated by TheImperialDragon 24-01-2008)

Add roads as you see fit. If you look at the attached road concept you might discern that the road between Silgrad Tower and Reich Parkeep goes along the edge of the Forgotten Forest. That's a major road, and should be safe to travel, apart from the occasional bandit or wolf or other normal things. If you're concerned about monsters getting onto the road in some parts, feel free to add pathspears - they're a great hindrance to keep monsters inside the forest. Please set up a Legionnaire or two to patrol the road, because we wouldn't want a Lvl 2 player to get slaughtered travelling one of the main roads.

Be sure to mod the road within the boundaries of the FF claim. See the claim map a little further down.

[title]Reference[/title]

Here are a few screenshots showing typical Forgotten Forest scenes from our TES3 mod, in case they can inspire.

Here is a map of the region's boundaries:

(click for a larger image!)

Posts from the old discussion were exsized to the archive. /RW 071122

[TheImperialDragon]

Updated claim map and road description.

[blackbird]

I've made preset of this region myself. Do you want to have region preset or a full generated region?

[TheImperialDragon]

Hey, if you'd like to generate the region - even without claiming it - it'll bring us closer to our goal for ST 3.0 so I'm for it. :goodjob: But we will need to go through the usual procedure. Could you generate a 6*6 area and send the ESP to me?

[blackbird]

There is a little problem with that. I've tried to generate the full region but I've divided in some parts. I can't save it on another name with the CS.
One of those parts is already done and I don't want to clear and regenerate that again, so I am going to send that part to you. It's larger then a 6*6.
I didn't use custom textures, so please check those.
http://files.filefront.com/ST+FFregesp/;...einfo.html
Edit:
I've copied and renamed the file in windows, cleared that part and generated a 6*6 region.
http://files.filefront.com/ST+FFreg2esp/...einfo.html

[TheImperialDragon]

Well, it's a good start , but I don't think we can merge it as it is right now.

There are too many rocks, or at least the rocks aren't placed so that they look nice. I think for the forest it should be a few big ones clustered together here and there, with smaller ones on the ground near those clusters and trees. Maybe the odd one off on its own too.

There should be more trees for a forest. It's difficult to find a good number of trees to place because it seems there's either too many or too few. One of the things that has grown on me about the TES3 version of the forest was how little sunlight could get through the tree canopy. Of course, that meant a lot of trees and as a consequence lots of lag too. In Oblivion, we've got LOD and other visual enhancements to worry about so I can't see the same effect working as well. It's going to be tricky deciding how to create the same feeling of being trapped in the dark. We could have thick cloud cover to start with, but we're going to need more on the ground level. But going back to this particular preset, it needs more trees.

I'll have a look later at some of the forests from the SI expansion for some ideas. Make it darker and creepier maybe.

There are also some technical bugs. The rocks on the slopes are floating, and the vertex shading is really weird (look at the screenshot from above).

We will also need to use custom textures, like you pointed out. If in the future you want to use vanilla game textures, keep in mind you can create another texture entry. Name it with your ST abbrev and point it to the vanilla texture. When we find a good alternative, it's simply a matter of pointing the entry to the new texture.

[blackbird]

http://files.filefront.com/ST+FFreg3esp/...einfo.html
The newest version: less rocks, more trees.

[TheImperialDragon]

Again for this version, things are still simply too evenly distributed. hrug: I really do think it would look much better if the rocks were clustered somewhat... As for the trees, maybe, but I'd first see how things look with the rocks.

[blackbird]

I've set the cluster value of all rocks to 100. I've playtested that claim and I must it's not bad, not good either. I think that the trees are too big or we just need some smaller trees. If i should increase the density value of trees, we would have trees bleeding in each other.
I'll upload/give you the newest version tonight.

[TheImperialDragon]

Thanks blackbird.

I probably won't be able to look at it immediately because of some computer problems. I'll try anyway but it probably won't work. Expect a response Saturday, by then I expect to have my computer up and running right again.