Sload Quest Prospect

[Lore_Naga]

These boards are quite in-active on the ideas front so i thought i would add some things.

I was thinking last night if someone did make a playable sload race
(Or not, This quest could work both ways)
then i think i have an ideal quest for the sload to play in blackmarsh-

So the Sload wakes up in a cave (A deep cave at that) in a mud puddle wandering were they are,
The sload looks in his/her inventory and see's a note written for them,
It says that the pc must find a way to get the hist to give up the information of life and afterlife on certain races of tamriel (For two reasons: 1 the pc was banished from thras due to unknown reasons and needs to retain there own honour back by obtaining the secrets, 2 after thras was destroyed and re-made again they lost there vital secrets that they gained from the hist),
The note also states that the pc should look in blackmarsh for the hist and so there adventure begins (From getting out of the cave they should be in the bottom of blackmarsh's southern ocean)
from there on out they should start BM's main quest intill i guess the PC in the mainquest will finally get to meet the hist and thats when the sload step in saying they really did not care about the pc,
But instead they wanted to find where the hist are and trick them into giving them the information so they can release another plague onto tamriel Because the imperial pigs sunk there isles (This whole quest could be a setup that a necromancer group of sloads following N'Gasta's teachings did in so that they could find the hist).

I guess if the player was another race he/she could get a note from them stating that the hist are trying to deceive the player (In so trying to act like the good guys when they are actually the bad guys) and a similar setup happens.

[Ibsen's Ghost]

There's plenty of ideas, NA. We just have a lack of people ready to mod them.

I like this idea. =) The only problem being the absence of the Sload as yet, of course. I wrote ideas for Anaster Marrowmir, a BM companion, years ago but development on him has been so slow that we're still waiting for him to appear in any form. It depends on what we can do with the resources currently available to us that will determine how the quests go. I'd certainly keep this idea but bear in mind that it's a no-go until we get the models. It might even be fruitless to develop the idea at such an early stage....certainly with respect to the PC playing as a Sload and also with the PC talking with Sload since the face morphs is another vast task to undertake.

So go ahead and develop it because it's a nice idea but I don't want you to feel deflated if it doesn't happen any time soon....and that may include by next year because who knows when we can get the animators?...

[Lore_Naga]

I think we should at least "Attempt" a blackmarsh playable sload after the paatru are done,
But the only problem is that there bodies are so unique that it would be a heck of a problem to get it done,
I like the idea of sloads actually living in blackmarsh because of the sinking of thras they fled to a province with a feel and look like the home isles "Thras",
If we cannot get anything like that done when it comes to it then at least they could "Lazy" talk (Telepathically speaking, And maybe get an animator to jabber there mouths up and down to look like there speaking without needing the full facegen conversions...).

[Ibsen's Ghost]

Yeah, the telepath option is a really clever way of getting round the mouth anims....nice one. :goodjob:

We'll have to see what we can do with our key races: Sarpa, Paatru, Naga and Sload. For me, the Sarpa are paramount. Paatru and Naga are essential, perhaps with Paatru more so since we now have Glok-Chuba all set up for them (barring the furniture and so on...which KP will be working on shortly). Bear in mind that the Lilmothiit also live in BM and there are plenty of resources available to make them available to us....besides the other Argonian variations.

[Lore_Naga]

I know this is a bit of a silly request but could we have a sub-race of sarpa's that have been completly de-generated into avian like lizardmen?
Its not lore breaking because it would be a sub-race of the main "Type",
Also you forget the "Ogre Like Lizardmen" but really all they are from my point of view is- An old kingdom lost from an unknown war but the remnants of them have been turned into Ogre like lizardmen also some stocky looking argonian/men lookalikes are rumoured to be seen near a old fortress
(By the way can we get this in? I mean on enviroment generating terms,
A unique fortress with an obvious difference to other fortresses in blackmarsh).


If we could have the sub-race of sarpa avian like lizardmen then i think the jackals from the halo series would be a nice to get the avian features down on a "Wingless Avian Race".

[Koniption]

Originally posted by Lore_Naga
I think we should at least "Attempt" a blackmarsh playable sload after the paatru are done,
But the only problem is that there bodies are so unique that it would be a heck of a problem to get it done,
I like the idea of sloads actually living in blackmarsh because of the sinking of thras they fled to a province with a feel and look like the home isles "Thras",
If we cannot get anything like that done when it comes to it then at least they could "Lazy" talk (Telepathically speaking, And maybe get an animator to jabber there mouths up and down to look like there speaking without needing the full facegen conversions...).

Making playable sload would be hard. I was thinking though, that later after I make the creature, about how to possibly go about making a "mini-NPC" sload, that you can do dialogue with. Other animators say that with custom playable races with different bodies, that one must custom tweak those hundreds of animations that playable races use.

(WARNING: Technical jargon ensues...)
I don't know if it would cause error messages or cause a CTD, but what if only a few of the necessary animations for a NPC were tweaked for sload use? For instance, sloads aren't good with using tools, so bow anims, onehandattack sword anims, twohandattack sword anims, might be able to be eliminated altogether. That could end up leaving far fewer animations one would have to tweak. But I don't know if the game would crash, like if the NPC or playable sload character tried to use a bow, for which there would be no animation.

As for the head and the speaking anims: one could morph animate the sload's lips to look like it speaking (a generic all purpose anim to be used with all it's dialogue - like make the lips wave around and up and down, etc). That head anim could be called via a "SpecialIdle" animation that plays when the sload speaks, then stopped when conversation has ended. I don't know if scripting allows for detection of exactly when NPC's begin and also end their speaking, because for all I know, the speaking animation would play the whole time that the player is speaking/questioning to the sload, even when the sload has already spoken or is supposed to be waiting for another question/comment from the player.

It'd be experimental...but I'm sticking with the creature sload for now. But just in case, I'll use the NPC beast skeleton, so the bones are named correctly for current NPC animations. This way, any animations i make, can possibly be used for the NPC sload experiment, if I decide to do it.

Koniption

[Ibsen's Ghost]

Basic anims could work for the voices, I guess. I'd probably end up doing the voices and I'd planned to have them sort of slur their words anyhow. This should work with minimal lip anims. It'd be worth looking into.

As for NA's suggestion, you're extraordinarily accurate in terms of our current plans but, again, we've already got this sorted. You may have heard of Drake's Dragon Wings resource: http://www.filefront.com/13316313/Drakes...urce-v1.0/ (there's also a thread at Bethesda) . This arrived shortly after TheModaxJago finished the Sarpa model and it was quickly decided that we could use it as the Mk 1 model of the Sarpa. There is lore connected with that.

[Lore_Naga]

WoW im extraordinarily accurate thats a first,
Don't get me into this whole animation thing all i did was suggest it,
Im currently busy on my naga (Oh how much i hate Face Morphing....)
But im tediously working at building a naga face from my own view so be sure im not just talking on the forums, Im not really into the idea of re-making a tail and everything else but im having a little bit of trouble with "Xivilai Height" on corth's tail, It goes alright at first but when it moves it goes swishing/swashing everywhere and the tail seems to fling off in the distance and i get CTD,
So maybe a re-vamp on the idea of "Xivilai Height" but ill try other heights (Seems to be a tail problem, Ill look into it more).

I need to have a chat with corthian about his clever tail balancing,
Oh my! Ibsen i found the book you were on about,
The book is so "Odd" it leads you from one place to another (With you freaking out because all the information you take in the middle, Its a slow reading session for me).

[Ibsen's Ghost]

Stick with the Naga, NA. It sounds like you're really getting to grips with it. It'll be hard making the transfer from WoW to OB but it looks to me like you're getting there. =)

And stick with 'Perdido Street Station'. I didn't like it at first, either. It sounded far too much like many other books I read at Uni and just seems like a guy trying to make himself sound clever from the beginning. It gets better when you stick with it and get to find out about the Garuda and the Slake moth....enjoy! :yes:

[Lore_Naga]

WoW i just made a crab arm move on a slaughterfish body im proud i can do custom animations even though i have no clue what im doing .

I made a telvanni mole crab helm but i cannot get the rigging right but if i do i will post a pic and maybe we can use it for Blackmarsh,
I was thinking of something,
Sloadskin stitched leather armour... Is that a possibility? Because i think i can make a cowl like helmet (Like the gray fox cowl and the boiled netch helm) but ill have a go and report back but the rigging is the hard job.


Ginger root in coffee makes me a little Ecstatic, But it tastes nice.