Silgrad Tower from the Ashes

-=DOWNLOAD V5=-

What's new in version 5?

Not much, mostly optimization, cleaning and things of that nature.

I'm content with it as it is now, and if there are no objections, version 5 is the final release.

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royalblue[/hr]


-=DOWNLOAD V4=- (outdated)

What's new in version 4?

I've worked a lot on moving the skiffs around, and the "escape from Gnaar Mok" is rather interesting now, I think. That took a helluva lot of time to pull off, actually, but it was very fun and gratifying when it came together.

However I had the most fun creating the "bridge" from the island to the mainland. Officially it's an ancient dwemer construct designed to keep outsiders from crossing the water, or something like that. Inofficially I like to think of it as "Happy Dwemer Psycho Circus" You'd have to see it to believe it, but the short story is that it's a platform-game experience where you have to use your wits to get across. The slaughterfish have a tendency to follow you from beneath the water as you jump around, and you really don't want to fall in towards the end, hehe.

When you finished the circus you arrive at a signpost on the beach, which generally points to the interesting and/or nearby areas (Silgrad Tower and Reich Parkeep in the first category, Steadhelm and Legio Argonis in the latter).

I'm pretty happy with it now, and the next version will probably be the final one, as I have some more playtesting to do. Please feel free to give it a run-through and add your comments and tips

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royalblue[/hr]

-=DOWNLOAD V3=- (outdated)

What's new in version 3?

The start of the adventure is now easier both for low-level characters as well as good-natured characters. If you're level 1-9 and position yourself properly, one of the assassins will fire a special spell on you that gives you 100% chameleon for 90 seconds. You can choose to stroll about during that time and watch the fireworks, or you can run south and away from the fighting straight into the DeathDealer scene - or, a goodnatured character can use the chameleon to fight the pirates inside the town.

If you position yourself correctly and have a little bit of luck, you can evade getting struck by the Hlaalu guard altogether. If your character is weak you probably won't be able to do much to stop the fireworks, but at least you can escape unharmed.

If you're above level 20 you'll never encounter the assassin that casts the helpful spells.

Good-natured characters who are rather powerful and inventive can have a bit of fun (hopefully) trying to figure out how to stop the Lvl 80, speed 225 Death Dealer pirate from fighting the imperials. He's not really meant to be fought with though, and if you don't hurt any of the other pirates he's quite peaceful.

The new spoken dialogue by Quentin is in, and is followed by a rather atmospheric freeware MP3 file which is also included. However it is over 5 megabytes big, so I'll make it a project to streamline it. Can't hurt to learn something new. It's in a special directory to keep it from being played at random.

General improvements on the scripts and making the adventure work from different angles have also been made, and that suck up more time than I care to think about hehe, but the end result is so worth it. I find it very entertaining how almost every playtest session ends in a different way, and running out of town beforehand and watching the fireworks over the town from a distance is something I've never experienced in Morrowind before.

Also I've managed to make one of the skiffs move with the player on it, which is rather fun I think. The Nerevarine gave me a great tip on the plugin "Hawthorn Hall" which has an extremely impressive ferry, but I haven't been able to customize it yet. Instead I tweaked the script from Scripting for Dummies, and as long as it moves at that mellow pace, the player stays in place. The ferry I have in there is a WIP, but I plan to work on it more. The ultimate dream is animating the whole pirate ship to sail from coast to coast (!) ...now that would be something.

I've used a program called "TES Files" to pack this release, and while it requires a lot of cleaning afterwards, it's immensely beneficial to get all the files the plugin uses copied to a separate dir automatically. Silgrad Tower is an .esp so if you drag-and-drop an item from the esp it will show up as having been altered, and so also be copied to the separate dir. That doesn't happen with .esm files, I think.

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royalblue[/hr]

-=DOWNLOAD V2=- (outdated)

What's new in version 2?
- Fixed a lot of bugs thanks to The Nerevarine excellent reports. This release should contain all the meshes and textures; if you find any error markers or other errors kindly mention them to me in this thread.

- A number of players probably wouldn't like the idea of teaming up with a band of bloodthirsty mass-murderers, so in version 2, good-natured players have it a little easier:
* There's now just one assassin going around killing townspeople, so the window of opportunity for stopping the massacre is much greater. There are still two other assassins (one, if the player is > level 20) which help in the fight against the angry Hlaalu guard who is probably the first to attack the player. The sharpshooter guard is usually occupied from the start with the assassin who targets the people.
* If you attack any of the pirates in Gnaar Mok now, your bounty gets reset to 0. So you're no longer forced to go on the ship to get a free reset.

- Other players might not like nudity and so I added a script to the stripper in the Captain's Quarters. When you enter it, she'll be dressed in a vest and thong. Click on her to get the option of giving her a tip, and see what happens

- Fixed a problem whereby the Captain gave the spoken greeting even if you hadn't come aboard through the proper channels. I had accidentally left an experiment in the Voices category of the Dialogue, so eventually he greeted the player with the line.

- Lowered the stage and made the stripper normal-sized (thanks to TN for spotting that)

- Some misc enhancements here and there.

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royalblue[/hr]

-=DOWNLOAD V1=- (outdated)

Here is version one of "The Road to Silgrad Tower", and I'd really appreciate it if you guys and girls could find the time to playtest it. The road to Silgrad Tower starts in Gnaar Mok, and when you get there... well... you'll notice the fireworks, I promise To get the best playtesting I figured it might be best to reveal as little as possible, but there are some screenshots in the "WIP Shots" section of the gallery which can give a hint as to what happens.

I was able to implement The Nerevarine's spoken dialogue after he sent the version using 44 Khz sampling. I didn't know it before, but one must use exactly 44 Khz sampling for the lipsync to work. I'm unsure if the bitrate plays into it as well, but it's probably best to use 64 kb. Now that I've verified that I'm able to implement voices, I'm really looking forward to more clips

You'll need Mw+Tribunal+Bloodmoon and the internal 1-4 release as the base for this plugin.

Not exactly sure what it does, but some of those screenshots are pretty damn cool.

Also, if you need more voice acting I COULD try.. But I'm not sure there's much a 13 year old can do..

Hi Razorwing,

there are some bugs i discovered, do you want me to report them here or in the CMS?

Even though I'm not Razorwing, I'd like to ask you to report them here.

Since this is still work in progress and not implemented in the main plugin, everything that relates to it (bugs, comments, suggestions etc.) should be in this thread.

I think it will make it easier for Razorwing as well when he finds everything in one place.

But the last word on this is Razorwing's.

Greetings

Quentin

Sunsetter: Sure, I'd be happy to take your voice work! The MP3's need to have a bitrate of 64 kb, 1 Mono channel, and 44 Khz sampling rate. If you could compare your MP3's volume to those Bethesda made (Sounds\Vo\Misc) that'd be terrific.

Could you record some screams and shouts and general combat lines (like "Come here you bastard" and things like that) ? That'd make the two battles a lot more fun!
Also I'd very much need this line, screamed loudly:
"He's not with us!"
That would be what one of the pirates says when the guard mistakes the player for a pirate.

The Nerevarine: I'd be very happy if you could report them in this thread, thanks! I'm aware of two bugs at the moment, one is that the floor of the skiff on our side of the BC flickers; the other one has to do with two bad icons which have brownish background.

Everyone: Here's a little storyboard of what happens. After you've installed the plugin (and assuming you have the 1-4 release of Silgrad Tower installed as the base for the plugin);

The next time you travel to Gnaar Mok you discover that a band of pirates are attacking the village. At the same time you reach the village, the pirates launch their attack on the townspeople -- and in the confusion, the guards mistake you for belonging to the pirates, and declare a death sentence on you. The pirates win the battle (not all tend to survive the fight inside the city), and proceeds to slaughter the townspeople.

If you continue a little bit south out of Gnaar Mok you come to the second stage of the battle. You can see the second stage if you look south from within the village, so it's hopefully a fluid experience. In the second stage the immensely powerful and wickedly fast top pirate takes care of a number of Imperial legionnaires. This pirate has a horrifying, flesheating sword that literally slices the flesh from his opponents (it's a trick using fake armor pieces that looks skeletal). After that fight is over, the main pirate proceeds to the skiff, and if the player hasn't noticed where he's supposed to focus next, he probably will when he sees the pirate walking to the skiff.

So hop over to the skiff, and talk to the boatman. You'll be whisked to the Maria Daria, together with the boatman and the top pirate. Then have a chat with the Captain, who can clear your name of the bounty the guards set as well as transporting you to our side of the Bitter Coast. That part works like any other travel service, and you end up on the deck of the Maria Daria again - this time just southeast of the huge island. And then you're free to adventure around our mod as you like.

Do you know what I could use to record these files? A freeware program, too.. The uh, 'Come here you bastard' might have to wait till my parents leave.. I'm only allowed to say damn and hell..

Quote:Originally posted by Sunsetter
Do you know what I could use to record these files? A freeware program, too.. The uh, 'Come here you bastard' might have to wait till my parents leave.. I'm only allowed to say damn and hell..

The "WAV to MP3 Freeware" program I use can record audio, I think. But I also think there's a program included in Windows XP that does it, in "Accessories" then "Entertainment" (or something like that, I translated the names from my Swedish version of Windows). Other than that you could try doing a search on download.com and filter the result for freeware only.

Feel free to change that line to anything you can think of that would be suitable battlecries, and which your parents wouldn't object to.

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black[/hr]

Version 2 is now online, please see the initial post.

Yes, there is one that comes with Windows, but it has either no or a lousy noise supression.

I used Gold Wave. It also has some features for remastering the recorded voice as noise filtering, changing the volume, flaten breath noises and such.
If you want to save the files as mp3 files please also read the " Optional Downloads" part on that page to get the mp3 encoder.

Razorwing,

Well, you've gone and made me reinstall Morrowind again. Yes, I confess, I haven't actually played it in awhile, and even worse, I have yet to see ST in-game. You all may flog me now.

So, anyway, I loaded Morrowind, Tribunal, and BM, plus the 1-4 internal release of ST, plus the Road to ST v. 2. Upon entering Gnaar Mok, I'm given an error regarding something with white sleeves. Sorry for not getting the specific error, but my game ended too soon anyway. Heh.

Here's what happened. I roll up a character, steal all I can from the census office to sell at Arille's for travel money. I then fast-travel hop my way to Gnaar Mok via silt striders and boats. As I'm walking up the docks into the village proper, I hear a commotion to my left, and see some fighting going on. "Cool!," I think, "Lemme take a closer look."

Immediately, I'm given a warning that my crime has been reported. As I approach the fighting, an Ordinator zeroes in on me and proceeds to kill me. Dead. And I didn't save AT ALL. So, I've got to start the game from scratch, which brings me to my main question:

Is there a prerequesite level for the mod? It looks cool, and the sense of "HOLY CRAP!" chaos is portrayed nicely. I just want to enjoy it "right". Also, are there any supporting mods that ST and the Road to ST need, as per that error about white sleeves I got? Some clothing mods, or somesuch?

Thanks!

-Jon

Glad I could inspire you to reinstall the game, Jon
I think I had modded for ST for about three or four weeks before I got around to installing and checking out the mod, so you're in good company.

Sorry that the adventure killed your character I playtest with a level 5 fighter and I survive most of the time, mostly because I know that if I turn right just after going through the gate between the manor and the town (coc), one of the assassins casts a super-spell on me that gives a massive shield and regenerate hit points. That assassin only shows up if you're below level 20, to keep it challenging. So I run to her, get the spell effect, then try to elude the guard until the two assassins (who by now are set to escort me) take out the guard. It helps if I get in some pot shots on the guard, as he usually kills the two assassins otherwise if left to their own devices. Pounding him while he's occupied with the assassins usually does the trick. A good-natured character could instead use that time to run away from the scene and go further south, where there shouldn't be any dangers.

But I'll definetely go over my scripts to make the adventure even safer for really low-level player characters. My first hunch is to make the other friendly assassin cast paralyzation on the guard while the other one casts the super-spell on the player, and set that to occur only if the character is below level 6 or so.

Unfortunately I might not have packed exactly everything that was needed, but I think I got everything included with the second release, so I'm puzzled by the error you recieved regarding "white sleeves". I think that if I had missed to include something you would have seen huge error markers, but as I get the impression you didn't then it must have been another problem? The release shouldn't require any additional downloads besides release 1-4. I noticed some clothing problems this morning which had to do with body parts not set up correctly, so that *might* be the reason. I'll doublecheck all clothes items for any errors and upload a third release soon.