Silgrad Tower from the Ashes

Changing water levels are not possible even with OBSE. The ability to change waterlevels lies soley in the CS development of the cell, interior or exterior. The closest thing people have gotten are moving entire cells down hence simulating rising water levels. As for just a visual effect, there has been a new texture trick that makes objects assume all visual properties of water (ie. colour, ripple and wind reliant waves) but in the end, they are only be textures and not actual swimmable water. The trick can be used in ciao_gamer's parting of the ocean idea, assuming someone made an animated mesh for it.

As for Ysne's clarification on the Tsaesci races and their tails only being present on higher levelled ones, i assume it is also a social ranking. The ability of Kapotun who turn into dragons could be viewed to be a similar case, although much more difficult (perhaps a loss techinique?).

And for the tails themselves, No one has come up saying they know how to make organic models for clothes, armor or creatures, etc hence we have no one in that skill area. If we were to use the model from a morrowind mod, we still need it to be converted and re-rigged for oblivion. We now face the problem of needing new recruits, whom we either seek now and hold production till then or gamble that they will appear if we continue on with the heightmap and village building.

(wow, i type a lot!)

The splitting of the seas idea would definitely be cool, but I think that would still involve displacing the real water.

What about this:
I make a land brige model that is under the water and one of Tsaesci "casts a spell" and it rises up? It could even be a giant turtle :eek:


Ysne-
How do you want the tail to look? I thought Corthian had made one?
I've rigged a few things now so if it's an actual tail (not where the lower half of the body is a snake), I think I can do it.

If you download Sirens And tritons by luchaire (i think) at tesnexus, you can have a look at how the mermaid tails are rigged to the leg bones.
Dunno how easy or hard it is though.

The land bridge seems like an interesting idea, the turtle seems a bit...:lmao:. I think meshes should be made after the heightmap has been fully completed and we know what we're dealing with.

I think that the Tsaesci with tails could perhaps be put on the back burner, at least whilst we're doing the island.

After all, they wouldn't send high-ranking Tsaesci to a small skirmish on a remote island. We can always introduce Tsaesci with tails later, perhaps in a subsequent release.

How does that sound?

Deeza you are correct. That is what I was anticipating needing to do with the more snake like Tsaesci, put it off for later. The triton/siren mod requires quite a few other mods to work properly. We can look at that when we start on the next project perhaps

RA I really like the idea of a raising and lowering land-bridge. That is the most practical solution to the issue of how the Tsaesci get to the island that I have seen so far. I think we should go with that.

Exile, yes the tailed tsaesci would be higher social status than the ones without tails. Assuming we actually get a race of tailed Tsaesci up and running that is.

I think that's a good call Ysne, on both counts.

The raisable land-bridge is suitably mysterious and alien-sounding. I like it.

Okay- so unless we come up with a better solution, we'll go with the raising land bridge. I guess the first thing we need to know is, how will this affect pathfinding for NPC's? We "they" be able to deal with 'wait at edge of island, land bridge rises, cross land bridge to new island' or will they all try to swim across?

I have to say I think it would be good if we could split up the "forest making". If everyone that is able to, gets the exact same copy of the landmass and does a section, we can merge them. That way we're not all waiting on one person. I could do a large jungle area since I'll be in possession of unique plants and trees that I've made.

We'll get the landmass completely done then worry about the next step. I can always delete trees and stuff when laying down the city, port, etc.

I wish I could help with that. My computer just doesn't have the prower to process landscaping. I can do other things in the CS but not landscaping. For some reason that takes more processing power than the other functions. At least on my computer it does.

You could try installing the Oldblivion utility. I'm not familiar with the theory, but it's supposed to improve performance on PCs with less power.

If I were on and XP computer I would do that. Vista gets funky with that, at least this version does, I tried that or something like it already.