Saturday, July 11, 2015

General Update

Howdy and Shorah!

It's been a long time! I've been busy with work and moving into a new place so I haven't had time to update here, but I have been getting some good work in on the mod. Let's get to it!

Food
 
I've created three Uru themed foods you can create and consume to buff your character. You can only have one Relto food buff active at a time. I have ideas ready to go for other foods as well. The three that are currently in the game (and working!) are:

  • Teledahn Flatbread - inspired by the Teledahn Age in Uru. In that lore, the mushrooms of Teledahn were harvested and used to make food; bread made from these mushrooms was considered a delicacy. Various mushrooms found in Skyrim can be used to make a modified version of this mushroom bread.
    Cooking pot used for screenshot convenience, actually requires oven
  • Er'Cana Pudding - Er'cana was another Age created mainly for food; grain was produced and harvested there. A themed pudding is available now for Skyrim.
  • Chor Bahk - per the Myst books, chor bahk is some sort of D'ni meatroll, but nothing else is known about it. I interpret it as being similar in appearance to a burrito.
    Cooking pot used for screenshot convenience, actually requires oven
     

    Note that there have been some changes to the ingredients and effects since these images were taken; e.g., I changed the time from one hour to four. I also will change which foods have which effects as I make more foods, and I plan to do some more work on the textures to make them look nicer. I actually plan to remake many of the textures on other things I've worked on as well as I get more practice.

Climate

I figured out how to create weathers and climate for the Relto worldspace! There are currently two weather types, and I may create a few more (though not very many).

  • Pleasant - In this weather you can view a yellow sunrise, a blue daytime, a purple sunset, and a darkish night, with a few happy, serene clouds moving across the sky.
    Morning
    Daytime
    Evening
    Nighttime




  • Raining - Rain is rare in Relto, but when it does rain it rains hard and the sky is covered with thick gray clouds. Daytime is rather dark, and rainy nights are almost pitch-black.
    Daytime
    Nighttime (with extra dark!)
Again, note some changes have been made since those screenshots were taken. For example, I figured out how to create and apply "imagespaces" to give it a little more atmosphere, which might be visible in some of the later images in this post.

Blooper Bonus: I found a setting that said "fog particles." This did not mean what I thought it meant.
D:


Moiety Dagger

The Moiety dagger has been updated; it is now a wieldable, working weapon!

Inventory
First person
Third person
Sheathed
It has some clipping issues when sheathed, so I may look into ways to make that less noticeable. However, other daggers I sheathed had this same clipping issue, so I think it's more of a problem of the vanilla placement of the daggers with certain armors. The hands also clip a little through the torus on the hilt, but it's not noticeable unless you are specifically taking screenshots from certain angles or during certain animations so I probably will leave it as it is.

Also shown in those screenshots: more flora and a new Relto hut! The custom hut I was working on is on the backburner for now... >_>

Storage Room Relto Page
 
I've made a lot of Relto pages for things you can unlock for both the exterior and interior areas. I don't want to post too many spoilers for that, but I will show one of them that I am working on for the interior: a storage room where you can put your trophies and collections on display! I haven't added lights to the room yet, so you'll have to squint a little at the images.
Display shelf
Put unique items from your inventory on display
Take items back from the display when you want them
Displays for Thieves Guild items and Daedric artifacts will be optional, where you can just press a button or something to turn them off if your character isn't into that sort of thing. If you choose this, you'll have regular shelves or more mannequins or something. I haven't worked out the details yet :-P

Miscellaneous
 
Here are a few miscellaneous images for random stuff I added:
A window you can slide open/shut

Firemarbles are now even glowier than before!
A place to clean up a bit
Dovahkiin should bathe daily

Relto Book Quest
 

After some thought, I've decided I want to (at least try to) make a quest you will need to complete to obtain your Relto book. I've put a lot of thought into it, and I think I've come up with a plot that works with both Uru and Skyrim lore, while still leaving it up to the player to choose if it was already their Relto book or not. There will be one large dungeon and one small dungeon (but possibly 5 additional small dungeons if I feel up to it).

There will be enemy NPC's you have to fight that each have their own background story you can learn if you want. They won't be voice acted though, as there are no plans to have the player talk to them; you'll have to read their journals and letters if you want to know their history. I'm hoping I can figure out how to give them their own armor/weapons/spells/abilities, as I want them to each be unique and interesting.

There will definitely be puzzles; I'm trying to find a good balance between fairness and difficulty, but I don't want the easy spoonfeeding baby puzzles that almost every game seems to have now. I really want the player to have to actually use their brain; you might even have to take notes. This will be my first time doing anything like this though, so we'll see how it pans out. I also want the quest to have no quest markers so you have to actually use the information you find to figure out where to go.

Speaking of puzzles, I will say that I plan to add a few secret puzzles on Relto itself. I won't give any more info than this except that I have no idea yet if solving them will unlock anything useful, or just some small aesthetic thing. One puzzle is already in and working. :-)

Happy Exploring!
Katelin

Sunday, May 24, 2015

Music Player

Howdy and Shorah,

I finally started work on the music player for Relto. Currently I have the "advanced" music player in an alpha state with a lot of songs. I plan to have the player start with a basic music player that has only a few songs that can be upgraded by finding the Relto Page for the advanced music player.


The music player is currently made up of models available in the Creation Kit, but I might give it its own model in the future.


When you interact with the music player, you are given an options menu where you can select the theme of the music. The current options are Tavern, Town, Explore, Combat, Dungeon, Solstheim, and Misc. You can also choose to stop the play of any music it is currently playing. I put the music into these categories because there are a lot of great songs in the game, so they needed sub-menus to fit them all. A message box can only have up to ten buttons.


After you select the category, you can choose the individual song you wish to hear. The music player will stop any other music it was playing and play the song you chose.



There is still a lot of work to do on the music player. For one, the music you select will keep playing if you leave Relto, so I am trying to figure out a way to force the songs to stop if you aren't on Relto. I have some ideas about it though, so hopefully it won't be too long until that's fixed. Also, the music player currently does not play any of the bard songs (instrumental or vocal), and I'd like to get those in there as well, although it's not priority (as I might just end up making a bard that can be hired instead).

Happy Exploring!
-Katelin

Sunday, May 17, 2015

Custom Models/Textures - Safety Cones & Eddie

Howdy and Shorah!

Anyone who has played Uru knows that it's just not complete without safety cones, so I made some for Relto for Skyrim. At first, they were too big!

Too big!
Looks good in the inventory though.


I promptly scaled them to half the original size. I then took a cone into my inventory and attempted to drop it, only to watch it freeze in mid-air. Yikes! I realized what the problem was: when I had converted my Blender file into a .nif, the template I used in NifUtilsSuite was a static object rather that an object that can be taken. I had originally used one of those glazed pots that can't be interacted with in the game, so when I wanted to drop the cone, it had no physics. I re-converted using a basket as the template, and the cones now work more or less the way they are supposed to.

Much better size :)
In addition to the cones, I also created Eddie the Beachball!

Eddie, not in his natural environment
Eddie has a few texture issues, but he's fun to play with!



The cones and Eddie will be available in Relto for Skyrim, but I know that for some people they might be too immersion-breaking, so I'll put them somewhere out of the way (inside a barrel or something).

Happy Exploring!
-Katelin

Saturday, May 16, 2015

Moiety Dagger Update

Howdy and Shorah!

I redid the model and texture for the Moiety Dagger, and I think it's looking good! It still cannot be wielded as a weapon, but I plan on getting that figured out eventually.


...well that's all there is to say about it :-P

Happy Exploring!
-Katelin


Tuesday, May 12, 2015

Custom Models/Textures - Moiety Dagger

Howdy and Shorah,

After much pulling of hair and gnashing of teeth, I was finally able to get a custom model/texture into the creation kit! I'm completely exhausted so I don't have time to test it in-game yet, and I probably won't have time to for a while. Obviously it's still a major work in progress (needs a lot more detail to both the model and the texture, and currently the dagger is not set as a weapon, only a decorative item), but I am super excited that I finally know the process of getting my own meshes into the game. Now I present the very alpha-state Moiety Dagger!


Now I'm off to bed...goodnight all...

Katelin

Sunday, April 26, 2015

Interior for Relto

Shorah and howdy!

In what little free time I've had lately, I've been working on an interior area for Relto. It will be accessed through the Relto hut (whenever I finish that; I haven't done any work on it in quite some time). You'll start out with a basic but large room with a few necessities and some decor. However, you can unlock rooms and special items (such as a vampire coffin) by finding the corresponding Relto Pages. An example is shown below (note that nothing is even close to complete yet; I haven't even finished adding ceilings haha).

The "kitchen" area you begin with is just a fireplace with a cooking pot and some decor.


Once you find the Relto Page for the kitchen, the fireplace goes away and is replaced with a door.


The door opens to the kitchen...I won't show detailed images yet because I don't want to spoil it too much, but I may upload some down the road when it's more complete.


There will also be rooms for Enchanting and Alchemy, a master bedroom, an extra bedroom for adopted children etc., and probably some kind of mass storage/display room.

Here is an image from part of the master bedroom:


I'll spoil a little bit more for the Enchanting room; the first image is currently just some decor, the second image is something I'm working on that I might try to make activate-able for some small temporary buffs or somesuch:




And I guess I might as well show the current state of the library area since it will be there by default:


Also a little conceptual update: I will be attempting to add a music player of sorts since Relto in Uru: Ages Beyond Myst had a music player you could add. It will start off with just 3 or so basic songs (I haven't decided yet if I'll use some of the Skyrim bard instrumental music, or if I'll make my own), and I'll add a Relto Page that will replace it with a more advanced music player that has lots of Skyrim music to choose from. I'll probably put one music player in the exterior, and one in the interior location. If I make my own music to put in there, I'll put instructions so that people can easily replace them with their own songs if they wish by simply replacing those sound files with files of identical name and filetype...in theory at least, as I'll have to test to make sure this works.

And as a closing thought that I think needs to be touched on: there is currently a major controversy over the Steam Workshop monetizing mods. I just want to state that Relto for Skyrim will be free, because 1) I never intended to sell it, I am making it for my own fun and for others to have fun; and 2) since a lot of the ideas and names are from Cyan's game Uru: Ages Beyond Myst, it wouldn't be legal for me to make money off of it anyways.

Happy exploring!
Katelin

Sunday, April 5, 2015

Relto Hut

I am slowly but surely creating the Relto Hut!


Not an exact replica by any means. I may change the design over time depending on how it looks in Skyrim, but I like this shape as it is in Blender..

The modeling is pretty simple, but in the past I was never able to successfully get models into NifSkope to make them Skyrim compatible. I won't give up though!

Texturing might also be a bit difficult for me, but it will get done after some time. I'll probably have to start off with some really simple placeholder textures though so I can see how everything works.

Happy Exploring!
Katelin