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Skywind rising: Modders recreate Morrowind in ‘Skyrim's’ world
By RIE TAKUMI, GMA News
From the shadows of the Red Mountain, the Nerevarine rises again. This time though the heroic reincarnation has the same skin as the Dragonborn.
Named Skywind, the game modification to the popular “The Elder Scrolls” series (a franchise of high fantasy role-playing games by Bethesda) aims to recreate the world of Morrowind, released in 2002, with the game engine of Skyrim, the series' 2011 entry.
Through conversations on their forums, several members of the Skywind team explained to GMA News Online why they chose to bring the volcanic marshlands of the Dunmer to the icy tundra of the Nords.
"Morrowind has a very unique and alien atmosphere that fans enjoyed, and has a vast world and compelling story/culture," explained SquallyDaBeanz, a lead landscape designer.
Lead artist Ravanna said, "For some, TES III (Morrowind) was considered the best, and many new or younger gamers never had a chance or desire to play due to old game mechanics."
"We feel we owe tribute to an amazing Elder Scrolls game and hope to recreate and re-imagine it with today’s technology," added SquallyDaBeanz.
Far from being a mere port of Morrowind quests and objects, the mod will feature all-new assets to populate the updated landscape of Vvanderfell. Concept artists, 3D modellers, and musicians around the globe are now creating content the size of official downloadable content for the mod.
To date, only Alexander J. Velicky's Falskaar mod for Skyrim has achieved a grand size in a mod.
Landscapes and models
Perhaps the biggest change in the Morrowind remake are the new assets, such as meshes and textures, made exclusively for the mod. Such an overhaul may seem unnecessary, but the team is taking all precautions to avoid the legal scuffles Morroblivion, a port of Morrowind to Oblivion or TES IV, faced.
"To keep it simple: Morroblivion was mostly using the Morrowind assets, including some textures that were outsourced by Bethesda to another company and for which the contract didn't allow for use elsewhere than Morrowind," explained digitalparanoid, who leads the SkyWind development team with Eloth and happychappy.
Guiding the modellers are concept artists who try to approximate the style inspired by former Bethesda artist, Michael Kirkbride. Interestingly enough, happychappy confirmed through a chat message that Kirkbride has made himself available for consultations regarding the game's lore.
"When we model or sculpt, some changes (to the concept art) are made for the sake of speed, or mechanical accuracy," said Ravanna.
"Sometimes (details are) not evident because you have to account for some loss of detail for the richer pieces to avoid overloading the system with processes," said Tajnarasha.
Landscapers clutter the world with lore-appropriate clutterers such as lava lakes, bogs, and steam vents, objects unavailable in Skyrim's kit. Populating the landscape are creatures native to Morrowind, such as ash ghouls and cliff racers, found on-land, under-water, and hovering in the sky.
Men and mer won't face these creatures in their smallclothes, as weapons and armors are now being created. Samples of these- made by modeller tommythegun- can be seen in one of their developer videos.
The map has been generated, but digitalparanoid says that they are still enhancing it to "2014 standards". One-third of the map has been updated, SquallyDaBeanz estimates.
Quests and perk systems
While its environment will receive a complete overhaul, Morrowind's quests will remain largely untouched. But because it is implemented in Skyrim's engine, its gameplay elements will interact with the former's systems.
"We're trying to back as many great features from Morrowind as we can, while still working them into Skyrim's systems," said SquallyDaBeanz.
These features may include spell crafting, armor layers, and real mining. Skyrim features like smithing and mining will take advantage of materials exclusive to Morrowind.
"There is (also) talk of adding scenes like the ones you see in Skyrim when you enter a city for the first time. For example, in Seyda Neen you might see guards harassing Fargoth," said Vivec, a long-time member of the team.
For those wanting a "vanilla" Morrowind experience, the team may include options for disabling Skyrim features such as fast travelling and quest markers.
Several storylines and side quests have been completed, tested, and inserted into the mod by developers. They can be completed, but because of the game is still in the making, naked NPCs and placeholder creatures are also commonplace.
"At the moment, if you play the quests, consider yourself a tester. When we release the first "final" release of Skywind, then it will mean that the quests are in good shape and you should start a new character," said digitalparanoid.
Voices and music
Morrowind gave its many races unique voices but relegated them to generic greetings and banter. To circumvent this, voice actors, under the direction of stijmunkey and gigaflare, are now manually adding over 30,000 lines of unique dialogue to the mod, a fraction of the total number of lines in Morrowind.
"The hard part is finding volunteers who can provide decent enough quality as most people don't have proper equipment," said stijmunkey.
He added, "Even if their voice is suitable and the quality is good, the actors still have to act. They need to put proper emotions behind the lines and make them sound like a natural believable conversation, which can also be difficult."
Accompanying the vocal tracks is an expansion of Morrowind's 45-minute soundtrack, led by Dragomir and Tajnarasha.
"We’ve definitely focused on giving a more tribal, almost eastern feel to some of the Ashland pieces with drums and djembes, as well as haunting Dunmer vocals by our composers Sharm, Liz and Dragomir," said Tajnarasha.
The result, Tajnarasha said, is both an homage to TES composer Jeremy Soule, and their interpretation of Morrowind's world and story.
Helping the project
Membership to the forums is open to every interested fan, though happychappy mentioned in a thread that only 30 percent of new members truly stay on the team.
"About 70% of people stating that they want to help invariable leave without trace. This in fact hinders the project," he said.
"If you truly want to help, (please) carry through with your task," he added.
If potential volunteers can't commit their time, they may commit their cash instead. Site runner thermador has set up a PayPal account to help keep the site running. Donations will become crucial in the future, especially when the mod is released and site traffic heightens.
"Where your money ultimately goes is for paying our service providers. . .If, by some miracle, people donate more than US$2500 a year, then the excess will stay in the PayPal account for future server costs," said thermador.
He added that if they receive too much donations, a poll will open to decide which charity the money will go to. The team has yet to set a release date for the mod. — KDM, GMA News
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