Wolf Mods, Skyrim (and more!) for Oblivion Options

[Lena Wolf]

Someone complained to the Nexus Mods moderators about TWMP Hammerfell and TWMP Locations, and as a result both mods have been locked until Akatosh knows when. This means that Skyrim mods cannot be installed either, breaking the chain.

So instead of working on TWMP Skyrim Alive with all its castles and whatnots, I had to take a very serious look at the decoupling of the TWMP mods in order to produce studs for replacement while the originals are locked. My previous decoupling work now paid off!

I am still testing and ironing things out there. I have to make two studs: for TWMP Hammerfell and for TWMP Locations. Hammerfell is a master of TWMP Skyrim Improved which is the basis for my TWMP Skyrim Alive. So a stud for Hammerfell must have all those resources that are used by TWMP Skyrim Improved.

TWMP Locations is not a master for my TWMP Skyrim Alive but it provides important bug fixes and updates for TWMP Skyrim Improved. So the stud that I need to make will contain those bug fixes but no new content.

To make it all possible I am preparing an update for the Tamriel Resource Pack - TamRes.esm and TamRes_Landscapes.esm with the associated resource BSAs. This resource pack is independent of TWMP, that is, TWMP uses it but other mods can use it also, like for example Fort Akatosh Redux. The update will be an extension of the original containing everything that the pack contains now, plus all the interesting free resources from TWMP Hammerfell, High Rock and Skyrim Improved.

As you can imagine all this takes a lot of time, but will make the mods more robust by making it possible to reduce the number of masters and make each province independent.

[macole]

Dang it! What did they have to complain about?

[Lena Wolf]

That's hard to say. TWMP Hammerfell is over 10 years old - has been on Nexus all this time. It is a TWMP adaptation of Hammerfell which is even older. The mod is rather racy, even sexist. But so are many other mods! It is tagged as "adult", so it can't be an issue. There isn't even any nudity in the TWMP version, only scantly clad girls dancing... and stuff.

And I completely cannot understand any complaints against TWMP Locations. It's got tombs with zombies in them... well, zombies are not wearing any clothes, but neither are vanilla zombies (and they are the same zombies, by the way).

But may be I'm barking up the wrong tree there - the complaint could be about anything, such as copyright violation (which I can't see either).

[macole]

Unbelievable. Well, I got my copies tucked away somewhere safe. There have been a few but usually I don't delete any mods that I've DL'ed.

[Lena Wolf]

Just uploaded a stud for TWMP_Hammerfell.esp. It has no playable content but instead has all the resources required by TWMP_SkyrimImproved.esp. It may not fully cover TWMP Skyrim Alive release 2 because I reworked resource usage already. A new TamRes resource pack will appear shortly.

[Lena Wolf]

TWMP Hammerfell and TWMP Locations have been unlocked!

And in the meantime I've been building High Hrothgar. Here are some preview pictures.

Just another hundred steps...

High Hrothgar approach

You stand before the gates

Front view

Back view

High Hrothgar from a dragon's perspective

Inside the walls

High Hrothgar great hall (which is also the only hall)

Library in High Hrothgar hall

[Acadian]

Wow, lots of good work!

[macole]

If you only have one hall make it a great one. Looks like you really captured the essence of High Hrothgar.

[Lena Wolf]

Big news on the TWMP Northern Provinces front! We (Haldar and I) are going to officially decouple Hammerfell, High Rock and Skyrim from each other. This was a long time coming, but it is a huge undertaking really, so it never happened. I made an attempt last year that didn't work, but this year we're doing it differently.

First, I extended Tamriel Resource Pack (TamRes for short) - version 2 is already out, and there will be an update to it a bit later. This pack is not a part of TWMP - it is just a library, used by TWMP, true, but also used by other mods, for example Fort Akatosh Redux. Can be used with any mod, really. The previous release was from 2011, so it was a high time to add the many wonderful resources that became available since then. Of course, not all, but a selection of them, and selfishly I mostly selected the ones we use in Hammerfell and Skyrim. Plus a bit extra. My criteria for selection where simple: it has to be a free resource, it should have vanilla resolution (or nearly vanilla) to work on old PCs, and it has to be child-friendly, like vanilla Oblivion. So no 4K textures and no naked people or creatures, for example. Players can always install other mods on top to change that for their own game.

File structure and editor IDs are changed in this version to make it all more logical and workable in the CS, but TamRes v2 will still work with old mods based on v1 because it contains everything that v1 contained too, even if some of it is hidden, but preserved for compatibility. Editor IDs have no impact in game, and form IDs have not changed.

Tamriel Landscape Pack is now integrated in TamRes, and has been already since the previous "full pack" version. There is an update to that as well - I cleared the 1000+ HITME errors in TamRes_LandscapeResources.esm and fixed a few textures in the pack. So ignore the old separate mod and use the landscape resources from TamRes. I notified Firespark about it who now maintains TamRes, but I don't know if he has access to the old Landscapes mod which is still under Onra's name.

Extending TamRes was really the big thing for us. The next step is to redirect Hammerfell and Skyrim Improved to use the resources from the new TamRes instead of their own local copies. This is necessary because currently all our Skyrim mods use resources from Hammerfell, hence the dependency. With all resources stored centrally in TamRes, we don't need this link. Well, there's more to it, but this is the main bit. The work is already quite advanced on this stage - it's in the "checking again" phase.

High Rock is currently empty apart from the landscapes, but there is a technical issue between High Rock and Skyrim Improved: they overlap. Which means that in large parts of Haafingar you get double amout of rocks and trees than what you were supposed to have. This is a problem if you want to put buildings or roads there - as you move rocks and trees out of the way, you find that some come from the High Rock mod, and some from Skyrim Improved. Plus, all path grids reside in Skyrim Improved, which is illogical (and will be near lethal once we start developing High Rock). I have moved the records and separated High Rock from Skyrim, but it needs checking ("ready to check" phase). This will give us a clean TWMP High Rock ESP, ready to develop High Rock.

TWMP Skyrim Improved takes the most work because it is the centre piece of this jigsaw puzzle. Other mods depend on it - my Skyrim Alive and Haldar's Locations are the two big ones, plus all the little addons we've made in the meantime. I have done the first pass, but this needs checking properly and then checking again with Locations which contains important bug fixes that need to be moved into Skyrim Improved. This is in the "working on it" phase.

After that Locations will need attention too, but it is still in the "we'll need to see about that" phase.

TWMP Skyrim Alive v3 will be a "decoupled" version - it will not have Hammerfell or High Rock as masters, but only Skyrim Improved and TamRes (plus other required things). It is independent from the decoupling project, that is it can be used with the current "coupled" versions of the province mods, but also will work with the new "decoupled" versions. That's the plan, anyway. It's a lot of work and we don't want to put ourselves under undue pressure, because real life keeps getting in the way.

All this decoupling work does mean that the release of v3 of Skyrim Alive is delayed. This cannot be helped, it had to be done. The incident of Hammerfell and Locations getting locked down for nearly a month gave me a bit of a shock, to be honest, because it breaks the chain. So the chain needs to go.

With that said, the next preview release of Skyrim Alive is getting along nicely. A dozen new castles and a dozen coach stations or inns, new roads and coach transportation will be included. The castles all have interiors, NPCs, etc., but nothing exciting is happening there yet - they are all going to be used in quests to come later. I shall also release a new map with all the new roads. So for now you will be able to explore the castles for no particular reason. (Some are castles, some are cloisters or abbeys, it varies.)

[Lena Wolf]

The Castles update for TWMP Skyrim Alive is definitely coming closer! Just one last cloister to fill in and a couple of inns to update. Phew! That's 11 castles down, 1 to go.

I was going to include coach travel into this update, which requires new dialogue. However, I found that merging mods with dialogue often introduces corruption. I had a lot of trouble when I merged the previous Bleak Isle module into the main file - it took a long time to clear. I decided to avoid adding dialogue to modules meant for merging from now on.

The issue was with the "Previous INFO" subrecord of an INFO record (a dialogue line record). Dialogue lines are arranged in a kind of linked list with each line keeping track of the line it is following. When you merge INFO records from one mod into another, their IDs are renumbered but the "Previous INFO" subrecords are not updated - not with Gecko, not with xEdit, not with Merge Plugins. So you end up with dialogue lines that have invalid information in their "Previous INFO" fields. Sometimes the game is able to correct it and you find an error message in the log, but more often than not the game hangs or crashes on load. All in all, too much trouble for my taste.

[Lena Wolf]

For anyone who read the previous post and is now scratching their heads as to what to do about those corrupted INFO records: don't panic! I know I was panicking already.

Having a large mod like TWMP Skyrim Alive suddenly hang the game, is enough cause to panic - all that work that went into it! But the case of the INFO records appears to be easy to fix: just open the newly merged mod in the CS, then save. The CS corrects all these errors automatically! If you look in the console log, you indeed see all those errors detected. I don't know if it is the original CS or the extender CSE functionality, but I suspect it's original. Thumbs up for that again!

I also noticed that merging mods that contain dialogue is not always problematic. I've done it so many times, and never before did the game hang. I suppose I was lucky. The "Previous INFO" subrecords are not reset, so there is an issue, but apparently the game was able to resolve it before, but not in this case.

So my new revised rule is this: after you merge some mods that contain dialogue lines, always open the newly created merge in the CS, save and exit. Just to be sure.

[Acadian]

So glad you were able to get everything to work!

[Lena Wolf]

The castles have been built!

This was probably the largest chunk of work in this whole release, even bigger than the Bleak Isle module. Twelve castles with interiors and sprawling dungeons, three manor houses (coach inns), a dozen coach stations - that's a lot of content, even without quests or dialogue.

I didn't build all the castles from scratch - that would have been impossible for a single person, together with everything else that needs doing! Instead, I located castle mods with open permissions, then imported those castles and modified. They are not the same as the originals, the changes ranging from some stylistic modifications to complete ripping out and redoing the interiors. I was mostly interested in the exteriors anyway, but that had to be relocated which in itself necessitated changes. And then of course, a few things I did build from scratch.

The next update will have the quests associated with most of the castles. That goes remarkably quickly, now that the castles are ready! We'll see how far I'll come on them, but I expect to have two complete quest lines wrapped into the next update: Whiterun Citizens and Ysgramor's Companions. This will populate the whole of Whiterun, excepting the Jarl - that's a separate quest line. Yes, Whiterun comes to play a central role in Skyrim.

[Acadian]

Congrats on Castlevania!

[Lena Wolf]

Thank you! Castelvania indeed! And with each castle taking a week to build... That's a huge project! Phew! Done now.

[Lena Wolf]

Would you go in? I'm having fun with quests for TWMP Skyrim Alive. It's a big job, once again I took on a far larger project than I intended. But you can't leave a story half-told, once started, you've got to do what you've got to do...

[Lena Wolf]

Spent the whole evening sorting out werewolves...

Building Skyrim is moving on, but I am also debugging and streamlining the Tamriel Resource Pack library (TamRes.esm), and standardising TWMP Hammerfell, Skyrim Improved and Locations. Wolves and werewolves were running amok in those mods, with different versions, some defective models, some overpowered creatures... If you were to walk in the woods in Skyrim, you had a very good chance of running into a dozen-strong pack of level 22 werewolves... Not much fun if you are level 1. Or even level 10!

I know some people prefer games where all creatures have a fixed level. But Oblivion is a leveled game in general, for better or for worse. My view is that the Skyrim extension should not go against the general game setup, which I happen to like, in fact. I feel you should be able to play the whole game in Skyrim, starting at level 1, and you should be able to delve into caves and walk in the woods without the fear of certain death. It's just not fun. We have plenty of difficult dungeons, difficult at any level, there are also boss creatures which would eat you alive at level 1. But they are generally tucked away at the back of a dungeon somewhere and not walking into your local pub for a pint of mead.

Werewolves (and wolves) are going to play a prominent role in my story. So had to have them sorted. And why not do the slaughterfish as well, while I was at it.

[Lena Wolf]

The 3.0.4 Castles update is now on Nexus!

This update adds quests to most of the castles that I introduced earlier. Some are still unused at this point, and most will get another use in later modules. We have three quest lines: Whiterun Citizens, Ysgramor's Companions and the Order of Kynareth with a total of 25 medium-sized quests and 1974 lines of dialogue... Ok, it is actually a lot fewer lines of dialogue because some repeat for different races, but still. A lot of chatter included!

All three quest lines are side quest lines, that is they don't have any direct influence on the main quest. You are welcome to completely ignore them, too! Keep your Whiterun empty and let Ysgramor's Companions drown in their mead, for all I care. And don't bother with Kynareth because who wants to do tasks for the Goddess of Nature, really?

With the previously released Bleak Isle module, this completes 3 out of 7 originally planned quest lines. The Order of Kynareth brings it to 4 out of 8 quest lines because it wasn't originally planned... still added it though...

Next I'll be working on two intertwined quest lines centred around the College of Magic in Winterhold. One is involved in the main quest, the other is really a side line, just to confuse you. Hope you enjoy the game.

[Lena Wolf]

A bit of testing and debugging this end. Pleasantly surprised that most things work as intended. Of course not all though! But the game doesn't crash and I can check a lot of things quickly, which helps to find the bugs, at least the ones that aren't in hiding. Mostly easy to fix so far, fingers crossed.

I've figured out how to make use of the standard Rumours system. That is, not only add new rumours to the list, but also give them a higher priority so that you would be much more likely to hear them in Skyrim. And of course you won't hear them anywhere else - that's the easy bit. But now I realised that with all the locations and all the quests already made, I have tons and tons of rumours to write...

I do not spread rumours, child. I create them.

[Lena Wolf]

Version 3.0.5 of TWMP Skyrim Alive Preview is released. This is a merged version of everything developed so far, that is Bleak Isle and Castles. All resources are updated, voice files and lip sync generated and uploaded. The total number of voice files is now 8690, of which over 7500 were added in this update. That's voice files, not unique lines, because some lines are recorded in multiple voices for different races and genders. This in particular is true for rumours. I added around 350 unique lines of rumours and that resulted in over 5550 voice files. On the other hand, some 540 unique lines of quest-related dialogue only resulted in about 2000 voice files as there's a lot less repetition there (most lines can only be said by one NPC rather than groups of NPCs).

I have been thinking about the whole issue of sampling the actors' voices and then generating artificial lines from them. For myself, I reached a moral compromise: let those generated lines be imperfect, so that you can understand what is being said but also can immediately hear that it isn't the actual actor saying it. I am using xVAsynt v2.3 without manual correction. I find the voices "acceptable" - that is, exactly what I said above. You can understand them perfectly, yet you also know they have been generated. I feel uneasy when the generation is perfect. It's like a deepfake.

Of course, if someone wants better voices for the mod, they are welcome to do it themselves!