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

[Lena Wolf]

After a bit of a break, I'm back with modding! Back to building Skyrim in Oblivion.

But first, to compensate for Dragon Age: Veilguard being such a terrible flop (in my opinion), I decided to put some Grey Wardens into Oblivion, as I am known to do (drag everything of value into Oblivion). There will be some Grey Wardens in Skyrim (that is, in TWMP Skyrim Alive) because that's where my story goes, and here I mean THE story - "I am Lena Wolf". And so in preparation I made a teaser mod Warden's Oath that adds a small Grey Warden outpost all the way East along the Panther River. It's got goodies for the player and for the mod maker alike, as everything is a free resource.

And now back to Skyrim. I've been building Dragon Wood, also known as Kynesgrove (see Wiki). It is a small village with a malachite mine and, more importantly, with an arena (which for some reason vanished by the year 4E201). We are going to have Dragon Wood in TWMP Skyrim Alive complete with an enchanted arena (naturally).

Come and test your mettle against never ending varied opponents! Or are you a milkdrinker? And if you'd rather be betting - you can do it too. They will be happy to take your money, since you seem to have no use for it. Just don't expect to win anything - the only winner is the wizard who enchanted the thing.

See big pictures on Nexus!

[Acadian]

Intriguing - a magic arena!

[Lena Wolf]

Well, you know, there are always people who like to fight for the sake of fighting. The idea was actually prompted by a post on the Nexus forum - someone was requesting a mod for Dragon Age: Origins with an arena with never ending opponents. The poster was so in love with the combat system in that game, that just never wanted to stop fighting... So... Ok! Not in the same game, but we will have an enchanted arena!

[Lena Wolf]

I decided to mirror TWMP Skyrim Alive on ModDB . The offering is slightly different.

The package on ModDB contains all of my content in one, making it easier to install. However, some options are missing and have to be added separately, if people want them.

The package on NexusMods is fragmented, offering updates, options and patches for those people who prefer to pick and choose. However, since upload times to NexusMods are ridiculously slow, I may not always post updates there.

The version on Masser and Secunda is somewhere in between. It is split into separate zip files but all of them work together - there are no old versions there. This is where I post all the latest updates before they make it anywhere else.

[Lena Wolf]

I made a big decision to move my TWMP Skyrim Alive mod out of the TWMP framework and make it stand-alone. This is a hugely big deal. Epic.

The reason it is such a big deal is completely technical and under the hood. To the player, the stand-alone version will look and work exactly the same as the TWMP-based version. To a mod author however, this is like moving to another planet. To a mod user with a full load order it is somewhere in between - masters will be different and you may have to reshuffle your load order, but you will still be able to use it alongside other TWMP mods, as long as they are not for Skyrim. Because that would be crazy.

I have done this because I wish to build my own Skyrim, completely according to my own ideas. As much as I appreciate the huge work that Haldar put into his TWMP Skyrim Improved, and as much as I made use of it as a base for my TWMP Skyrim Alive, there are also areas where I would have liked to do things differently. But doing it in Haldar's Skyrim would be bad manners, and so I decided to strike out on my own.

So then why ditch TWMP? Well, the idea of TWMP was that you would have various mods for Tamriel outside of Cyrodiil, and using the same framework would allow them to work together easier. The reality is however that we don't have said mods. There is at most one finished mod per province, TWMP or no TWMP. Building a whole province is a very big job, so not surprising that only few of us have enough steam for the duration. And so TWMP becomes an overhead rather than a help, and why load the land for entire Tamriel while you really only want it for one province? That's a lot of dead data that your game does not really need.

However, there are some brave souls with good PCs who in fact do run the entire Tamriel. Well, for them, my stand-alone Skyrim can be loaded alongside other TWMP-based provinces, so you could still have it without issues. Or you could opt for Haldar's Skyrim with or without TWMP Skyrim Alive.

And so, TWMP Skyrim Alive Release 3.4.3 is the final release for the TWMP version of the mod. It has very few bugs (as reported to me), it is a good and stable version with a story that brings a large chapter to conclusion. I feel it is good enough to be left alone.

The new stand-alone version is going to have a different name to make sure you don't try to load it into your existing game. With so many changes, that is sure to cause crashes. The new working title is "Skyrim Alive Lone Wolf". It may or may not be the actual title at the time of release. The mod will start with version 4.0 as it continues on everything that went before, and will include all the content that I built so far. I plan to make a small converter plugin that will allow you to bring forward the progress you made in TWMP Skyrim Alive and import it into Skyrim Alive Lone Wolf so that you would not have to replay the same quests again.

The first big change in Lone Wolf Skyrim is in the basics - the landscapes. Since I no longer use TWMP Skyrim Improved as the basis, I needed a new one. I went with the original TWMP_Skyrim.esp from the TWMP mod, the one that also Haldar started with. This base has land textures, trees and rocks, but it has no waterways at all. Haldar made rivers, but remember that he did it before TES5 Skyrim came out... so guess what - they are not quite the same. I have no problem with it as such, and indeed I am not trying to recreate TES5 landscapes either. But when I study to original Onra's TWMP heightmap, I can see The Throat of the World and Lake Geir, Riften and Windhelm - Onra made provisions for them based on the lore known to date (BEFORE TES5!) - and they are not where Haldar chose to put them in his version when he made rivers. And so I will make rivers where Onra originally intended them.

Click to enlarge

Here's a map of TWMP Skyrim. Haldar's rivers are shown in white and my planned rivers in pink. This is a heightmap - you see equal height lines showing the topology. This is an overlay of Haldar's map over Onra's, so the areas where Haldar made changes to the heightmap are the areas where height lines disagree and cross each other.

The biggest differences are around Snowhawk where Haldar made the Karth River, and around the Throat of the World, Lake Geir and Riften. Haldar moved them North so that he would have more room in the South of Skyrim, but I want to put them back where Onra intended them, and which is indeed similar to the map of TES5 Skyrim (Bethesda must have been planning ahead). My Karth and Hjaal rivers are still not like in TES5, and our landscape is different there, but I chose the flow for the rivers to follow the landscape rather than cut through it. And yes, I do intend to build Snowhawk as a city and not just a ruined fort.

But wait, Onra's heightmap is TWMP, and I just said I would no longer use it? Ugh... Yeah... Onra made a great heightmap... It can be made to exist also outside TWMP... This is under the hood trickery with cell form IDs. My Skyrim will have the same heightmap as Onra's TWMP, I shall be able to use the same map in-game... but it won't be based on the TWMP framework. However, with a flick of a wrist and a few choice words, I would be able to revert it to use TWMP, should I ever wish it again...

I started my landscape work in the North, in Haafingar. Since I am no longer using TWMP Skyrim Improved, I have to rebuild Solitude and Windhelm. I also intend to rebuild Riften completely from scratch as it is now going to be in a different location. And yes, I'll build Snowhawk too. That's four major cities on top of Falkreath, Markarth and Karthwasten already planned for release 4, plus half a dozen of villages and hamlets to add along the way. Let's say, this, once again, is turning out far larger than originally planned.

The changes in the landscape are such that my Skyrim will have some new varieties of trees and a lot more herbs and mushrooms than before. I like to pick ingredients and make potions, and there isn't enough variety at the moment. And new types of trees make for differently looking landscapes.

I started work on release 4 already in the TWMP setup. I built Karthwasten and Falkreath (both big cities), and laid out Markarth. Now in the new setup all this work continues, nothing is lost. In the last few days I laid out Solitude. That is, I built the exteriors, but all the interiors, people and stories are still to come. I felt that as the seat of the kings, it must be a grand city, and it must match the Blue Palace that I built previously. And so I've done it. I leave you with some pictures of my new Solitude - click the image to view the album.

Click to view the album

[macole]

This looks and sounds extremely interesting. It would be fun to be able to walk from Hermaeus Mora's Shrine to Solitude or to see your vision of Winterhold before its collapse without having to re-install my entire game with TWMP.

[Lena Wolf]

Thanks, Macole! It will still be a huge mod, no doubt - the land is much larger than Valenwood or Elsweyr. But it won't have to be layered over three other mods, and that will cut down on memory and processing power. I have been doing some tests... it does look promising, performance wise. If my 15-year old i7 can do it, then most people's PCs will be able to cope with it and have a few other large mods installed as well (I know you like your MOOs or OOOs or OCOs or whatnot). The plan is to just have it mastered on the TamRes library - but that's just ESMs for new objects and such, it doesn't add anything in-game in itself. It's still early days... but we'll see.