Thanx for the help anyway, but still I have a question I'm very anxious about:
Will it be possible with a permission from MeMod Team to introduce all the wonderful vertex shader stuff into original Morrowind? I haven't thought about using it in my own mod, thought just of letting some of the MW script-gods to create a mod which would fill Morrowind along with Soltsheim, Sea of Destiny and Wizards' Isles with realistic grass, water effects, etc.
I'm not quite a fan of LOTR, though I'm looking forward to this mod.
And I really believe that it wouldn't do much harm if all the physics\graphics\mechanics of MeMod were transferred into MW (I don't mean stealing hobbits, elves, Gandalfs, or any original MiddleEarth-only characters or weapons or misc items - just the engine improvements).
The only thing I wanna know - are the MeMod Team and non-MeMod Morrowind modmakers rivals or friends?

now i cant really answer this..
wait for a dev..
about your last question: friends:) but there are secrets between these friends:D

I thought Daerk was OK with people using their models and textures and everything, IF they would say that it was created by this mod team (give credit where credit is due), and IF they'd ask permission first. I think it's in the Daerk on... thread.

First of all, we are friends with the non-MEMod mod community - quite a few members of MEMod are also involved in other projects.

Regarding making technical features available to the rest of the modding community - a few resources have already been released: here.

I posted this topic because there are (or at least were) a lot o' people in the morrowind forums bumping their heads against concrete walls and crying in despair:

Oh, that bad MeMod team ain't gonna release no pixel shader grass and we'll never see it because they'll work on the mod for six more years and finally screw up the whole thing, we don't need no hobbits just give us pixel shader grass *whining and sobs*

Remember that there are many MW players which don't like the whole idea of your mod, but still adore the eyecandy thingies you've managed to make.

P.S.
Read "Daerk on... game physics&mechanics"
Oh god, it's nonsense to involve humidity and all that science - you'll get too much realism, half o' players will beg you to get rid of all these complications... just hunger, thirst and sleep. Daerk & Co have been getting a little insane for some time, I see. Hope they will finish MeMod before getting too crazy to write scripts.

Half of the point of the mod is to be realistic.

P.S. Daerk isn't on the team anymore, genius.

P.P.S. If many MW players don't like MEMod, then they don't deserve to have its technology.

any more questions/requests/ideas about memod or can i lock that topic?

MEmod is made as a tribute to Tolkien. They don't give a damn if it's fun to play or not. Atleast, that's what they say.

Dude, in a month youll have all the grass you want........................
I made my own pixel shaded grass but have to wait for a month until a certain company can release a compiler that can make my grass into a format morrowind can use through 3ds max. Plus after I get the compiler, my version wont even need an special .exe file because in that format it would just come with a scripted addition to the morrowind ini to allow morrowind to boot it up with the texture plane on onto which the grass is generated on.
Why need a compiler, because I dont want to take shitload of time to make an exe file and then make a utility to make it boot up alongside the morrowind exe.

Just wait. Go to my site: http://www.freewebs.com/postaldudeleo/
and if you want try to use code yourself without the compiler, give it a try ......

Plus,

MeMod is doing this for free so if those people want the grass so much then they could stop being pissed off on memod and try to do it themselves...........

I think Daerk meant fun to your average 'casual' gamer, you know, the kind of person who thinks that any LOTR game has to be about 6 hours long at most and the storyline is something like you are Gandalf and you're on a quest to go kick Sauron's butt, and you do this mainly by firing off super-duper ultra-magical spells, or something equally as asinine.

Oh, that's a bit mean to say:

"If you don't like the mod, you don't deserve the technology"

In fact, it's very, very impolite. If you think uncle Tolkien your god, still many think he's just a good writer, and nothing godlike. Have you ever seen signposts in Morrowind like "no hobbits!", or "palantir use is prohibited!"?

I haven't. MW modders share their technology (e.g. better bodies, mighty sailable ships and all the stuff) freely with others, and nobody says:

"If you don't like Dunmer (Guars, Daedra) we won't give you this or that"

In Tolkien's world, you're surrounded by Destiny. You have a great freedom of action, still you can't break through the plot of the book, e.g. you can't kick Smeagol's ass, etc. What's worse, these Tolkienite fanatics don't even want to talk about magic. WELL! Tolkien meant no magic, let it be called Powers.
But in all the LOTR games some kind of 'magic' still persists, especially the official strategy 'The War of the Ring'. Do you think the guys who have yhe copyrughts to Tolkien's world would risk their license for such a blasphemy?
And what all the non-MeMod Tolkienites (just the fans of the book) think? Did you ask them first?

MW-dedicated people are quite a different kind. They don't want to be led by Destiny, they want be the Destiny themselves. In MW you can change the world your own way, so that's what makes the game so enthralling.

And the above-mentioned peculiarities of the two worlds (and of the minds of the two kins of roleplayers) are the main cause of all the misunderstandings between MW-hack'n'slashers and MeMod orthodoxals.

And I'm beginning to think MeMod devs feel themselves a bit too saint, because they have such a god as Tolkien. Gonna get a nimbus over the head, each of them.
At least I believe so.

I'm afraid when MeMod is released, there will be a great deal of quarrel about it: half of the guys will rip the armors and weapons out and put them into MW without any regard to what the team has done, the other half, dedicated Tolkienite players, will begin flaming about magic - some will say "no magic", the others - "powers", the rest will ask for a possibility for the player to become a Gandalf-like wizard... All the same even if the mod will have graphics like the Shrek toon.

So I believe everyone will be all right if the team aren't so orthodoxal.
Maybe better do a several polls among Tolkienite loremasters and common RPG players? I'm particularly interested in what the Tolkienites will say about magic - I mean asking at least 50 people, maybe 100, who are specialists on the book and all, on the net.

To Postaldudedeleo:
What about this idea:
Collect all the popular balanced plugins, mix them with Wizards' Isles and Sea of Destiny, add some handfuls of realism (no humidity of course, and no hobbits and release all that stuff like a one add-on consisting of many mods, I mean build up completely new Morrowind culture instead of numerous cool, but uncoordinated mods?... I hope you'll really make the grass, and what about other texture effects like rainwater running down the roofs and walls - the technique is similar, a vertex shader effect is appllied to the texture...

Anyway I meant no harm to anybody. I'm jus' a little hobbit.

And the wicked shall be smited by MeMod.
What I really mean is all you guys talking out of your asses will be slain in awe when MeMod comes out.

ok. Time for some clarifications, I beleive.

will the memod be fun, or painful?

fun. it'll be hard, it'll be real, it'll have times you struggle. but it is a game. not a simulator.
Realism is primarily a grounding upon which the rest of the mod is built - a tower that's 300 feet tall will have hefty walls at it's base, so the top does'nt collapse. A sword will kill you bloody quickly, a doorway that weighs several tonnes will require some sort of counterbalance to work easily.

At this very moment, there's been some bloody vicious argument in the team and dev forums abut that very point - how for instance, a dwarven hall can exist - working out the practicalities of the designs.
well, simply stated, it exists in a state of plausibility - a structure that when you walk through it, you go "wow. that *could* exist". When you're playing memod, the first thing is gameplay - that it's not a clunky, mechanics-driven game that has no actual fun involved. the fact that it's possible to have a plausible world-structure and physical reality allows the suspension of disbelief when the player encounters the truly fantastical. a dwarf, in the world, lives,breathes, laughs and loves, within the world it is real, and what we're doing is ensuring that how those things ae done is plausible.

Memod versus the rest of the MW community.

you, you steeking mortals, I fart in your general direction, you sons of food-traough wipers! Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt.... of Elderberries!
no go away or I shall taunt you a second time!

Feck that. Memod has some of the best artists, scripters and designers in the entire community. we're producing something that will be the best mod out there.
So f*ckin' what? we're here to produce a mod. we're here to make something impressive. it does'nt make the sun shine out of our arses, it does'nt make us better than any other group.

we are producing a tribute to the literary works of John Ronald Ruel Tolkien, we're making a mod that will blow people's socks off... but we're making it for a love of the crated literary world, first and foremost.
We want players to be able to go "wow" as they walk through the opened gates of Minias Tirith, look up toward the white tower, see the guards in black and sable passing in the street. We want players to be able to immerse themselves in Middle-Earth.

no more, no less.


Magic

In tokien's letters, he once wrote the following.

thanx for quotation from Tolkien: I've never came across his letters, so now I see that 'human' magic is really impossible in his world; why don't you post this quote somewhere on the main page in a bright flaming font? Now I see...

But can someone tell me where Gandalf & other wizards got their power from?

And another question: the label "memod dev team" in the signatures of the MeMod teamsters with a picture of a marsh - is it a real screenshot? The view distance looks too far for a standard cell.

And the last question, maybe a bit bugging:
What other graphic features besides those descripted in Daerk On... will be available in MeMod, which are not available in Morrowind?

The Letters of JRR Tolkien, Edited by Humphrey Carpenter, Pub by Harper Collins. ISBN no: 0 261 10265 6

Well worth reading to learn what he actually thought about a lot of things.


the wizards:
Gandalf, Saruman, Radagst , Alatar and Pallando are Istari, the five wixards. they are Maiar, the angelic beings of slightly less power than the Gods, the Valar. they're the same power of creature as the Balrog, or Sauron... but they're incarnated in mortal bodies...

that's roughly what the wizards are. their power comes directly from their being, created by Eru, the one.

the signatures are all photographic works. they just show very middle-earth-ish scenese.

other graphics features? Wait and see. I'm nota technician, I really can't say what we'll manage to push the engine to.

Suzerain.

Edit: I love it when the teamsters say exactly what I did a few moments earlier, or I repeat what they just posted, without knowing they'd replied.... Makes me know we're all on the same wavelength...

Dildo Baggins, I already made a huge mod that is a compilation of other mods to lift the graphics bar of morrowind. But its just one huge esp file thats made from merging over 80 other mods. Plus the whole thing is 600 mb. Im not uploading that. Second It would be bad becaus eI coulnd distingish which mods I used anymore out of which only 3 are my own. Others Iv downloaded. And if I spread my mod that would be pretty much called ripping off the people who made 99 percent of the whole thing.
No im not releasing it and a bunch of people have done the same thing excpet with other mods to fit their taste. my thing is suited to high end comps to make grapgics, effects, sounds, music, splash screens ect better.................

On another note, I hope MeMod is released soon.................... I think It will be fun.....

But it will no doubt have tons of people screwing it around when it is released and not giving credit where it is due. Why, cause they are a-holes.........................screw them up thier fat ___es..................

Im going to play doom 3 that just arrived today. My site I bought it off sent it one day ahead. Bye..................

Thank you Dildo for starting this thread, forcing Suz to make the best, most informative post in a LONG freaking time.

Good work, Suz. Thanks for clearing a few things up.

~Valdir

y'wot?

I did'nt say nothing, really.
not that's not been said before a fair few times.

D and myself had a long history of battling to ensure playability realism and practicality were evenly balanced - me ensuring that the mod is always playable, even when it's accurate.

suz

This topic seems really to have wound itself up, but just one minor comment:

If there is grass in memod, will your character be able to smoke it and most importantly grow your own patch of it ?

if you mean *that* sort of "grass" then I'm afraid out of sensibilities we really could'nt promote the use of drugs of any sort, beyond Nicotania pipe-weed.
we at memod would never condone the use of other chemicals.

Suzerain

and with that, I'm off to snort a line of cocaine of the chest a naked woman, before sipping absinthe and appreciating a fine drop of laudinum, as I "chase the dragon".
I wish.

erf
laudanum and cocaine doesn't fit very well together indeed
especialy if you intend to "chase the dragon"

addi©tionally absinthe is best sipped alone

*me is off to drink some onodrim's brew*

just to clarify...Daerk made it pretty clear to me that MEMod is basically an ME life simulator not a game as mentioned above...has this changed at all now? if so..how so? or is this still aimed at "the most hardcore of hardcore ME fans"? i guess it doesn't matter to me either way as if i get annoyed with the MEMod i can always take a break from it and play AME...if it ever comes out.

Quite simply, a "life simulator" in morrowind's engine would really be abysmal, in my opinion.
I'm not sure that it's possible to create with current tech. Take a search for the threads on "families" which I made six months back or so, just for one part of the logic as to why it'd be awful.

In addition, I beleive that even the freeform narrative of Morrowind nand the MeMod storylines would still be too constricting for a "life" sim.


It's still certainly aimed at hardore Middle-Earth fans, but however, as a games designer and author I am very firmly of the opinion that the end product should be *fun*. at least to the extent of being playable, something to return to again and again, and being accessable to a range of players - while it will be plausible for hardcore gamers to notice tiny details of narrative history and design elements from single paragraps of the literature, equally, I beleive that the casual player must have access to the game from the start, even if the nuances of detail and the design elements are lost on them.

I hope that's a suitable answer.

yep perfectly clear answer

heh. and there was me reading my reply and thinking "christ, was it so vague that he had to explain it better?"



suz

People that want to play hardstyle should probably move to the south and east parts of ME, since thats "Where dragons may roam" isn't it?