[WIP]Mermaids

[mantaman]

oi, cant you fight with the flying ring animations? 

 

and azmodan, pressurized homes for visitors

[Suludi]

Don't worry, the file is NOT corrupt. I downloaded and tested just fine!

Phew, I'm really glad cause I had NO idea how to fix it if it was really corrupted.

 

 

 

When I look up though, should you at least be able to see things above translucently, when I look up, it's just blue.

 

Yes, I somehow screwed this up. Still trying to find a way to repair it. If any of you can point me in the right direction, I'll be very grateful.

 

 

 

and the mermaid swim animations applies to everyone. When you swim upwards or downwards, can you position the body diagonally, rather than horizontal?

 

I'll try but I don't know if there's a specific "swim up" or "swim down" animation in the game. I'll have to check that out. And I think binding the mermaid animations should be part of the race design, so I'll not do that right now while I'm waiting for someone to publish a finned mesh as the basis for the race. I'm already working on a scale texture but I'd be REALLY glad if someone else could do this.

 

 

 

I could not find the caves too. Can you please add map markers?

 

 

I can but right now, it's easier to give you a few screenshots, see below.

 

i also found a few glitches in whiterun

 

(...) 

oi, with this stuff cleared up, and new monsters or whatever, this'll be lookin even better

Oh crap, I think this is because I originally planned the area around coordinates 0 0 which is near Whiterun. I hope I can fix this.

 

First...

backstory idea post of mine. This could cleanly and easily explain why they use dwemer architecture.\

I like that idea. (Although I DON'T like the general elven appearance, I find them horribly ugly.)

 

The swim animations:

love seeing your evolution in the anim. The first one was kinda stiff, the newest one flows well. Isn't it going to be on one of the mermaid bodies? if so, I really think you can pursue flow, and make it look really cool, but at the expense of slightly passing the limitation of traditional humanoid joints. For example, I think you can get away with hyper extending the knees another degree or 2 if it makes the flow look really good. Same with the spine. Only in mermaid form, tho, imo. In humanoid form, you almost have to stick with traditional extents or risk freaking out the player.

 

 

I want to put it on a real mermaid, still waiting for those meshes to be published. Thanks for the compliment but I still have lots of work to do. I don't like the hand/arm stiffness at all and will change it.

 

I think that before you can truly settle on what their settlements are like, you should answer the question "what is their relationship with the Mer?" are they reclusive? are they secretive? Xenophobic? Unless they're actively friendly to Mer, their settlements will be nowhere near the beaches of tamriel.

 

(...)

 

Therefore, I encourage you to think bigger. If you're concerned about player access, use a map marker like wyrmstooth. At that point you could put it anywhere and not care. You could put the water surface at 10k feet, and build the city as vertical as you want . . . which would be a HUGE departure from skyrim.

 

for example something like this underwater: (...)

 

could be built with any number of the dwemer constructs. large spire near the center, smaller spires in close proximity, even smaller spires in the near vicinity.

 

 

I would absolutely love to create a deeeeeeeeeeeeep gorge and insert houses/holes/caves/crazy buildings into the steep walls. Not sure how far Skyrim allows me to dig, though. I had a first try with the Chasm, I hope you like the general idea but I think it's FAR too small.

 

 

 

And you know something. . . Wyrmstooth, Helgen Reborn, and a couple other mods, made quite a big deal out of "rebuilding" things. How about this: The whole interaction starts off with a tiny tiny tiny atoll . . . a gilligans island no bigger than a shoe store poking up out of the water. Over time, a civilization -- a network of surface wharfs, buildings on piers and subsurface Nereid/Mereid constructions built DOWNWARD into the water -- is built out from that little piece of sand over the course of the campaign.

 

 

I like.

 

 

 

Ok so those are my thoughts. Got to say, I really like the progress. I've a design background (game, print, web) and have some texturing skills. I have putzed with buildings and dungeons, so i'm familiar with those tools, tho I will stop short here of offering to do something that will take a long-term commitment. I will however love to follow and offer my support and musings.

 

 

I'll be glad for any help I can get. Ideas, designs, meshes, textures... anything. Not to mentions NPCs, more animals, plants, corals, quests... I'm really sorry if it looks as if I've hijacked this thread but I just liked the original mermaid idea so much that I really want to do this - but not alone!

 

 

 

 

More later, need some beauty sleep. Badly.

[moonwolf3]

New to this  thread but  just curious is there an actual download for t he race  or what i  see theres  the lake rise DL but i may be  missing  something went through  11 pages of  this already.. or  just wondering what is  available  already,

[mantaman]

eh there moon

 

lakerise and the race(s) are still a wip, lakerise was sort of released for playtesting purposes

[firepower02]

oi, cant you fight with the flying ring animations? 

 

and azmodan, pressurized homes for visitors

 

Unfortunately, you can't. There was a new spell version that allows you to fight while flying, but it requires skse and fnis, I don't have fnis, and when I ran it, the problem that I don't like was there was no collision, you pass right through solid objects, you even pass through the ground. Actually, I have tried it with fnis, and there is still a problem with collision, or lack thereof. I have to uninstall it, because when I load a savegame that doesn't have the spell added yet, but I just previosly tested it, and did not save, the character will be flying. In short, it still has a few kinks. I really should not be discussing about it here.

 

 

 

 

I feel bad for those people that come here having to read through 15 pages or more, but could not find the mermaid race download. I was like that too before I participated posting. All there is is a mermaid in blend format, which cannot be used in game. I wish Suludi would be the one to finally make this race, and not just leave all of a sudden.

 

Btw, while waiting for someone to upload their version of a mermaid tail, maybe we can start with the flopping on land animation.

[Suludi]

 

Btw, while waiting for someone to upload their version of a mermaid tail, maybe we can start with the flopping on land animation.

 

By "we", I suppose you mean me? Right now, I'm working on the swimleft and swimright animations and add swimup / swimdown which have no references in the vanilla game so they will have to be scripted. Flopping, if we do it at all, will have to wait.

 

If noone uploads a tail mesh within the next few hours, I'll usurp the entire project and start working on my own mesh. I want to get things DONE. But I really wish Richard, EB and Xenos had not swum out of this project.

 

Update on the water problem: it's a vanilla-bred fog problem. When I reduce the fog to make the water transparent - which we NEED -, the surface transparency gets lost, and vice versa. I have searched the net but found no solution so far.

[Kyubi]

Meh, please no more of this "flopping on land" topic. Something like that is rather inexpedient, why should it happen?

 

It is against all immersion. If mermaids KNEW they could only flop on land, why would they leave their water in the first place? Which living creature would willingly expose itself like that to enemies which have a lot of advantages on land when they'd gain literally NOTHING by doing so? Don't you think it is more likely for them to come ashore if they know that they could atleast move?

 

Game-wise I fail to see the sense of this either. I don't know about the majority of the people who are looking forward to this race - as for me, I'd like to have a race that has all those neat attributes and the grace of mermaids when in water but at the same time blends in with the rest of the Skyrim gameplay. The mermaids should be unique in their waterworld, yes. But players should also have the chance to gain access to the other gameplay content when playing mermaids or it will pretty much become a useless race! You don't gain this access though if your character becomes an utter cripple once it leaves its little lake.

 

Furthermore, the way I see it, the game itself will become the biggest enemy of that idea. Knowing that Skyrim is a real bitch when it comes to bugged scripts, one wrong script in the automatism that is supposed to detect transformation events or to trigger the flopping animation when you need to transform (leaving/entering water) will screw up the entire experience and cause a lot of frustration. So why don't we just go for the manual transformation via spells or a simpler automatic transformation without this complicated interstage of "flopping around until you're dry" or anything?

[Suludi]

I'm not too keen on flopping either. Mermaids aren't stupid fish.

 

Speaking of which: I just found out that the guy who started this thread uploaded his mermaid tail blender file to the nexus way back in August for anyone to work on, so I guess he's definitely not coming back. Don't know about the others, so now I'll just make my own.

[firepower02]

When I think again, now that we have a pretty huge underwater city, mermaids will have plenty of space to swim around, it's like they have their own world. I'm content with them looking normal humanoids on land, with no traces of fish, except for their water based magic. I still dont consider the flopping on land useless though, some people want to see them for, I don't know, amusement?

 

Don't worry about the surface transparency, it's not that important, it can wait. What's important is the mermaid tail mesh you said you're going to work on if no one will upload theirs, and making it into a playable race. If I know how to mod, I wouldn't feel so bad not having other's help, you would feel that you single handedly created a new race, and not just a race, but an entire new world, new weapons and armor, new quest and factions, and new underwater humanoids and creatures all by yourself, and you should feel pretty good about yourself. You wouldn't have to worry about permission either because it's all yours. I hope you will have a PG friendly version too, as in no butts and genitals, so you will have maximum target audience. On the nexus, you can't find adult content if not logged in.

 

I hope you can make singing mudcrabs and slaughterfish and clams! Lol!

[mantaman]

Meh, please no more of this "flopping on land" topic. Something like that is rather inexpedient, why should it happen?

 

It is against all immersion. If mermaids KNEW they could only flop on land, why would they leave their water in the first place? Which living creature would willingly expose itself like that to enemies which have a lot of advantages on land when they'd gain literally NOTHING by doing so? Don't you think it is more likely for them to come ashore if they know that they could atleast move?

 

Game-wise I fail to see the sense of this either. I don't know about the majority of the people who are looking forward to this race - as for me, I'd like to have a race that has all those neat attributes and the grace of mermaids when in water but at the same time blends in with the rest of the Skyrim gameplay. The mermaids should be unique in their waterworld, yes. But players should also have the chance to gain access to the other gameplay content when playing mermaids or it will pretty much become a useless race! You don't gain this access though if your character becomes an utter cripple once it leaves its little lake.

 

Furthermore, the way I see it, the game itself will become the biggest enemy of that idea. Knowing that Skyrim is a real bitch when it comes to bugged scripts, one wrong script in the automatism that is supposed to detect transformation events or to trigger the flopping animation when you need to transform (leaving/entering water) will screw up the entire experience and cause a lot of frustration. So why don't we just go for the manual transformation via spells or a simpler automatic transformation without this complicated interstage of "flopping around until you're dry" or anything?

maaaan, i had quests set up for helpin out landlocked mers. <:I

 

I'm not too keen on flopping either. Mermaids aren't stupid fish.

 

Speaking of which: I just found out that the guy who started this thread uploaded his mermaid tail blender file to the nexus way back in August for anyone to work on, so I guess he's definitely not coming back. Don't know about the others, so now I'll just make my own.

oi, isnt his tail public use? 

 

and hopefully, HOPEFULLY today is the day that EB shares his tail

[Monsto Brukes]

Meh, please no more of this "flopping on land" topic. Something like that is rather inexpedient, why should it happen?

 

 

There's a ton of things that can suck about it from a technical point of view. It's already going to be a complex mod and this is one transition that can remain simple. I suggested before that at the right moment, that there just be a flash of magic and TADAA!! Legs. 

 

It will seriously be just a one-off event anyway as most of time will be spent either wet or dry. Therefore, it doesn't need to be an triggered event. It should only be part of scripted sequences. Otherwise, I guarantee that it will fuck up a significant amount of the time because the game engine and the script engine are not in perfect sync. The script will say to do something and it can take some time for the engine to get around to it. If for whatever pathing reason, the entity that's about to transition goes thru tht detection more than once too quickly, the game will get confused. Therefore, it should only be part of scripts, whatever the effect is.

 

In Bioshock Infiinite, the girl that follows you around for most of the game has a great AI. One of their tricks is that if she gets too far away from you her AI seemingly PREFERS to teleport to proximity. . . but only when you aren't looking. 

 

Here, if there was going to be a Neremer raid on a Naga settlement on land, and you were going to attack en-masse like (the like the vanilla civil war), and you're one of 30 people swimming to shore, I think this would be the way to do it: transition quietly when the player isn't looking. . . but I don't know if the game has that capability.

 

The point is this: I can give you bunch of reasons why it should remain simple and how it could happen. But the best reason is for the things we can't think of. Because each one of those reasons would likely lead to some kinda bug. 

 

Keep it simple. No Magikarp bullshit. It's easy to avoid.

[Suludi]

 

I'm not too keen on flopping either. Mermaids aren't stupid fish.

 

Speaking of which: I just found out that the guy who started this thread uploaded his mermaid tail blender file to the nexus way back in August for anyone to work on, so I guess he's definitely not coming back. Don't know about the others, so now I'll just make my own.

oi, isnt his tail public use?

 

Yes, and I downloaded it cause I wanted to use it. But I wasn't really happy with the mesh, so instead of tweaking and twisting, I just made my own.

 

Now I just have to find out how weightpainting works in 3d Max...

[Kyubi]

That's pretty much the point I tried to make, Monsto Brukes. I kind of know HOW the game reacts to scripted things like that, yet I don't know how to explain the cause properly as I am not really what you could call an expert of scripting and the like.

 

But yeah, I was getting at this fact that there are problems / delays of communication between the scripts and the game. This will probably screw up the entire timing and make this whole interstage animation useless. Everyone who has extremely script-heavy mods installed (for example Sanguine's Debauchery) knows this. SD simply is a masterwork of modding, I bet everyone would agree with me. Yet the game engine never fails to f*ck things up which is downright frustrating.

 

So as you already said: Since this mod is going to be very large in its extend anyway it is best if such things get crossed out right from the start.

[firepower02]

Wow you're pretty quick. Would love to see it with textures, and hopefully you can make male version, oh and pls don't forget a triton!

[mantaman]

crap, so no more crawling mers? im gonna have to rewrite a bit of stuff then

 

and suludi, you made that model absurdly fast, jesus christ

[Suludi]

Thank you! That's ONE advantage of playing with Blender for years.

Aaaaand we have a breakthrough. I checked the CK to see how Race Creation works, and lo and behold: there's a CHECKBOX called "no combat in water".

So now we know how that pesky slaughterfish got his advantage over us... but no more!

[mantaman]

oi, actually, ive marked that box off for a test race, and there still is no fighting underwater, no animations for it i guess?

[Suludi]

Animations are the least of our worries now, I was afraid we'd have to script the entire combat thing. It should be easy to replace a standing attack animation with a swimming one.

 

 

 

 

i hope. *G*

[firepower02]

That is true, I tried that with Lakerise and tried loading it first and last, but no underwater combat. I knew it was too easy. The mount combat too when checked does not work, still no mounted combat, but I have seen mods on nexus that allows mounted combat, so underwater combat isn't impossible, but not that easy.

[Xenos]

Do to work and family I don't have as much time as I'd like to work on this and it's a shame to let it go to waste so here's the mesh if anyone wants it. Maybe I'll be able to help out more later on.

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/sbgc0xnitl6tvou/Desktop.rar

http://www.mediafire.com/download/2hyjc61tcr36zaq/Desktop.rar

[Suludi]

Downloading it now. Thank you!

[Kyubi]

Thank you! That's ONE advantage of playing with Blender for years.

 

Aaaaand we have a breakthrough. I checked the CK to see how Race Creation works, and lo and behold: there's a CHECKBOX called "no combat in water".

 

So now we know how that pesky slaughterfish got his advantage over us... but no more!

 

 

Animations are the least of our worries now, I was afraid we'd have to script the entire combat thing. It should be easy to replace a standing attack animation with a swimming one.

 

 

 

 

i hope. *G*

 

 

Suludi, did I already mention that I love you? Seriously, without you this thread would just be another all-talk-no-work topic. But you actually have the vigor to push this forward and now it even looks like you're doing this alone. I know that I already mentioned before that I think you're doing awesome work but I guess this can't be mentioned often enough. No bootlicking intended. I am just couching what (hopefully) every mermaid-fan here is thinking.

 

Keep up the good work!

[Halstrom]

 

Yes, and I downloaded it cause I wanted to use it. But I wasn't really happy with the mesh, so instead of tweaking and twisting, I just made my own.

 

Now I just have to find out how weightpainting works in 3d Max...

 

I like the way the tail is near human leg length, instead of being super long

[Vioxsis]

I got bored and made some tridents..

 

 

They need to be unwrapped for texturing.... Glad i left the stack on the spiral one..

 

And if you need any help with meshes Suludi you can ask me, and i will help in any way i can. 

[Monsto Brukes]

alright here's an offer. . . 

 

I put up the site for hdt support. If you want, I can put up a private forum or irc or whatever for mermaidmod dev. Right now there's only a small handful of people involved, but it would aid communication and just be as organized or messy as needed.

 

Suludi: youtube, nightasy tutorials.

 

Any scripters paying attention in here?