Sancrahtan

No real news.

I’m sick so I haven’t done a lot of anything in the last 2 weeks. Here’s a picture of me that I stole from my friend so you can see there is a real person behind this mod. :>

See? I’m not a Robot. Those were just rumors.

So, I’ve been quiet for a little bit, I’ve been working on 3 other mods as well as this one lately. But do not worry, I’ve been working on this one the most! I finally finished off the main interior of Gravia Av La, all that remains is the gardens and some small areas then that area will be completely finished! :D

The City has been progressing at a snails pace, it’s an awfully large area to decorate. I figured out that I have roughly 50 interiors to create, so don’t hold your breath. Not to mention all the streets, pathgridding and NPC’s. I think I might add some pets too, no place would be complete without a pet kitty.

Been working on Project Wardrobe too. The gardens are almost done, I just need to figure out the weather pattern and light scripts for that section, the wardrobe itself isn’t constructed, but the main living area looks fabulous in the CS. Torvald Rooms is still in basic shape, it’s not a big mod, just some additions of some shops that have been shockingly neglected in the Imperial City like a Bakery or Vegetable market or Butcher. Third is a little cottage near Weye, I found a fabulous looking resource that I’m just itching to try out.

<3 Trapiki

So I haven’t updated for a few days, I’ve been reworking a few areas so there isn’t much of screenshot-worthy proportions yet. Instead I’ll post a picture of my lovely Everia. I think in some respects I’ve based her features on Storm from X-Men, Gorgeous skin tone, white hair and a destruction skill that’ll knock your hat off (then incinerate it :3). I did take this screenshot on the island, so you can see a little in the background. :D

Oh! I’ve also decided to make a stone pillar tower in the middle of the rift, I was going to make a small reef just under the surface, but this will take care of several jobs at once! So the sister tower to Gravia Av La, Latta Av Sancrahtan will function as a Waypoint of sorts, as lighthouse and Wizard home (Backstory being that Gravia Av La was the Wizard’s home in Tamriel and Latta Av Sancrahtan was his home while visiting the Isle.)

Exciting? Yes? :D

The Rift.

I’ve noticed in a lot of Island mods that the island itself is worked into a masterpiece while the surrounding sea is often neglected and empty. I’ve been toying with a few underwater area concepts, somewhat inspired by the Vashj’ir area in World Of Warcraft. If you’re a WoW player then you’d know the area, while my area is a lot smaller and may not be as pretty, I hope to add a little something more for the intrepid underwater adventurer (I just need to find myself a seaweed that I can scale D:).

Enjoy the lovely Image, it’s just a small cave >_>

I think I might change the weather to the Paradise climate, the colouring and fog just makes it look absolutely lovely and suitably mysterious. I’ll have to properly test out the climate naturally of course since that was a weather spell that I was using there.

Of course it depends on how I’m going to make any outlying islands, I don’t want to obscure them too much.

It’s pictures like this that make modding all worthwhile and pleasurable.

So I’ve been hiding for a few weeks but I’ve been busy busy busy! A new cave under construction, I’ve started planning another section of the city and I’ve even added a new little island just off the East Beach. The new island looks so great that I might even add a few more around the exterior of the main island, which actually will help a lot with the sea floor.
I was rather unsure of what should go at the bottom of the sea, but new islands will help to define areas that I can split up into groups and assign a particular theme to. The Shipwreck keeps getting shifted about, it’s a sure thing but it hasnt found a proper location yet.
To another issue. I’ve been trying to keep the bare minimum of custom content down as much as possible, I’ve been looking at a few of Mr Siikas ships (elven and normal) and I think I may include a few of those in the mod. my reasoning for this is that a Rowboat is unsuitable for a small island area, but so is a full sized ship! Some of his small sailing boats will be perfect to add a little more life to the area.

I will probably add Armamentarium and COBL support to the mod when I’m finished, those two mods will add some more variety to the mod if people happen to have those two installed (I will recommend them of course!).

Happy New Year everyone, I hope you had a Lovely Christmas!

97 Containers in that room alone, have I overdone it? I think not. :D

Plenty of storage for the Alchemist or Mage, or whatever else you fancy yourself! There’s alphabetical labeled drawers for Ingredients, potions drawers for different strengths and a LOT of generic storage for everything else you could possible think of.

Since that section, and the library are done now (though they may need some minor tweaks) I’ve started working on the Living quarters. It’s coming along slowly, but there’s still a lot of storage there too (though not as much as the workroom). So there’s just a lot of tweaking and cluttering going on in this section of the build.

So once I’m done here it’s back to the great City and back to houses there. :D

The Importance of Libraries and Bibliofactual* items

* Please note that Bibliofactual is not a real word, I just made it up to make it sound more awesome.

AS a book lover myself, I see to it that every mod that I make has at least one library or decently sized bookshelf. My reasoning? Since the game is based on a sort of Medieval era of sorts, where education wasn’t really a big thing (have you noticed any schools in Oblivion? I think not (and no, the mages guild does not count)), I’d like to think that my characters are smarter than everyone else (which they are) and they deserve a comfy library to come home to after a hard dungeon trawl, removing stupidity from existence.

Plus Libraries look awesome and you must be rich if you can afford a house with a room dedicated to books :D

Now back to business:

The interior of The Tower (depicted in a previous blog post) was somewhat of a dilemma for me. Since I constructed it from Ayleid pieces I wanted the interior to match, but in the infinite wisdom of the Ayleids, they liked square things underground, with nary a circular room to show for it! This really made no sense to me since all of their above ground structures are based on a circular pattern. >:C

So I had to find a suitable tower interior to retexture in an acceptable fashion. good news was that the Imperial City had some fabulous sections that I could use and it’s all turned out wonderfully. Although my goal of keeping a bare minimum of custom materials is being fizzled out by a lack of suitable items, I think that the overall effect will far outweigh that goal (plus they’re modded vanilla objects, same shape, different textures). Not that it matters, only about 5% of the actual stuff used will be modded goods, I’m still weaving some Vanilla Magic here. >:3

Also, here’s a picture of what’s on those banners, I designed it myself by cobbling together pieces of Vanilla designs and adding some of my own flair, see if you can spot where I got some of the features from!

Anyways, I’ve got a plane to catch. For real, I’m going to see Muse. :D

Gravia Av La - Obscured From Time

Just a way-marker? Or itself a Gateway to another world?

I worked on a piece for the Tamriel section of the mod, quite possibly the starting place for the mod to find Sancratan on a small hunt for clues. I was inspired in the design by this image. I’m always on the lookout for different uses of vanilla objects with fantastic results that I may be able to integrate or use to inspire new methods of building!

Here’s a few ideas for fellow modders, they mostly revolve around plants because I love having them around the place.

Hanging Pots- Use the Cooking Pot found in Static>Clutter>Farm and hang it from where ever you want, then add plants! To avoid clipping stalks from the bottom I suggest ferns from static>landscape or short stalked plants such as Foxglove or Mandrake.

Pots and planters-

The RFDBowl from Static>Dungeons>Misc plus the EmberPIle01Off from Static>Lights make a great starter pot for planting just about anything! you can have them as pots for a window sill or even a big floor pot for a small tree or shrub, don’t be afraid to fiddle with the sizes of objects, sometimes it will yield interesting results! Here’s an Example of this.

Another under-used asset (in my opinion) is the KvCourtPlanter02 from Static>Architecture>Castle>kvatch It’s a lovely shape and it comes with dirt inside it already!

Folding Screen - Use a couple of AnvilShutter01 from Static>Architecture>Anvil and place them in a zig-zag position with their edges touching, although this object does not have collision, it makes for a fantastic dressing screen or room divider. You can see an example in the background of this image.

Well that’s all I can think of for the moment.