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State of Cities Overhauled and Lessons Learned

Greetings Adventurers,

As expected, when modding I've run into some interesting issues and learned some incredibly important lessons I want to share around.
And some of the massive challenges facing Cities Overhauled.

Firstly, to give a rough timeline and summary I've been working on this mod/project for shortly over the last year which is crazy in my recollection, but nothing compared to some of the other veterans what have I learned in that time.

Learning the Tools to mod DFU
Learning about world data and how to modify it.
Learning the WDE and modifying interior's.

Here are some bits of advice for other exterior modders and those I've met looking to work on handcrafting towns similar to my Orsinium or Fishguard Mods.

CITIES OVERHAULED : Mid Feburary update

Hey everyone,

With Armorers released (and patched) the feedback has been really positive and really constructive so we've ironed out some key bugs, currently i'm working on an addon to cities overhauled : orsinium adding an entire new city to the game with custom blocks, working factions and a few other aspects. 

In addition to that i'll be making my next addon to Cities Overhauled which, I am happy to announce 

will be:


CITIES OVERHAULED : MAGES GUILD


This is a different kind of approach from armorers as it is looking at a guild's hq's and city blocks and seeing how i can design and improve them adding to the goings on, here's just some of the ideas I've been kicking around regarding different aspects of thi...

dfworkshop and github links

https://forums.dfworkshop.net/viewtopic.php?p=67218#p67218

github tba...

A little tour of the work I have made thus far

Bearhead's Handpainted Bows
Here is a showcase of the edits I've made after the upscaled images of Bearhead's Handpainted Bows (found in the optional files on realakp's mod page). They didn't have enough shadows for my taste so I added some and smoothed out the edges, although the Orcish Showbow became a little rough on the wooden edges but I think it's alright. The Dwarven Bows has been updated from this, as you can see more of below



Bearhead's handpainted Dwarven Shortbow


First I upscaled bearhead's Dwarven Shortbow, then I painted shadows, highlishts and other parts but the I didn't realize at first that the bow wasn't positioned right to the chracter
I had to move the entire orignial image, and then I had to add pain...

Update 0.0.6

Added the option to disable various components, e.g. walk/run, jump and climb penalties. This should help with interoperability with mods....

Cities Overhauled : Progress Update Mid Jan

Howdy Folks

Some good news re the project

What is the next release: 


CITIES OVERHAULED : ARMOURERS
^ Name has changed to reflect the new approach. 

- 12 RMB's affecting every single blacksmith/armorer block in the game across the ENTIRE Illiac Bay (Redguards get Love.)
- Revamping Key Interiors as well as the exteriors including other buildings like taverns. (fixs window placements and adds more clutter.)
- Different Approach that doesn't just scrap block layouts entirely and relies more on fixing weird terrain paths, moving some house placements,
- Rather then fully throwing out the old layouts. 
- Better support regarding mod compatibility, mod authors who want to combine efforts in the future or have ...

CITIES OVERHAULED : ORSINIUM RELEASE

Welcome to our first part of the new
Cities Overhauled : Series

this series of mods taking the same name, will overhaul individual cities/one off locations ingame and provide more depth, more detail and overhaul add to the gameplay experience. 

Cities Overhauled - Orsinium at Daggerfall Unity Nexus - Mods and community (nexusmods.com)...

Progress

ORSINIUM

Hey Folks,

So, upon getting back into it and making some more progress, theirs some amazing mods coming out that will actually be made by a variety of authors working on more specific aspects ie. villages/smaller blocks as a well-known example. 

We've agreed to co-ordinate so we all aren't reinventing the wall, the next build of Cities Overhaul will be a remake* starting with outer wall blocks, they'll be designed in such way to be atheistically pleasing when repeated. the key difference will be the mindset and methods used, we will also require DET and the RMB Resource Pack, they're some incredible paints to have on the pallet. 

Orsinium as a Minimod is Nearly Finished, I'll release this as a seperate 1RMB only file and a new m...

Capital Cities Travel Map

Alterative travel map ...

Upcoming Plans for the Mod

Hey Everyone,

its been a short while since i was last directly updating the mod the main reason for this has been drowning in bug fixs, 
but also partially because as i've improved in the recent updates I've come to the conclusion by implementing DET and some additional models/textures that i could do this mod and its end goal to a much higher standard with way less errors that take time to fix.

This has been a good journey on this vanilla version of the mod which will be left up, I will reupload a Revamped Version of this with a slightly different namee and a successor,

Thanks for the support thusfar! when the time is right i'll have a revamp ready to go and will post here,

Tioradh an-drasta (bye for now) 

-.Wayton...

Update 0.4 Release and 0.4.1 Patch

Hey everyone,

I've just rolled out a new update that is mainly adding exterior wall blocks but also a few new residential blocks to further enhance the city layouts, to also tackle mod compatibility i've released the raw files for other modders to make compatibility fix's on there mods....

Alternate Death Screen

Alternate Death Screen...

Update 0.3 Release

Over the last few weeks me and Aethel have been working on a great deal of overhauled city blocks to bring to you guys finally we can share our progress and showcase what's been done so far and give a picture of what we will be working on next! 

This update adds in a detailed fashion: 

BOOKAL00.RMB
-Unique Urban Bookstore block featuring some urban gardens. 
-Under Construction Tower Housing.
-Market Stalls area. 
-Huge Tavern Restaurant with a wooden patio and shelter.
-intimate rooftop market.
-a few other surprises for those who go looking.

LIBRAL00.RMB
-Small more lower middle class block, less dense. 
-Unique Courtyard outside of the Library with fountain feature. 
-Small Hobo Camp 
...

Autosave Nexus Release

Hi everyone!

I made this mod a long time ago. I have not heard any games breaking from it, so I'm glad it's still working as intended. I am however tracking a few reported issues from the forum thread. I will look into them this month.

Thanks and have fun!...

I hope you enjoy

The music used was freely distributed by its author. Please don't strike me, Blizzard <3...

Musical Ambience Remixed - detailed list of changes.

Original list (left most column) by Shwiffer. Middle column = decision to keep original music, change it for something else, or replace with ambient sounds from MizterMoonshine's mod. Right most column = what replaces what, considering LordBraathen's original Sound folder.

song_5strong | Launcher, the Daggerfall theme. MUSIC CHANGE Replaces song_12, replaced by song_overlong
song_02 | Overworld, clear day and cloudy. AMBIENT DAY Replaces song_20
song_03 | Overworld, clear day and cloudy. AMBIENT DAY Cut
song_04 | Dungeons. MUSIC CHANGE Cut, replaced by song_10
song_05 | Dungeons. MUSIC KEEP
song_06 | Palace theme. ...

Replacing Daggerfall Music

Hey y'all. So, the following is my guide that I personally wrote up for all the music tracks in Daggerfall and where they all play. I'm not gonna ramble too much, but here's the general gist of it...

A Preface: Understanding the Two Track Lists
Daggerfall Unity uses two track lists; The gm list and the fm list. This is because it was released with (or later patched to have) two track lists for the sound cards/processors of the time so that more modern cards could enjoy better sound quality while the less powerful ones would utilize the standard tracks. There's a fair bit of technical details, and I'm not 100% certain this is wholly accurate, but this is what I learned. In Daggerfall Unity, however, the program doesn't use midis, but instead .ogg files.

So, mos...

1.2 Update

Fixed Dungeon Exteriors 1.2 has been released. I checked every single dungeon and fixed exteriors when needed, bringing the number of modified dungeons from 670 to 1055. What's next? I'm thinking of creating new exteriors from scratch that could fit better those dungeons, such as ruined farmsteads or actual cave entrances. Enjoy!

Specifically, the locations below have been changed as follows in this update : 

Aviaries/Aeries/Roosts/Coops/Nests (Harpies)-> Trees
Nests (not harpies)-> Mounds/Trees
Excavations/Mines/Lodes/Barrows/Caverns/Caves/Tunnels/Holes/Pits/Hollows/Grottos/Lairs-> Mounds
Webs-> Mounds/Trees
Haunts/Houses-> Castle Ruins
Assemblies/Councils/Communities/Convocations/Gatherings/Convergences-> Mounds/Rui...

Todd the 'Godd' Howard the 'Coward'

This i so cool because todd is todd and todd is fraud but cool and Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth Plagueis The Wise? I thought not. It’s not a story the Jedi would tell you. It’s a Sith legend. Darth Plagueis was a Dark Lord of the Sith, so powerful and so wise he could use the Force to influence the midichlorians to create life… He had such a knowledge of the dark side that he could even keep the ones he cared about from dying. The dark side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural. He became so powerful… the only thing he was afraid of was losing his power, which eventually, of course, he did. Unfortunately, he taught his apprentice everything he knew, then his apprentice killed him in his sleep. Ironic. He could save others from death, b...

Daggerfall OST on OPL-3 beta 0.2

This is a new release of the classic MIDI soundtrack, as it could be experienced with SoundBlaster soundcard back in the day.
Improvements:
- rendered using libADLMIDI, using the Nuked OPL-3 emulation engine (reputed for its accuracy);
- using classic Daggerfall own sound banks (MELODIC.BNK and DRUM.BNK) instruments;
- looped using MIDI notes; Loop seem to end at the last note before "end signal" (one note at velocity 1, then same note at velocity 0).
Looping is not always perfect, but often quite close. An improvement would be to manage to render 2 loops, and clip the 2nd loop. Better yet, if Daggerfall Unity could loop music tracks back an arbitrary offset, would be to start rendering the loop a second time, and spot (using an autocorrelation algorithm?) whe...