TenTonHammer interview Matt Frior

While Zenimax Online, sister company to Bethesda recently setup to focus on MMOG's, is not directly related to the Elder Scrolls series I think keeping on top of their plans might well be interesting to some (as it is interesting to me). Matt Frior has been in the lime-light a lot recently after it was announced he has been pulled in from MMO developers Mythic (Dark Age of Camelot, Warhammer Online) to head Zenimax Online. This "pinging" interview with Matt focusing on the inception and direc...

File moderators and reports active

I thought I'd set aside some time to introduce two new (yet known) faces to the TESSource staff. LHammonds and Buddah, well respected members of this community and two of the most helpful and dedicated members in the entire Elder Scrolls community have kindly agreed to help moderate the file database at TESSource. Joined by current staff member Povuholo, LHammonds and Buddah will help to clean up the file database by fixing dead links, erroroneous file information, irrelevent or nasty file co...

Supporter Issues

People who have paid for Supporter access since last Wednesday might be experiencing issues with their site access. Unfortunately I made some prospective changes to the Supporter system last week in preperation for some new features to be added to Supporter accounts, but something obviously went a little screwy. I will get onto rectifying the issue tomorrow and creditting your accounts with the necessary time to compensate for the hassle. Hopefully the new features I will be rolling out soon ...

Third file server added..Europeans rejoice!

I have now added a third file server to the site. Located in London, England, this server should help to accommodate the many European visitors who download from TESSource. This server is paid for, in part, by the generous Supporters who have donated to the site. If you don't know what a Supporter is, or appreciate the service provided here and want to help with the heavy server bills this site incurs, please head on over to the becoming a supporter page to find out more info. On a related...

File Server #2 Temporarily Down

There is a known issue with file server #2 (Texas) at the moment, and I am working to fix it. Never fear :) Edit: All fixed...

Bethesda parent company branches into MMO territory

I found some intriguing news on my usual daily visit to Blues News; it turns out that ZeniMax, parent company of Bethesda, has opened a new MMO studio. What implications this might have for a future Elder Scrolls I don't know. Personally I find it highly unlikely that any future Elder Scrolls game, or Fallout 3, will be an MMO or even feature a multiplayer aspect. Bethesda have always been adamant that their focus is on "massively-single-player" games. Very interesting, none-the-less....

Top 150 files rating increase

Keeping in-tune with the number of ratings for files, the Top 150 Files section of the file database has been updated to only calculate the bayesian estimate for files with 50 or more ratings. Generally speaking, the higher the minimum limit for ratings, the more accurate the listing will be....

Folding@Home

Folding@Home is a project started by Stanford University to research the way proteins proteins fold and misfold. Yasgur, Bethsoft Forums moderator: This concerns a distributed computing project (along the lines of SETI) from Stanford University in the US that deals with research in proteins, and hopes to result in ways of finding solutions to diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and others. I've had this installed on my system for a couple of months now. It runs completely unattended, ha...

Holidays

Hi folks, Thought I'd leave a little note to let everyone know that I will be off to Spain early tomorrow morning for a much needed holiday. Hopefully no rain! I'm due back next Tuesday. The server has been a little rocky these past few days with several slow downs happening throughout the day. Hopefully the server will iron itself out because I'll likely not have any internet access while I am away. When I get back I have several improvements planned for the site, including: A new ...

Hacker

Hi folks, Over the past few weeks TESSource has been "under attack" from a Chinese hacker who targetted certain areas of the site in an attempt to infect visitors with multiple trojan viruses. This basically involved injecting code into the database of the site via an external site. While it is unfortunate to have your work sullied by such a pathetic individual, the actions of this hacker have forced me to upgrade the site more, adding in more security checks and hack-proof additions that...

Oblivion: Game of the Year edition announced

In all likelihood, as a visitor to this site, this news won't be of any help to you. However, topical as always, I'm here to tell you that Bethesda have announced their Game of the Year edition of Oblivion. The GOTY edition will contain the Shivering Isles expansion along with the Knights of the Nine content, on top of the original vanilla Oblivion content. Here's a snippet of excitement: July 9, 2007 (Rockville, MD) – Bethesda Softworks®, a ZeniMax Media company, announced today that it w...

File server stress test

Hi folks, I am taking down two of the three download servers for the remainder of the day so I can properly stress test the new download server I recently purchased. I apologise if this inconveniences anyone, but it is something that needs to be done....

New Site Poll

It's time for a new generic site poll on TESSource. I'm asking which town is your favourite Oblivion town; where do you go to stash your gear, enjoy a quiet one in the local pub or visit your favourite house? The last site poll asked "How are you finding Shivering Isles?". The results are below. It's good - 2221 votes - 68% It's ok - 550 votes - 17% It's bad - 119 votes - 4% No opinion - 354 votes - 11% Seems that Shivering Isles has been a good success for Bethesda with a majority o...

Game Design class uses Morrowind at University of Florida

An email was written to Bethesda, and later posted on the official forums. Here's a piece: Dear Bethesda Softworks, My name is Dave Small and I am teaching a course at the University of Florida this summer on game design, which has 25 students enrolled. Along with the textbooks, the students are required to purchase a copy of Morrowind GOTY, as they will be using the TES Construction Set to implement their game ideas. Sounds fun! The forum thread is here. One of the professor's students ...

Image share boo-boo!

Hi folks, Semi bad but not catastrophic news for those people who use the image share feature on the site. While writing new code for the site that enabled uploaders to edit their image information I made a rookie PHP mistake and updated every single entry on the site with a default title, caption and description. My last backup of the site was on the 8th of June so I will be doing a manual reload of the backup for all entries before that date. Any entries to the feature since the 8th of J...

Top 20 Images

As promised over recent days, I have coded the Top Images section of the Image Share feature on the site. The listings are limited to the top 20 images based on the same bayesian formula used in the Top 150 Files in the file database. As and when more ratings come in on images the listing will increase from 20, so head on over to the Image Share section now and start rating your favourite pictures!...

Current Interesting Mod Projects

In this news post I'll mention certain mod projects which are either released and still being worked on, or are unreleased and being worked on. For those not familiar with Bethesda's official forums, 'WIP' means Work In Progress, and 'RELZ' means release. 'REQ(Z)' means request but that's not really relevant. Also, 'OBSE' means Oblivion Script Extender, and for those who have been living under a rock for the last 10 years: 'mod' is modification. Enhanced Daedric Invasion BETA It would seem t...

Site Layout Changes

As you may have noticed I have been busy changing the layout of the site (both the main site and file database) today. Changes include a switch to a variable width design (using up 100% of the screen), a change to the right nav, a darker background colour, switching the right nav to the left in the file database and a few other tweaks here and there. Hopefully there will be some more changes and tweaks coming soon as well as an uplift to the content of the site. In other news; I'm trying t...

RSS feeds now available

RSS feeds are now available on TESSource for the current day's uploaded files and the current day's updated mods. People with RSS programs should been able to add these feeds no problem. For people who do not know what RSS is I believe the Google techie said it best when he said "when you want to check your email you don't contact Bill, Jenny or Ben to ask them; it's all centralised in your email inbox". RSS is basically a way to consolidate the resources you access regularly in one place so ...

'Tamriel: Total War', a Rome: Total War Modification

A team of modders is making a modification for the game Rome: Total War, using the world of The Elder Scrolls. Tamriel: Total War (TTW). The purpose of this mod is to bring the world from The Elder Scrolls game series into good, old RTW. Our aim is to create different, realistic and fun experience. We believe that balance, fun game play and realism can be matched together very well and we will do everything that we can to satisfy our fans. We will focus on Tamriel (the continent actually k...