Beta 0.3 Released

I’ve released Beta 0.3 of Primby Village on Skyrim Nexus. This time, the upload was smooth. I should keep to uploading my files there during the weeks, since traffic on the Nexus is obviously murder during the weekends. Download Beta 0.3 from the Nexus here. Enjoy, and as always, do report any errors with the mod.

Changelog Version 0.3:

– Added Sugardaddy’s Bakery (do read his book on the table by the bed!).
– Created a Governor’s Quarters in the other Fort Tower.
– Created an interior Griffin Banner.
– Many new NPC’s have been added. The Governor and Sugardaddy, among others.
– Added more guards; Primby Sharpshooters, manning the fort walls.
– The merchant doors now lock at night.
– If you commit a crime and are caught, the guards will now send you to prison in Windhelm.
– The guards will now talk about arrows in knees and lolligaggin’, like they should.
– Locked the Smith’s chest.
– Updated the “History of Primby” book.
– Fixed several other small glitches, did corrections and tweaks.

Floating Grass in Primby?

I need to add this here, so I can only referr to this post when people on the forums ask me about this specific issue. It seems to be the most common problem users have with the Primby Village mod. I will add this to the ReadMe from Beta Version 0.3.

3. FLOATING GRASS. If you experience grass hovering above the ground inside Primby Village, you’re one of those who have encountered a specific bug that does this. It seems to strike some players, while others, like myself, don’t have it. The solution is this:

Open up both Skyrim.ini AND SkyrimPrefs.ini and at the bottom of the [Grass] section add/alter this:

bAllowLoadGrass=0

bAllowCreateGrass=1

bDrawShaderGrass=1

Then, in the skyrim installion folder open SkyrimEditor.ini and at the bottom of the [Grass] section add:

bAllowCreateGrass=1

bAllowLoadGrass=0

Source (Thanks to Somnyus for sharing!).

This is how the ground looks on my end. No floating grass here!

Beta 0.3 Coming Soon…

I haven’t had any time for modding tonight, but I’m not concerned about that. I’ve already done so much new stuff since the last release that it warrants a Beta 0.3 release. I will have that ready some time during this week. I’m amazed that I’ve already managed to add such a lot of content in such a short space of time.

I just need to do a bit of polishing before release first, because I like to release my stuff as well-working as possible although it’s only Beta and I’m allowed to mess up. Many people download my stuff and just go ahead and use it although it’s Beta state and they never report any bugs or make any comments either. But that’s OK in my book too, go ahead and use the mod. I’m glad you do, and rest assured that I’m making an effort to keep the file versions as tidy as possible.

Here’s a teaser screenshot from Beta 0.3 featuring the interior of the Governor’s Quarters. I’m quite pleased with it.

Creating a Mega-City?

I was just thinking. My next goal should really be to create a mega-city in vanilla Skyrim space. I am making good progress on my Primby Village, and it’s looking more and more like a small town than a true village. My next project should logically be to create something similar but on an even grander scale than this, but yet smaller than the entire Frontier continent I will start later on.

That’s in fact how my Dibella’s Watch for Oblivion began more than a year ago. The initial idea was just that I wanted to create a mega-city, but it was actually fleshed out successively to involve an entire island.

And by Mega-City, I mean a real Mega-City. Type Solitude, but perhaps even larger than that. More NPC’s and interiors, but perhaps not more space territorially; I like to press things together to create shady back alleys and narrow streets, like it would have been in Medieval times. The idea would follow Primby’s criteria – to make something that would fit right into vanilla Skyrim. There should be high walls and city gates that take the player inside. Just an idea. We’ll see. There’s still stuff to do on Primby.

Dibella's Watch began as just one city and ended up being an entire island.

More People and Places

No rest here. I am continuing with creating more people in Primby as well as creating new buildings and interiors. I’ve made an interior for the Governor of Primby. I haven’t created the governor himself yet though, but his seriously upper class quarters look pretty cool with a Dibella statue and even running water. Creating upper class environments is usually no fun, but this turned out OK.

I added a bakery too. Sugardaddy’s Bakery. Sugardaddy himself is the greatest womanizer in town and quite a character. Here are some screenies of the new environments. Sugardaddy’s Bakery from the CK, while the Governor’s Quarters was shot in-game.

The Governor's Quarters

 

Sugardaddy's Bakery

Beta 0.2 Released

I’ve released Beta 0.2 of Primby Village on Skyrim Nexus. It won’t appear on the Steam Workshop, and I’ve removed Primby from there altogether. Download from Skyrim Nexus here. I did not remove it from Steam Workshop because I dislike the SW, but because I want to concentrate the downloads to one location at this time and the Nexus is still the biggest ES-site. The final release of Primby will be back on SW.

Skyrim Nexus is giving me a hard time though. It was near to impossible to get the file over there today, and now I can’t get in at all to update the screenshots and ReadMe and whatever. Sigh. I wish there was a better and more reliable alternative, but at least they’re not shoving washing powder commercials down my throat these days as they used to.

Version History for Beta 0.2 of Primby village:

– Expanded the Fort. Outside and inside.
– Created five more NPC’s in the village.
– More features added to the Player House.
– Retextured and created the Griffin Banner.
– Reuniformed all the guards.
– Cleared some grass here and there.
– Made ownership on the smith’s chest.

Planting the Flag

The Griffin Banner is now flying from the top of the Fort tower in Primby. I used to retexture some stuff for Civilization 4, and did some in Oblivion too. I’ve never understood the Normal Map thing, so this flag will have to do for now. It looks sufficiently good in-game.

Interior Done

There. And three new NPC’s later. One guard, one jailor and one prisoner. Interior Done.

NavMeshing again

My interior cell is actually pretty much done. I’ve been NavMeshing the thing too, and this is how it looks in the editor when I’m doing that job. you shouldn’t forget to “Finish the NavMesh” once done, so that NPC’s can enter and exit the cell. It’s actually very important; you just need to have your door marker standing on one of the triangles and press the V on the NavMesh toolbar to finish it properly.

A cell is actually never really finished. Knowing myself, I will probably move things around and add stuff as I go, and it will only get better. Now to add some new NPC’s to the interior and set bed ownerships and stuff like that.

Doing the interior

I’ve started the interior of the new fort tower. The entrance of this tower should be at the top, while the rest of the interior goes down into the ground. It can be both fun and time-consuming to create and interior from scratch, building it slowly from the tiles Skyrim supplies us with. I chose to simply copy tiles from already existing tower interiors, and built upon that where I needed to close gaps and so on. Getting stuff to fit together with no gaps is hard. That’s why we have the “snap to grid function”.

After building the basics of the interior, you get to do the fun part – decorating it. Trying to create an interior that looks natural and like someone actually lives there and uses the space is creative and a true artistic process. This is supposed to be a garrison base slash barracks. I therefore created the barracks are, with the beds and eating areas downstairs, while the top floor will be the “office” and official reception area.

Tomorrow we do the NavMesh as well as a few new NPC’s, probably. I’ve decided to create a governor/mayor type of character for the town, and he would probably quite naturally be living in the fort as well. I might need to create separate rooms for him though. Right now, I’m going to end my modding for the evening here, since I’m in the patch beta, the latest patch just released and SKSE will need to update. And I have some Star Trek Enterprise to watch with my little lady in the meantime.