The Real Nordic Summer Sky

That’s the real Nordic summer sky. That’s what we have outside my window every evening. In the summer, the sun never sets either. I don’t think Skyrim replicates it too well. At least it does a mean Aurora Borealis.

Azura’s Dawn Beta 03 (Hotfix 2)

Changes:

• Fixed missing textures on the flag pole as well as in the attic.
• Updated the Credits file properly with links as well.

Mediafire wouldn’t verify my file after the upload, so I’m not going to use that waste-of-time service anymore.

Edit: The service I chose instead (4shared) was even worse since it led the user onto a lot of useless links and lies.

Let’s try this one then: DOWNLOAD FROM SENDSPACE.

Azura’s Dawn Beta 02 (Hotfix)

Early monday morning here, and I’ve been fixing some problems with the Beta 01 release. I haven’t tested this Beta 02, so I’ll leave the link in the post below to Beta 01 which is proven to work.

Changes:

• Fixed missing bed in Master Bedroom.
• Fixed missing meshes in the Kitchen area.
• Rearranged folders a bit.

DOWNLOAD BETA 02 FROM MEDIAFIRE

Azura’s Dawn Beta 01

The Azura’s Dawn Mansion is ready for Beta 01. I tested it myself on my wife’s computer and it’s in a very good shape. This is the beta version published before a proper Nexus release.

The mod is still lacking NPC’s and some sort of immersive function for the player to acquire the mansion, but otherwise it’s done. Right now, you can just enter, explore and take and use all the stuff in there. The map marker is visible in the Rift, about halfway between Riften and Ivarstead. You can travel there instantly.

Some minor clipping problems occur at doors in the house. The mod has not been cleaned. There’s a BSA with the meshes and textures as well as a separate music folder. A .txt with credits to the resource creators is provided, but not really filled in with all links yet. Manual installation required. The compressed folder is a 58MB download. The mod was created using Seasons of Skyrim ENB; for full effect, turn down game brightness to zero.

DOWNLOAD FROM MEDIAFIRE Do not download unless you know how to manually install or are interested in giving feedback and testing. Provide feedback here on the blog or by PM’ing me on Nexus (I’m known as Antiscamp over there as well). Alternatively mail me at Antiscamp (a) gmail.com.

An Ode to the Elder Scrolls

The whole mansion of Azura’s Dawn is turning into a great shrine to the Elder Scrolls series overall with Daggerfall music playing and now I also implemented some paintings with concept art from Elder Scrolls Online. They look amazing where they are!

I hope to have a beta version of this standalone mod available during the weekend, but there’s a whole lot of work still to be done, so the beta won’t be all that impressive. I have two major areas still to do; the gallery and the followers/childrens rooms. Stay tuned.

Ended on a High Note

Last night’s modding ended on a high note. I finally got some custom music implemented into the Azura’s Dawn mod! that’s something I’ve never done before and it was easier than I thought to do.

Luckily, I have a lot of VERY suitable music to use, since I have Dan Goodale’s remixes of old Daggerfall game music which he made for the DaggerXL project way back and I got permission to use in Frontier. I’ll probably also implement the playlist in some areas of Azura’s Watch. If you have nostalgic feelings about old Daggerfall, like I do, entering the Azura’s Dawn mansion will make you cry!

I will probably need to create a demonstration video to show off how the music plays in-game. Here are the tracks I chose for Azura’s Dawn:

I don’t know if anyone’s used Dan Goodale’s remixes of Eric Heberling’s Daggerfall music in any mods yet, and that would be a shame if they hadn’t been used, because he told me that he did these songs for modders like me! All credit to him and Eric Heberling who composed the original midi music for Daggerfall. Still brings a tear of joy to my eye!

Oh, track number six, GSnow, is the national anthem of Azura’s Watch.

Back on Track

I redid the interior I was having trouble with earlier and now it’s nearly done. Some more cluttering and stuff and we’re good to go with this one too. It’s no fancy interior this one; nothing much to write home about. It’s the Servants Quarters. There will be five NPC’s inhabiting this interior – the mansion staff.

Staffing the mansion makes me think about how I’ll make the player acquire the mansion. An environment like this just can’t come for free. You can’t just walk in and say “I live here”, no-no. Maybe a small quest with a payment attached. Having to pay a certain amount of money for it, would insure that the player has gotten far enough in the game to be suitable as a mansion owner… We’ll see.

Fallout 4

Yes, Fallout 4. I never really played the old Fallouts. I have 3 and NV, but I’ve played NV like 25 hours, so, in my book, it wasn’t a hit. There’s something about the hypothetical 60’s nuclear destruction slash post-apocalyptic world that doesn’t grab me. I will get Four when it’s out, but don’t expect any love from me.

The game’s graphics has already come under criticism, based on what has been seen in the trailer. I don’t care about graphics. I’ve played Distant Worlds for a thousand hours, for God’s sake!

Nonetheless, with Fallout being Bethesda’s focus right now, and Elder Scrolls VI far away, it seems like there’s a couple of years of modding work in Skyrim still to be done. And that’s OK by me. I still haven’t released any really big mod, so I’m happy to get some more time with old Skyrim. Expect me to be here, because i have a lot of ideas I want to realize. Best of luck to Fallout 4 though.

Time Wasted

So I spent the entire morning creating an interior, only to go in-game and find that the wall pieces I had chosen had no collision, meaning I could run through the walls. I had to delete the entire cell.

Many of the pieces have no collision. This can be worked around with some, but when you’ve pasted 30 wall pieces without collision, there’s no way.

Now I have to redo the entire cell. I want to say something really ugly.

Some more from the Kitchen

Here are some more images from the kitchen as it’s shaping up. It’s a bit of a Déjà vu for me, since I’ve created similar kitchen areas in Azura’s Watch before. That also means I know what I’m doing and know what I want to get it looking as great as possible.

Oh, and Bethesda just announced Fallout 4 too.