Create your own Morrowind Adventures Info from www.elderscrolls.com The Elder Scrolls Construction Set allows you to create, modify, and edit any data for use with Morrowind. It does it all - from building landscapes, towns, and dungeons to writing dialogue, creating characters, weapons, races, creatures, magic, etc. You'll be able to create your own adventures and other players will be able download them directly into their existing game. The entire system is built on a "plug-in" architecture. Each file created in the Construction Set is a modification to the world. When you play Morrowind, you select which files you wish to play with. A single plugin may contain a new character in a certain town that has a quest for you. Another plugin may simply be a new sword that is available. Plugins can change or add anything, and they will work within your current game. Plugins can even change how the game plays, with settings for everything from movement speeds to player level increases. The Elder Scrolls Construction Set also comes with its own scripting language. These scripts allow you to create new functionality for game objects that we at Bethesda had not envisioned. Extensive help files give tutorials on the best way to create adventures. Very early on the goal was create a role-playing operating system, more than a particular type of game, and The Elder Scrolls Construction Set is the main result of that thought process. You can change and grow the game, and trade these files online for a never-ending game experience. It's a very big step for Bethesda and the Elder Scrolls community. How to do it: Here is a brief look at how to create your own dungeon using the Construction Set. Load up Morrowind Master file. When starting any new plugin, you should always load the "Morrowind.esm" first, since that is the file your plugin will rely on for objects, creatures, landscape and any other data. All changes you do while working will be tracked as well as their relationship to the data in "Morrowind.esm" Create a new interior cell. Once Morrowind.esm has loaded (this is a big file and may take up to a minute), create a new interior cell for your dungeon. All areas of the world are referred to as cells. Select World\Interior Cel and press New. Give your map a name ("My Cave of Death and Adventure"). Keep in mind that the player will see this name when entering the cell. You can also select other options here such as the ambient, fog, and sunlight color in your map, if it has water, and if the player can sleep in this area legally. Last, select your new cell from the cell view window by double clicking it. The render window will now switch to your cell, viewed from the top. Layout the basic geometry. The first thing to do in building your dungeon is to layout the pieces. Select the "Static" tab in the Object Window and select the objects you want to use. To place these, simply drag and drop pieces into the render window. Static pieces are used for basic building blocks such as walls, houses, furniture and other objects whose only purpose is to collide with. After you have the pieces in the cell, move them around and "snap" them together by dragging them around the render window. In this example we've used 4 of the pyrite cave pieces to snap together. This is a small sized cave, but should provide a nice quick diversion for the player. Add creatures. Next select the "Creature" tab in the object window and drag in some creatures. We're going to fill this dungeon with undead creatures, so we'll use some skeletons and bonewalkers. In the back room, we'll put some "Leveled Creatures". These are creatures that will be generated from a list that, like everything else in the editor, can be modified. In this example we'll fill the "leveled creature" list with undead creatures to keep the theme of the dungeon consistent, but any creature can be placed in the "Leveled Creature" list. Leveled Creatures are selected from the list based on the player's level, so our cave will be filled with harder creatures for higher level characters, and easier creatures for low level characters. These creatures will also respawn if the player kills them and comes back later on, so there will always be a few creatures in our dungeon for fun later in the game. Notice that the Leveled Creatures look like "Ninja Monkeys" in the Construction Set, but these will become real creatures when the player enters the area in the game. We've placed in two leveled undead creatures we created to keep things consistent. Add treasure, clutter, and doors. All dungeons need treasure and other stuff to make it interesting. So we'll drop in some chests from the "Containers" tab that have some gold and other Leveled items. The Leveled Items work much the same way as leveled creatures. The designer can fill the Leveled Items list with objects that will be interesting and leveled to the player. You may want to drop in some furniture and such from the "Static" section to keep it interesting. We'll also drag in a doorway (each architecture style has a doorway or door-jam piece) and a door into the hall to keep this back room separated. The doorway can be found under "Static" and the door under the "Door" tab. Add Lights. Next you'll want to add some lights, under the "Light" tab. There are two basic kinds of light, one is just raw light and has no associated art, such as the deep blue glow we've placed in the following shot. These lights will be represented as big light bulbs for placing purposes. The other kind is lights that have art, such as the torch we placed by the Leveled Creature (ninja monkeys) in the back room. Link to the outside. The final step here is to link this dungeon to the outside world, or tell the dungeon exit where to go when the player uses it. Place a door at the entrance, double click it and set it to teleport the player to another location (choose an exterior cell, but you can also have that door lead to another cave or dungeon). You'll need to add a dungeon entrance to the outside world as well, so see the landscape sample for how to do that. Save and test. Last, press save and give your plugin a name (MyPlugin.esp). Everything you've changed has been tracked by the editor and will be saved into this file. Run Morrowind with your plugin and test out your dungeon. Make sure all the doors work and it's fun. You'll probably want to tweak the creature placement and lighting after you play through it. They make a huge difference on how fun something is and how nice it looks. You may even want to add a few more rooms after you get the hang of things. Landscape: You'll probably want to read the tutorial on World Building first. Landscaping is one of the key ways you can use in the Construction Set to give an area a unique look. Load your plugin file. You'll want to load your plugin first, "MyPlugin.esp" (see the World Building tutorial). When you load it, select it to be the "active" plugin. You can run the Construction Set with many plugins loaded, so you must set one to active. The active plugin is the one to which all of your changes will be saved. Find an area to build in. Landscape is infinite in Morrowind. It goes on forever, although most of it is underwater (an infinite ocean surrounds the game area). You can add your own islands and continents there, or modify the landscape on the existing map. If you wish to edit the landscape that is already there, you'll probably want to find a place that isn't too close to any existing towns. For our demo, we'll start with an area off the existing continent that is just water. Shape the landscape. The landscape is a "height map" made up of vertices. You can pull these vertices up and down to shape the landscape. You can only move them up and down because this keeps the massive amount of landscape data to a reasonable level for storage. Click the landscape button on the toolbar to enter landscape editing mode. Your clicks in the render window will now move and select the landscape points, instead of world objects. A red circle shows how big of an area you will be pulling up and down. By changing the Radius and Falloff %, you choose how the vertices move as you select and move the mouse up and down. Start pulling the landscape up so it's over the water. By moving large sections of landscape up and then others down, you can sculpt the mesh like clay. Also try using the "smoothing" checkbox. This will allow you to smooth out areas to get rid of unwanted jaggedness that can occur from rapid height changes. It is best to edit the heights in wireframe mode, but switch often to textured mode so you can see where the ocean height is hitting your area. Texture the landscape. Once you have a shape you like, you'll want to texture it. Right clicking on the landscape paints it with your currently selected texture. Try to follow the shapes you have built. The landscape textures will automatically smooth into one another. If you get more than 2 textures hitting the same area, you'll want to move some things around and try to get the texture match on the corner, as only 2 textures look perfect hitting the same spot. A landscape texture covers 4 landscape vertices, so you may also want to adjust the shape of the landscape when you see where the textures fall. Place landscape foliage. Dress your landscape up with trees, rocks, bushes and anything else you can think of. Leave landscape editing and drag objects in from the object window. The larger trees and rocks are under the "static" tab and the plants and bushes are under "containers" since they contain ingredients such as berries. Once you get a bunch in you like, use the copy and paste functions to move groups around quickly. Vertex Coloring. The finishing touch on landscape is vertex coloring. Go back into landscape editing mode and select "Edit colors". Your mouse now becomes a paintbrush. You can select a color for right clicking and one for left clicking. Vertex painting can really enhance your area by adding darkened areas under trees and weathered areas around rocks. Place dungeon entrance and link it. Now add an entrance into your dungeon we created in the World Building Tutorial. Drag in a door object from the object window. Double click the door and select the "Teleport" option and choose the Cell you want the door to go to, "My Cave of Death and Adventure" in this case. Do the same to the door in the dungeon, linking it to the outside. After you choose the Cell you want to go to, you'll get to place a DoorMarker that shows the exact location the door goes to. Save and test. Now go to your new area in the game. Make sure the doors work correctly. You'll probably see some areas in your landscape that need smoothing, or places where you could have used the texture placement better. You can also adjust some of the hills so they are too steep for the player to walk over. You should also think about vertex coloring a path to the dungeon entrance, or some kind of landmarks. You don't want the player to miss your excellent creation. Plugins These are available for download from www.elderscrolls.com SIEGE AT FIREMOTH PLUGIN firemoth1.1.zip (457kb) 09/20/2002 Updated plugin version 1.1 The island fortress of Firemoth was taken by the skeleton army of Grurn years ago. It's time to take it back. ADAMANTIUM ARMOR PLUGIN adamantiumarmor.zip (266kb) 08/02/2002 A new shipment of hard to find Adamantium Armor has arrived in places across Vvardenfell. LEFEMM ARMOR PLUGIN v1.1 lefemmarmor1.1.zip (677kb) 07/26/2002 Updated plugin fixes a conflict between TNT2-based video cards and the DDS art files. LeFemm Armor, specially tailored for the ladies, is on sale at the Fighters Guild in Vivec, from Sirollus Saccus in Ebonheart, the Redoran Vaults, and the lady smiths in Ald-ruhn, Sadrith Mora, and Ald Velothi. MASTER INDEX PLUGIN masterindex.zip (34kb) 06/21/2002 Requires the 1.2.0722 patch This is a quest to find the ten propylon indices. In return for completing this quest, you will receive the Master Index, allowing the you to travel to any propylon chamber, or return to the Caldera Mages Guild from any propylon chamber. HELM OF TOHAN PLUGIN ebartifact.zip (218kb) 06/13/2002 The Adamantium Helm of Tohan is a rare and powerful artifact lost in the Sheogorad Region. Travel north to Dagon Fel to find out more about this legendary helm. AREA EFFECT ARROWS PLUGIN area_effect_arrows.zip (7kb) 05/31/2002 Go to Vivec, Aradraen: Fletcher in the Foreign Quarter Lower Waistworks for her world famous area effect arrows. Exclusive to her shop! BITTER COAST SOUNDS PLUGIN bittercoastsounds.zip (43kb) 05/31/2002 Let the gentle chorus of swamp wildlife draw you further into the mire throughout the entire swampy region of the Bitter Coast. You'll find dragonfly creatures now inhabit the muck ponds along the coast ENTERTAINERS PLUGIN entertainers.zip (609kb) 05/10/2002 Speak with Dulnea Ralaal in Balmora, Eight Plates on the topic "entertain the patrons". She will give you options to tell jokes, dance the high-kick, play the drum, play the lute and sing, or juggle. Unofficial plugins: DESTINATION MORROWIND MORROWIND SUMMIT GAMER'S ROAM ALDRIEN'S CHALICE MORROWIND SOURCE Utilities 3DS MAX3.x TES EXPORTER TESExporterMax3.x.zip (404kb) 07/12/2002 7/12/02 New shader option added. This utility allows you to export 3D artwork from 3D Studio Max into the TES Construction Set. This exporter is for 3DS Max version 3.x. 3DS MAX4.x TES EXPORTER TESExporterMax4.x.zip (404kb) 07/12/2002 7/12/02 New shader option added. This utility allows you to export 3D artwork from 3D Studio Max into the TES Construction Set. This exporter is for 3DS Max version 4.x. PHOTOSHOP TEXTURE COMPRESSION PLUGIN Download from NVIDIA's site This is a DXTC texture compression plugin for Adobe Photoshop that allows you to open and save .dds files. - o -