The Harvest Moon Consortium

[s030363l]

[CONCEPT IDEA]

The Bararic North tileset started off as the New Winter Tileset on the vault. There were a few bugs within this tileset but overall was a very beautiful and promising set. I began stripping out content I wanted to change and fixed what I like within the set. I ended up stripping out some of the terains and crossers. I kept all the original buildings.

[RECRUITMENT]

I then talked with Chandigar who was looking for ideas for a new tileset, he gladly agreeed to work with me on the tileset. I was exstatic that he was up for the task and I agreed to help him with future sets he has plans to build. Sets he has already accomplished are the Gothic Estates, Gothic Interiors and the Aztec Redux all tremendous works if you have not already checked them out, I would reccomend that you do so.

[USEFUL AVAILABLE TILES]

I have added lots of content made available thru the vault, bioware rural winter and DLAs TNO tilesets. I retextured and modified alot of them and cleaned up some minor problems. Alot of them will be edited to add snow and other ambiences to make them more suitable to set. Credits for any tiles used will included in the sets readme.txt to ensure credit is given were credit is due. [see already done below]

[NEW CONTENT]

Chandigar has been concentrating on all new content to increase the flexiblity of the set as well as offer lots of new tiles more along the lines of the barbarians. He has already completed the new mountains which are walkable along the snowy paths, he has created new trees more along the northern woods type such as pines and firs. He has also built a new viking longship. Planned creations are being discussed but may include such things as a nordic style church, yurts, a pallisade crosser, torches along the mountain paths, a viking longhouse, a funeral pyre, possibly a half made ship, a mine entrance and a cave entrance among others being discussed, not all will make the cut but I expect most will [no guarantees]. The new tile building has just begun so bare with us.

[BACKGROUND]

The set is based on people moving North to increase their riches and resources thru mining, trapping, shipbuilding and fishing. They have managed to establish small villages and towns in this godforsaken cold region, but are in constant threat of being overrun by the original inhabitants the barbarians based along the viking civilization. Also the caves in the mountains harbor the fierce monsters known only as the Yeti. I beleive when all is said and done this will be a very good set which many will enjoy. Once we are closer to finishing the set we will probably post screens to the CTP forum to build anticipation and show off some of the great work Chandigar has done. The set is already over 200 tiles and continuing to grow exponentially each passing week. I expect it to reach around 400 or so by finish. I will keep you updated on the progress thru the CTP forums.

[PARTICIPATION]

I am asking the peeps out there, what other additional tiles you think would help increase functionality of a set like this. I promise we will look into all submissions and see if they are plausible adds and you might just see your suggestions in the final release as we wish to make this something everyone will use or give at least a decent look.

[TEASER]

You will have to download the set to see if your suggested tiles were added. Bannor has said he will take a look at the completed set and if it does not require large amounts of work it may be released by the CTP team but no guarntees. I would also like to say that I hope nobody pesters any of the team members for its release as they are quite busy already at trying to bring you as many great looking bug free sets as they can. If it does not make the grade or time constraints become a problem then it will be released thru the vault upon completion and it will be CTP compatible. I would also like to plug OMBs clean model tools as this is being used to clean up small errors not caught by myself or Chandigar within the set. This is just a truely fantastic tool that every tileset builder should use, it is downloadable thru the vault, nuff said. This set will also include a demo module and possibly some scripts as I plan to include a mock sailing script I found on the vault for everyone to try.

[WARNING]

Please do not confuse this with Lord Rosenkrantz excellent New Mountain Tileset just because mountains have been added as they are completely different. This was just a coincidence and goes to prove that great minds think alike, only his entire set is completly from scratch thus far and we wish you the best of luck with your new set Lord Rosenkrantz.

[THANKS]

I want to take the time to thank a bunch of people here now. First Chandigar for helping me make something to contribute to the NWN community that I actually took part in. If not for him this would still be a dream and it was something I just had to do. Since joining the CTP Team I felt kind of useless having never really contributed anything to the community when everyone else had, hopefully this will satsify that feeling. I wish to continue with the CTP Team after completion and even during if their is something I can help with. I also want to thank Bannor for letting me into CTP and I really appreciate all the work that he and the team has done. I want to thank Christopher for creating the site as it now looks extraordinary and I know alot of him went into it. I would also like to thank OMB for his programming prowess, clean modules 3 is something exceptional. I would so like to thank the entire community for all work and love that has gone into keeping the game alive.

[ALREADY DONE]

Features and Groups

6 Houses (2 originating set, 4 DLA)
1 Inn (originating set)
1 Ale House (originating set)
1 Blacksmith (originating set)
1 Stable (DLA)
1 Hay Loft (DLA)
1 Barn (originating set)
1 Watchtower (DLA)
3 Mausoluems (2 Bioware, 1 DLA)
5 Grave sites (Bioware)
2 Gardens (Bioware)
4 Fields (Bioware)
1 Barracks (Bioware)
3 Burned Buildings (DLA)
1 Granary (Bioware)
1 Well (Bioware)
2 Warzones (Bioware)
2 Shrines (Bioware)
1 Crypt (DLA)
1 Barrow Entrance (DLA)
1 Ice Cellar (DLA)
4 Ships (1 new viking longship, 3 originating set)
1 Church (DLA)
2 Fishing Stands (DLA)
1 Snow Drift (Bioware)
1 Small Pine Trees (Bioware)
1 Orchard (Bioware)
1 Dead Tree (Bioware)
1 Hollow Tree (Bioware)
1 Crystal (Bioware)
1 Cave (new)
1 Small Boat (Bioware)
2 Market Stalls (DLA)
1 Menhir (Bioware)
1 Snowy Rock (Bioware)
1 Tower (Bioware)

Crossers and Terrains

Forest (new)
Mountains (new)
Docks (originating set)
Wall (originating set)
Road (originating set)
Fort (originating set)
Water (original set)
Snow (original set)

[IMG]http://www.markip.com/nwn/061119_barb1.jpg[/IMG]

[lord rosenkrantz]

Hey guys, good you are starting to post news and screenies about what you are doing in secret
I gotta run to school and I got no time right now, more to come later today.

[Grov]

Me like winter, me life cold land. Me wants winter ground for toothsets.

[Chandigar]

I think s0303 was going to post some screenshots later but here are some of the new stuff...

http://www.markip.com/nwn/061112_barb1.jpg
http://www.markip.com/nwn/061119_barb1.jpg

[lord rosenkrantz]

Alright, a few more things come to my mind reading this announcement

First off, I am glad there is still people who are developing for nwn1.

Secondly, I like the fact that to an extent the new material is going to cover fields that were uncovered or covered just poorly by previous custom content coming from the nwn1 community.

Furthermore, from the screenies so far published it seems the material is going to be high quality, which I am personally always glad to see ^_^

Then, it also seems that such barbaric winter tileset will alleviate myself from the need to focus on snowy terrain and features for my rocky mountains (yay, less work to do!), as those interested in building far north areas can simply use s030363l & Chandigar's new tileset I think that at this point, I'll only need to add to my tileset some lightly snowy tiles, more like patches of snow rather than complete snowy features.

Finally, I like the way the work has been presented so far, I enjoy reading what is the concept behind a tileset and what goal the builders are pursuing, because it's the same approach I use when it comes down to take on similar tasks




Now the technical sides of it: the most problematic of them, but also the one we don't have a real solution for, is the infamous cake layer effect that raising a terrain causes. In the case of your tileset though, I can spot an interesting solution that I am pretty sure I'll steal and integrate in my plans of a raisable terrain (yes, I am so scared of the cake layer effect myself that I am postponing the creation of those tiles as last task )

The other element I can spot in the screenies posted is that you have been struck by the "smooth each tile separatelly" graphic engine issue, which causes lighting seams to appear at tile junction no matter what smoothing values you use. The only way I found to fix it is to make tile edges to have a "border" which is perfectly horizontal or vertical. Any other angle would cause the bug to strike. But I also understand that your set is quite ahead of mine in terms of building, so it could be too much of an issue to fix the tiles already down. There is a workaround when building the areas in the toolset anyway: it only takes to set "ambient" and "diffuse" light to values similar or alike.

Trees are quite interesting too, I am assuming they are painted as a terrain like Chandigar usually does with his tilesets, and since I was planning to add pines and firs to my rocky mountains, I'll surely have a closer look at what you did with them in terms of polygons and shapes

Well, enough rambling for now, I wish you guys the best of look with your work, and post new teasers as soon as possible, I'll be monitoring this thread ^_^

[Chandigar]

LR:

First, thanks!

As for technical stuff, yea, basically the edges have to meet at true horizontal to get rid of any seams at all. Technically, its not that each TILE is smoothed separately, but that each MESH is smoothed separately. Each tile is a separate mesh, therefore the engine doesn't know that they need to be smoothed between them. This holds true if you were to place the two meshes side by side in MAX too.... so its not really an engine issue.

Using a true horizontal is fine if you're using relatively low slopes but I wanted to use at LEAST a 45 degree slope... which made it difficult to fit some of the extra content (like the walkable path) in. It could be a little cleaner, but then I ended up with really abnormally steep sections which made it look even worse. So meh... its a middle path.

To be honest with you, I don't really believe there IS a solution for raising smooth terrain without a layer cake effect... but I look forward to seeing your attempts! I think the idea you mentioned to using crossers to smooth out particular areas is VERY interesting, but the corners are gonna be a killer.

For the firs, yes, they're terrain... they're based on the standard forest models used for the snowy tileset then modified to be stand alone... but mainly the textures had to be completely redone to make it work... thats pretty much the key.

[Tiberius_Morguhn]

Chandigar, can you look at this tileset and possible pull trees and structures from it:

http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Hakpaks.Detail&id=6417

It may be a tileset you want to take your expansion and merge with? The original author has disappeared since first posting this and it is very nice. It runs thru OMB's CleanModels tool with good results so it may help to do what you want. I really like the way the trees are implemented in this set also. I would love to see your snowy mtns with this set! Thanks for your work!

EDIT: CRAP. You said "New Winter Tileset" and its called "New Snow Tileset" so you already started with my suggestion. Ugh. Anyways, my next to last sentence still stands - can we have the original tileset trees/forest as an option?

[s030363l]

[QUOTE=Tiberius_Morguhn;34156]
EDIT: CRAP. You said "New Winter Tileset" and its called "New Snow Tileset" so you already started with my suggestion. Ugh. Anyways, my next to last sentence still stands - can we have the original tileset trees/forest as an option?[/QUOTE]

Sorry, about the misname of the original set but it I wrote the lead in at work off the cuff without our work being accessable guess my memory is not so good. Keeping the original trees is going to increase the size set as terrains and crossers require large numbers of tiles but it is possible, but they may not look as good on the elevated terrain but we'll take a look though no promises.

It was your original post that brought this set to my attention and for that I thank you.

[raven280]

Hi Guys,
This looks like a great project and I wish you all the best on it. When you get close to finishing and need help doing a demo mod or some screen shots, let me know and I will help you with it. Good luck, and keep us posted on this tilesets progress...

Raven280

[lord rosenkrantz]

[QUOTE=Chandigar]
As for technical stuff, yea, basically the edges have to meet at true horizontal to get rid of any seams at all. Technically, its not that each TILE is smoothed separately, but that each MESH is smoothed separately. Each tile is a separate mesh, therefore the engine doesn't know that they need to be smoothed between them. This holds true if you were to place the two meshes side by side in MAX too.... so its not really an engine issue. [/QUOTE]

Thanks for the clarification, it makes perfect sense. I still consider it an engine issue, but I guess the original sin is that NWN didn't use any smooth terrains (all of them are flat, if I am not mistaken), so Bioware never had to deal with this issue when developing the game



[QUOTE=Chandigar]Using a true horizontal is fine if you're using relatively low slopes but I wanted to use at LEAST a 45 degree slope... which made it difficult to fit some of the extra content (like the walkable path) in. It could be a little cleaner, but then I ended up with really abnormally steep sections which made it look even worse. So meh... its a middle path.
[/QUOTE]

What about using a narrow vertical border? If your angle is significantly greater than 45 degree, maybe it could be a solution? Not sure though, I still need to test vertical borders myself, but at the moment it seems to be the most likely approach I'll use for the raisable terrain, as I want to use high slopes