Under an Ashen Sky - The Elder Scrolls in 28mm (Frostgrave)

[MachinaMandala]

What did you use for the armatures for the dwemer spiders? I was looking at Malifaux steam arachnids and I think they could be done without any real changes depending on what style you wanted (since the appearance of dwemer stuff changes from game to game).

[Wyrmalla]

They're all plasticard rods. 0.15 inch cuboids for the long bits, 0.1 for the short ones. A bit of a shore to put together, though simple enough that a production line of them could be viable (I'm thinking about using them as Giant Spiders, so may need a few).

I totally forgot about the Malifaux Arachnids. Yeah, they'd work. I've some of their creatures awaiting painting for some fauna.  Looking through their range I can see a few things which would work (at least fitting in with the current Dwarven look. I mean anything works if you want to cover the breadth of styles the games use). Just replace the heads on these with art deco bearded faces, add some curly scroll work and paint them brass.




Or go straight Clockwork City and have stuff like this.



(Main games - there's a Nord dressed like a barbarian using Iron tools. Clockwork City - ...so you're just casually sitting their with an electric desk lamp. What do you mean computers are a thing?)

I had tried searching for viable models for constructs though hadn't cropped up with much. Not even things like robotic limbs which were spindly enough. Blight Wheel Miniature's spiders could possible do as well (with the guns removed).



Though finding something which also has that Dwarven/ fantasy look to it is difficult.

[Wyrmalla]

Well I made the mistake of reinstalling Morrowind and lost two days to that. As with my recent experience with replaying Oblivion, its not what it was. Installing mods on newer systems is harder than it has to be. Morrowind isn't Oblivion bad (where I was having to edit the date the core files were created or they'd overwrite the mods), but the issues were still massive enough that even when forced to run the thing through the the OpenMW engine it wasn't amazing. Queue uninstalling the game.

Still, no games installed does mean more time for modelling.


Here's another pair of sculpts. This one's based on some of the MMORPG's Dwemer armour. That game's not all that great, but I keep at it for all its assets.



The bow's from Wargames Factory's Female Survivor set, just with the tank things cut off. Archers cost more in Frostgrave, so this one got a proper set of armour unlike the Thugs. Now to come up with an idea for the second one in the war band.

The Knight of Order's ready to paint as well.



I'm not 100% satisfied with this one. The in game model from the Shivering Isles DLC has a really smudgy looking model, with a load of non-complex shapes. Meanwhile the concept art was pretty over the top with all the spikes. Its an interpretation of the in game model, though could be better. I'm tempted to make one of those Tron like Order Priests from the concept art and use that alongside this Knight (...it'd be difficult to justify a whole Order war band unfortunately).


The first of the Dwemer tiles is due some paint too.



Not that its been worked on much lately. That mesh which I'd ordered wasn't suitable. Its just too thick to cut without taking a band saw to it, and that's too much effort for the amount of bits which are needed. Instead some spare mesh had to do. If it doesn't work out its not like it needs to be carried over to the other tiles if something better crops up.

Some lava beneath the mesh might work.  

[Bloggard]

tremendous modelling as ever.

but the MW installation problems - is this a windows 10 issue?
I thought open MW was a different thing to a 'normal' installation and MSGO overhaul type of approach?

[Wyrmalla]

Its between a Windows 10 issue and just ...issue issues.

I'd installed the game earlier last year on the same OS and not had so many problems. I guess something changed (knowing Windows 10). I mean the game wouldn't even run mods without OpenMw. It'd show them in the .ini file, but load up vanilla (WTF. And yeah, this all after messing about with file permissions for hours).

OpenMW itself is a new engine for the game to run on which mostly provides new back end functionality. If you're using just that then you can run the base Morrowind with no mods and just those changes. That's not exactly what I experienced however in that the game runs like crap on Windows 10 (this being across a couple of PCs). Mods which were fine back in the XP days on now 10 year old systems had a better fps than today's computers. :/

What I had expected was for them to update the engine so that the game ran better on Modern PCs. The game was built with different specs in mind, so runs better within those confines. They may have attempted that with OpenMW, though I wasn't managing over 30 fps in most areas without mods (that's with all the changes the forum threads advised to). Don't talk to me about the sub-5 fps large towns offered. Oblivion was pretty dire too. With the crap fps and the horrible amount of effort it took to actually get running in a somewhat stable state (crashes every 10 minutes being considered "good enough").

Best stick to that never to be released mod for Skyrim if you want to experience Morrowind again.

[Askellad]

Dreaming about a remake..

[Bloggard]

Its between a Windows 10 issue and just ...issue issues.

I'd installed the game earlier last year on the same OS and not had so many problems. I guess something changed (knowing Windows 10). I mean the game wouldn't even run mods without OpenMw. It'd show them in the .ini file, but load up vanilla (WTF. And yeah, this all after messing about with file permissions for hours).

OpenMW itself is a new engine for the game to run on which mostly provides new back end functionality. If you're using just that then you can run the base Morrowind with no mods and just those changes. That's not exactly what I experienced however in that the game runs like crap on Windows 10 (this being across a couple of PCs). Mods which were fine back in the XP days on now 10 year old systems had a better fps than today's computers. :/

What I had expected was for them to update the engine so that the game ran better on Modern PCs. The game was built with different specs in mind, so runs better within those confines. They may have attempted that with OpenMW, though I wasn't managing over 30 fps in most areas without mods (that's with all the changes the forum threads advised to). Don't talk to me about the sub-5 fps large towns offered. Oblivion was pretty dire too. With the crap fps and the horrible amount of effort it took to actually get running in a somewhat stable state (crashes every 10 minutes being considered "good enough").

Best stick to that never to be released mod for Skyrim if you want to experience Morrowind again.

right.
I'm still on win7  - when I tried open MW a while back, was disappointed by it graphically - at that point it wasn't a patch (excuse pun) on MSGO and XGE etc.

[Wyrmalla]

I don't think OpenMW's purpose is to offer a graphical upgrade. That's just an addon to the core feature set. From what I've heard its more about opening Morrowind up so modders can do what they want with the game, like having multiplayer. Though my knowledge is fairly sparse, as I'm wondering why there isn't mods out there which properly replace the animations (the ones I saw didn't use OpenMW) or let the game render as many objects as one would find in newer games (I don't even know how the game renders stuff, though it appears it loads everything instead of just what the player can see).

For now the Skyrim mods are the closest there is to a modern Morrowind. Though those are incomplete. Skywind doesn't seem to suffer as much as similar mods in that its updating the art style of the game, rather than just porting the assets, along with adding to the original content. Though personally I'd rather have a mod which continues the plot instead of copy/ pasting it, as that runs into issues of accessing the original assets (besides that there's a reason for mods which rewrite or add to the base game's quests). Someone had made a Morrowind map set in the series' present, but nobody really did anything with it.

If I want to play a total conversion it'd either have to be great, or I'd just go play something like Nehrim - which has its own new setting and plot. Those at least aren't shackled by poor choices that devs made over a decade ago, and can do their own thing. Or hell, just drop the Elder Scrolls games completely and go play The Witcher III (its a bit embarrassing to play Skyrim knowing how much of a step down in quality it is from the Witcher. Skyrim, and the series as a whole's, only saving grace is the mods honestly).


*edit

Oh, and there's always The Elder Scrolls Online. That's utter crap though. Good for the updated art assets, but not much else. Woe on those who go to that game expecting any consistency with the canon (not that Oblivion or Skyrim were any better with not contracting the lore. Something, something, Dragonbreak).

[Manchu]

Your Dwemer ruins are going to look phenomenal when painted, I can already tell. What an adventure awaits you and your gaming pals!

[Wyrmalla]

Yes, all of this stuff is looking forward to a bright future of being used one time then being committed to the Cupboard of Doom (!) for eternity.

And back to watching videos on silicone mould making on the internet. Its a possibility.

[Manchu]

You ought to send some pics to Bethesda.

[Wyrmalla]

I remember sending them their PR guys a few emails way back, but with no response. The way to go's probably to post things on their official forums or catch the eye of one of their mods somewhere. Heh, despite being on their MMORPG's front page for a few days I didn't hear anything from the PR person who monitors that sub.

If I spam one of their official channels enough maybe that'd work. But ...work.

[Wyrmalla]

Here's a bit of variety for the regular cave tiles.




I believe there's rules for frigid water somewhere in one of the books, a will save or something. Its a fantasy setting so that lava shouldn't block movement entirely (maybe I should make some rock platforms to float on top).




 

I guess this is the alpha test for the Dwemer ruins.





Maybe tone down the lava with future ones. I couldn't manage the same effect as the cave tile with the lava due to the mesh. Ah, which looks better? ...Or the least bad? Is the T-34 turret a bit too uncanny?

Don't think too much about how those spindly robot spider feet don't just sink into the holes between the mesh. ...Or how lava in video games doesn't generate ambient heat to burn everything in the room (there's plants growing right next to lava in the games).

[Askellad]

For the tank turret, yes maybe its too visible.
Good dwemer gold aspect

[Bloggard]

now there's some serious modelling  ... although the lava pool does look a bit like a pizza (that is supposed to be a joke btw - I appreciate that's a pic of photo of a pizza above  ).