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Exterior Showcase - Riley's Island, Farmstead, and Dwemer Ruin
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koncertejo
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- Joined: Tue May 13, 2025 9:25 am
Exterior Showcase - Riley's Island, Farmstead, and Dwemer Ruin
Put together this exterior showcase with the Ascadian Isles pieces. Big thanks to those that gave me pointers in the Discord server. The cells are named Riley's Island, Riley's Farmstead, and Nrongnthumz.
- Attachments
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- RileysIsland.esp
- (484.92 KiB) Downloaded 10 times
Thank you for your submission. Your island is coming along nicely, but I have some points for you to address before I give your showcase a proper review.
CLEANLINESS:
-You have some lines in your Standards Validator output. Follow the instructions on https://wiki.project-tamriel.com/wiki/S ... _Validator for details, and then fix the output it gives you. Make sure to download from the releases page and not the Git repository.
-File is otherwise clean, good job.
TECHNICAL:
-Wilderness cells should not be named, and one of them has "Illegal to sleep" ticked by mistake. If you named them so they were easier for you to find during development, make sure you have CSSE installed and tick the "Show modified only" box under the cell list. Revert it by changing the cell names back to "Ascadian Isles Region" and they will no longer appear marked on the map.
-Town and dungeon are named, good. However the town is not marked "Illegal to sleep."
-For cells needing pathgrids you do not need to path out the entire cell, only the points of interest. See https://wiki.project-tamriel.com/wiki/P ... _Explained for more detail
LANDSCAPE:
-I know I gave you a pass for the island shape already on Discord, but after looking at your file in the CS I think it needs more work, sorry. I think having your hill be less tall and wide would help a lot, do more smaller hills with more coastline shape variation. Smaller hills will be easier to detail, and a refined coast shape will help you fit more underwater detailing.
-A lot of your terrain is rough and needs smoothing.
-Land texture placement needs more variety, generally use larger patches of alternate textures. Notice in the Ascadian Isles that sometimes sand will wash up on the land, instead of the whole coast being rock, and that a lot of the time (not always though) grass/dirt will be used as a transition texture between the rock and the grass. The stone road you picked is used for settlements, Ascadian Isles has a different road texture to use in the wild. The mudflats texture is not present in your showcase either.
-The vertex shading on the road is too thick, too far away from the road texture itself in some places, and too dark. The entire coastline and every single other texture also lacks vertex shading. It is not exactly how vanilla handles shading textures, but we (for now) outline our texture placement, sometimes with lighter or differently coloured shading than the roads.
-Object vertex shading is also too dark.
-A lot of your objects lack vertex shading beneath them.
POINTS OF INTEREST:
-Dwemer ruins should be built into terrain and not use so many stand alone structures, when you alter the landscape to make more height variation you should build the ruin into the hills. Cobbling like you have on the tower is not something we like to do in PTR, basically assume that if you have to cover a gap in the structure with blocks or rubble, then it isn't meant to be used that way.
-The farmstead should be a full town, and you should avoid bleeding buildings together. This is another spot that could benefit with heavy terrain work and less overall elevation.
-Cave is present and has a road leading up to it, satisfying the 1-3 minor POI requirement.
DETAILING:
-The sides of your road need much more detail. Rock groups, small and medium flora, railings. Commit to the railings more, there are 3 sections of them, and they are 2 ropes each, and they are placed quite far away from the road itself.
-The wilderness detailing should be grouped in "detail islands" and be less evenly spread overall. If you look at vanilla Ascadian Isles you might notice that the rocks in the wild away from points of interest and roads are generally larger or groups, while the roads tend to use smaller rocks and groups. The region is a lot more variety of lightly forested and bare hills, while your island is rather heavy on the trees. Chop down some of your trees, groups some together more, and add more rocks. Notice vanilla Ascadian Isles cells often have somewhere between 150-200 references per cell, while none besides your farm surpass 150.
-You are using the same grass object over and over when there are alternate variants to be used.
-Flowers need to be placed in larger groups with more variety, and flowers in the Ascadian Isles tend to grow near rock groups. Heather can grow in larger groups in fields with grass.
-Underwater sections are under detailed.
Try not to get discouraged at this massive wall of text, this is a learning process and I am trying to make it as clear as I can. Don't forget to refer back to the showcase guidelines from time to time, as there are a lot of useful tips and hotkeys listed there. I want you to take some time to walk through the entire region in game, and pan through it and study it closely in the CS. There is no better way to get a good understanding of the region you are trying to work on, even once you are developing for PTR and are able to use the guides. Take your time working on this, it is not something that needs to be finished in a week. The Narsis claim took me around 2 years to complete. I should note that I didn't submit my showcase until my third attempt at an island, so if you ever feel like starting over is your only choice, don't worry. Good luck and keep at it.
CLEANLINESS:
-You have some lines in your Standards Validator output. Follow the instructions on https://wiki.project-tamriel.com/wiki/S ... _Validator for details, and then fix the output it gives you. Make sure to download from the releases page and not the Git repository.
-File is otherwise clean, good job.
TECHNICAL:
-Wilderness cells should not be named, and one of them has "Illegal to sleep" ticked by mistake. If you named them so they were easier for you to find during development, make sure you have CSSE installed and tick the "Show modified only" box under the cell list. Revert it by changing the cell names back to "Ascadian Isles Region" and they will no longer appear marked on the map.
-Town and dungeon are named, good. However the town is not marked "Illegal to sleep."
-For cells needing pathgrids you do not need to path out the entire cell, only the points of interest. See https://wiki.project-tamriel.com/wiki/P ... _Explained for more detail
LANDSCAPE:
-I know I gave you a pass for the island shape already on Discord, but after looking at your file in the CS I think it needs more work, sorry. I think having your hill be less tall and wide would help a lot, do more smaller hills with more coastline shape variation. Smaller hills will be easier to detail, and a refined coast shape will help you fit more underwater detailing.
-A lot of your terrain is rough and needs smoothing.
-Land texture placement needs more variety, generally use larger patches of alternate textures. Notice in the Ascadian Isles that sometimes sand will wash up on the land, instead of the whole coast being rock, and that a lot of the time (not always though) grass/dirt will be used as a transition texture between the rock and the grass. The stone road you picked is used for settlements, Ascadian Isles has a different road texture to use in the wild. The mudflats texture is not present in your showcase either.
-The vertex shading on the road is too thick, too far away from the road texture itself in some places, and too dark. The entire coastline and every single other texture also lacks vertex shading. It is not exactly how vanilla handles shading textures, but we (for now) outline our texture placement, sometimes with lighter or differently coloured shading than the roads.
-Object vertex shading is also too dark.
-A lot of your objects lack vertex shading beneath them.
POINTS OF INTEREST:
-Dwemer ruins should be built into terrain and not use so many stand alone structures, when you alter the landscape to make more height variation you should build the ruin into the hills. Cobbling like you have on the tower is not something we like to do in PTR, basically assume that if you have to cover a gap in the structure with blocks or rubble, then it isn't meant to be used that way.
-The farmstead should be a full town, and you should avoid bleeding buildings together. This is another spot that could benefit with heavy terrain work and less overall elevation.
-Cave is present and has a road leading up to it, satisfying the 1-3 minor POI requirement.
DETAILING:
-The sides of your road need much more detail. Rock groups, small and medium flora, railings. Commit to the railings more, there are 3 sections of them, and they are 2 ropes each, and they are placed quite far away from the road itself.
-The wilderness detailing should be grouped in "detail islands" and be less evenly spread overall. If you look at vanilla Ascadian Isles you might notice that the rocks in the wild away from points of interest and roads are generally larger or groups, while the roads tend to use smaller rocks and groups. The region is a lot more variety of lightly forested and bare hills, while your island is rather heavy on the trees. Chop down some of your trees, groups some together more, and add more rocks. Notice vanilla Ascadian Isles cells often have somewhere between 150-200 references per cell, while none besides your farm surpass 150.
-You are using the same grass object over and over when there are alternate variants to be used.
-Flowers need to be placed in larger groups with more variety, and flowers in the Ascadian Isles tend to grow near rock groups. Heather can grow in larger groups in fields with grass.
-Underwater sections are under detailed.
Try not to get discouraged at this massive wall of text, this is a learning process and I am trying to make it as clear as I can. Don't forget to refer back to the showcase guidelines from time to time, as there are a lot of useful tips and hotkeys listed there. I want you to take some time to walk through the entire region in game, and pan through it and study it closely in the CS. There is no better way to get a good understanding of the region you are trying to work on, even once you are developing for PTR and are able to use the guides. Take your time working on this, it is not something that needs to be finished in a week. The Narsis claim took me around 2 years to complete. I should note that I didn't submit my showcase until my third attempt at an island, so if you ever feel like starting over is your only choice, don't worry. Good luck and keep at it.