General:Ashley Cheng: My Summer Vacation

This is a developer diary for The Elder Scrolls III: Tribunal. The diary was originally posted to the old elderscrolls.com website on 20 September 2002.

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Ashley Cheng - Producer

Hi all. This is Ashley Cheng with a new team update. Hope you had a good summer. Our summer has been very busy. After Morrowind shipped, we immediately finished the localized French and German versions and started work on Tribunal, the official expansion for the PC version.

As the producer of the Elder Scrolls series, my job is to track schedules and manage the day-to-day minutiae of the Elder Scrolls development team, but mostly to keep Todd Howard's lawn nicely manicured.

I actually used to do Pete's job (though not as well as Pete, of course), then I left because I thought the grass was greener.

It wasn't.

I've been back for over a year now and feel fortunate to be working with a talented and dedicated team.

Plugins

First, I'd like to say how impressed we are with the variety of plugins from the mod community. We did not anticipate that people would be playing with ten or more plugins loaded at a time!

Here are some general tips about using plugins that we wanted to share.

• Always create a separate backup saved game BEFORE loading any new plugin. Official plugins are tested and can be considered safe, but this is not always true for user-created plugins.
• Use multiple saved games. The average saved game size is 2-3 MB - chump change! Don't be shy about making lots of saved games. Even better, code their names to specify what plugins are loaded. True Story: we received an e-mail from an unfortunate Elder Scrolls fan with an 80+ character, who only used his one quicksave the entire time. He never made any other saved games. He encountered problems with the saved game, tried opening it in Notepad and ended up corrupting his one and only saved game. (I'm not making this up.)
• What does "One or more plugins could not find the correct versions of the master files they depend on. Errors may occur during load or game play. Check the 'Warnings.txt' file for more information." mean? Most likely, you just patched your game and are trying to load plugins last saved with an older version of Morrowind. In most cases, the plugins will work just fine and you can continue on your merry way. You can remove the message by loading the plugin in the TES Construction Set and re-saving it.
• Remember the plugin file (.esp) goes in the DATA FILES directory, right next to the master files. Any new art files should go into subfolders in the DATA FILES directory. If you receive an error message about missing art, either the actual art files are missing or in the wrong directories, or the plugin may be looking for them in the wrong place. This should be reported to the plugin author for fixing.
• Look for the Morrowind Beta Testers Group (www.teammorrowind.com) seal of approval. This group is comprised of our external beta testers, who test and certify plugins on their own. While a plugin with their seal is not considered an official plugin, they are the same testers who verify the official plugins are ready for release. (If you are a plugin author, I suggest you submit your plugin for certification. Their feedback will be invaluable.)
• If you ever have any questions about plugins, you'll find many knowledgeable plugin authors and Elder Scrolls devs in the Morrowind Mods section of the Elder Scrolls forums.

Tribunal

Tribunal will have its own separate master file. To play Tribunal, you will load the Morrowind and Tribunal master files together. However, the Tribunal master file will not work if loaded by itself. If you want to create a Tribunal-specific plugin, you would load both master files together in the TES Construction Set.

If you ever want to go back to just playing Morrowind, you don't actually have to do anything. The original game is already loaded up and waiting for you. In fact, you can go back and forth from Morrowind and Tribunal quite easily. You could just load the Morrowind master file alone, but then you will miss out on the new journal options.

All Official plugins will work correctly with Tribunal, and most fan-created plugins should work fine, as well. The new landmass created for Tribunal is a walled off city, inaccessible from the outside wilderness. Plugin authors do not need to worry about Mournhold overwriting any landmasses they've created themselves.

Before I go, let me get up and walk around the office so I can give you a quick update on what the team is up to.

• I just finished creating leveled lists for the goblins, so that high-level players can fight stronger, meaner goblins and beginning players won't be smacked down too terribly.
• Artist Noah Berry is polishing off the Mournhold Palace exterior.
• Programmer Mike Lipari is writing scripts for a quest, utilizing new script functions that he coded himself.
• Designer Brian Chapin is tweaking dialogue for a quest geared towards thief classes.
• Artist Christiane Meister is animating a creature, codenamed Sludgepuppy.
• Artist Juan Sanchez is putting the finishing touches on another new creature, codenamed, um, round Dwarven thingie.
• Artist Hope Adams is putting final touches for a special museum interior.
• Lead Artist Matt Carofano is taking screenshots for release to press.
• Mark Nelson, designer, is finishing some speeches so they can be recorded.
• Lead Designer Ken Rolston is carefully typing into a huge spreadsheet of greetings, also to be recorded.
• Artist Gary Noonan is working on the end game dungeon.
• Artist Christine Miller is testing the goblin lair dungeons she just finished building.
• Artist Ka-Kei Wong is building models for the goblin weapon set.
• Art Director Mike Wagner is working on the front cover image for the Tribunal box.
• Todd Howard, Exec Producer, is working on a script for a dungeon puzzle.
• Todd Vaughn, development VP, who is building a new character to test Tribunal, says he looks forward to killing me in Battlefield 1942 later.

Ciao,
Ashley