<>--FPS hit.

I'm running the game on max settings with
Intel® Xeon™ CPU 3.60GHz processor
2048MB RAM
580 GB Hard Drive
NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT(512mb, passive cooling edition) vid. card.

I suffered a heavy fps hit when entering the world space, particularly when entering the shrine room.

I usually run around the normal oblivion landscapes etc. with relatively small fps drops, with 15 fps being the lowest, however in here, my fps drops drastically from 25-40 to 10-20 in just this single room, whenever I look at the sky, or to another direction away from the room, the fps gets better. This is something that could use a little work to make it less heavy, if splitting the entire complex into sections isn't completely out of the picture, it might help.(Or turning it into an interior and then slicing it to 2-3 parts.)

<>--The Black Pit

Suffered slight FPS hit, but still good enough to be playable, no CTD issues with doors that work at the moment, uploading 2 vids to xfire again, I also found that some of the NPC:s need to be adjusted, the lockpicking trainer for example, she has novice skill and thus is unable to teach. Going to test the unfinished quest/npc dialogues more for the next part which I'll post in this topic


P.S. Yes I'm using 'tcl' to move around freely, did walk around the Garden of Meridia(Maze of Meridia imo. :P) for a few mins and almost got lost, the map could use some work since it really is a maze and on some parts it's rather hard to see where is a 'hallway' to get forward in the complex. Another option is to make the hallway entrypoints more visible ie. add a lamp/plant/something at the sides to make it more visible, this is just my personal opinion however.

#1-->FPS hit video of Garden of Meridia(this was a pain to tape since I also got a 2-5fps hit from the recording program.)

#2-->The Black Pit & Blacksmith

P.P.S. If there is anything specific you want me to test, give me a shout and I'll focus on it, for now I'll just do the basic tests.

You'd probably be a bit less confused by not using TCL in the garden or the Pit. Both have fairly clear routes. Your weather mod may also be interfering with what weather is used within the realm. Not sure if this is something you can change or not, but would explain why some things may not look right.

The FPS problem in the garden is a known issue, I hope to have it solved as soon as havok export for 3ds starts working right. Don't know how to use blender, so can't fix it that way.

Still trying to figure out why the mod seems to have so many problems when working with some other mods.

Well, my point was that I actually got lost in the garden when I didn't use tcl to check my location, pit is fine and easy to navigate in, still running around the place looking for crashes etc, but haven't found any issues so far which makes this seem pretty much crash free. Going to test what happens when I plug off the weather changing part of the addon. Also going to try adjusting the gamma to see if it helps me navigating.(My navigation skills are poor at best. ^_^ )


edit;

<>--Golden Plains

Even though it's largely unfinished, the basics look pretty good, the town center looks like it's been used for slave marketing tho, unless it's intented that way, the location of the portal could be slightly changed.(Add a resting zone with a tree like in Bravil/Chorrol to it's place for example, might look rather good there, plenty of other opportunities aswell and it'll be up to you and your team to decide what to do with it or leave as is.)

-->Deactivating Natural_Weather_by_Max_Tael.esp didn't really improve the fps or change how things were in The Garden of Meridia, getting heavy rain is equally as bad with the vanilla oblivion rain as with the custom one.(Users with lower end graphic cards might see a hit tho.)

-->Navigating in The Garden of Meridia;
I think it was mainly my bad navigation skills and the frustration of the very low fps in the starting zone, after I got around to exploring more of the actual space w/o walking to the shrine room, I found it a quite good looking area, altho the architecture is rather repetitive after exploring several of the rooms, I assume you're going to change this later on to make it even more unique. Overall the zones look good and the currently playable part is working well enough to be given a sign of approval for further development after the small issues with trainers & vendors have been fixed, which can be left for later if you're focusing on the landscaping/decoration/interiors/quest lines for now.

P.S. I haven't tampered with the quests yet as I've always hated 'broken' questlines. Once there are complete quests for tests, I'll gladly start ripping the quests apart.

The quests have kinda taken a back seat to the current issues which I'm still trying to figure out. I hope to have a house for sale quest finished soon, but that requires a bit more setup time. I'm really just more concerned as to why my landscape is vanishing since I can't just mandate that everyone using the mod load it in the first spot.

You don't seem to have noticed the path leading down into the pit, the caves don't do very deep yet, but it should prove a bit more interesting than just walking around town.

Heh, admittedly I've missed it, but with around 30 mins of playtime a day, can't really fully explore this vast an area fully. ;P Going to lurk around the dungeon once I get home from school tonight, damn days pretty much last from 8am till 4pm and afterwards I've still got my other hobbies and homework. :/

edit; snuck away from my arts class. ;p

<>--Aterite Mine & Mine Shaft
I just checked out the tunnels, took me about 20 mins or so to fully explore them apart from the area behind the Sealed Door(Quest or not, did use TCL to get behind it from the other mine cells, going to explore it more fully looking for nifty secrets on my next run through now that I have the map pretty much covered.) The place was rather earie and void as I assume it was meant to. I did enjoy running around there although the construction plan was rather simple, it was succesful in creating the atmosphere. There could be a few more fights or some stranded NPC's in the mine as it almost seems empty for most of the part, not adding too much might let the void atmosphere stay.