ear Middle Earth Enthusiasts!
Today we want to announce a very drastic step in the development of the vision "Adventure Middle Earth": AME is getting frozen.
The technical limitations of the publicly available Construction Set makes it impossible to realise AME for TES IV: Oblivion with the planned size. Based on the fact that we could already implement our whole landmass in Morrowind we did not think it could be a problem for Oblivion. Just when rumours spread that there is a limitation of 6x6 Quads (1 Quad = 1024 cells) in Oblivion we started testing the whole size of the heightmap instead of testing it step by step as we had done before. The result was shocking: As soon as the amount of the quads surpassed 20 the Construction Set crashed, when trying it in one rush and also with parts of 10 quads each. So altogether nothing above 20 Quads can be imported to Oblivion. Additionally for these 20 Quads no LOD-Terrain (LOD is what you see in the distance) can be created anymore - this is only possible with a maximum of 16 quads. As we had planned Adventure Middle Earth with 225 quads, the realisation is impossible due to an ever crashing Construction Set. Even a request for help at Bethesda did not result in anything. This does not astonish us too much as the Community's calls for a new Version of the CS, which is used for the Pay-PlugIns, were unheard. We have tried everything, tested as much as possible and searched for solutions - but it is simply impossible. We hope you can understand this sad but inevitable step.
Now, after about four years, we could of course review the past time and wallow in memories, but we won't, as AME is not cancelled and thus we rather look hopefully into the future. AME is a vision we want to realise for ourselves, and to do this the way we want we accept waiting for some more years which we will use to look for a new technical basis and to extend our skills. We will also proceed with some work on AME. So today we want to say goodbye to all those who have eagerly awaited Middle Earth in Oblivion and whom we have disappointed. But we also want to invite all those who share our vision to visit the forums from time to time, because it will definitely go on. Time is not yet ripe for such a Middle Earth, but some day it will be, and with today's progress rather tomorrow than the day after. As a bridgeover for this time we have a composition from our musician who has already transferred our vision into a melody: Er-Chorf - The One Ring.

We will meet again - in Middle Earth!

or sure it is some time that you have last heard of us, but in the public as well as in the internal forums we had a lot of company. This means that on the one hand many questions were put by observers of AME (who wants to know more: read the forums), and that, on the other hand, team-inside a lot has happened and good progress has been achieved.

At the moment six people intensively work on the planning and textual elaboration (stories, Quests, dialogs etc.) of various regions. Among them are Lothlórien, Thal and Lindon. A small poem of Erebor which you can find in Thal is called "Feuerflucht" (only the German text, though).
Also in Concept-Arts and in the Modelling area there is other good progress to report. In addition, we have already provided a huge number of ground textures from which we would like to show you one. It is a mud texture (and another screenshot of it) made by Kayo.
And not at least of course, also the Heightmap on which Seven-D works made huge progress. Now there is a new Rendershot of the Weathertop in the Gallery, because the old one did not really meet our requirements to the mountain. This Screenshot shows the various possibilities, which GeoControl offers us. (It is merely one Terragen-Rendershot. Ingame it will look different to the Weathertop a little bit.)
The progress of the last weeks lies partly, absolutely, also with both of the new Teammembers, to the Concept artiste KFMCcall and the region planner and text worker Mornon which I would like to welcome them in the team at this point.

Since Kontrabasstintenfass ist the leader of our Musicsection, a lot of work was done for nearly the first time. We reached to the conclusion that hireing two artists only working on foley-recording, which means recording all kinds of sounds, would be helpful. We also added a profile of our requirements to the Jobsection.

We would be glad about feedback to the works.

Greetings
Your AME-Team

oday is the right time for some news! These days we are making a lot of progress in all section. This can, of course, easily be said, but it is true. It will definitely not take a long while until we will again show you some of our results.
But today's more important news is that we are having two new teammembers! As you can read in our teamlist kontrabastintenfass has been our lead musician for about a month now. Furthermore Olorin helps us with the region planning and the textworks and is a great help as far as Middle Earth questions are concerned.
Of course we are still looking for qualified teammembers. If you are interested just look through the jobs section, see what you can do and then apply. Good luck.

Kind regards
your AME-Team

he first testterrain edited with GeoControl is finished now and walkable ingame!
Certainly we want you let partake in this sight.

For this purpose Seven-D. build two panorama images out of ingame screenshots, which are (again) showing a part of the Ered Luin with the new look.

Panorama1 (2000x600 Pixel)
Panorama2 (2220x600 Pixel)

Also this screens are still very WIP and in no case final.
So be lenient toward us if they look faulty to you.

We hope you enjoy the panorama images.
your AME-Team

ith an approximated landmass of more than 160.000 Oblivion cells (which is more than 545 kilometres of walkable land) Adventure Middle Earth is one of the biggest mod projects ever started. According to this it is not astonishing that creating the giant landmass takes a lot of time. This is why our Co-Teamleader und Lead 2D Artist Seven-D. is working on a new heightmap creating the whole at one fell swoop.

Oblivion is supplying us with lots of new possibilities as far as landscape creation is concerned: Much higher density of details, freely adjustable waterlevels and an extreme far view. These possibilities made it inevitable to elaborate the heightmap further.
With the new demands for the terrains the generators we used before to erode and filter the landscape reached their limits. It has never been possible to make big and differently looking landscapes look exactly the way we wanted them to look. We needed more control over the terrain...

Just then GeoControl saw the light of day. And the name holds what it promises.
GeoControl is a new and innovate terrain generator. Its DLG (Dynamic Level Generation) and DLB (Dynamic Level Brush) make it possible to edit every pixel individually and to paint whatever we want into the landscape. An exact description of the programme can be found here:
GeoControl
With the help of these tools and the immense mass of filters and terrain options, which can all be combined and varied with each other, we have all we need to create millions of individual landscapes which we never dared to dream about before.
Seven-D. has now bought a license of GeoControl and will revise the heightmap he has created and make it reach is limits. Furthermore he will work as a Beta-Tester of future versions of GeoControl and thus help optimizing the programme for the gaming industry.

To give you some impressions of the development of the heightmap we have made two new screenshots from the programme:

An excerpt of the Blue Mountains from the painted heightmap, which shows the different height layers:
GeoControl Screenshot 1

Having edited it with GeoControl (erosions and other filters) it looks like this:
GeoControl Screenshot 2

The screenshots are still from the test phasis and can differ from the final look. But it is fact that we now have all possibilities to create every inch of Middle Earth in a unique way and thus give it something special without having placed the first blade of grass in the landscape.
GeoControl will speed up Seven-D.'s work a lot and will help us to give all players of AME a landscape full of details which does not have to hide behind professional game design companies.

We hope that you enjoy our screenshots.
your AME-Team