In fact, it stands for Middle Earth Roleplaying Project – a Lord of the Rings total conversion for one of my favouritest games of them all, Oblivion. It’s still very much work in progress, but it looks rather sexy. We’re expecting a trailer in a couple of weeks, but for now, you’ll have to do with a few beautiful vistas and the promise of more to come.
If you’re half as excited as I am, check it out! It all looks rather good. Colour me titillated. You can download the beta, so let us know how it is!
Argh. Not a good idea, this engine is grossly limited. I’d hate to see the world’s supply of Middle Earth love wasted here.
There are/will be better engines for such a project.
I was thinking about trying to craft middle earth just the other day.. Blame sculptris mixed with minecraft..
@Jakkar:
Out of curiosity, what engines do you think would be better suited to the task? And what what makes the Oblivion engine a bad choice, other than the infamously poor animations?
It looks quite impressive to me. Unfortunately I can’t play it at the moment. Thanks, cheap, overheating GPU.
Hello Davie.
Regarding the Oblivion implementation of the Gamebryo engine (which can be bent into almost any shape, and itself has my approval =p), I could sum up the issues by saying;
Horrendous Blooming Lighting, no sense of darkness or shadows, world generation best compared to putty in various colours gently transitioning upon occasion into other colours, with the odd tree.
The animation issues are purely down to Bethesda being painfully incompetent, not their deeper engine programming.
Which is also fairly incompetent, but nevermind.
Middle Earth..
.. It’s beautiful.
Do you really anticipate that engine even managing to convey the full size of the Arggonath, the giant statues above Rauros?
I mean, think of the Imperial City, then think of Gondor, or the immense scale of Barad Dur or Orthanc (Isengard) – Think of Mount Doom.
There are engines procedurally generating content, streaming hundreds to thousands of miles of terrain, and there are beautifully detailed engines, but these haven’t yet mixed successfully, and neither are yet quite up to the task of conveying a zone the size of Middle Earth.
You can picture it, can’t you? The Shire will look like Cyrodiil with round doors, Mordor will look like the Plane of Oblivion, and they’ll conveniently forget to depict anything else, except to use a few Ayleid Ruins to depict Osgiliath, Helm’s Deep and Minas Tirith.
Convenient that Bethesda don’t have any imagination; their assets are already fairly LOTR-ish.
.. But uh, basically; the engine is ugly and limited, too much so to have a hope in hell of conveying Middle Earth in a way that doesn’t come across as comedic.
@jakkar
you will be surprised at what we have managed to do and the time we have put into this mod. (the heightmap is 7 times the size of cyrodill and it took 1 person a year to complete! Have you even looked at the screenshots, never mind played the BETA? I can tell you haven’t because minas tirith is done and is most certanly not an ayleid ruin! So everything you pictured is totally wrong.
A lot, if not most of the models are newly created, it’s not a “lets use everything bethesda provides to put middle earth into cyrodill” we can make huge
if you notice, most mods look similar to the original games and this total conversion will be as good, if not better than the original game ;)
do not judge something by a couple of paragraphs and a small, not very representative, picture.
anyway enough of my ranting, take a look for yourself before you waste your time commenting.
@Jakkar
As already said, you have obviously not looked at anything concerning the mod. Before you judge our teams worked, at least do us the curtousy of looking at it. For your information, we have made and are making custom models for most of the regions of Middle Earth including Gondor (Minas Tirith, Osgiliath, Pelargir, and Minas Morgul will all have custom models), Rohan, Lindon (the Grey Havens will have all custom models), Mordor (Barad-Dur’s model is finished already and it makes the White Gold tower of the Imperial city look like pencil :P), Moria, Erebor, Mirkwood, Lorien, the Shire, Rivendel (go to moddb to see what has already been made) and just about every other region you care to name. We aren’t a few half-wits making a cheap knock-off of Middle Earth who haven’t read the books. We strive for lore accuracy where possible and strive to portray middle earth in a truly grand scale. So anyway, play (or at least look) before bashing please; its only common curtousy (and common sense honestly).