Looking at how artificial intelligence is developing and what tasks it is learning to solve, I increasingly want to appreciate what only humans can do. The spark of reason, the divine error that is always present in his work, still allows us to distinguish one from the other. But every year it becomes more and more difficult to do this, and someday we will completely stop seeing the differences. Then everything in the world will turn upside down, and man will have to find something else that only he can do. But there is no need to worry: even our smaller brothers can do what we cannot. We live in an amazing time when a person has a chance to finally become a domestic cat under the close supervision of AI.
I once wrote that, as a rule, the player never appears in the frame in Morrowind Screenshots. But there are always exceptions to the rules, and here are two more. One of the screenshots is an old one, where the player came to inspect his growing wizard tower. Here the player is needed for the plot. The other shot is new and not mine, where the hands of the player praying to the Sixth House are visible. Without hands, there would be no prayer.
Morrowind Screenshots sometimes publishes thematic collections of four screenshots that have already been published on the channel. This is a new look at the old shots, enhanced by their combination. I am considering the idea of supplementing this format with selections of screenshots that have not previously been published on the channel, but seem too weak to be published separately. It’s a pity to throw them away altogether, but together they will look stronger.
I want to share the song The Nightwatchman by the Irish band The Duckworth Lewis Method, who write music inspired by cricket. You can’t say that about the song itself - it has a romantic night mood. By the way, nightwatchman is the name of one of the cricketers, but I can’t say exactly what he does in the game. To do this, you need to understand cricket at least a little.
The Nightwatchman
Lightning flashes in Morrowind have always made an indelible impression with their sharpness, brightness, and ruthlessness to the eardrums. I have long wanted to capture the moment of a flash, which is what happened in this shot. Of course, there is no visible lightning in the sky, but it flashes brightly for a moment, illuminating everything around. The role of the “reverse lightning” here was performed by a brightly lit tree in the background.
In fact, there is nothing surprising about this, but if you go to the folder with Morrowind textures, you can find 32 files with water textures. If you put them together in order, you get a short looped animation of the water surface. And when all the modern water shaders are disabled, the game just plays these 32 textures, repeated many times on a translucent surface stretched to the horizon. The result is water.
There is such a term in programming as legacy code. It’s when a piece of code is poorly written or outdated, but you still have to work with it and write just as bad code next to it, because rewriting everything takes too long. Today, having started to expand the old barn at the country house, I realized that the barn is crooked and the extension will also have to be crooked, otherwise it will not be possible to connect them together. So I learned what legacy is in the real world.
I’ve heard rumors that this skeleton hanging by its legs in the ice cave from Bloodmoon is a reference to Star Wars.
Morrowind Screenshots news. The “Last News” and “Last Redrawing” blocks have been added to the home page. The display of news still clearly needs work. The site now also takes into account posts from the Extras section in the authors’ statistics. The problem with uploading new screenshots to the site, which I wrote about earlier, is partially solved, although periodic problems with updating it still remain. In the meantime, the first post of the “Wallpaper” type has been published on the channel, and this is a screenshot made by the new author of the project.
I remembered an unusual case of discovering a musical band. Some time ago I read a book on 3D-modeling. The book was accompanied by examples of finished models for individual lessons. One of the examples was a speaker model, which started playing a song when the animation was launched, and the speaker itself vibrated to the beat of the music. I liked the song right away, and I got a collection with the band’s discography, where there were a lot of great tracks. This is how I got acquainted with Dire Straits.
a songFor several days now, I’ve been struggling with a bug that prevents new screenshots from being uploaded to the Morrowind Screenshots website from the project storage automatically when they are published. But it looks like the solution has already been found — I just need to implement it. Sometimes it’s a pity that technical issues take time that could be spent on taking new screenshots.
Jeremy Soule has made a huge contribution to how The Elder Scrolls series is felt in the mass consciousness. He literally breathed his soul into these games with his music. Unfortunately, Jeremy disappeared from the radar several years ago due to vague accusations against him. There is still hope that he will triumphantly return with the new part of The Elder Scrolls, although everything suggests that this will not happen. But we remember him and hope that we will still hear his new works.
A significant part of the work on creating the Extras section for the Morrowind Screenshots website has already been done. Some of the old project news has already been added to this section, as well as all the redrawings of screenshots by artists that were previously in the main section. In the future, it will also include mentions of the project from other sites, funny remakes of screenshots from subscribers, polls with results, etc. Some posts from Extras will get into the project feed, but at a different time of the day, and will not replace the main posts. A separate important category will be the collections of screenshots that were not included in the main section due to violations, or not interesting enough individually. More authors will have the opportunity to publish their work.
I dug out my screenshot from Oblivion, made back in 2007. It served me as a desktop wallpaper for a long time.
Usually I try to capture the scene without making any changes to it, that is, the way any player would see it (except for an unusual angle, of course). But if there is not enough light in the scene, sometimes you can improve the situation by giving the character a torch or a lamp, thus highlighting the foreground. The light source itself is not visible in the frame. But here is a rare case when the added light source is visible right in the frame, and it becomes part of the composition.
I have an idea to remake old Morrowind screenshots published by Bethesda itself during the promotion of the game. At least those of them that are not too different from the final version.
When you are waiting for TES VI, but you get TES IV again. A prophetic frame from the “Moonlighting” TV series.
Music in games has always been of great importance to me, as well as movie soundtracks. Here are some basic properties of good game music: