Yesterday, the team behind the ambitious Skywind total conversion mod has released a new 20-minute gameplay demo focused on the quest to rescue Joncis Dalomax. It had been two years since the previous gameplay demo, so fans of the mod are definitely elated to see it again, although the team did release a video detailing their work’s progress last year.
This time, the video mostly showcases the original Morrowind quest remade in Skywind. However, before closing, the modders provided a new update on the project’s status:
- 2D Art: all base game art complete; now working on nice-to-have art and extras.
- Writing: all base game writing complete, now working on flavor texts and extras.
- Coding: spellcrafting and Ui close to complete; character creation UI close to complete.
- 3D Art: almost all essential creatures modelled. Last three tilesets being worked on or finalized.
- Animation: making good progress om creature animations
- Asset Implementation: gradually progressing as 3D tasks are completed
- Interior Level Design: 60% done and ready for review
- Exterior Level Design: only Red Mountain, Ashlands, and Zafirbel Bay are still in progress.
- Navmesh: progressing steadily
- Visual Effects: strong progress on weathers, spell VFX 75% complete
- Sound Effects: all armor foleys now completed; world ambience and creatures being worked on
- Quality Assurance: progressing steadily
- Quest Implementation: progressing steadily
- Voice Acting: now looking to fill our last few rows, including Dagoth ur, Vivec, and Yagrum
- VA Mastering: most productive year yet; working on documentation and workflow
- Filecutting (voice review and tagging): progressing steadily
- Music: Applications will reopen soon; composers for combat music wanted
The Skywind team still hopes to find more volunteers with expertise in 3D clothing modeling, voice mixing and mastering, and implementation of 3D assets via the Creation Kit. Some other openings don’t need previous experience, such as “filecutting”, which is checking and tagging voice actors’ recordings, as well as navmeshing, which involves creating walkable paths for NPCs, and translators to help localize the game’s text into other languages.
Skywind doesn’t have a release date yet. It does seem like it’ll be a while before we get to play it, but at least we should get Skyblivion (still set to launch in 2025) in the meantime.
