Bethesda did not let people import Vvardenfell in to TES:IV but will Bethesda let us import Cyrodiil in to TES:V? If it is possible with, I would like to join efforts for accomplishing that when the Creation Kit is released.

Try to send PM to Gstaff and ask him about it.

Bethesda did not prevent or oppose people importing Vvardenfell into Oblivion, they opposed and prevented people from redistributing Morrowind game files and data. If someone were to recreate Cyrodiil themselves or create a program that copies the files from an Oblivion installation it would work. There have been Oblivion mods that allow the user to copy the Vvardenfell data from a Morrowind installation for use in Oblivion. This was acceptable since Morrowind's game files and data was not being redistributed in the process.

You could make Cyrodiil yourself using your own models and stuff, or the stuff that comes with Skyrim, but moving assets from one game to another is not allowed.

It was called Morrowblivion and it was a program that converted Morrowind's assets for use in the Oblivion engine. No it was NOT acceptable.

Bethesda's official unwavering stance on this subject:

No assets from one game shall be ported to any other game. No exceptions and no discussion.

You might bring up FO3 -> NV but it's not the same because NV is just a total conversion of FO3 and already uses many of FO3's assets and they don't require alteration.

Actually, Morroblivion DOES use MW assets which was the real problem. By "assets" I mean models and textures. Even with the retextures out there, Morroblivion still uses Morrowind models for buildings etc. Bethesda doesn't own the rights to give people permission to use Morrowind assets in other games because they didn't create them, they paid someone else to.

If a converter for Oblivion => Skyrim came out it would become a banned topic on this board instantly almost certainly.

Honestly, these converters always svck and deliver sub-par results, I don't know why anyone would want to straight convert game content. It would be far more inspired to create your own heightmap and then use the editor to put towns etc in place. You're going to have to recreate all the quests anyway if it's anything like the Morroblivion converter, so why even bother converting the Oblivion quests? Are there seriously people here boring enough to want to replay all of Cyrodiil's quests in the Skyrim engine when they COULD write all new quests that focus on the state of the empire during the time of Skyrim?

This has and will be the official response.

I'm curious as to why this is the case.

In short - legal issues.

It's alright if you own both games, and a conversion program comes out, for you to use the program to port the files from one to another, since you own both games. However since some of the assets in each game were licensed by Beth for just that one game and not the other they can't condone doing so. They don't even like it talked about openly here which is why Morroblivion languished in near obscurity

However they won't take legal steps to shut down the creation or use of such a program if someone wants to create it. Time was they'd delete posts just for mentioning the name of the program too. Glad to see that's at least stopped.

Doesn't fit with the lore anyway. It's 200 years in the future from oblivion. Cyrodiil would certainly look different.

The complete ban on asset imports is still unfortunate. Its not like anyone's still making money over fist from Oblivion assets haha.

Oh well.

I would gladly pay $40 for an official remaster of Oblivion to the current engine. (though they must fix the issue for multi screens first).

It would mean one gameplay for 2 games (add morrowind too!) and one tool to mod them all! That would be a pure joy for me. Too bad that Beth doesn't even consider that idea. I don't know if it will sell well but I think it will.

I could have swarn there was an exception that if the creators of the other game give permission then it was ok. This is, to my understanding, how it was ok for people to port over Stalker models to Fallout 3.




@ Ismelda Lasombra: Perhaps a guild Wars method of having them all be stand-alone games, but if you have more then one, you could travel between them.

if someone were to make a tool to extract Assets from an installed game would that be legal? That way there is no Legal of issue with distributed works. If that's the case the users would have to have all three games installed to use the tool. I would appreciate official response on this concept.

Or I could be misunderstanding something maybe it's not the distribution of the work but act of porting porting content that is it Illegal. Do you see what I mean?

No. That's exactly what's been discussed. Just because you're distributing the files within your hard drive, it's still distribution.

thanks for the clarification

It isn't illegal. It's just against forum rules.

As far as I know, Bethesda didn't make their own assets for Oblivion so even if they wanted to give permission to use Oblivion assets in Skyrim (or Morrowind for that matter). It's possible Bethesda didn't make their own assets for Skyrim or Fallout 3 either. I mean, they've always outsourced that stuff before so why would they stop now?

This is the same reason Bethesda can't give out the Morrowind source. They didn't write the engine for Morrowind. They didn't write the engine for Oblivion either. They probably didn't even write the engine for Skyrim.

I assume the real problem is that Bethesda pays the Oblivion team X in salary/compensation for working on one game. If the work of those employees is then used in another game, the employee might have a legal claim that they are owed more compensation. And in some cases, assets are licensed and not owned. For instance, I do believe Bethesda licensed SpeedTree technology for Oblivion. They don't own it. And assets that are deemed properly of SpeedTree technology could not be legally used in another game without Bethesda licensing them again.

You could probably move the heightmap/landmass over and then use model and texture replacers, but most models haven't been replaced by modders. Good 3D modeling is hard to come by. Such a project wouldn't be very feasible.

No. It's because Bethesda didn't make their own resources and therefor they don't have the right to give other people permission to use them.

It would be for the best If someone explained the difference between assets and resources.

One in the same.

Bethesda is not commenting on other peoples assets, only their own. When they say "no assets from one game in another" they mean their own games.

Completely incorrect. You can port all you want, OpenMw is porting everr Morrowind asset to a completely new engine. What you can't do is distribute any of these assets.

I.E. if you wanted to do this project, you couldn't give anyone any of the art assets from Oblivion. But if they already HAD Oblivion, and you could have the ESM refer to where to them, then that should be fine. So, if you wanted to somehow refer to the original BSA's, in someone's Oblivion install directory, then that might be okay.

Morroblivion now checks to see if you have Morrowind, Tribunal and Bloodmoon on your computer and if you dont have it, it will not install. So why is that still banned from the forums? You pretty much have to own those games now to use that mod.

Now back to Oblivion in Skyrim, what if someone made a program that ported everything over but it replaced all of Oblivion's textures and meshes with Skyrim's?