World editing and NPC faces news - Skyrim: Warring States mod for Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Recently, I've been focusing on fleshing out Mikua, the first village in our worldspace Miora. Below are a few pictures you may have already seen.

New Landscaping

I know landscaping elements aren't the most exciting things when it comes to games, but they help to flesh out a living world. Here you can see a new grass texture, 'fine grass,' which will not have additional 3D grass models on top of it when the rest of the grass is working properly.

Please note that the above two images were taken within the Creation Kit.

Followers

As we've discussed before, followers in SWS are not like the ones you find in Skyrim. Followers will be functioning characters within the story, and will react to their environment both randomly and contextually. Those who chose to follow you into battle are not 'sworn to carry your burden,' but instead are individuals who's trust you have worked hard to earn. This doesn't mean you'll be playing a mini version of The Sims, talking and complementing your way into someone's heart, but simply that your choices will have a say in who is willing to do what for you.

You will also be able to gather more than one follower, forming a 'party,' as seen in many traditional RPGs. Your party members will react to one-another, and may not always get along so well. Choosing who to bring along on what adventure can be the difference between quick success and a long drawn out affair.

We Need Your Help!

Are you a Skyrim player interested in helping out? Do you lack modding skills? Its ok! Here is something anyone can do to help out.

We need faces. Not faces pealed from the skulls of other living people (Sorry, put the knife down), but faces carefully crafted in Skyrim. More spesifically, we need Asian themed male faces. As you may know, the modding community is overflowing with mods to make your female characters look amazing, but not a single modified male-head mesh exists in all of the interwebs.
Due to this lack of resources, we will be using the default head mesh from Skyrim, at least until we can make our own. Here is what you need to do if you want to join in the fun:

• Open Skyrim and make sure you have saved your character as you like them. Also make sure NOT TO SAVE after this unless you understand the consequences (If your character looks like their arms are bound in ropes like the start of the game, you've done something that will mess with your stats! Don't save.)
• Find an area with good light and face the sun so that you can get a good look at your face as you work (Optional)
• Open the console using the '~' key and type ShowRaceMenu (Capitalization is irrelevant). This will launch the same interface that you see at the start of the game.
• Select Imperial as your race and make adjustments as needed to form a face. Note that we are looking for Asian looking faces. Imagine them in samurai armor. If it looks weird, it isn't right. Sadly, Skyrim is heavily geared toward massive, weight lifting nords with massive noses, jaws and forheads, IE the opposite of many Asian facial features.
• Tip! If you play via Steam, you can press Shift+Tab to bring up the overlay. Then launch your web browser and google-image search Asian faces (WARNING! I take no responsibility for the kinds of things you may see during this search. Use safe-search!). You can then resize the window so that you can see both the browser and your face at the same time. Keep Shift+tabing out of game as you work to compare your results.
• Once you have a face you like, you don't even have to exit the showracemenu, just bring down the console again and type spf YourName_AsianMale01. SPF is a command to Save Player Face. After the space comes a file name. You include your name so that we know who made what face. Obviously change male to female if you do one of those instead. Make as many as you'd like!
• Before you exit or start on another face, take a screenshot of your face from the front and side, or just one at about 45 degrees.
• Exit the game without saving by typing qqq in the console. This will make sure you don't save over anything. You will find your face files as .npc files in the Skyrim directory. Re-name your screenshots to correspond with your .npc files and zip them up (If you can).
• Email them to us (Subject 'Skyrim NPC Faces.' We will sort through them and select ones that are appropriate for use. The best ones will be used for pre-sets in the player creation screen, and or for NPCs that will populate the world. You will receive credit for your time and effort, along with our thanks!

Here you can see my failed attempt, with a nice sunset to make up for it.