Cyrodiil

[Vrenir]

Cyrodiil has problems; that much has become evident to even those of us who do not own the game. For one thing, the leveling system for creatures, NPCs, and loot is way out of whack. For another, the NPCs have much less dialogue and the Dunmer don?t have gravelly voices. Finally, the scaling is just terrible in terms of adding anything, forcing those of us who want to mod other provinces to either spoil immersion by making our areas huge in comparison or minimize our work by cutting out entire towns.

The leveling system is being fixed in a ton of different ways by the larger modding community, and virtually any type of player can find what they?re looking for. Perhaps the dialogue will also be boosted by modders. It?s the last problem that is wrecking havoc with our plans and the plans of other communities like TR and probably the mysterious Dwemer guy. Until a consensus is reached about scale for our mods, no map work can proceed, and until the map work proceeds, nothing except perhaps a few town interiors can be made (i.e. Reich Parkeep).


So, what can we do about it?

When I first heard the idea of rescaling Cyrodiil, I was highly skeptical. I mean, it sounds like it?d be a ton of work, and it wouldn?t even really give us something new like the Silgrad area, Vvardenfell, Black Marsh, or any of the other provincial mods would. Moreover, I immediately thought of all the tons of good mods that would doubtless be incompatible, things like the creepy Dark Brotherhood expansion (the one with the weird role-playing modders who are always talking about Sithis and the Night Mother), and even little building mods or expansions by Bethseda.

But I?d ask you not to think about those for a moment and take an open look at the situation. Right now, most of us can do no real modding. We have no models for the game except Imperial, no new armor, no new weapons, and the custom models that we do have cannot currently be used with the physics system. We cannot even make our maps until a scale is agreed upon, and that?s assuming that we don?t need added features there like textures and plant models that don?t yet exist. And so all we do is plan, and while planning is certainly very necessary, I wonder if we cannot accomplish something in the meantime.


If we, as a joint project of Silgrad, Blacklight, Vvardenfell, Skyrim, Black Marsh, Elswyr, and Valenwood all undertook to ?fix? Cyrodiil, think of the resources we would have.

1) Plenty of manpower. Even if you take out those of us who can?t mod, there are combined between us a ton who can, and some of them are extremely skilled.

2) Lore. The original game already takes place in Cyrodiil. We know the locals, the regions, everything.

3) Models. We have all the architecture, armor, weapons, plants, items, and clothing that we need already produced and functional with the physics engine.

4) Finished portions. Even if we rescale, we already have completed interiors, functional NPCs, quests, and items. A lot would need to be ?cut? and ?pasted,? but the actual scripting would be moot. (Simply a matter or reassigning door links)

That?s all fine and well, you may say, but how do you plan to go about this? It?s a big project and making a total conversion of Oblivion could take a long time.


Again, I?m not talking about a total conversion. Much of Oblivion would be retained, basically everything except the exteriors. Adapting from an earlier suggestion in one of the forums, I suggest one or the other of the following plans for attack:

1) Begin with the landmass. When it is complete, link the existing cities and interiors into it. After that, take the cities on one at a time, leaving as much of the layout intact as possible for compatibility, but expanding the perimeters with new areas, especially in the Imperial City. When this is complete, add in additional tweaks like settlements and localles neglected by Bethseda that now fit in the increased space between cities.

2) Begin with the cities. Leave the exteriors and landscape intact, but beef up the internal content of each major city. Strive to keep the locations as consistent with the original game as possible to prevent compatibility problems with other mods, but add new areas to the cities, especially the capital. When the interiors of the cities are done and teaming with life, not necessarily quests, move on to the outer landscape, where we make the exteriors of the cities match the improved worldspaces within. Then, as in option 1, move on to include new locations in the expanded wilderness (farms to feed all the people of Cyrodiil, more ruins, small settlements, etc).

It should be noted that I favor option 2, because people are more likely to pay attention to a mod series of small mods that beef up the cities than a single large one that expands terrain. However, the idea behind both schemes is to change as little as possible while still accomplishing our goal. The motivation behind the order of the steps is simple: increased publicity and usage. If we release our mod between each major segment of development, it will retain compatibility for the most part with other mods (either in supporting new landscape locations or new intra-city locations). As our mod is embraced by the public, especially the Elder Scrolls purists and Morrowind buffs out there, modders will likely join us to help, and modders doing their own thing are more likely to provide compatibility with our work if they have something to use.


And now for the obvious objections:

Q: What do you do about the maximum size for a worldspace?

A(1): So far, I?ve thought of two solutions. The first is to subdivide Cyrodiil using an ancient wall (dating from some lore-based war) combined with natural barriers. There would be several access points to cross this divide and these would link as doorways into the other section of the province. I imagine that this divide would likely run roughly north/south along the river and eastern side of the Imperial City?s lake, then up into the mountains. Most Main Quest areas would be kept on the western side of the barrier, preventing any hassle to the player. The eastern side could also easily encompass a handful of new locations on the Argonian and Morrowind borders if we so desired.

A(2): The second solution, and the one that I favor, is to cut out some of the excess terrain around the perimeter of the Cyrodiil map. As you can see from the images at the bottom of this post, I have attempted to place the new borders in ways that should keep the illusion of more land intact. For instance, the northeastern edge of the map will occur at a point where the Hammerfell coast turns north and inland, meaning that the outcropping is completely visible still and blocks the view of nothingness beyond. Similarly, in the east, I have placed the projected border at the edge of the Velothi Mountains, meaning that they should naturally cut off the view of anything further. To the southwest, the inward curve of Elswyr functions much the same as Hammerfell?s coast did, and in the southeast, Argonia tapers away in the same fashion that it did in the original game. The only weakness that I can see in the new border is that the ocean ends quite close to shore in places, but perhaps we can mask this with mist of some sort, especially on the southern edge of the map.

Q: What scale do we use for Cyrodiil then? You haven?t solved the issue at all!

A: Using my projected map, we could effectively increase Cyrodiil?s size by 1/3. I have heard that Cyrodiil uses a 1:12 or 1:15 scale and that Morrowind used a 1:9. If this is true, then a 1/3 increase should put us in the range that we want. It might not be perfect, but it would be close enough to eyeball for the most part, and any inconsistencies in scale should be too minor to notice.

Q: This is too big an undertaking. It?ll never get done.

A: That, I think, depends on us. Maybe it is too big a job, and maybe we?d be better off just working on our individual mod projects for the provinces. But, again, there isn?t much that our mod teams can do right now as it is. The modelers can model, the non-game-owning planners can plan, but there are a lot of people who are waiting, and we might as well see if we can accomplish something while we wait. Who knows? Maybe it?ll be easier than we think. Maybe if we release a revision of the Imperial City or Anvil, we?ll get a wave of new members who will gladly help speed this along. Maybe we?ll be able to set a new precedent in modding, the total revision of the original game the way the hard-core, lore-centric fans wanted it to be. Maybe we?ll find ourselves having produced the greatest ?must-have? mod for Oblivion. But we?ll never know if we don?t give it a shot.


So, bottom line: Big project, but probably the most helpful thing that we could do for all of our provinces while we wait for more editing capabilities. Also quite possibly the biggest publicity boost that we could give our community, and at the same time (for such a massive undertaking) surprisingly light on specific requirements. Everything we need to do this already exists, folks! So I would encourage you to weigh the possibilities, look at the present situation, envision the future, and then get moving on this. I don?t think that we?ll regret it if we do.

[Siegfried]

An incredibly ballsy proposal my friend. If this could be pulled off I might just [censored] myself. If we do this we MUST not just do this as BC, but the entire mod community needs to be in on it. The more people involved the better it will be, the more people who will use it and base their mods off our mod, and when its done we're gonna have one helluva community. I can't stress enough though how important it is that this isn't just Beyond Cyrodiil, we need to try to get TR involved, maybe the Dwemmer guy, Kvatch Rebuilt, and general modders working on this. If we're going to do this we need to make sure that this isn't something that only we use and nobody else cares about, if we do this the use of the exteriors OB shipped with need to become obsolete as a mod base and replaced by ours. I strongly advise posting links about this discussion on the forums on all major mod sites, not after we decide we're gonna make it or not, but get everyone's attention and get them in on the decision.

[X23]

This is a good idea. It would really unite the modding community, and bring the mod publicity.

We should add some more small towns like Pells Gate, or hackdirt etc. I could help with that since they wouldn't be hard to build.

[Siegfried]

No small towns in the base version! The first version should just be an expansion of Cyrodiil's size. We can have a later non-required release that adds in new towns. We don't want this to become an entire province project of its own, just a rescaling! Is it possible to alter the scale of a heightmap? So we could use the original Tamriel heightmap just larger, that would be an incredible boon to us if we could. Also I'm gonna put a link to this thread on the Planet Elder Scrolls Forums.

[Vrenir]

I added an addendem to the Planet Elder Scrolls post. Could you please also put one in the Official Forums of TES? I don't currently have an account there.

[KuKulzA]

this idea... is mind staggering.... if we make Cyrodiil bigger and in small ways better... well then....
I say, Vrenir had the brain and balls to plan out this proposal... if there is enough support, then lets do it
I got the balls, we all have the brains, we have the resources... I think we CAN make Cyrodiil better

one thing though... I fear for BC's mods.... we must not lose sight of it....
personally I'd rather have a good Silgrad and Vvardenfell and Skyrim and Valenwood and Elsewyr and Argonia and just hang aroudn there instead of one good Cyrodiil... I don't think we will forget our own mods, I just think, we are all making huge mods already... IF we can get a huge amount of work done for this Cyrodiil fix, then that would be great... I'd laugh at Bethesda

remember.... unity.... I don't want the project to be too big and too contrversial that people squabble and lose sight of the true goals...
also, we want to keep in mind that we have our own mods... don't forget it

otherwise, I think if life was fair and people could get together and do stuff well, I think this can be done, I put in my support if we can get the TES4 modding community in on this... we need a lot of support and general agreement

[Vrenir]

Thanks for the support Sigfried and KuKulzA! To reiterate my answer to your concerns, I think that this project, once begun, might have the capability of sustaining itself for the most part by generating interest in the larger community of people fed up with the inadequacy of Cyrodiil for their modding needs. While our people begin work on this project, Razorwing, Caligula, and Cryonaut can all continue modelling. (Until they have more done, there isn't much the rest of us can do anyway.) And KuKulzA and I, as well as others who can't actually mod yet, can keep up our planning for our other mods, fleshing out plotlines, developing dialogue, etc. Vvardenfell isn't going to die as far as I'm concerned, and the primary purpose of this mod is to help our others and those of every other ambitious modder in the community succeed beyond the current abilities. Of course, if this gets off the ground, I plan to keep tabs on it as well and offer support in what ways I can.

[Siegfried]

We have to remember above all else that this is just rescaling the original exterior landmass, if we do only this, and act as a community, we can have it done in no time. If its possible to rescale a heightmap, half our work is already done. No new little settlements like Hackdirt, if there are enough people bent on that when we are done with the rescale, they can make a team to do just that. We MUST only rescale! If we do that we'll be done in no time at all. I don't have an account on the official forums either. Here's a link to the Planet Elder Scrolls thread http://www.forumplanet.com/planeteldersc...id=1877294 Someone post on other big mod sites too please.

[Dox]

But can you tell me whats wrong that Cyrodiil in TES4 is smaller? It just enforces all modders to make their provinces smaller as well. Just stick to the same scale current Cyrodill has, why do you need to burden yourself with even more work? Look at the brighter part of all this scale stuff, you will have less work to rebuild Silgrad, Blacklight, Vvanderfell, Morrowind and so on. They will be smaller for you, but they will be normal compared with Cyrodiil towns, Cyrodiil scale. You have to finish project, and that enables you to complete it faster, just because it is going to smaller. Why there is thurst for huge amount of work, when you are not sure you are going to complete project anyway. If you are done, you can always move to another province. Or you can work on even more quests.
I think Bethesda helped all these Tamriel rebuilt projects by decreasing scale. Now those provinces are much smaller, that means much easier to accomplishe.
Just my 2 cents and keep a good work.

I'll be watching you

[Rodan]

Well, we are going to have a test version between Reich Parkeep and Blacklight using the original cellspacing in Morrowind and see if it works. If it doesn't we will expand that. We will be using a new worldspace for Oblivion and if we have to modify it, we will do so. Blacklight is going to be a great city .