Cyrodiil

[Epyn]

This is crazy, crazy good.
It could be fun to start with, kind of a way to get some people into the cs more. But this is a large undertaking than most think. Ever if the heightmaps scale and such.

Think of all the objects that will have to be placed again, because they'll be out of alignment with the new stretched map. All that static stuff in the wild, trees, rocks, ruins, chests, gates, boxes, etc. This is a great thing to do while we wait for the tools needed for starting the full mod but it could easily take a long long time.

[wilting]

Wow that map is awesome, exactly what I needed!

[Vrenir]

I thought that foliage and stuff was auto-generated. I guess I could be wrong, but I thought that you program the basic parameters of a landscape cell, press a button, and then tweak what the computer creates if it got something wrong or if you want to add something like a path or ruin.

Anyway, to keep people here appraised of our other recruiting efforts, here's a copy of my long and detailed response to a couple of nay-sayers on Planet Elder Scrolls:


Alright, it?s time for another exciting round of clarification/defense for this project.

Regarding Sabin?s point about simply removing the invisible borders to mod outside of them, if fail to see the relevance. Yes we could do that, but the projected terrain placed outside of the invisible borders doesn?t match the maps of Tamriel in any way. If you want to put something like a new town, it?d be fine. If you want to recreate something from the traditional maps contained in the game and its predecessors, the worldspace provided in Oblivion is not adequate and it cannot be expanded beyond the current dimensions. The logical option is then to link mods in as other worldspaces, which is still the plan of this mod; that?s what we?re trying to make more fluid.

As it is, a team trying to replicate Vvardenfell for instance, has an inordinate amount of trouble because they either have to make their island more than half the size of Cyrodiil or they have to cut out half of the places we know and love from Morrowind. If they do the former, realism is thrown out the window as soon as someone notices that it takes them almost as long to walk across a mid-sized northern island as it takes them to walk across the largest province in the empire (at least according to any map). It just doesn?t work. The alternative of cutting places out to match Oblivion?s scale doesn?t work either because invariably someone is going to be very upset that their favorite spot isn?t around any more. What would Morrowind be without Seyda Neen for instance or Gnisis or Pelegiad, but those are the sort of things that would need to go to keep Ald?ruhn and Balmora. The same unhappy choice presents itself to the group trying to mod Skyrim, because all nine Keeps cannot fit within the area that the province ought to occupy in Oblivion unless they sit right next door to each other. The dilemma has cropped up with the groups doing Elswyr and Valenwood, and Argonia also. The places shown on the maps cannot exist in Oblivion?s scale alongside any wilderness. So things could be cut, but nobody wants to make choices like that. So far, each large mod that I have looked at, the Silgrad group, TR, and other independent ones, have all decided that under the present situation, they are going to ignore the scale of Cyrodiil and say that as soon as you cross the border / enter the portal / whatever, you just accept that the world you left doesn?t match and belongs in a different game. I personally don?t want that if there?s another way. I think that others feel similarly, and this is quite frankly the most obvious solution.

So that?s the rationale, point blank. Simply deleting the invisible borders would not solve the problems that this is trying to address. This is a mod to help people who want to use lore-friendly, and especially larger, mod projects. If you don?t want that, then don?t use this, but if you do want that, then this is what is needed to make your game cohesive. If other people who aren?t the primary target of this mod end up using it and using the space it provides for their own stuff, then more power to them. We?ll be happy that our work has been appreciated.


Now regarding Uggen?s objections, your points are valid. Not everyone will likely use this mod if it gets done, even if it gets done perfectly. Not every mod produced before or after this will be able to be compatible with it, and players will have to make choices whether they want what our rescale has to offer or what the mods based on the original Cyrodiil have to offer. I imagine that, given two viable options, people will likely fall on both sides. More lore-centric people and modders who want to build major things inside the Cyrodiil borders will likely choose us. People who just want to have fun with the game ?as is? or who aren?t interested in continuity with previous Elder Scrolls games probably will be more than happy to keep the old Cyrodiil. That?s their choice and I don?t begrudge them that. In fact I hope that each group can get most of what they want tailored for their choice.

At this point, I would like to try and help you understand how I think that this tailoring will be possible. Each independently produced mod will be based on one or the other platform, but incompatibility, if this mod is done right, will not necessarily be a huge issue. The reason for this is twofold. First, the current plan is to offer the rescale in two styles, modular and merged. This means that users should be able to pick and choose what elements they wish to use in their game (landscape, Anvil expanded, Bethseda version Bruma, etc). Second, the policy of the rescale mod is one of minimal interference. People can do what they want after the basic mod is done, adding cities and guilds or whatever, but the basic mod is to leave as much untouched as possible in accomplishing the basic rescale. Allow me to explain in more depth.

The key is again the modular design. If we alter the landscape of Cyrodiil to make it larger, we don?t necessarily alter the interiors of any cities. That means that any mods adding a building or NPC won?t be effected within city worldspaces or any worldspace except for the wilderness one. Similarly, if someone does develop a revision of the Imperial City or any other, it will be packaged separately (as well as integrated for those who prefer that option) and therefore doesn?t need to impact even the landscape if a player doesn?t want that changed.

Furthermore, within any city alterations, the policy is to keep Bethseda?s work intact. That means that streets will be in the same places and on those streets the same NPCs will live and work as they did in the original game. The same interiors will be linked to all locations throughout the game as well. All that will be open for change in the official project will be additions and their access points. There could be a new gate in the outer wall of the Imperial City that leads to a new satellite branch similar in style to the current Prisons and Archane University, but that wouldn?t make any mod using the original city layout incompatible.

That said, there will doubtless be incompatibilities. As you said, there is no way that Bethseda will ever convert to our mod as their base, and all of their $2 downloads and eventual expansions will be based on their map and their scale. However, I have thought of this, and I do have a plan for adaptation.

For illustration, let?s say that Bethseda releases a really great little tower mod for a wilderness location. Since it fits in the landscape outside of a city, it is incompatible. However, someone from our project purchases the mod and uses a cut and paste technique to replicate the exterior of the new building in our mod at an appropriate location. He then links the interior to the cloned exterior, and saves it as a rescale-compatible patch. The critical thing here is to do it legally, and the way to that end is to not include the textures or meshes in the patch download. If somebody with the rescale wants to play with the patched version of Bethseda?s tower, they?ll need to have bought the official mod themselves.

Granted, there is a difference between a mini-mod like a tower and a full-blown expansion. If Morrowind is any indication, however, expansions will likely be centered in locations not presently in Oblivion such as perhaps Summerset Isle (if you can believe the rumor mill at all on these forums). In such a case, there will be transportation provided. If that transportation is an NPC within a city like it was in Tribunal, then there is no problem of compatibility because the NPC will be automatically located to the appropriate city worldspace that we left unaltered in original content. The same would work if transportation were a ship or anything else within a city. If it were outside, we simply do the same thing that we would do for the tower mini-mod, a cut and paste patch that requires the purchase of the expansion to run. The new area included in the expansion would of course not be scaled according to our new Cyrodiil, but it would work, and if this project goes well, maybe we?d decide to tackle the expansion in the same way.

So there you have it, our plan as best we can figure out of how to deal with the problems you noted. The mod is probably very much like Morrowind Enhanced in that things dependant on it will not work without it, but most things that are dependant upon the original game can be made to work. The truth of the matter is that this is no different from the many other mods that require a choice. There were highly rated city expansion mods for Morrowind that conflicted with each other or with mods that used the unaltered cells, and people who wanted to play them had to either give up other mods or tweak. That?s the same thing we?re presenting here. We don?t expect everyone to convert; our only intent is to make this a worthwhile choice so that those who want to use our mod find it rewarding enough to justify the trade-off. I think that our concept is good enough and doable enough to meet that standard. Moreover, I think that if we can get enough people to help, we can put the core mod together in a timely enough manner to really open up possibilities for the community.

Thank you both for listening, and thank you as well to all the other forum-dwellers who share your concerns (I?m sure they exist). If there?s anything that I can make more clear or any other questions you would like answered, please post them. I or somebody else will try to keep up with the traffic. And if what I?ve said here in this post resonates with you as a modder or player, please help in whatever way you can. If that?s gathering support and voicing encouragement, or helping create a detailed concept map, or even recreating landscape cells, we would be more than happy to have you.

[Vrenir]

I checked the recent thread traffic at TR this evening, and guess what was being talked about? A rescale effort for Cyrodiil! Supposedly some of them have also been working on possible strategies, including heightmap editing, and I extended an invitation to cooperate on this effort, giving them links to this thread and the one on Planet Elder Scrolls.

I realize that there has been "bad blood" between TR and Silgrad in the past, but as I said in my post there, I think that this is something ambitious enough, pre-defined enough, and beneficial enough to warrent our cooperation. Working together on this project could very well be the most beneficial thing possible for this project.

[Siegfried]

I agree with you Vrenir, and TR shouldn't mind our plan. The whole idea here is to be lore friendly. We expand the game world to make it truer to lore and make things easier for modders. This could be a valuable oppurtunity to establish some kind of knowledge sharing network between large mod projects.

[shunoshi]

That's good news! Perhaps we can get the greater mod community behind this effort. The more people we get working together on this, the more viable it becomes.

[KuKulzA]

:dance: I feel like we are making history.... almost...

[Siegfried]

Yeah, Planet Elder Scrolls doesn't seem to be warming up to the idea though. They seem to be opposed to making community wide changes because it forces soemone to conform to some kind of standards other than what shipped with Ob.

[KuKulzA]

well they don't need to buy into it if they don't want to...
just its a mod that is great of big time modders especially.... like Beyond Cyrodiil's mods

[X23]

I don't know why they would be opposed to this, its a great idea, and there are no downsides to it.

But I think we should leave the towns the way they are, as in the inside of the town, not the location or elevation of it. We can change the locatation to reflect the lroe, and the resizings.