Exterior cell size in Oblivion vs. Morrowind

[Razorwing]

[GALLY]extCellMeasurement1_TES3Morrowind.jpg[/GALLY] [GALLY]extCellMeasurement2_TES4Oblivion.jpg[/GALLY]

[blockquote]My findings:
- An exterior cell in Morrowind is 30x30 blocks of 256x256x256 cubic space large, i.e. 900 blocks.
- An exterior cell in Oblivion is 15x15 blocks of 256x256x256 cubic space large, i.e. 225 blocks.
- Ergo, exterior cells in Oblivion are four times smaller than exterior cells in Morrowind.[/blockquote]

I conducted my little test by firing up the TES3 Construction Set, loading the Ashlands cell at 0,0 and turning on the ext cell border lines. I then set the snap-to-grid at 256 and dropped an interior tile set piece at one end and copy-pasted and moved it southward, leaving a piece for every five steps. I could fit thirty of them on that end. Then I fired up the TES4 Construction Set together with Reich Parkeep, and basically did the same thing with one of my Indoril interior tileset pieces.

Also please note these three factors.

1) While the exterior cells are four times smaller in the new game, most everything in Oblivion have also been scaled *up* compared to the player. This is particularly noticeable in cities, because you could fit a whole town in TES3 into just one exterior cell, but you'd never be able to do that on four cells in Oblivion unless you drastically reduced the size of buildings.

2) Another thing that needs to be considered is the speed with which the player moves about in the world. The player character in Oblivion is much faster than the player character was in Morrowind. That's why the cities won't feel as gargantuan, despite their much larger base area, compared to how they would have felt if they had somehow been displaced into TES3.

3) Finally, ponder the wildly increased view distance in Oblivion. Remember for instance how you could see the spire of the Imperial City to the south not long after you exited Bruma? To some, I bet that's a really cool effect. But at least to me, it makes me feel like I'm hiking through the mountains north of the IC when I should be feeling like I'm exploring the northern reaches of Cyrodiil. The landmass scale of Oblivion, especially when coupled with the view distance, is nothing short of pathetic. And I hope we don't want a scenario where the player can see from one town to the next?

With that in mind, my assessment is that simply using four times as many exterior cells wouldn't do.

[blockquote]I feel we would need to increase the scale at least 300% compared to the 4x4 example mentioned initially, so that one Morrowind cell is recreated as 12x12 Oblivion cells.[/blockquote]

Partly to calculate in the effect of the much larger buildings, elsewhile towns might very well end up bordering each other, but also to get a decent distance between the towns both so it takes appropriately long to move between them and counter the view distance effect.

What do you guys think?

[Siegfried]

Good job Razorwing.

Ah heck, I like to run and get lost, lets do 16x16 scale. With the heightmaps and speedtree exteriors shouldn't take any longer than in TES 3 to make. Besides, its just not right to be able to see cities in every direction you go, you should be able to see the silouhettes of maybe one or two small settlements, no more.

[Razorwing]

^ Seconded.

Plus I think it can be a good idea to leave huge chunks of land completely blank - to let future modders who love modding massive landscape bits. I mean, imagine a valley so wide you can just barely make out the other side, with a looong rickety bridge across, hundreds of feet high; that'd be a cool sight, and probably a blast to mod, and I shudder to think of how many hundreds of exterior cells it'd need. So, bigger is better I think, keeps our options open. =)

[Axen]

Maybe you could compare the sizes of two similarly-shaped buildings from TES3 and TES4?

[X23]

16x16 (400%) the bigger the better, and more room for claiming. Plus exteriors are easier to make in Oblivion than in Morrowind.

[Caligula Superfly]

Gogo 400%! When I first started exploring the OB wilderness, I felt a bit sad when I realized how much of the map I could traverse in a minute.

[Axen]

The only problem I see with 400% is... well, for Vvardenfell's case anyway, there'll be a heightmap LARGER than 4096x4096, and every heightmap editing tool I've seen doesn't go beyond that resolution, so making the heightmap will become a bitch. (Though, I really just can't imagine remaking Vvardenfell even at TES3's scale... everything ALREADY there will look so damn close together, and it's scary how claustrophobic it would be with all the new locations we're adding on top of that.)

[Greybeard]

Kept it unanimous. Can we defeat the 4096x4096 limitation with several worldspaces for a single province? At least in Skyrim, there is enough mountainous area (and the Rift) to make some pretty convincing natural boundaries.

[Axen]

Oblivion's worldspaces can go up to 16x16 quads, which would be a... 16384x16384 heightmap. However, the built-in heightmap tools in the CS are rather weak, and you can create WAY better landscapes with an external program.

Even though 400% would be nice, a 200% increase MIGHT be the best course of action (or it might not be)... well, I'll go check how many cells the distant land view distance goes out to really quick.

Edit: Somewhere around 33-34 cells (8.25-8.5 Morrowind-sized cells). Well, you can see beyond that, but the landscape becomes totally fogged after 33-34 cells.

[Razorwing]

Originally posted by Caligula Superfly
Gogo 400%! When I first started exploring the OB wilderness, I felt a bit sad when I realized how much of the map I could traverse in a minute.

Hear hear :yes:

Morrowind was brilliant because Red Mountain was a huge and natural barrier, so one had to explore the island around the rim, making it seem much larger than it was from a bird's eye view. Plus the not-so-strictly-levelled creatures made sure the player had to wait to explore some parts of the island, iirc. I remember fast-travelling to one of the Telvanni towns and being scared shitless when a daedroth attacked me just outside of town