Soluthis' Farmland Region [Finished]

[Razorwing]

webpage

Claimed by Zurke

[blockquote]NOTE. The farmland region has an equal measurement of oak trees and emperor parasols, but for technical reasons the oak trees don't show up on the map above.[/blockquote]

The portion of Soluthis' Farmland region closest to the city encompasses 83 cells in a quadratic layout to the south-by-southeast of the Redoran metropolis. To get a sense of where you are, check out the region map where I marked the Farmland region with an X. As you can see it borders the forest (3) to the southwest, Deepen Moor (4) to the south and the east part of the mossy region (2). More of the Farmland region will be generated in the direction of the arrow to the east. There's not much point in downloading the full map since the above composite gives a pretty good view but if you still want to download it, I compiled an archive.
[indent][/indent]Instructions: Download the hi-res map archive (323 kb) and extract it to a folder on your computer. Doubleclick the file Map_Full_SolFD.html and it should open in your default browser.

The Farmland region, whose technical name is StRPRegionForestDirt, is a pleasant and fertile region. The large bog called Deepen Moor looms on the southern horizon, but it's actually beneficial to the region since it acts as a watersource for a large area around it (thus keeping the groundwater level healthy = farmers have full wells = crops get plenty of irrigation). There should be plenty of farms modded here, but not many action-oriented locations. The forest in the west will have plenty of action for high-level characters, and the rocky region in the north plenty of action for low- to mid-level players - but the farmland is settled and peaceful. That doesn't mean an inventive modder can't chisel out an action-oriented quest, it just means you won't find ogres wandering about.

The first thing you'll want to do is examine the landscape heights to determine if you want to mold the landscape more to your liking. Maybe you want a few hills or a small lake or things like that, and it'll save you a ton of work to do that before you get down to modding new stuff in. If you make a hill just grab the stuff that got 'drowned' beneath the landscape, raise them high in the air and then hit the F key to settle them back down again and then optionally finetune their vertical position. You can also delete the objects if you'd rather do that, the only rule is to have more details when you're finished than when you started and if it's easier to delete some of the generated content then by all means do that.

Taking on the claim to the farmland region is a bit more work than doing area claims because you not only need to make the landscape interesting but you also need to do quite a bit of modding to turn the generated content into an actual farmland. Check out the road network map. See how there is a road going along Soluthis' southeastern rim? This part of the road, between the two dots, will go through the farmland region. From -11,34 north-by-northeast to -9,39, where I have made a rudimentary start on the road that will also go north and then east to Ald Nium. After you've modded the farms you should also extend this road into the farmland region to connect them with the main road.

As far as trees go the farmland region has about an equal measurement of oak trees and parasols. Neither type should dominate the other, but if you want one cell to have trees only and another to have parasols only that's fine. The smaller wilderness flora is kreshweed, gold kanet, stoneflower, dandelion, chokeweed, roobrush, roweed and ash yam. Kreshweed is very common; chokeweed, roobrush, gold kanet and stoneflower is common; dandelion and roweed are rare; and ash yam very rare. This only applies to flora in the wilderness - flora grown on farms is another matter entirely. In those cases the staplefoods are ash yam, comberry, corkbulb, hackle-lo, scrib cabbage and roweed. It's also possible to farm saltrice *but* saltrice has to grow in water (just like real rice, I believe), so if you want to go with that then make sure it grows in a pond on the farm. Farms can also have livestock, where guars would be the obvious choice in my opinion.

If you have any questions don't hesitate to ask :-)

[Shakes]

A small tributary creek flowing through this area would be nice, with 2 or 3 farmhouses next to it, although looking at the road map the heightmap would not necessairly explain it logically. Where could it flow to?

[Razorwing]

Originally posted by Shakes
A small tributary creek flowing through this area would be nice, with 2 or 3 farmhouses next to it, although looking at the road map the heightmap would not necessairly explain it logically. Where could it flow to?

Deepen Moor would seem like the logical candidate. There could be a riverhead somewhere in the farmland that flows towards the bog. Though that's just a suggestion since the decision rests with the person who would mod the area.

[kingevil]

A creek flowing to Ashmur lake would be fine by me. Ashmur lake would make more sense, since that is the part of my claims direcly below this region. Make sure you update the heightmap in the .esm fast, since another regeneration will be done once we make some height modifications in the bog itself ( see subforum)

[Razorwing]

Thanks for the go-ahead kingevil. But no-one has the claim to the farmland region, so whether there will be a creek or not is an open question to be decided by whomever takes the claim. If you need to make changes to Deepen Moor then by all means go ahead and then the person who takes this claim later on will adjust to those changes.

By the way nice name for the lake :goodjob:

[Zurke]

I think I would like to take this on. It seems less daunting than some of the other areas I was reading. I think I can find ideas for farms etc. and I seem to understand this region better. I don't know if it were the threads themselves but the other regions seemed really complicated.

I have Silgrad_Tower.esm v 3.05 installed. Where do I find it in the CS and how do I begin?

[TheImperialDragon]

Originally posted by Zurke
I think I would like to take this on. It seems less daunting than some of the other areas I was reading. I think I can find ideas for farms etc. and I seem to understand this region better. I don't know if it were the threads themselves but the other regions seemed really complicated.

A while back I separated the general information in the threads from the information related to just the regions. Did you see this thread and the other stickies? It's a pretty straightforward process:
- Create the region generation preset
- Generate the region
- Customize the region
All done in different ESPs. Actually doing it is more complicated than listing it, unfortunately. If you think it might be helpful, I can rewrite the threads for certain regions.

Originally posted by Zurke
I have Silgrad_Tower.esm v 3.05 installed. Where do I find it in the CS and how do I begin?

There's a link to a map archive in the OP. All of the cells have coordinates. The cells that are a part of the region are in colour, and the ones that aren't a part of the region aren't in colour.

You should start by looking at the landscape's shape and making changes to it as you see fit:

The first thing you'll want to do is examine the landscape heights to determine if you want to mold the landscape more to your liking. Maybe you want a few hills or a small lake or things like that, and it'll save you a ton of work to do that before you get down to modding new stuff in. If you make a hill just grab the stuff that got 'drowned' beneath the landscape, raise them high in the air and then hit the F key to settle them back down again and then optionally finetune their vertical position. You can also delete the objects if you'd rather do that, the only rule is to have more details when you're finished than when you started and if it's easier to delete some of the generated content then by all means do that.

[Zurke]

Thanks TID. I did download the area map but didn't realize the coordinates were there. I was under the impression the landscape was already generated and if I chose to alter it a bit I could do so.

[TheImperialDragon]

This landscape is already generated, and you can change it a bit. I don't know if this is the right board for it, now that you mention it though. It was posted here originally, so I'll leave its final location for Razorwing to decide. He's in charge of the Soluthis region. On that note, I've been planning on cleaning up the whole board. It's not terrible right now, but any bit of extra tidiness can work wonders. I feel like I finally have the time and luck to work wonders too.

Try to keep the landscape changes to a minimum, however, because each landscape change increases our ESM size by a fair bit. I'm not exactly sure the cause or how it works, but in theory we could continually change a single heightmap quad (we'll say it starts at 32 MB in size) by merging new landscape change ESPs over and over, each time increasing the file size. We don't want to waste too much memory because more memory increases the amount of time the ESM takes to load, and also the amount of time it takes to download. Just something to keep in mind.

[Zurke]

That is good news TID and thanks for the info. I think my whole point was that I didn't want to make alot of changes . Ready made is what I was looking for. I may want to remove a rock or two and possibly have to flaten to create crops in some small areas but I don't want to change or generate. I also read that I may have to place trees etc.