Landscaping: A look at the Cyrodiil Borders

[Razorwing]

Zarkis: It doesn't really matter to me personally if it'll take some work on my own part to coordinate the exterior mockup of Reich Parkeep with the interior worldspace one, as long as it's not impossible. Because that means I and others can keep modding it while someone else sets up the heightmaps for the landscape of our landmass, without either side needing to feel any kind of stress.

Ben Vagara: I'll refrain from commenting since I know too little about the subject to be able to offer any kind of useful opinion.



But here's a question that's been brewing on my mind. How come Bethesda often uses several worldspaces for a city?

[Zarkis]

I would be patient. If you look at the cities Bethesda did, they used the steps I described. If you open any city worldspace and look in the heightmap editor, you see, that they cut out a piece of Tamriel worldspace at exactly the same spot the city was and in the render city you see the terrain was fully done before they did it. May guess is that the child worldspace uses the LOD files of the parent. If you set up your city at a total different spot, the terrain around it will not be displayed correctly.

[Zarkis]

Just to inform everybody I gave up on landscaping for now before the LOD issue drives me crazy... It just doesn't work on my PC and without it I feel lost in the landscape. Plus the whole thing crashes on me far too often. I hope the community can figure it out.

[raggidman]

Originally posted by Galrina
I would think you would have to dismount, land, what-have-you, before you crossed the borders with or without a separate world space. I don't think the guards and militia would take kindly to strangers from out of the province popping into their capital cities, etc. I feel that strangers would be required to go through a gate/pass/checkpoint or something just to keep the criminal population on their toes if nothing else. So.. fast travel to a border town or outpost, cross through the gate.. fast travel to your destination.

On the non-technical side in response to Galrina's excellent note: - while the method/s possibilities and other options in the connectivity are being determined, if there are to be 'official' routes, could there not also be regular 'unofficial' routes, and even the odd 'secret' route built in for quest purposes, with a built-in rep and character profession modifier that alters your char according to the 'nature' of the route you take?

Thus if you enter a Province via a smugglers' trail the smugglers will be more likely to accept you, the guards more suspicious of you, and you might get a small bonus to speed of stealth skill developement, and a small penalty to skills other professions? Which would be very useful for multi-classed chars.

Why? Because your actions create a variety of circumstances that confirm or alter the nature of your actual profession through your professional standing?

This might encourage travel and experimentation with the different characters and combinations of mods.

I do understand that ST does not like to alter basics in the usual way, but I am suggesting that it might be in keeping with the natures of the different mods for 'things' to develope at a slightly different rate in each province.

I was astounded when I travelled to ST for the first time the other day, and enjoyed the experience immensely, but I sort of felt that I was still the same char - essentially unchanged by my 'new' experiences. This is something that I would like to see built in, in a subtle way - that there should be unvoidable consequences both positive and negative to my choice to travel 'abroad,' and that I should not return unchanged.

My suggestion that this be effected through my char is an attempt to reduce the processing 'costs' by focussing change mostly within the char, as the NPCs might not for the most part realise what they were reacting to...though it might be fun to surprise players occasionally by having carefully selected characters show a knowledge of their travels through a variety of responses. There is nothing like recognition to boost the ego, provided it is not overdone.

Another loong raggidpost - would you leave this here long enough for everone to take note, before you move this to a new thread?