Re-Scaling Cyrodil?

[wilting]

Ok, so I know how everybody is excited about the modding possibilities in Oblivion; the amount of non-gameworld landscape included in the game and the ease with which landscapes can be created are begging for mods to add in other provinces of the Empire, and I'm looking forward to the various projects that hope to achive this or partherof. In a few years, who knows how far we'll be able to explore?

However, as massive a game world as can potentially be created, Tamriel's true continental size won't be represented.

I would propose a three part re-scaling of Cyrodil to be a closer representation of the true lore scale (or at least as big as the game space would reasonably allow)

A: Part 1: Group Project: Re-scale the landscape of the province so it is closer to the size it should be according to the lore/as it appeared in the earlier TES games. Essentially make the landmass bigger, whilst keeping cities, dungeons etc in the same relative places (if actually much further apart) and the same size. Preserve all the original quests and so forth.

A: Optional Part 2: Group Projects/Independent Community Projects: Expand the existing cities.

A: Optional Part 3: Group Projects/Independent Community Projects: Add new dungeons and settlements across the landscape.

B: Group Projects/Independent Community Projects: Add other provinces in the same scale..build a truely huge world.

It seems to me that now landscaping on a large scale is a relatively easy part of modding, compared to creating quests and settlements for example. So keep settlements the same size, but why not make the landscape a worthy representation of Tamriel?

Is this possible? Imagine creating a truely "continental" Tamriel as an expansion from this, using seperate exteriors.

I'm not starting this myself as I don't even have the game yet and it could be months before I get a PC that can run it, but I just thought I'd post this up here at Silgrad where so many great projects are being set in motion. But I might just attempt it myself in time, if somebody else hasn't already.

[Garrett]

It's a logical idea, but there may be some technical problems.

Take a look at this map. That's the maximum size of a worldspace in Oblivion, no more unlimited land as far as the modder can build. And as you can see Cyrodiil takes up most of it already.

The problem really is Oblivion's insane draw distance. Vast swathes of land are already built for no purpose other than to give the illusion that the world doesn't cut off just past the horizon (which technically it does).

Now this is the problem. While technically four interlinked worldspaces would work, the problem is that the modders would have to make low-res versions of the other three quarters and place them out as far as possible to continue the illusion.

The Elsweyr team (or was it the Valenwood team?) have approached this by simply deciding not to be to scale with Oblivion but rather to scale with Daggerfall (or something along those lines).

I'm not saying a bigger Cyrodiil isn't possible, but just a lot more work than if worldspaces were limitless as in Morrowind (where theoretically you COULD actually have a complete 1:1-scale Tamriel). The new worldspace size limit is perhaps one of the reasons why Cyrodiil isn't closer to 1:1 scale to begin with.

EDIT: now I think about it, the lore scale is probably even bigger than 4x. I'm pretty sure Daggerfall was 1:1 (or thereabouts) to what lore dictates, and it alone was the size of flippin' Great Britain. Without creating a whole heap of new towns (maybe bring back some from Arena?) I can't see filling that vast space up. While on the one hand Fast Travel means you can get to each location quicker, the problem is that just like Daggerfall those inbetween areas might end up being rather samey.

And that's not even considering the number of worldspaces it would take to create such a thing. Which creates a second problem: if 1:1 isn't done, what scale is to be decided upon? Twice? Four times? Ten times? Yet another tough decision, and yet more landscaping.

[gravedigger84]

Talking about Daggerfall and most areas looking samey to eachother.
And advancing TES series from that point. I wouldve personally thought continuing same huge scale than Daggerfall and spend the most of develop time improving the huge scale issues (all looking same) more wouldve been better, rather than taking up a scale that for sure is handlable to Morrowind and develop that much smaller area.

For me Daggerfall still offered illusion of huge world very good. Much better than Morrowind/Ob (unmodded) and thats one thing i love in rpg like that.
Ofcourse illusion suffered since they couldnt make all areas so unique but still basically, i think its better than small detailed area. And i hoped they would had tried to continue that huge area tradition to TESIII.
The biggest problem with Daggerfall for me was the dungeons. I think they were rather sub-par. HUGE labyrinths with no direction.

Now here we have TESIV and i hope the best with all modding to make the huge explorative landscape and unique quests. :banana:

[Vrenir]

What if you made Cyrodiil as big as the worldspace would allow, using higher hills/mountain/etc to decrease the viewing distance off the map? I'd definitely be in support of the endeavour. The only problem I see would be compatibility with other mods. If we rescale Cyrodiil, either other mods will have to use ours as a base or nobody running ours will be able to run anything else.

My personal stance is for us to just decrease the size of Cyrodiil province in relation to the others around it. Italy was not the largest portion of the Roman Empire and yet it managed to control all the rest. Why can't Cyrodiil be the same way?

[Vrenir]

The more I think about this idea and the more debate I see over how to scale the provinces we're modding, the more this whole Cyrodiil thing appeals to me. If somebody just took this on (it'd be the easiest province to mod since all models and such already exist), then it could seriously solve all of our scaling problems. We could adopt the TESIII scale universally (or as near as we could get with the maximum map size).

The only problem would be mod incompatibilites, but if it's a mod that's really worth it (like Kvach Rebuilt or a lore-centric new/expanded faction), I think that we could make the effort to port it over with the author's permission. Get this implemented soon enough, and we could become a standard replacement, a must-have, and future mods would be built for ours instead of Beth's.

[gravedigger84]

The idea is great i think. But hugeness of it and affecting the original material + original material affecting mods will propably drive most people away from the idea and keep working only for the new lands.

[X23]

This is a great idea. I could add more dungeons after you resized the landmass

[Vrenir]

Just to note that I posted a big spin-off of this idea in The Tavern forum. The thread title is Cyrodiil. It's pretty long, pretty developed, and the best shot I could give at getting this actualized.

[Oldphart]

Originally posted by Garrett
It's a logical idea, but there may be some technical problems.

Take a look at this map. That's the maximum size of a worldspace in Oblivion, no more unlimited land as far as the modder can build. And as you can see Cyrodiil takes up most of it already.

It is hard to believe that there is a hardcoded limit to the worldspace in a new game which does not support old graphics cards. Do you know where the limitation is? I would be inclined to think one might patch / code around it somehow.

Even with the far view distance it should work to have a fairly wide overlap between worlds if world-swapping should be the only way to solve this.

There are a number of things I think detract too much from realism. One is the short distances between settlements and important features. I can see that would be desirable for somebody who wants a fast-paced game, but with fast travel it should not be a problem for most of us to stay closer to reality.

One desirable effect would be to get enough farmland so that it would look reasonable that it could feed the population. That would also mean lots of livestock. The project would obviously take a long time, so I do not really see performance as a problem. By the time it is rady, hardware will be another order of magnitude more powerful.

[Garrett]

Well, from all I've read so far the worldspace dimensions are hardcoded. Or, at least, there's seemingly no dimensions feature (I haven't checked in the CS).

Hacks would be possible, but I'm worried about the game having more serious problems than just needing higher specs. I remember well how GTA expansion experiments ended in tears. While that's admittedly an entirely different engine I'd say that Bethesda also had a good reason for making worldspaces finite.

Anyway, the other thread is more the place for this now.