06-07-2006, 09:15 PM
[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?