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[WIP] Distinct Skyrim: Landscapes Reimagined


Jehoram

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BETA TESTERS NEEDED! PM FOR DETAILS!

OVERVIEW

Hey guys, thanks for checking out the WIP thread. The idea for this mod actually started a long, long time ago back in the days of Morrowind when I first read

about the land of Skyrim in the in-game books. I've always been a huge fan of TES Lore and this is my attempt at interpreting that lore and bringing a new and

unique look to the land of Skyrim. It also takes care of some of the laziness of Bethesda in their creation of the Skyrim landscape, particularly with regards to

LOD and how they used an insane amount of trees to cover up the fact that their LOD was atrocious. Now that its 2014 and technology has developed to allow

for much better LOD, I think its time to reimagine Skyrim in a fun new way, make it more lore-friendly and give regions their own unique look that separates them

from the other regions of Skyrim. Now I know some people won't like these ideas, but that's okay because I'm not out to please everybody. That being said, I hope

you guys enjoy the creativity, love and time that has gone and will go into a project of this size. As always constructive criticism and feedback is much appreciated!

THE BREAKDOWN

So, what exactly is going on here? Well, we're taking apart Skyrim's Holds and rebuilding them in a way that either corrects them to match the lore description provided

by in-game books, or taking them off in an awesome new direction where the lore description is lacking and the concept for the region just isn't as awesome as it could be.

Here's a breakdown of what the plan is, broken down by Hold. Take a look at the plans and let me know what you think!

- Hjaalmarch

 

Screenshots - 1 2 3 4

 

- More fog/mist
- More Nordic ruins sticking out of the mud
- Wispmothers
- dead skeletons

- Falkreath Hold

My plan for Falkreath Hold is to have it be an ancient forest that's so immense that it dwarfs everything inside it. I literally want to have mountains hidden in the trees.

 

- Huge trees
- Very little underbrush
- Trees get smaller as you near bodies of water/edge of the forest
- More fauna


- The Pale

A pretty standard frozen tundra. Ice, rocks, snow, hardy vegetation. Strong winds, blowing snow and all that jazz.

 

Screenshots - 1 2 3 4

 

- Remove trees
- Turn into frozen tundra
- add ice
- more ice creatures
- jagged rocks

 

 

- Eastmarch Hold

The hot springs area I want to be more dead than it was in the vanilla game, other than that mostly changes to the forest in the southern part of the Hold and the River Yorgrim changes.

 

Screenshots - 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

 

- Dead Trees

- More animal skeletons

- Make River Yorgrim navigable

 

 

- Winterhold

absolute desolation, no plants, just ice, rocks and more ice. I'm planning on using the frozen lake assets from Dawnguard to create an ice sheet to replace the broken up chunks in the sea of ghost right now.

 

-No foliage
-Ice Plain
-Desolation


- Whiterun Hold

Just like Rohan from the Lord of the Rings movies. My plan is to emphasize the giants a little more since their story and the way they fit into Skyrim is kinda weak and I think it could be improved. Also going to add wild horses and a horse ranch as since Whiterun's banner is a horse so that seems only logical.

 

Screenshots - 1

 

- no trees

- Remove mountain in middle of hold

- wild horses

- expand on giants

- horse ranch in Rorikstead

 

 

- Haafingar Hold

Haafingar is in pretty good shape for the most part. I want to try and create a different subset of trees for Haafingar because I really dont like the vanilla snow trees and I want it to be a little less wintery than they look. I also added some light snow to Solitude because it really doesn't make sense that there isn't snow that high up when points at the same elevation all around the map do have snow.

 

Screenshots - 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

 

- snowy trees

- light touch-up

- light snow in Solitude

 

 

 

- Bonus

 

Throat of the World - 1 2 3 4 5

 

 

 

You'll notice that The Rift and The Reach are both missing from the list. For now, I don't have any plans to change either of these areas. They're in good shape in how

unique they are with mods already out there, in this case Realistic Aspen Trees and Skyrim Flora Overhaul respectively. I currently have work in progress in Haafingar,

Eastmarch, Whiterun, Falkreath, and Winterhold. Hjaalmarch and The Pale have already been released in standalone modules, so if you're interested in checking out

what's already been done feel free to download those mods and leave some feedback. That's all the information I have to share for now, but there will be some exciting

news about the mod as we get closer to release. Thanks for reading all the way to the end of my post, its really appreciated even though I'm sure it was tedious and boring.

SCREENSHOTS WILL BE COMING SOON FORMATTED THEM BY REGION FOR YOUR VIEWING PLEASURE!

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Questions, comments, suggestions, concerns, etc. will all be replied to, so bring it on people! If you've got other questions I will be available via PM here at the Nexus.

Edited by Jehoram
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Looking forward to this. Any thoughts on compatibility?

 

Yep, there's obviously going to be some challenges here, but its surprised me how many mods are compatible or need very few changes to make them compatible. I have 200+ mods installed and haven't seen any conflicts so far. My first objective is to get as much of the work done as possible before turning my attention to creating patches. I've already promised to create a patch for ETaC once this has been released, and as people request patches for other mods I'll likely handle them as well. I'm intentionally leaving cities alone (exception is Solitude, so this is gonna need patches for sure) as there's a huge number of mods that effect them and I don't want to have to compete with them to be in people's load order, especially when they do such a good job of altering the cities anyways. I'll likely recommend city mods to be played alongside DSLR but thats just a suggestion and people are free to do as they please. :)

 

 

Lol math, i read his post and my first thought was "The incompatibility list will be astoundingly large"

 

I'm constantly on the lookout for incompatible mods that a lot of people are using. I obviously don't have every mod on the Nexus, so getting people to report incompatibilities is a huge boon for me, especially if its with a really popular mod. I'll do my best to handle these incompatibilities once the mod has been released. The last thing I want to do is take away from people's Skyrim experience so creating patches is actually really important to me. :)

 

 

I like the ideas you've implemented so far. Especially the horse ranch in Ivarstead, as I've always felt the Whiterun hold was missing one

 

Thanks! I originally planned on placing it closer to Whiterun, but I really wanted to expand on the Giants and give them a little more story while I'm playing with Whiterun. Placing it near Ivarstead actually works out better as I've got a better spot for it over there anyways. :P I agree. I thought it was weird as well that Whiterun's emblem is a horse and yet they don't seem to have much of a focus on horses at all!

 

 

Cheers guys, thanks for the replies!

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Hey, Jehoram! Sounds like quite an undertaking. The changes sound really exciting and I can't wait to see some screenshots, especially ones from Falkreath. :D

 

Hey Mellow :smile:

 

I'm looking forward to getting some screenshots up! I'm currently neck deep in Eastmarch right now so screenshots from that region will be coming out soon. I'm focusing most of my time there before moving on to another region. Falkreath will probably take a while to get screenshots for unfortunately. Mostly because I don't want to show it off without it being suitably epic. :tongue:

 

 

 

EDIT: And screenshots from Eastmarch are up!

Edited by Jehoram
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