Announcing Beyond Skyrim: Cyrodiil

[Celegon]

I would really love to see this come to fruition. They had a rudimentary mesh for the White Gold Tower in vanilla Skyrim, so clearly there were some plans, but now they've said they're ditching Skyrim and not making anymore DLC, so I guess that went out the window.

 

Considering that what has been shown is this thread is kinda just the tip of the iceberg, I'm not worried about seeing these projects achieve completion. :)

[1shoedpunk]

I just wanted to let everyone know that Deeza has been interviewed on our full project, Beyond Skyrim, over at Game Informer.

[markusliberty]

Got some new screenshots from our latest interior assets, the Bruma Fighters guild:

http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5336/9470087031_64d7e8f785_o.jpg

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3770/9469876105_e381396854_o.jpg

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3769/9469875867_2dc7b64763_o.jpg

 

Hope you like it :)

[yic17]

Hello. Just read the interview by Game Informer. A nice read. =)

 

Something I am wondering about ... you guys probably have thought about this, too ... but what do you guys think about minimizing/simplifying each of the continents/projects to the size of an expansion such as Dragonborn instead of creating the entire world like Skyrim? And after releasing a stable, playable expansion, then you guys work on another one that adds to the original and on, and on ...

 

I am saying this because looking at many of the similar, ambitious projects for Oblivion, 90% of those projects never got completed or released. I followed many of them - it's really exciting seeing all the progress and all. But also quite sad to never actually see them get completed. One reason I think is that before they could finish, Skyrim already came out and the teams just stopped working to focus on new projects. So I am concerned that by the time you guys reach near completion, TES6 would be out and you guys would move onto new projects for TES6 as well. Maybe this is sounding negative and discouraging ... but I think it's also a valid concern. Which of course one solution is to downsize the projects and work on them in expansion form instead of working on the entire world.

 

This idea came to me while I was reading the Game Informer article during the part where it said you guys are writing all the books for the worlds. At that moment I just thought ... okay, this mod ain't never gonna get finished. XD ... No, I was really thinking about I wonder what you guys prioritize in your projects. What if you prioritize by quests and only write books that are related to the quests? That will definitely cut down on the workload. But I suppose one can argue that it will take away immersion and the idea of an open world for you to explore. So yeah, I guess it comes down to the balance of questing vs. exploring.

 

What are your thoughts?

[Deeza]

As I told Game Informer during that interview, we are currently planning to release in sections. So the border regions surrounding Skyrim will be completed first, and we will work our way out from there. That way, regardless of whether or not the whole landmass gets filled, all of the areas will be continuous.

 

As for the books specifically, I couldn't disagree more. If the world is only partially complete, the books are even more important because they can be used to add immersion by referring to other areas that aren't present.

[markusliberty]

Hey yic17! I can understand that you're concerned, but let me try and explain how things work so that you may better understanding why we are doing things the way we are.

 

The Game Informer Article is very simple in the sense that it doesn’t really explain how everything works, as you may have noticed. We have different teams working on almost every province and you need to analyse and judge each Beyond Skyrim project individually, because they are very much independent from each other when it comes to basic development and team members.

I'm going to assume you already knew this, since you found your way to the Cyrodiil province thread and all.

 

Only a very few province mods have actually made it to release, Tamriel Rebuilt and The desert of Anequina are both good examples. The reason why a province mod usually struggles compared to any other total conversion mods is because they depend on costume assets. Nehrim, Falskaar and Enderal are all mods using skyrim or Oblivion vanilla assets when building the game worlds, this is a luxury we do not have when creating a province. The lack of 3D modellers is often the key reason why province mods fail.

 

Tamriel Rebuilt's got a hardcore and talented development team, with both the 3D modellers and texture artists needed to create the game world, Elsweyr: the desert of Anequina had several well known modellers including Mr.Siika and DarknessEternal, without these individuals the projects would have been impossible. Its very difficult to find 3D modellers willing to produce such an amount of professional game assets for free, at Beyond Skyrim: Cyrodiil we have about three such amazing modellers and in the past four months we have been able to create 25% of every game asset needed to build the province. Safe to say, getting the assets needed wont be a problem in our case and that puts us in the same spot as Falskaar and Nehrim, we have the assets needed, now we simply need to build the world.

 

Our long term plan is to purplish the mod in pieces, starting of with Bruma and the Jerral mountains, so there you've got the expansion mod you're looking for. Getting the mod published before the release of the next elder scrolls is of absolutely no concern, we are more interested in creating our own game world than worrying about people not playing within the next three years. We are doing this for fun, and not because we want the largest about of people possible playing it.

Edited August 12, 2013 by markusliberty

[yic17]

@Deeza

 

Hi, I wasn't saying it is my stance in suggesting to only write books for quests. I was only throwing out the idea for discussion. I did also say it would take away immersion just like you said. =)

 

@markusliberty

 

Thanks for all the info. It's good to know them.

 

I think I wasn't being clear in my last post when I used the term "expansion". I wasn't only saying to release parts of the worlds in sections - I was really trying to bring up the idea of creating a world that revolves around quests/stories vs. creating a world and then add quests/stories into it. I imagine when Bethesda created Dragonborn, they didn't start with the idea of creating the world/setting and then add a story to it. More likely they came up with an idea for a story first and then built settings around it - adding towns, dungeons related to the story etc while leaving out the rest.

 

Different people have different gameplay style. Some mainly play for questing/story, while some play for immersion/exploration. Of course, there is always the balance of the two as well. Neither one is better/worse, right/wrong - just difference in preference and difference in focus. So when I said "expansion", I was trying to ask what do you guys think about focusing on quests/stories and create settings around them? Then release them in expansion form just like Dragonborn. You can always add immersion by adding extra stuff such as dungeons, towns, books that are unrelated to the quest afterward.

 

But as you said in your last paragraph, "we are more interested in creating our own game world that worrying about people not playing within the next three years. We are doing this for fun, and not because we want the largest about of people possible playing it.", I think it is clear which direction you guys are going for. I only wanted to throw out the idea and see what you guys think. If it's not something you guys want to focus on, it is perfectly fine. =)

[1shoedpunk]

As one of the Cyrodiil leads, I want to chime in here. A lot of the work we are doing is to set up a firm foundation for parallel development of multiple cities and questlines. Currently, Bruma is the farthest along and will likely see a demo release relatively early on. The demo release is not really going to be an expansion like Dragonborn, but it will contain several implemented sidequests and dungeons to explore.

 

While we are working in Bruma, we are also region-generating, building dungeons, and creating assets for the other cities. So, the short term goal is to have every city in Cyrodiil to that state. Then we will implement our multi-city questlines, which would be mostly structured similar to the main quests in Skyrim and Oblivion. Each of our major questlines are big projects on their own, and since they're dependent on each other to a degree, we would need to work on them in parallel and release them all at once.

 

If we released all of the cities as a full province, with the basic side-quests, it would probably be close to the amount of content as Dragonborn on a larger map. Our immediate goal is to get the project in that state so best case, we've got a firm foundation for further development, and worst case, we have a final release that is cohesive and playable.

 

EDIT: I just want to mention, we are creating the world around the stories. We have a pretty good idea of the content and tone of our major questlines and are designing the game world accordingly. I just don't want to write everything ahead of time and then get limited by a lack of resources when trying to script everything. We have our plot to the point where it needs to be for the world to be built, now we're at the point where we need to do the building.

[Colinpark]

Curious to know if the engine you will be using is the same as Skyrim or is it a different engine and not limited by the RAM issue? Wish I could help, but my skills are limited to punch cards....

[yic17]

@1shoedpunk

Hey, that sounds great! Looks to me like you guys have a very well thought out blueprint for the project. I think it's perfect actually. Couldn't come up with something better myself. =\

 

Thanks for sharing that and wish you all good luck on the project! =D