Regarding Open Cities Skyrim ... to mod authors

[crimson2018]

Please make your mods to be compatible with OCS, as a compatibility edition (this is easier to make since you just cut / copy render and 'paste in place') or a patch. There are ton of city overhauls on nexus but a single framework that deal with the issue of 'enclosed cities' and that is OCS and if you are forcing people to chose many of them will chose the OCS framework and will never enjoy your beautiful work and passion you put into making it, because there is no mod in existence that add so much to immersion as OCS.

 

OCS is not just an immersion mod, it is also the fix for the primary bug of Skyrim. The major five cities of Skyrim were removed by Bethesda from the Main Worldspace of Tamriel and added to their own children spaces and entering those cities you are not in Tamriel anymore, you are in an entire cell completely with its specific rules, weather patterns, fake LODs, invisible walls, loading screens, i cannot imagine something more ridiculous and immersion-breaking than this. With the release of SSE the circumstances that made the devs to enclose the cities in the first place, no longer apply so you get better performance in an Open City Cell than in the enclosed city cell and you have this framework that did most of the work for you. Why not make use of it and continue playing or modding in the fake, buggy and non-immersive version of vanilla city-cells?

 

Things would have been so much easier if Arthmoor would have include OCS where it belonged, meaning in the USSEP.

Edited February 13, 2023 by crimson2018

[crimson2018]

Hi. I've read an reddit topic about Open Cities and that inspired me to write this. I've realized that many people don't know what Open Cities is or what it adds to the game. The mod is not even on Nexus anymore, because of some questionable decisions from the mod author, but this is in no way impact the value of the mod, and the concept that it brings to the game. It is still free to download on the internet, and that's enough. I also noticed a troubling trend lately, from some mod authors, that if a mod is not on Nexus, it doesn't exist, they don't offer any support they don't even entertain talking about it. For you guys, this is just a site not a cult, the Skyrim modding community is larger and competition, alternatives are good things and no Terms of Service can tell you otherwise. Even in the time of Morrowind, when this site didn't existed, we had the PlanetElderScrolls and a bunch of other minor sites to take our modding dose.

 

To the subject at hand, and since i realize that there are people new to modding Skyrim, that don't even know what Open Cities is, this mod copies the original closed cities' assets and paste them in the Tamriel worldspace, where they are supposed to be in the first place. It is not as easy as it sounds, since we do not only speak about statics and clutter, but activators, triggers, re-navmeshing the entire space, which is such a pain in exterior cells. There is a lot of work put into this 'minor change', only to fix Bethesda's wrong-doing, and certainly an mod author can really appreciate that. And there are some reasons you won't see other attempts like this ... they will be redundant, no point of redoing what was done before ... then all the mods affecting cities will have to be re-patched from scratch, and they will not be more or less compatible than it is OCS now, meaning the same type of patching will be need, unless powerofthree can pull another rabbit from his hat. The principle is this ... there is no need to re-invent the wheel, since it's working.

 

Technical stuff aside, what OCS does plainly is ... it assure an smooth transition between the inner and outer city space (there are not one parent space and 5 children spaces anymore, is just one worldspace), for you the player character, the NPCs, wildlife, weather. With no loading screens and even gate attendants that will open the gates for you if you are on the horse, it assure an seamless and continuous playing experience. You won't see NPC popping in and out around the gate, there are no more invisible walls cutting you from the outside, no more fake LODs in the distance (what you see is what you get), you can hear dialog from outside the gates from, you can jump the walls in an out, even mod a smart system of ladders and ramps that will bring you in and out of the city, shoot your bow from inside the wall, admire the outside landscape and mountains from your balcony or porch, a true immersive experience as no other. For mod authors, they can expand the cities in a realistic way since they don't have to deal with 2 worldspace anymore. If they remove the walls as well they can actually integrate the outskirts region inside the city itself (Markarth is actually asking for it). And the cities won't look bigger on the inside. There is more to say here, but i think i made my point.

 

Performance wise OCS doesn't impact anything on its own. You will get the same framerate (+/- 1-2 FPS) if you use identical setups. I tested this myself on SSE (not on Oldrim) and i actually know that performance is not an issue. I was running OCS and SSE with 4 GB VRAM for 6 years, with heavy modded games (2K mostly, plus 4K a few). If you match that, you are in the clear, with what is called "heavy modded skyrim". And that has nothing to to with OCS, but with your entire mod setup.

 

Some ppl are saying, that you cannot run OCS with 100+ mods. That's garbage. I never started a lengthy playthrough with under 1000 mods (and those are only plugins, more than half patches but that's they way it goes with the Modding Noawdays). In my last playthrough i was running the most stable mod setup of SSE with SKSE with 1900+ plugin mods, to date. I never got a CTD or a freeze in any of the 5 major cities. In fact i don't remember crasing inside the cities since Oldrim. This is a non issue.

 

Now Compatibility. Is not that OCS is or is not compatible with anything. It is a framework for land and layout design. If the mod authors are replicating their city changes in the OCS cell, then it is compatible with the said mod, otherwise NO. It all left to the mod authors, if they want to support the OCS framework and its user / fan base or not. I made myself few patches for personal use, to work in the OCS space, for clutter and statics you just copy and paste in place, re-link some doors and markers, re-navmesing if need is more complicated and that always gives me trouble. But i cannot do this for all the mods. But the mod author is the ones that know better what their mod ads ads and where, so they are the ones that can apply the proper support for OCS. Leaving that aside, there is also an SSEEdit script that can do some this process automatically, but the output needs to be tweaked afterwards to get an fully functional patch. The script also cannot do combos, which are the most needed with OCS, otherwise with singular mods OCS has support for anything really.

 

From my experience you can run TWO routes with overhauling OCS, and these are very stable and very featured in a 1500-2000 mod setup (if you add the Northern Roads, which BTW it is 10x harder to patch and integrate than OCS, but it can be done).

 

Route 1. JK's Skyrim is a very popular mod with extensive mod and patch support, it adds tons of small objects to the cities, some times, too much. It is also very compatible with OCS via patch. Even the combo, Dawn of Skyrim / JK's Skyrim it has OCS support. Between the two mods you can have your cities filled with clutter, new shops, stalls, people. You can add even more stuff to the 5 cities, beside the combo in OCS wordspace, like ... skyrim sewers, outlaw refuges, drinking fountains, bells of skyrim, immersive laundry, notice boards, missive boards, and the newer animated traversal since they are implemented in the OCS space as well with patch, 3DNPCs, Citizen of Tamriel, ICAIO, JK's Interiors, etc. I used his route for years with no issue in a close to 2000 mod list (that's only ESP, ESM and Light Plugins).

 

Route 2. The second route is with the Capital Expansion Mods of Whiterun and Windhelm, and the superb mod of Redbag's Solitude which is hand-tailored for OCS, because it opens the dock entrance to the city, which OCS never did. It also brings down the city walls and with the Dregnin's Blue Palace Terrace you gen an all-opened Solitude. There are Open Capital Whiterun and Open Capital Windhelm that make it possible to use the two capital expansions with OCS and they are surprisingly bugless. I only found myself making a minor patch for the Windhelm exterior, and covering some small land gaps with snow drifts. I also added Windhelm City Entrance Overhaul as a bonus and it works just fine. You can fit all the mods in the first route here (since they already have compatibility with the OCS worldspace), except JK's Skyrim, Dawn of Skyrim and after many failed tries, Bells of Skyrim (because of the Solitude's bell). Now ... that will leave your major cities more baren without JK's clutter, but actual city layout expansion, new quests, npcs, etc. It is good to experience new stuff. JK's Skyrim can certainly be made compatible with a patch, but i didn't found one, and i just hate to make myself exterior navmesh in Skyrim. I run this route now with 1500 + mods and it is even more stable than the first. Patching Northen Roads, Water for ENB and the Gras mods and fixes outside the cities is many times more difficult. LOTD is also working with the Solitude setup above, with a small patch i made, since the LOTD caretakes only support Redbag's Solitude in the vanilla cell not the in the OCS Cells.

 

To both these routes you can add plenty of stuff outside the city as well making your city-areas more lively, like outskirts and docks overhauls. For Riften and Markarth, tis is actually a must, since there are no ground-breaking inner-city overhauls. It is not like the loading screens will make any distinction between the inner and the outer city-area. The OCS will actually help you to overhaul a city, giving you endless possibility to art mod and expand without making the city's expansion look silly and non-immersive.

 

I wrote this especially for those new to modding Skyrim, to highlight great mod in a great ocean. I hope you find some of this useful.