Soulrest: City of the Dead

[behughes]

Soulrest: City of the Dead aims to create the eponymous city of Soulrest in the province of Black Marsh. It will be playable as an "alternate start" type mod, allowing players to create a new, non-Dragonborn character*.

This mod is a bit of an experiment in Elder Scrolls gameplay. Most TES settings allow players to explore vast expanses of wilderness, but feature cities that are modestly-sized at best. TES IV's Cyrodiil was quite large, but its Imperial City only had about ~190 NPCs. In contrast, the idea behind this mod is to create a single, massive, exclusively urban landscape, to which the gameplay will be confined. The player will not have access to any wilderness areas.

As a result, nearly all of the players encounters will be with “persons” rather than creatures. There won’t be any caves or bandits, but rather, street gangs and their hideouts.

I considered several locations before settling on Soulrest. I wanted the feel of a diverse and bustling port city. At the same time, I hoped to create an environment of poverty and decay. Lastly, I wanted to recall the alien and unwelcoming atmosphere of Morrowind. Soulrest, flanked by two massive rival empires but ruled by isolationist Argonians seemed like the perfect fit.

Finally, as an alternate start mod, I'd like to give players a rare opportunity -- to play as someone who isn't [explicitly] special. It is my intent to create a story that operates at the level of "human" interaction, rather than some grand epic carried out by a divine hero. This doesn't necessarily mean it won't be a story worthy of the Elder Scrolls, but I'm going for a different feel. The large, all-urban environment and "down to Nirn" story should create something that feels like equal parts TES and GTA.

*The player character may be Dragonborn, but not know it. In the event that this mod permits the player to travel to Skyrim, he/she may eventual realize that destiny. As such, Soulrest would serve as a "prequel" to Skyrim.

Design
Very little is given in the way of information about Soulrest, much less any other part of Black Marsh, so I've taken some liberties with the design of the city, including the geography, demography, and politics. Generally speaking, I prefer to depict the Argonians as less primitive, so my rendition of Soulrest will not be a modest swamp village, but a grand city to rival any other. I've drawn inspiration from many real world cities, such as New Orleans, Rio de Janeiro, Kowloon Walled City, Lagos, and many others.

However, the "shape" of the city was inspired largely by this artwork by Noah Bradley:

The following map provides a rough idea of the topography and layout of Soulrest:

 

 

Note the street grids in the Lower Ward, which should provide some sense of scale. By itself, this area is probably roughly the size of Whiterun and far more densely constructed.

For more details on the layout, see the following:

Outside the main gate, a river delta dotted with small, swampy islands is home to the poorest of Soulrest, a massive slum called The Dregs (1). Crime is rampant here, and the government of Soulrest has little interest in maintaining order, as the population is largely non-Argonian immigrants and Lukiul or “assimilated” Argonians. Rival gangs fight for control of this area.

 

 

Along the east bank of the Mithxi River lies the Nibenean Quarter (2), so named for it’s primarily Imperial population. This part of the city is governed by a human magistrate who answers to the Archwarden and Underwardens. A portion of the Nibenean Quarter lies beneath the water. Off the shore lies the ruins of Fort Mossmoth, a former Imperial garrison that now serves as the city's prison.

 

On the west bank lies the Meric Quarter (3), an Elven enclave which is home to an embassy for the Thalmor. The Elves have their own magistrate as well. Slight more well-to-do than their human counterparts, the shore of the Elven Quarter are lined with large waterfront hotels and casinos.

 

The city’s Upper Ward (7) is controlled by the An-Xileel, a faction of Argonians known for their strict laws, isolationism, and dislike of foreigners. They operate out of the Theel Palace, which was seized from the Lord of Clan Theel in the early 4th Era. Three local clans support the An-Xileel: Ikan, Hathei, and Utawei. The highest ranking member of the An-Xileel is the Archwarden, who is served by several Underwardens and advisors.

 

A massive xanmeer (6), a mausoleum of the ancient Argonians, serves as the centerpiece of spiritual life in Soulrest, and is overseen by a council known as The Organism. Soulrest once served as a traditional burial city for the ancients, and it is for this reason that the city is called "The City of the Dead" (it is not unlike Falkreath in this way). A Histgrove (9) lies on the other side of the ancient ruin. Once the spiritual leaders of Black Marsh and the arbiters of the Hist, the Organism and now little more than puppets of the An-Xileel.

 

The Lower Ward (5), while still under An-Xileel authority, is home to two rival parties, the An-Inaxthi and the Otu-Thelliul.

 

The An-Inaxthi (Ahn - in-AHSH-tee) is a progressive party, a splinter of the An-Xileel that wishes to resurrect the Ebonheart Pact in order to protect Black Marsh from the Thalmor. They consist of three clans, Scale-Song, Im-Ru, and Neetinei.

The Otu-Theliul consists mostly of displaced aristocrats, Imperial and Thalmor sympathizers, and “heretics” who council with the Psijic Order and adhere to a more allegorical view of the Hist’s role in death/rebirth. Three clans support them: Theel, Wahan, and Merei.

More details coming soon.

Edited July 5, 2014 by behughes

[Mattiewagg]

This sounds really good. I'd definitely be interested in it. Are you proficient in quest making?

[behughes]

@Matthiaswagg

Thanks! To answer your question, I'd not really proficient in anything except story writing and music/audio stuff. I've toyed around with voice acting but don't own a proper mic yet. I've also messed around with scripts and tweaked a few existing quests, but beyond that, I'm a total noob.

[Mattiewagg]

@Matthiaswagg

 

Thanks! To answer your question, I'd not really proficient in anything except story writing and music/audio stuff. I've toyed around with voice acting but don't own a proper mic yet. I've also messed around with scripts and tweaked a few existing quests, but beyond that, I'm a total noob.

 

Well, once you've finished the level design stuff, then I may be able to help you with the quests. I'm working on my own big project right now, but I do have some free time. I can't help with much of the other stuff, but I'm decent at scripting and quest design is what I consider myself best at.

[behughes]

Well, once you've finished the level design stuff, then I may be able to help you with the quests. I'm working on my own big project right now, but I do have some free time. I can't help with much of the other stuff, but I'm decent at scripting and quest design is what I consider myself best at.

I'll definitely take you up on that. I can write stories until I'm blue in the face, but building quests isn't something I've got much experience with. Everything from SMQO that I did involved tweaking existing quests, so I am familiar with how they're set up, but I'm usually terrified to mess with scripts because I've broken my game a few times that way.

 

Right now, I'm looking into a way to create a heightmap in Photoshop so I don't have to hand-craft the entire worldspace using the landmass editor. I found a good tutorial, so hopefully I can get that out and maybe even have a few pictures up by the end of the day.

[Mattiewagg]

 

Well, once you've finished the level design stuff, then I may be able to help you with the quests. I'm working on my own big project right now, but I do have some free time. I can't help with much of the other stuff, but I'm decent at scripting and quest design is what I consider myself best at.

I'll definitely take you up on that. I can write stories until I'm blue in the face, but building quests isn't something I've got much experience with. Everything from SMQO that I did involved tweaking existing quests, so I am familiar with how they're set up, but I'm usually terrified to mess with scripts because I've broken my game a few times that way.

 

Right now, I'm looking into a way to create a heightmap in Photoshop so I don't have to hand-craft the entire worldspace using the landmass editor. I found a good tutorial, so hopefully I can get that out and maybe even have a few pictures up by the end of the day.

 

 

Cool. Well, I'll be gone for 3 weeks starting in about 4 hours, but once I get back I'll be happy to help with anything that I can do. I might not be available to help all the time, since I've got a project of my own, and school will be starting up again, but once I've got time I'll help in any way I can with scripting/quest design. Though I don't think I'll be much help in other areas - not my forte.

[DDProductions83]

http://hoddminir.blogspot.com/2012/02/from-heightmap-to-worldspace-in-skyrim.html

 

 

Follows those to a T and gen LOD with oscape and place a few objects and gen object LOD with ck before you ever invest time. And I mean to a T

I've seen numerous posts from ppl having lod problems and landscape and obj gen and I have had 0 issues in the last 6 months. I started with those and took me 24 hours or so to get everything perfect but since that initial bleh its been a breeze with LOD

Best advice I can give :P

[behughes]

I've been following this guy's tutorial so far, which explain how to create heightmaps.

 

If I understand correctly, the author claims that the entirety of Skyrim would be generated with a heightmap of 3808x3008 pixels. I compared a few fan-made maps of Tamriel to get a sense of the scale, and Black Marsh is roughly the same sizes as Skyrim. In any case, to make a long story short, I figured my city's heightmap would need to be no larger than 256x256 pixels. I have no idea if I'm doing the conversions right, but we'll see.

 

My heightmap so far:

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-sYl6D2vzUSk/U7nNQCurxzI/AAAAAAAACHs/vte1dTznXww/s751-no/HeightmapTiff2.tif

Now to plug it into GeoControl and see what I get!

Edited July 7, 2014 by behughes

[behughes]

I followed the tutorial. Everything was looking good in GeoControl 2:

 

 

 

Applied some filters to make the terrain look more natural (height exaggerated here for the sake of illustratration).

 

But when I use TESAnnwyn to convert my heightmaps to .ESPs, I'd get this:

 

 

 

I continuously tried to compress my heightmap to have less and less contrast, hoping it would smooth out, and while that improved things a little, it was still extremely buggy. I'm guessing something went wrong with TESAnnwyn, or I messed up a step. Or it's a bad tutorial. In any case, I took a hand-drawn map and turned into a 3D heightmap... didn't know how to do that yesterday, so I'll count this as a small victory.

 

I'll be back at it later, but until then, if anyone knows what went wrong here, give me a shout!

Edited July 7, 2014 by behughes

[DDProductions83]

the light difference has to be sooooooo fractional in the greys to black, in the geo thing 90-91 is genned like 90.1 -90.2 in tesannwyn

hence why it took me 24 hours of work to get it right and made sure everything worked etc, i even then still had seams I had to smooth out

keep playing with it youll get it