Better SI

[Wolfhound646]

This is what i'd like to start with - nothing big, just make it perfect before moving on

*black = old & red = new * *sorry for the horrible drawing i drew them in like 5 min *

 

And the drawing is...... were? :whistling: :biggrin: :thumbsup:

 

By the way, you and yamcakes should team up.

[TodaY]

Lets stop that suggestion there and think about it a bit. Since the idea here is not to re-create the realm, but instead just to add to it, the new islands should not be just some lame re-hashing of the existing areas, but should be new places which are done in a similar style. The standard SI worldspace, if I remember correctly, is 4 quads, so if you're going to go the heightmap route of building these islands (as opposed to sculpting them as you go in the landscape editor), you would need to have some idea of how quads are used for landscape. as you design. The heightmap editor ALWAYS works with 4 quads at any given time, and trying to work on any space larger than 4 quads usually causes stability problems. Meaning that if you are wanting to do a heightmap that doesn't end up changing parts of the vanilla landmass, you would need to work on a square area (2x2 quads) to the north, south, east, or west of the main island. You could make several small islands, or maybe a few medium sized ones, but you would not be able to make more than 1 large island. You should also consider if you want this area done in the Mania or Dementia style. Working within the landscape editor is less restricted since you're only editing the cells you manually change, and only creating cells as you go, but is not as quick and is not as easy to get the full idea of the terrain.

 

You should also consider what you want on these islands and how capable you are with other parts of the toolset. While large tracts of randomly generated terrain may look nice for screenshots, they don't offer much as far as playable content. While you will almost certainly learn how to do new things as you work, most starting projects tend to dream well beyond what is practical for even a small team, and then become upset because it took longer than they thought it would. Even an area as small as 4 quads can take several months to fill with non-scripted content. Quests and other stuff can take significantly longer. Approach the project honestly, and keep your goals practical.

 

:P It wasn't a suggestion, it was a couple of questions for the modder (not me) on what he is planning to do with his mod.

And... you just answered quite a few of the questions there.

 

"Since the idea here is not to re-create the realm, but instead just to add to it, the new islands should not be just some lame re-hashing of the existing areas, but should be new places which are done in a similar style. "

-That's what I'm hoping he is going to do; and I think a couple of my questions were about that.

 

But, why keep it in the SI worldspace? Why not move it to another bigger one?

 

Another idea - each island is connected by boat, but they are in acutal diff. world space, and the other islands you can see from the island you are on are simply fakes (i know there is a technical name for it). So when you activate the boat, you move to another worldspace/island with more fake islands on the horizon.

 

I'm not a modder - don't yell at me :wacko:

 

1. PLEASE refer to me as SHE - im FEMALE o_O (sorry but everybody seems to think im not)

2. I like the dif. worldspace idea

3. uhm i dunno why the map isn't there (other post) - what ever

4. (also refering to other post) I'd like to team up ;P but if im going to do dif worldsace the 2 different ideas wont have much in common

[Vagrant0]

The reason why you'd want to have it in the same worldspace is so that you don't need a boat or other thing to get there, you can just swim or walk. Having it in the same worldspace also helps solve the problem of making sure that you have other parts of land visible in the distance. While you have a point, there is nothing which says that the islands need to be particularly close to eachother, having them in the same space provides for a better sense of connection as being in the same plane.

 

As far as making this new worldspace larger, that usually isn't a good idea since large worldspaces not only make the CS less stable (due to having to keep the entire mod loaded in ram), but also means many more months spent creating content for that worldspace. Even a small 4 quad worldspace can take over a year to do if you're working on it alone and care to have anything other than uninteresting environments. One of the reasons why there are so few finished mods which add more lands.

[Wolfhound646]

I don't understand why making a mod in one world space is harder -

 

It's gonna be the same islands, you'll just be able to swim between each of the islands.

Unless you want to do something like alivewaters.

 

 

 

Today - sorry :unsure: lol :rolleyes:

 

and i still can't see any link - is it me? am I blind? :wacko:

 

And about joining up with yamcakes, all I mean is what's the point of making new content if there's a couple of decent SI mods out there. I doubt that's going to be enough you're probs gonna have to make your own content too, though.

 

 

 

P.S. Vagrant0 - how big are your world spaces in the colored rooms? is each one like cyrrodill? or is each one like a Dragon Age size area? In between?

And right under your Vagrant0 picture, it says >link dead<. Don't know what it means, just in case you haven't noticed.

[TodaY]

@ wolfhound ;P there is no link i lost the pic and hoped nobody would notice [a]

[Wolfhound646]

:unsure: Are you going to re-post it?

[Vagrant0]

P.S. Vagrant0 - how big are your world spaces in the colored rooms? is each one like cyrrodill? or is each one like a Dragon Age size area? In between?

At current, there are 3 separate worldspaces. 2 of the worldspaces use an area smaller than 10x10 cells, created manually within the landscape editor, 1 of the worldspaces is a 4 quad worldspace with heightmapped terrain. The 2 small worldspaces were created first, and accounted for a filesize that was less than 5mb. With the addition of a single 4 quad worldspace, the mod jumped up to around 36mb before adding anything to that worldspace. At current, only about 20% of the 4 quad worldspace is in a semi-completed state, and most of this is terrain between settlements which doesn't need much variety. Less than 10% of all the planned interiors and dungeons are completed for just that one worldspace.

 

The mod at current is at a filesize that is roughly 42mb for just the .esm. If converted to .esp form, the mod is too large to load in the CS, and will cause a crash. When doing preliminary work for other parts of the mod, attempts were made to create worldspaces larger than 4 quads, but the heightmap editor usually crashed after trying to have more than 8 quads within the same .esp. Although an 8 or even 16 quad worldspace could be accomplished, it would require making the mod .esm based, and even if completely empty would be well over 60mb, and be very prone to corruption during merging.

 

While .esm allows you to work with a larger mod size, and gives you the ability to work on the mod in sections with a small team, it has one major limitation; you cannot make changes to ANY vanilla or SI space within the .esm file without breaking the world. Meaning that if I added a door, activator, or actor within the .esm that was placed in any vanilla exterior, I would end up breaking the landscape within that world. Although editing of vanilla interiors within a .esm won't cause the same problem, it can still cause serious conflict issues if any other mod makes adjustments to that cell. There's other difficulties which come with a .esm based mod (including missing terrain, problematic form conflicts, data corruption), but we're already getting too far off topic.

 

For a project being done by a single person, you're best off using a .esp, and leaving it to being a small 4 quad worldspace. Not only does this keep you from getting in over your head, but also means that you aren't as plagued with problems that pretty much require knowing what the hell you're doing constantly. Over the course of the last 2 years, we've had several problems which were caused specifically because of using a .esm, which caused significant delay. If you like beating your head against the wall, you're welcome to it. Really though, it's a matter of just getting around to filling those 4 quads with enough content to make your mod worth playing. Empty space doesn't make for interesting gameplay.

[TodaY]

 

While .esm allows you to work with a larger mod size, and gives you the ability to work on the mod in sections with a small team, it has one major limitation; you cannot make changes to ANY vanilla or SI space within the .esm file without breaking the world. Meaning that if I added a door, activator, or actor within the .esm that was placed in any vanilla exterior, I would end up breaking the landscape within that world. Although editing of vanilla interiors within a .esm won't cause the same problem, it can still cause serious conflict issues if any other mod makes adjustments to that cell. There's other difficulties which come with a .esm based mod (including missing terrain, problematic form conflicts, data corruption), but we're already getting too far off topic.

 

 

Ooooh yes I know.... -.-" I'm on the Ulfgard Chronicles team.... We had to convert a previous esp to an esm... it caused Anvil harbour to dissapear, and us to restart all over again o_O

And no, I'm not gonna reupload the pic cuz i'd have to go and look for the drawing in the trash and re-photogrph it (no, i cant draw a new one my only pencil is broken T.T )

[AmpolX]

How about a simple but elegant approach would be to try to increase the look of SI's graphics and aesthetics. Im not talking about texture mods but try to get creative with what can visually be done in-game. Make new skies, change ambient values for the two regions. Really make Mania and Dementia stand out. I personally felt that vanilla SI didn't contrast the two well enough. Once you achieved that, I guess just making each region unique would be a great overhaul.

[TodaY]

How about a simple but elegant approach would be to try to increase the look of SI's graphics and aesthetics. Im not talking about texture mods but try to get creative with what can visually be done in-game. Make new skies, change ambient values for the two regions. Really make Mania and Dementia stand out. I personally felt that vanilla SI didn't contrast the two well enough. Once you achieved that, I guess just making each region unique would be a great overhaul.

Thats exactly what I ment ;D (why didnt I say so - because I didnt know. Sheogorath had to much influence on me). Shame I'm no texturer though