Better Cities Modularity

[Vorians]

well ...what I have in mind for the near future is creating somekind of "crossover" mods that will combine Better Cities with our under the sign of th dragon mods..using both as masterfiles....this will include different kinds of "city life" as children, guilds, trade, industry etc...more interaction and repeatable quests than real adventures though...

having just the merged versions in this case would be really helpful for me...

 

cheers

 

Ah that sounds good, and it's pleasing to hear that less modularity appeals to your plans too.

[Marie46]

I love Better Cities and i think it is save bet to say leave the modules aside for the future.

They all stand out in quality and for me there is nothing else that quite compares.

Good luck everyone!

[iamsaige]

I tend to be all or nothing with City mods. It's nice to have options, but it can get to be too many options. I think you should do what's best for you guys, as someone said, there will always be somebody that hates it.

[Ferryt]

I voted "Yes", "Absolutely", and "No", in that order, even though I don't even use Better Cities. Allow me to explain.

 

I want to use Better Cities but I've been afraid of mod incompatibility with it. I don't use any of the sweeping physical overhalls to Cyrodiil because of this. I play this game primarily for the role-playing and immersion, both of which require the addition of a large number of mods that just affect small parts of the world. I know, for instance, that some of the mods I use will conflict with any mod that extensively alters the external environment, so I can't use something like Natural Environments, which is another mod I'd dearly love to be able to use. At this time I'm just not a good enough modder (or fast enough, which is more to the point, I suppose) to beat incompatible mods into compliance with something like Better Cities or Natural Environments.

 

That said, I prefer the totally integrated approach. If Better Cities offered a wealth of quest and role-playing opportunities I might consider giving up on the plethora of smaller mods that are available which alter the same places you do, which is one reason I've kept an eye on the development of your mod. It would be nice if you had an army of modders to do patches for every little mod that has 22 downloads, total, but that's not a reasonable expectation. In the meantime, I'll watch your progress on this project. If you start leaning toward the concept of full integration of the current modules, and give me more interesting things to actually do within the Better Cities environment you'll definitely have a new convert. From what I've seen of it so far, though, I have to admit that I probably won't like what you've done with Bruma, just as a number of other people have mentioned. That's a strike against Better Cities, but I could overlook that if you "redeem" the mod in enough places, elsewhere. That means adding more dynamic content (i.e. things to do rather than just things to see).

[prettyfly]

I voted for merged files. I use all the cities anyway and I look forward greatly to the potential future with the merged files.

 

Still, wouldn't it be possible to maintain an old version of Better Cities that has the seperate city files that are currently available. All that it would need is patch updates, and I imagine that would cater for the minority who like the seperate city modularity (they obviously wouldn't get all the additions of future versions with merged city files, but thats the compromise, right?).

 

BTW, whats happened in Bruma that has annoyed so many people?

[mhahn123]

After using Better Cities for quite some time I honestly love most of what it does. I am quite happy with all of the outlying cities and their exisiting patches for Unique Landscapes. Cheydinhal in particular alongside Cheydinhal Falls. I even like the idea of having the option for open cities on all of them. Skingrad in particular always vexed me with having the main road pass through the city gates. Why force me to suffer through two loading screens if I'm only interested in passing the city by? So yeah, that option sounds great. Can't help wondering if the same mods that are currently patched to work with BC would be patched to work with their open city counterparts. If that is the case I'm all for it.

 

I would be opposed to losing modularity in the case of the IC, at least in it's present form. Looking at other posts here it's clearly a matter of personal taste. Quite frankly I like some of your IC districts but not others. One major downfall for me is waterfront district.....it needs the same treatment you've given to the other port cities...namely docks, ships, shops, NPCs, light on the lighthouse. I've had to eliminate your version in favor of a smaller mod which at least partially addresses that aspect. Arboretum for me was way overdone, so again use another mod that I feel is better. Options to remove some of the overabundant vegetation would fix the problem, you have an option to remove the hotel. I loved the waterfront tunnel and the Arcane U is my favorite.

 

Guess what I'm saying is that if you updated the waterfront and added more options to remove excess materials, I would wholeheartedly vote for losing modularity on IC also. While we're on the subject of IC....would it be too much to ask for city defences (wall archers) here also? Every other city has them.

 

Anyway...don't want this to come off wrong. I love you guys and all the fantastic work that you've done. Just wanted to point out some things. Whatever changes you make I'll be sure to download and try it. Just hope you give these ideas some consideration.

[ArmeniusLOD]

...

BTW, whats happened in Bruma that has annoyed so many people?

The problem I have with Bruma, at least, is that the residential area around the chapel is WAY too overcrowded. It is really difficult to navigate back there and in my experience is as much of, if not more of, a framerate killer as the IC Market District.

[Vorians]

That said, I prefer the totally integrated approach. If Better Cities offered a wealth of quest and role-playing opportunities I might consider giving up on the plethora of smaller mods that are available which alter the same places you do, which is one reason I've kept an eye on the development of your mod. It would be nice if you had an army of modders to do patches for every little mod that has 22 downloads, total, but that's not a reasonable expectation. In the meantime, I'll watch your progress on this project. If you start leaning toward the concept of full integration of the current modules, and give me more interesting things to actually do within the Better Cities environment you'll definitely have a new convert. From what I've seen of it so far, though, I have to admit that I probably won't like what you've done with Bruma, just as a number of other people have mentioned. That's a strike against Better Cities, but I could overlook that if you "redeem" the mod in enough places, elsewhere. That means adding more dynamic content (i.e. things to do rather than just things to see).

 

My hope is indeed to increase the dialogue and minor quests available in BC as much as possible, it just takes time, and concentrating purely on any single aspect of the mod gets tiring :)

 

I am bemused by the increasing number of comments relating to disliking Bruma. Could more people elaborate on their reasoning?

 

I think it quite funny that a potential dislike of one single city (even though you haven't visited BC Bruma in-game yet) failed to be redeemed by the existence of the other six cities and 11 IC Districts!

 

After using Better Cities for quite some time I honestly love most of what it does. I am quite happy with all of the outlying cities and their exisiting patches for Unique Landscapes. Cheydinhal in particular alongside Cheydinhal Falls. I even like the idea of having the option for open cities on all of them. Skingrad in particular always vexed me with having the main road pass through the city gates. Why force me to suffer through two loading screens if I'm only interested in passing the city by? So yeah, that option sounds great. Can't help wondering if the same mods that are currently patched to work with BC would be patched to work with their open city counterparts. If that is the case I'm all for it.

 

I would be opposed to losing modularity in the case of the IC, at least in it's present form. Looking at other posts here it's clearly a matter of personal taste. Quite frankly I like some of your IC districts but not others. One major downfall for me is waterfront district.....it needs the same treatment you've given to the other port cities...namely docks, ships, shops, NPCs, light on the lighthouse. I've had to eliminate your version in favor of a smaller mod which at least partially addresses that aspect. Arboretum for me was way overdone, so again use another mod that I feel is better. Options to remove some of the overabundant vegetation would fix the problem, you have an option to remove the hotel. I loved the waterfront tunnel and the Arcane U is my favorite.

 

Guess what I'm saying is that if you updated the waterfront and added more options to remove excess materials, I would wholeheartedly vote for losing modularity on IC also. While we're on the subject of IC....would it be too much to ask for city defences (wall archers) here also? Every other city has them.

 

Anyway...don't want this to come off wrong. I love you guys and all the fantastic work that you've done. Just wanted to point out some things. Whatever changes you make I'll be sure to download and try it. Just hope you give these ideas some consideration.

 

The trouble with the Waterfront is that for many, it's FPS-heavy even when vanilla. We could add a flame to the lighthouse easily enough, and we have a tavern and a couple of new shops, plus the Gold Horse Courier integrated from Delivery Job adds a new business outlet. Ship meshes have a big impact on FPS, so adding more could be a problem. Plenty of new NPCs are added from all the new houses and the church, plus the IC Tunnel (admittedly still partly WIP) is meant to be an extension to the Waterfront, adding several more NPCs buying/selling/begging, plus the Imperial Guard-controlled port authorities offering sailing services. What more shops would you want on the Waterfront anyway?

 

A number of people have commented that the Arboretum is overdone, I suppose we could add a script to toggle off most of the plants and animals, if desired enough.

 

...

BTW, whats happened in Bruma that has annoyed so many people?

The problem I have with Bruma, at least, is that the residential area around the chapel is WAY too overcrowded. It is really difficult to navigate back there and in my experience is as much of, if not more of, a framerate killer as the IC Market District.

 

FPS killer, yes it can be for some. Hard to navigate though, this I find bemusing, as there's a clear path between the buildings circling around the back of the chapel. Yes it's more densely packed with buildings, but the route should still be clear and easy to follow.

[Ferryt]

My hope is indeed to increase the dialogue and minor quests available in BC as much as possible, it just takes time, and concentrating purely on any single aspect of the mod gets tiring :)

• Oh, I understand completely. Plus, I suppose it's not only easier, but more satisfying in the short term to create eye candy than to go through the long process of constructing and testing a well-conceived quest. I'm probably the exception, rather than the rule, in that I have to weigh, very carefully, the merits of any mod that's going to chew up my fps. I play this game on the only computer I have, which is a laptop that really isn't designed for gaming, although it does rather well with multimedia (which is what it was designed for). Even something as the new inn that Ruined Tail's Tale introduced to Weye dropped my fps down so low inside the inn that I actually thought, at times, the game had frozen up on me. Vanilla Oblivion, with nothing but patches installed, even has places, like the Leyawiin Mages Guild, where I never go because of similar issues. I have to play with grass toggled off. That's how serious of an issue fps is for me. Yes, I know. Get a real gaming computer. I'm working on it, but at the moment money is tight.

 

I am bemused by the increasing number of comments relating to disliking Bruma. Could more people elaborate on their reasoning?

 

I think it quite funny that a potential dislike of one single city (even though you haven't visited BC Bruma in-game yet) failed to be redeemed by the existence of the other six cities and 11 IC Districts!

• See my above comment. The main problem I hear about BC Bruma is the frame rate hit. I don't know about difficult of navigation. I can't imagine that would really be a problem ... except for people like me who already have low frame rates and an additional hit might make navigation in tight places all but impossible. When you try to make a 15° turn and your next frame has you rotated 180° it can get pretty frustrating, and that's the kind of thing I can already experience in Vanilla Oblivion in a few select places.
   
  So if it's modular I can just leave Bruma out and enjoy the rest of it, right? Sure. Except that I'm one of the people who want a fully integrated BC, with quests that could span all of Cyrodiil, if that's the way you want to structure them, and leaving out even a single city would break any quest that relies upon it. If that's going to be the case, then I'll simply have to wait until I have a computer strong enough to run BC. I can't possibly be the only one with this dilemma, but you're not creating mods for a tiny minority. You have to try to satisfy the largest proportion of your user base that you can. I can live with or without modularity, since, for me, it's going to be a package deal, one way or the other and I'll just try to find a way to smush incompatible mods into it by myself. I know enough about the CS to at least be able to reposition things.

 

The trouble with the Waterfront is that for many, it's FPS-heavy even when vanilla.

• Curious. Me, with a computer that chokes on games like Oblivion and Borderlands, as much as love both (and refuse to give them up) and I've never noticed an fps hit on the Waterfront. I'd love to see a real light in the lighthouse, as well as all the other things you've already done for it, with the IC Tunnel being something this game has needed due to the total break in immersion I get from just blipping to the Temple District. What I'd like to see, I think, is for BC Waterfront to "dirty up" the little settlement out back of the wall, if you haven't already done that. It's supposed to be a slum, but except for the distinctly low-class look of the buildings, it doesn't strike me as one. I know slums from real life. That isn't one. It should be larger, too. There's a lot of unused space back there, and it's hard to believe that a supposedly vibrant metropolis like IC would have only a handful of houses in its slum and only a couple handfuls of people who live there.

 

A number of people have commented that the Arboretum is overdone, I suppose we could add a script to toggle off most of the plants and animals, if desired enough.

• I think this is actually a good idea in every location where you've added a lot of non-essential content (meaning just pure eye-candy), but if possible it shouldn't be all or nothing. I know that's a big order to give people options like like and it wouldn't be a deal-breaker for me if you mod didn't have that utility.

[mhahn123]

@ Vorians: Admittedly It's been a while since I used the BC Waterfront so had forgotten about Delivery Job. As far as shops go I guess it's probably OK. One thing that I really liked from another mod (Reaper's Waterfront) was the addition of a mortuary and a small tweak to the graveyard, which seemed rather fitting for that area. For the ships and docks....could it be done as strictly another optional item? I fully understand the FPS issue... though it seems to be different for everyone so make the docks optional for those whos pc can handle it. I've tested literally every waterfront mod that did ships and docks..even RA Waterfront which has a crazy amount, with no real drop in FPS.

 

Oddly enough one of the only areas I had extreme problems with was UL Aspen Wood, the area near the guard tower just kills my pc for some reason. Maybe because of the Village mod in that same area. Anyway if you decide to look at this as a possible optional item, RA Waterfront might be a good one to borrow resources from. It's all about dock expansion and ships, even a nice twist involving Dark Brotherhood ships that could be turned into a waterfront quest.

 

Hope some of this is helpful.

 

 

P.S. What are your thoughts about the wall archers for IC?