[Concept] Larger world mod

[Linaru]

Hi, i am a modder of sorts tough far from an expert. i have created a few mods but kept them to my self mostly because they lack the polish to be worth anyone's time.

i now have a concept for a mod but due to the size and excessive amount of work my concept would take i wanted to post here and discuss the validity of my mod concept before i began any serious work on it.

Rough Concept:

Basically i want to create a larger version of Skyrim, putting more realistic distances between all of the existing caves and locations and making the wilderness feel more expansive and wild, this would likely mean recreating the entire Skyrim map from scratch as i do not believe there is a way to insert additional space between the already existing world cells and filling in the gaps.

i would prefer to try to make the already existing locations in the Skyrim map be dispersed evenly on the larger map

id like to focus on making the world feel more difficult to travel across (especially as i am a fan of Frostfall), but new spaces would also be a good base for other modder's to add dungeons/caves and quest-lines without cluttering up the map

a few questions id like to be discussed before i make any decisions on if i go through with this mod project:

is such a large mod worth the workload?

would people actually use it or is Skyrim to old to be worth the effort?

How much bigger do you think the world should be made? twice as big? three times as big?

Theoretically should the city's be made bigger too ? or just more wild space between them

as a completely rebuilt world would likely be incompatible with mods like 'open cities' should new and potentially larger versions be be in the open world ?

would the mod need to add more NPCs to fill out the new areas of the world?

i imagine a majority of popular graphical mods would be incompatible with a new world map?
with that in mind should the mod overhaul the worlds graphics? using newer meshes and textures?

or is it better to stick to vanilla graphics and let other mods improve upon the graphics?

is there anything i have overlooked about making the world map bigger?

if i go through with the mod i want to plan it all out in advance.

i would love to hear peoples opinions, particular those of experienced modders who might have some insightful input.

i'm not looking for a 'that sounds like a great idea' i genuinely wish to discuss if a large project like this is viable or if it is just too much work.

Lina Greyfall

[TonyOQuinn]

Seems like a lot of work to me, like "nearly everything in TES5 overhauled." My approach to achieve nearly the same effect would be to make a quest in a new dungeon or island where everything looks normal until you return to Tameriel, suprised to find you and your followers had been shrunk to 25% of normal size. And for some odd reason (yet to be made up) you can no longer fast travel. You can see the effect with player.setscale 0.25. It truly adds about 8 magnitudes of difficulty just moving around.

 

However, I'm not an experienced modder--haven't created any mods near the scale you're considering. So dont let my inexperience deter you. I suggest you draft some help from expert modders to whom you could dole out smaller parts of the big project.

 

P.S. Now this approach could be expanded. Instead of changing the map, you could shrink all objects on the map, npc's, buildings, furniture, etc. Most of the scaling could be done with a pascal script in TES5Edit. Probably just as much work, a long project dealing with object sizes rather than cells and nav meshes.

Edited February 24, 2016 by Tony_OQuinn

[Linaru]

i dont think shrinking the world s objects would have quite the same effect, my goal would be to increase the distances between all the key landmarks filling the gaps with wilderness.

shrinking everything down would result in the landscape being a distorted scale?

 

i realize that this would be a big project.. but i have got way to much free time right now

 

Edit:

i have started working out how the world would be spaced out, ive started splicing up the individual cells of this map:

http://i.imgur.com/VGfxQ4m.jpg

(i linked it rather than img tag because its kind of big)

 

i still need to split it up vertically but it gives a rough idea of how i would space out a larger world map .

Edited February 24, 2016 by Linaru

[Linaru]

After a few hours of work i have thrown together this concept map:

http://i.imgur.com/2wf46AD.jpg

i have marked on it the main city's and drawn out some of the main roads near white-run

 

this gives a much clearer idea of how the map might be.. how far each location is from one another

and a good estimate at how much work it might take.

[SiyuChan]

After a few hours of work i have thrown together this concept map:

http://i.imgur.com/2wf46AD.jpg

i have marked on it the main city's and drawn out some of the main roads near white-run

 

this gives a much clearer idea of how the map might be.. how far each location is from one another

and a good estimate at how much work it might take.

 

3 years later: how's it goin?

 

I've been thinking about making a mod like this myself so I just wanted to see how much it killed all of my predecessors to even try and take on this task~

[Warschack]

Bumbing. Bethesda did a pathetic job on skyrim. If it was up to me, I would have made all the holds separate areas on the size of skyrim at least, like in witcher 3.

I hope someone make proper Skyrim in Mount and Blade: Bannerlord once it releases.

[Beilaig]

Please someone make this mod! I want it badly! It should take me days to travel from one major city to another, not an afternoon or day at most.

[husky92]

Bump?

[NexusComa]

Slow movement speed down to 1/2 and you're done ... I've played Skyrim without fast travel and the map is huge. Even when you use a horse.