amblingalong Posted January 18, 2012 Share Posted January 18, 2012 Added some proposals for additions in solitude: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AssyMcGee Posted January 19, 2012 Author Share Posted January 19, 2012 I do like the areas you have as possible expansions for Solitude, those are pretty much the areas I had in mind too. The only bits of open land in the city haha. It just seems like Solitude should be crammed and have very little open space in it because lets face it, when you build a city on a stone arc open land is a precious commodity. Save for the area in front of the blue palace. Perhaps a sort of flower garden and some statues would fit nicely in there, maybe a couple trees. The rest of the city should really be crammed, sort of like Skingrad. And I do like the idea of the frozen watermill in Windhelm. That did look cool in the concept art, and I think the city in general needs more icicles hanging off of everything. Also a good area to expand into would be to the left of the market, and along the river banks in front of the market district. There's a little bit of extra room to maybe move the walls out a little and add a few more buildings. As for Markarth that one would really be one of the hardest to expand on. That is if we go up with it anymore. That city might be best if we go down. It is Dwemer after all. Someone else posted something about "fixing up" the warrens. That whole area could go down a lot further and be it's own little city under Markarth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vaknathi Posted January 20, 2012 Share Posted January 20, 2012 (edited) Pretty new to the forums, but I have enjoyed your thread and thought I'd put some suggestions in. I'm not much of a modder myself, only really having done interiors in the Morrowind Construction Kit and FO3 GECK (got so p'ed off with the ragdoll in Oblivion (and the over-all boring-ness of the game) that I gave up before I bothered going into the construction set, thankfully it has seemed more stable/less-erratic since, even if I still get cheesed off at it from time-to-time) I'm absolutely hopeless at landscape editing but I'd be glad to help out in minor ways if you need an extra hand distributing clutter or the like. Well, ideas:# Remember that the 5 big cities are in their own cells, so theoretically can be expanded indefinitely within those cells so long as one didn't mind a slight discongruity between the city cell and the outside world. In Whiterun's case this is not so useful, as you can see out from the cell into the surrounding area, but there are a few possibilities in the others. *In Solitude one could have a street running along the wall beside the Winking Skeever along the wall of Castle Dour, and possibly also the other direction, beside where the execution platform is, perhaps going down to the market area (effectively making a whole new street) This is similar to what is suggested in the picture "Solitude 2" from amblingalong. The buildings already there in vanilla could possibly just be moved in slightly to facilitate this. I'd agree with keeping the area between Castle Dour and the Blue Palace no, or at least not much, wider than it is, being set on the arch and all, but making it two proper streets perhaps, by putting buildings along some or all of the southern wall as well as filling in at least some of those empty spaces would add a lot to the place. An outer suburb and/or farms along the road fron the gates to the stables and down along the river inlet are practicallya must. *In Windhelm a new area could be added to the west of the cemetary and market areas, possibly more stores as well as houses. I'm less confident that it could be done neatly in the Stone Quarter or whatever the posher part of the city is called, though, possibly an alley between Hjerim and the house south of it, before you go up the steps. Similarly, an alley along the northern wall of the Grey Quarter could lead to another section full of tenements and boarding houses. I've wanted, since I first saw it, to clean up the top areas of Windhelm, I think it's daft it should be so run down. It should be in contrast to the Grey Quarter, not practically in contradiction to it. Leaving aside the subjective subject of any possible Nord racism, the Grey Quarter is a poor immigrant district, and should be as grotty as possibly, a skooma den, maybe some graffiti and a gang of Dunmer youths hastling the guard on the port gate, that kind of thing. I do think the ideas for the port are good, maybe, as it's supposed to be an Argonian area, a few shacks on stilts in the water itself around the edges might be a good idea. I'm in two minds about having buildings on the bridge entering the city, but it might look ok, like medieval London Bridge. There definitely need to be more farms outside, along the road to Kynesgrove and up to the mill on the hill. *Markath is a tough one; the plan for expanding the Warrens sound great, maybe, perhaps, making it more warrenish. It could be made practically an entire undercity. Would it be possible, does anyone think, to have a thieves guild cell or the like set up somewhere down there once the Markarth job has been done for that faction? As for outside expansion, upwards sounds great, but there are also corridors like the one the Talos Shrine is in, and a few dead-end balconies, all of which could have a door or two put in them for a bit of extra housing and shops. *In Riften, another canal would be awesome. I'm not certain how it would work, but is there any reason it couldn't go under some of the houses and come out the back? Even just making a row of houses along the south-east wall behing the gardens of the vanilla houses would improve things immensely. Most of all, I think the area around the bottom of the canal needs to be utilised more, and there is no reason why all of the Ratway areas can't be expanded. I do think all these 5 cities need another tavern/inn, except perhaps Markath, in keeping with the idea of the Silver-Blood monopoly, there could instead be a drinking house down in the Warrens, perhaps around a bear-baiting or cock-fighting pit. There maybe there could also be a bare-knuckle boxing ring down in the Ratways in Riften, they wouldn't need to be scripted, just suggestive, a ring, some seating, a few cages, there are one or two in some of the bandit caves, it seems a bit daft not to have similar activities in towns, at least the seedier ones. If any of those ideas appeal, I'd be happy to try and draw something up to make them a bit clearer. If not, I still encourage you all to continue with your endeavour, especially once the CK is out, and will watch your progress with interest. Edited January 20, 2012 by vaknathi Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MajikMoshos Posted January 20, 2012 Share Posted January 20, 2012 Riften has a second Inn that isn't open to the player because the owner's a...free spirit, though a certain quest (or the player's charms, wink wink) could get them a cheap/free room per night. Whiterun could have a second 'inn' located in the outer section, perhaps a bed in the barn offered to any willing farmhands (Work = Bed) or, in a commons house with others working to earn their keep. Twas I who suggested the warrens expansion. I was looking forward to finding a slum underneath Markarth and all I got was two homeless people and eight boring rooms. Makes the whole 'Blood and Silver' thing lose its weight. I like vaknathi's idea of a seedy drinking house in the warrens. Let's say the silver blood inn makes you pay 20 gold for a room because they're a bunch of theiving bastards, then this Inn would only make you pay 5 but put you in a small cramped rooms with a half dozen other bums. But when you wake up, your shoes are gone. Good luck finding them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AssyMcGee Posted January 21, 2012 Author Share Posted January 21, 2012 Riften has a second Inn that isn't open to the player because the owner's a...free spirit, though a certain quest (or the player's charms, wink wink) could get them a cheap/free room per night. Whiterun could have a second 'inn' located in the outer section, perhaps a bed in the barn offered to any willing farmhands (Work = Bed) or, in a commons house with others working to earn their keep. Twas I who suggested the warrens expansion. I was looking forward to finding a slum underneath Markarth and all I got was two homeless people and eight boring rooms. Makes the whole 'Blood and Silver' thing lose its weight. I like vaknathi's idea of a seedy drinking house in the warrens. Let's say the silver blood inn makes you pay 20 gold for a room because they're a bunch of theiving bastards, then this Inn would only make you pay 5 but put you in a small cramped rooms with a half dozen other bums. But when you wake up, your shoes are gone. Good luck finding them. I really like that idea about your shoes being gone. That would fit in well. Perhaps there can be a random chance of a piece of your equipment being stolen in the night and you have to find the thief. You could try the guards and maybe they will help, depending on speech skill, or maybe they will tell you warrens trash isn't their concern. All in all I agree that the warrens were really disappointing. As for Riften, I didn't really mind it the way it was. I didn't think it was to bad, but more canals would be really cool. Another thing I'd personally love is for that boarded up gate out of the city to be opened. I have no idea why that's even like that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deleted2558536User Posted January 21, 2012 Share Posted January 21, 2012 Glad to see this project has continued. I would love to see any type of development with the cities. Adding slum districts to the wall cities, Solitude, Windhelm, Markarth, Riften and Whiterun, and adding walls as shops to non walled cities. The small cities need to be enlarged to the same size of current large cities and the large cities just need to grow. There doesn't seem to be any natural growth. If you need help with city placement and growth I would be happy to help. However there is a difference to real-world urban sprawl and Skyrim urban-sprawl. :P Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
huntsman2310 Posted January 21, 2012 Share Posted January 21, 2012 I'd like to see an entire underground area built inside the arch of Solitude. Could be Solitude's very own Ratway. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nyhilisa Posted January 21, 2012 Share Posted January 21, 2012 Of the 3 pages I read, I love almost every idea here. And from a purely player standpoint, imo skyrim could stand to LOSE some of the voice acting. I get where beth came from in wanting to stand out, and adding to teh uniqueness, but even with the current number of npcs voice overlap is a huge issue. At least, in whiterun. Sort of a side note, but I wish someone would make a mod converting some of the voice acting to text - maybe if they were feeling ambitious, a complete overhaul of the journal, adding something similar to morrowinds more personalized journal & player 'thoughts', things npcs say etc about notable locations. Would help with immersion, and frankly cut down on the overlap thing. Anyway, my point when I started rambling - if someone were to do this, I at least would be quite happy if the npcs only had limited voice acting. Would perhaps be a bit of a reduction in 'quality', but it would allow for better cities and less frustration. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AssyMcGee Posted January 21, 2012 Author Share Posted January 21, 2012 A Solitude Ratway would be interesting, but in my mind not very feasible. Here's why: Solitude is located on a large stone arch, the only thing holding the city up is the integrity of the arch which has somehow managed to last hundreds, if not thousands of years without eroding into the sea. I think the last thing the builders of the city would have done would have been to start cracking into the arch and possibly caused it to lose some of its structural integrity. I think the best place for a slum in Solitude is somehow situated around the dock, and build up the harbor more. There would be homes for sailors, warehouse workers, fishermen and just the poor. Wealthy citizens wouldn't want to live next to smelly barrels of fish, creaking old boats and loud drunk sailors. There would be no walls here, the poor didn't get walls. They were lucky to get a home. Even if they have to share it with another family. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PaulH Posted January 21, 2012 Share Posted January 21, 2012 If Its too awkward to build above ground, what about underground ie a big sewer system. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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