Rescaling the map

[AgentGrady]

Thousands of towns, huge dungeons and cities that actually look like cities, rather than small towns.

 

THIS. Although this will be a giant pain to do. First off, the actual building size is pretty good. Doubling the size of the buildings and doors would make the game look stupid. The way this is turning out, I would think that the houses would have to be spread out, then the gaps filled in. Or, keep them where they are and fix the seams, then fill in the surrounding space. With a double sized (or even triple sized) Skyrim, the vanilla towns will look even smaller.

 

It isn't necessary to increase the size of buildings, just increase the overall size of the towns.

For instance

 

The size of Whiterun in Skyrim

 

http://images.uesp.net/5/58/SR-map_Whiterun.jpg

 

And here is the map of the city of Daggerfall

 

http://bulk2.destructoid.com/ul/user/3/31886-216058-daggerfallmap1jgjpg-noscale.jpg

Edited December 24, 2011 by AgentGrady

[leptok]

Cities also need 'burbs. Stuff outside the walls and more farms. I'd love to see a farming hold, where the whole area is filled fields. Might be a but boring, but it'd add atmosphere. Plus stealing crops should count as stealing.

[Finkleberry]

I think there would be value even without adding new material to an expanded landscape. If merely walking thirty feet in any direction turns up more things to do then the landscape just becomes a glorified two-dimensional menu for the next quest and loses its mystery. I like the idea of walking for twenty minutes in real time to find the next quest destination (though perhaps not two hours). Better yet, let the player get hungry and tired (and suffer meaningful losses to abilities) so hunting and camping become necessities not afterthoughts. Right now resting and eating are almost pointless features of the game.

 

 

A 1:1 scale would be way too much work if you wanted to do it right, but keep in mind that even if you scale everything up by a factor 2 (the world becomes twice as big), that means you need FOUR times as much content to fill everything. And sure, you could probably fill up a lot of that with generic forest/swamp/tundra/whatever, but as others have pointed out that would just add a lot of pointless travel time, without actually adding much to the game itself.

 

Because of that, I think the biggest strength of a mod like this is the amount of space it creates to actually do stuff with. I'm sure there will be plenty of modders looking for a good place to build their own custom house/dungeon/city/fortress/whatever, and if there was 4 times as much space to work with, they would have a lot less trouble finding a cool place to do their thing without creating any conflicts with existing content. So the rescale mod wouldn't necessarily be great on its own, but it would be an awesome base template for other modders to work with. And the more people would support the rescaled world in stead of the default world, the more awesome the end result would be.

[Edmond Dantes]

I totally support the idea of making Skyrim bigger. Bethesda already did a good job making it "feel" bigger than Cyrodiil, because this time around obstacles in the form of landscapes (like mountaines, rivers, canyons, etc) makes you have to travel around them, giving you more distance to travel than in Oblivion. In Ob you can just walk in a bloody straight line and get to practically anywhere you want in no time :biggrin: Still, I agree that Skyrim could be a little bigger.

 

The game Just Cause 2 comes to mind, it has one of the biggest game world I've ever played. Sure there are many repeating resources, but somehow they manage to keep me exploring it because despite the recycled resources like meshes and textures, they were able to keep the layouts and design of locations diverse enough to keep me interested. I envision Skyrim being recreated the size of Panau islands. Some of the things Bethesda can learn from those fine folks that made Just Cause 2:

 

Big Cities,

and I mean big. Sure, in JC2 you can't enter most buildings, but in terms of creating the illusion that it's actually a world and not a miniature of one, I say it succeed in flying colors. Implications in Skyrim would be to make a large city with many buildings acting just as props with only a few that you can actually enter. I always found it peculiar that no place is off limits to your character. It would make sense to have certain buildings just as props to flesh out the illusion of a large settlements. I mean, a person can't possibly be interested in entering every single building right? Places that you visit are always area of interests (can't speak for the overly obsessed though :laugh: )

 

Interactions can take place in well crafted streets or alleys. Accessible buildings should be reserved for places of interests, like banks, government offices, rich, lavish mansions to break into and steal from, and maybe the houses of a few quest givers. Care could also be given more to the smaller settlements. Just Cause 2's settlements, even the smaller ones, are more than just one or two small hovel or cabin/shack found in the wilderness. I could actually believe that people could live there.

 

Populating the place shouldn't have to be an issue either. We already see a lot of generic characters that don't really serve any real purpose. We could just add more :tongue: Making them feel unique can be done as more and more mods introduce new clothing, armors, and different recolors and retexes of various apparel. Obviously you will eventually see similar NPC's but if care is taken that they're spread out fairly distant from one another, it's acceptable.

 

Better transition between distant mesh and close mesh

Something else JC2 does extremely well. Not only does it have insane draw distances, the transition between long distance mesh and close ones are pretty good. Trees, buildings, and landmarks maintain good detail even at long distance and transitions well as we move closer to it. Implication for Skyrim is pretty limited I'm guessing, as this is perhaps an engine limitation. But, we can always do certain things like increase the quality of long distance mesh and texture, though it would certainly mean making the game a real resource hog.

 

Better modes of transportation

With a larger game world, utilizing various methods of transportation becomes more relevant. I'm personally against the idea of fast travel absolutely everywhere, but, certain locations like major cities, trading hubs, and other prominent locations or landmark should be accessible provided you use the paid services of certain transportation services. You could also make it so that once a person learns a location from someone, then that area is accessible for fast travel, and not before.

 

I envision different methods of transportation like carriage, boats, and maybe air balloons (okay, maybe that's pushing it :laugh:). Another idea I have would be that as you fast travel, your progress is displayed through the map as a moving cursor, and then, randomly, you can get stopped by bandits or wildlife so even fast travel is not perfectly safe. Don't know how feasible this is, but then I've seen modders do some pretty amazing things through scripting, so fingers crossed.

 

To sum it up, it would definitely require a lot of work. My estimate is that the biggest difficulty would involve scripting new gameplay features like the fast travel and transportation modes, and the actual process of building the world and populating it. Most other resources like clothing, armors, unique meshes and high res textures can be integrated with the help and permission of other modders. All this is really just a wish list of mine, but if it can really be done, than I would definitely be in favor for it.

 

I hope whatever vision you have for this mod can be realized. Good luck.

Edited December 25, 2011 by Edmond Dantes

[gigantibyte]

...if the creation kit have random landscape generator....

 

That would be too awesome, even if what it generated was basic. The modder would just need to go in and touch it up. I'm not holding my breath though.

[AgentGrady]

I think there would be value even without adding new material to an expanded landscape. If merely walking thirty feet in any direction turns up more things to do then the landscape just becomes a glorified two-dimensional menu for the next quest and loses its mystery. I like the idea of walking for twenty minutes in real time to find the next quest destination (though perhaps not two hours).

 

Agreed nearby locations should taken around 30 minutes to get to without using fast travel. Areas that are farther away should take hours or even days to walk to. With this and more fast travel options would make fast travel more useful and necessary.

 

Let the player get hungry and tired (and suffer meaningful losses to abilities) so hunting and camping become necessities not afterthoughts. Right now resting and eating are almost pointless features of the game.

 

I don't know about hunger but I think that when the players stamina (fatigue) bar drops to zero the player should collapse and if there are enemies nearby then the player should die.

[AgentGrady]

quote name='Edmond Dantes' timestamp='1324784267' post='4145508']

I totally support the idea of making Skyrim bigger. Bethesda already did a good job making it "feel" bigger than Cyrodiil, because this time around obstacles in the form of landscapes (like mountaines, rivers, canyons, etc) makes you have to travel around them, giving you more distance to travel than in Oblivion. In Ob you can just walk in a bloody straight line and get to practically anywhere you want in no time :biggrin: Still, I agree that Skyrim could be a little bigger.

 

The game Just Cause 2 comes to mind, it has one of the biggest game world I've ever played. Sure there are many repeating resources, but somehow they manage to keep me exploring it because despite the recycled resources like meshes and textures, they were able to keep the layouts and design of locations diverse enough to keep me interested. I envision Skyrim being recreated the size of Panau islands. Some of the things Bethesda can learn from those fine folks that made Just Cause 2:

 

Agreed but I'm think more in terms of Daggerfall which is bigger than just cause 2.

 

http://unrealitymag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/large-video-game-worlds2.jpg

 

http://www.jceason.dircon.co.uk/dagger/graphics/province/daggerfallmap.gif

 

http://www.uesp.net/dagger/images/dagmap.gif

[AgentGrady]

...if the creation kit have random landscape generator....

 

That would be too awesome, even if what it generated was basic. The modder would just need to go in and touch it up. I'm not holding my breath though.

 

Well lets hope that it does and if not hopefully there could a way round this.

 

Big Cities,

Sure, in JC2 you can't enter most buildings, but in terms of creating the illusion that it's actually a world and not a miniature of one, I say it succeed in flying colors. Implications in Skyrim would be to make a large city with many buildings acting just as props with only a few that you can actually enter. I always found it peculiar that no place is off limits to your character. It would make sense to have certain buildings just as props to flesh out the illusion of a large settlements. I mean, a person can't possibly be interested in entering every single building right? Places that you visit are always area of interests (can't speak for the overly obsessed though :laugh: )

 

Interactions can take place in well crafted streets or alleys. Accessible buildings should be reserved for places of interests, like banks, government offices, rich, lavish mansions to break into and steal from, and maybe the houses of a few quest givers. Care could also be given more to the smaller settlements. Just Cause 2's settlements, even the smaller ones, are more than just one or two small hovel or cabin/shack found in the wilderness. I could actually believe that people could live there.

 

Yes you shouldn’t be able to enter every building but you should be able to enter most. The interiors of most of the generic houses could be randomly generated\taken from other houses.

 

This was done in Daggerfall by having a message that said "This house has nothing of value" every time you tried to enter a building you couldn't.

 

Populating the place shouldn't have to be an issue either. We already see a lot of generic characters that don't really serve any real purpose. We could just add more :tongue: Making them feel unique can be done as more and more mods introduce new clothing, armors, and different recolors and retexes of various apparel. Obviously you will eventually see similar NPC's but if care is taken that they're spread out fairly distant from one another, it's acceptable.

 

Yes generic NPCs should be generated\made to fill up town and make them fill more life like. You should also be able to ask them for directions and other such stuff.

 

Quest markers should also be eliminated so the player would have to ask for directions in the local urban centre in order to find the building were the quest giver\objective is. The player would also have to take notes or pay close attention to their journal for places that are further away.

 

With a larger game world, utilizing various methods of transportation becomes more relevant. I'm personally against the idea of fast travel absolutely everywhere, but, certain locations like major cities, trading hubs, and other prominent locations or landmark should be accessible provided you use the paid services of certain transportation services. You could also make it so that once a person learns a location from someone, then that area is accessible for fast travel, and not before.

 

I envision different methods of transportation like carriage, boats, and maybe air balloons (okay, maybe that's pushing it :laugh:). Another idea I have would be that as you fast travel, your progress is displayed through the map as a moving cursor, and then, randomly, you can get stopped by bandits or wildlife so even fast travel is not perfectly safe. Don't know how feasible this is, but then I've seen modders do some pretty amazing things through scripting, so fingers crossed.

 

This is what I was talking about with the different fas travel methods in Daggerfall. Horse, Ship and foot should all be options for fast travel.

 

All cities, towns, houses, temples and most dungeons should be available to fast travel though. Maps could be found that show the locations of the other dungeons.

 

Paid transportation to areas that you have not discovered as you suggested would also be a good idea.

 

To sum it up, it would definitely require a lot of work. My estimate is that the biggest difficulty would involve scripting new gameplay features like the fast travel and transportation modes, and the actual process of building the world and populating it. Most other resources like clothing, armors, unique meshes and high res textures can be integrated with the help and permission of other modders. All this is really just a wish list of mine, but if it can really be done, than I would definitely be in favor for it.

 

I hope whatever vision you have for this mod can be realized. Good luck.

 

Thank you for suggestions and your time.

 

I also hope that this mod can be realised to, it would bring the game back to its roots and as well as making it deeper and add a lot more content.

[apanthropy]

Just curious if anyone is still planning on working on this mod, or if there's another one being planned somewhere else at all? I've been very interested in a mod like this and wanted to know if anyone out there was still planning on doing a project like this.

[gurugeorge]

Thought I'd necro this as it's still an interesting topic for some players. I recently came across this webpage where the guy had a project of scaling up Cyrodiil in Oblivion. No idea whether that project is still going or not, but I think it's the sort of thing that would be required.

 

"Realism" is a great thing in games. My game is chock full of the "realism" mods like hunger, thirst, and I've slowed the time scale down a lot, etc., etc. It makes for a sense of deep immersion, where you feel you're actually "there", and that in itself (taken along with modding the game for "realism" in combat, etc., so your character really is quite weak to start with, and the world very dangerous) makes for a special type of roleplaying gameplay all its own.

 

But you don't necessarily want 1:1 realism, any more than you necessarily want to be able to walk and run at a "normal" human pace. What you want (or what I prefer) is something that's somewhat compressed in space and time and power-level (e.g. stamina), so you're somewhat heroic, more heroic than you are in real life. You just want it to be not as time-space--ability-compressed as an action game, which is virtually what Bethesda have turned the Elder Scrolls game into. Not that that makes for a bad game, it's still a fun game of its kind, but it's drifted a bit too far from the old skool CRPG feel for my taste. And sense of scale is a part of that. I think Morrowind had a pretty decent sense of scale about it, certainly better than Oblivion and much, much better than Skyrim, which feels miniscule, like you take a couple of steps and you're in another town. It's almost comical, tbqh.

 

So the upshot is, I think both Oblivion and Skyrim would benefit greatly from having the same amount of content that they have, but just STRETCHED OUT A BIT, to the level of Morrowind. Here's a Morrowind mod where the modders are trying to recreate Cyrodiil to the scale of Morrowind, where they say Cyrodiil in Oblivion is 1.5 to Morrowind's 2.0. I should think the compression of Skyrim relative to Cyrodiil is probably a bit more, so twice the size would be about right, to fit in with Morrowind.

 

Just stretching the damn thing out a bit would work wonders, I think. And if the first guy above's algorithms could be made to work for this project, and then buildings and things resized to normal scale (and the slightly stretched-out cities filled with some "dummy" buildings perhaps), that would probably do the trick.

Edited December 4, 2012 by gurugeorge