Being a Dragon

[sundawn]

all please bear in mind that first and foremost skyrim is a CONSOLE GAME. It was designed around the capabilites of current gen consoles. That means limited memory, limited video rendering capabilites, loading times from optical disc etc etc.

 

i think 90% of the limitations like: seperate cells for houses, seperate cells for towns etc etc are brought upon us by the limits of console memory and the tight release schedule for holiday season this year.

 

oblivion has no problems whatsoever doing open cities so will skyrim

only a matter of putting it all into the worldcell and rewriting all scripts for quests, npcs etc to use the correct cell

[Sunnie]

all please bear in mind that first and foremost skyrim is a CONSOLE GAME. It was designed around the capabilites of current gen consoles. That means limited memory, limited video rendering capabilites, loading times from optical disc etc etc.

 

i think 90% of the limitations like: seperate cells for houses, seperate cells for towns etc etc are brought upon us by the limits of console memory and the tight release schedule for holiday season this year.

 

oblivion has no problems whatsoever doing open cities so will skyrim

only a matter of putting it all into the worldcell and rewriting all scripts for quests, npcs etc to use the correct cell

I just want to point out that Skyrim and Oblivion are not as closely related as some seem to think. Just because Open Cities work ok for some in Oblivion doesn't mean it will for Skyrim. The game engine is so heavily modified from the FO3/NV engine that that gave it a new name. And don't forget that FO3/NV engine was heavily modified beyond Oblivions engine. I can absolutely say that Skyrims worldspace resources have a much larger footprint than Oblivions did. Also, don't be naive in thinking that all the games cell design revolves around Console hardware limitations, I can guarantee that jamming a larger detailed city full of a ton of AI processing on top of the rendering and processing of surrounding outdoor world space and all the AI for the NPCs and creatures will make for an overall less than desirable experience for the average gaming PC.

[OrphenFire]

I think the best approach would be to just model the buildings from inside the cities into the incomplete spaces of the open world version of the cities. No NPCs, no way to actually land in the city, just model the buildings in there so it will look right. Make an invisible barrier around the fake city so you can't land in there and screw things up. That's my solution.

 

And as for transforming into a dragon inside a city, just don't allow it. Make it a power, perhaps a shout, and if the game detects an attempt to use that power/shout inside a closed city, it simply says, "This power is not allowed while inside a city." Bam. You're welcome.