Introducing 2 Mods and a Resource - WIP

[worm82075]

#1 - Tamriel Worldspace Complete

 

Has it ever bothered you that NPCs don't have to obey the borders that restrict you? Many times have I been in battle only to have my quarry flee beyond my reach. While turning the borders off can stop that from happening it just opens up other problems. For starters the rest of the worldspace beyond Cyrodiil is massively incomplete and this totally destroys all immersion. If you get past that then you and any NPC can fall off the edge of the world. One way to remedy this is to leave the borders on and move them to the edge of the map. The mod Cyrodiil Border Regions(my inspiration for this mod) did just that, but still NPCs can just waltz off the map and the clincher is that altering the border region alters every single cell in the Tamriel worldspace, not good for compatibility and in fact is a serious issue.

 

I began by altering the aforementioned mod but soon found that it was the wrong approach, but how to do it passively? Then it hit me, something so simple and yet so massive an undertaking that no one has ever considered it, until now. Immensely numerous, repetitive tasks are my specialty, so I set out to place 10x scale collision boxes in all 520 cells surrounding the 14,000+ cells that make up the Tamriel World space. This will keep you and all NPCs (accept Akatosh fliers) on the map and turning the borders off with this mod active will open up the rest of the map to you but will not alter a single cell used in the original game. Complete

 

That still leaves the matter of the rest of the map being incomplete, so the surrounding regions will be completed as follows:

 

1. Unique weather system for each region. Complete

2. Ambient sounds for each region. Complete

3. Finish texturing the incomplete portions of the map. 40% - Skyrim and Hammerfell so far

4. I will make a split version that also adds objects such as trees,rocks and plants. 0%

5. Pathgrids for the remainder of the map. Possibly going to make this an addon as well(depends on compatibility issues)

6. Spawnpoints, split into seperate addons for vanilla, Fran's and MMM to start, with others to follow. 0%

7. I will also be creating new creatures for this mod.

• A re-textured, rescaled Wolf using Cryonaut's Tundra K9 variation Texture that I have dubbed The Jerall Timber Wolf and will be found in Skyrim and the Morrowind Jerall Mountain region. They will only be found in packs of 5 to 10.Complete"
  
• A re-textured, rescaled brown bear that I have name the Jerall grizzly. Not as formidable as the wolf pack but I felt that a snowy mountainous region need a grizzly or two.Complete
  
• This is something people have wanted for a long time and now with the open sea available something of this size is possible. A great white shark that I have made by using a scaled up retextured version of the SB Modders Resource-SaltWaterFish-Sandbarshark.Complete
  
• Will probably be more after I complete the other tasks.
  

This does however create a problem that I must address. With the borders turned off every single world space that uses them will need a collision border replacement. I will address this issue starting with SE World (Shivering Isles) and release it as an addon. Complete

 

Another issue is the Map which must be expanded to encompass the entire worldspace. A prototype is in place but this need has given birth to another mod.

 

 

#2 Oblivion World Map Localized

 

Needing an expanded map for my Tamriel Worldspace Complete mod I set about making one from an existing map. I used Spewboys' Oblivion map and once it was done it didn't look too bad but it wasn't quite right so I decided to make one from scratch. I wanted it to be more accurate than all the other maps I had used previously and to accomplish this, first I had to make a grid. The smallest that I could possibly make each cell and still be able to fit the coordinates inside was 25x25. this translates into an image 3351 wide and 3226 high. Next I changed the height map color masking to be natural looking and captured the screen and cropped out the height map image. Knowing the coordinates at each corner of the resulting images I was able to stretch them to the grid I had created and the collective image displays very accurately.

http://i25.tinypic.com/1y8pi1.jpg

To get the roads just right I was going to need to reference the local maps cell by cell for the best accuracy. However upon looking for them in the BSAs I found that they don't exist, oblivion must generate them dynamically as you play the game. Well no matter I simply generated them myself. When I saw that the result was 256x256 at 256k, I decided to convert them to JPGs and when I did I had an idea. I tried resizeing them as well and found that I could get them down to 25x25 and still keep most of details. You may imagine what I did next, I can tell you tiling 14,000+ images to make one composite image is very time consuming and tedious but the results are amazing.

http://i25.tinypic.com/w7gbo4.jpg

When I generated the local maps used here, I had only the Skyrim region completed so the rest of the map is original. It is incomplete because i decided to complete my re-texturing and create new maps that show this before I spent any more time tiling. I will release this in several forms.

A modder's version

• 1 - playable with grid
  
• 1 - playable without grid
  
• 1 - viewable with grid
  
• 1 - viewable without grid
  

A Player's version

• 1 - playable with structures edited out and water added
  
• 1 - viewable with structures edited outand water added
  
• 1 - playable with roads and cities super imposed onto hieght map
  
• 1 - viewable with roads and cities super imposed onto hieght map
  

#3 A Modders Resource

 

The resulting PSD has great potential as a modders resource and I will be perpetuating this Idea fully.

The resource will be available in PSD format as well as all images that can be created with it.

Some features will include:

• A full worldspace height map
  
• A full worldspace local map
  
• A full worldspace region map
  
• A full catalog of local interior maps
  
• A number of overlays including grid lines,coordinates and cell form ids
  
• A potential for interactiveness with layers for specific mods
  

An example of a mod overlay:Skye Village Final

 

Portion of the map where the mod is located

http://i32.tinypic.com/2r2sohy.jpg

same portion with Cells Altered Overlay

http://i31.tinypic.com/ofji1.jpg

now that area with Structures Overlay

http://i30.tinypic.com/241qikh.jpg

that area now with both Overlays

http://i32.tinypic.com/32zon5z.jpg

 

Comments, suggestions and questions are welcome.

[Vagrant0]

How about a question? When generating local maps, how did you get around the sort of doubling that happens around cell edges. Like for instance, if I have a house on the edge of 0,0 and 0,1 but not actually crossing over into 0,1. The generated local maps will show houses both in 0,0 and 0,1. How did you avoid, or get around that?

[worm82075]

There is some overlapping in the images created. If you crop the lower left hand corner 241x241, they will tile seamlessly.

[worm82075]

Bump~"No News Is Good News" as they say but surely someone has a criticism or a comment, come on I'm a big boy I can take it, take your best shot and try to do some damage huh? Downfalls? Shortcomings? Incompatibilities? Anything?~/Bump

[nosisab]

Bump~"No News Is Good News" as they say but surely someone has a criticism or a comment, come on I'm a big boy I can take it, take your best shot and try to do some damage huh? Downfalls? Shortcomings? Incompatibilities? Anything?~/Bump

 

Good thing you remembered me, as I planned to DL and experiment some things, but in between the life pressures I forgot several things I planned to do, going to the site now :)

 

edit: There are already some public release?

[worm82075]

No public release yet as i am having a problem with land textures. seem that each quad in a cell can only have so many texture layers. when the layers are maxed and the first layer is visible, simply clicking on that texture replaces the original with your new texture. if it is not visable then the quad remains unchanged as you texture all around it and it appears to hover there over your newly textured cell. i cant figure out how to delete textures so i have to resort to overwriting them and this is posing a problem. I can't seem to get it sorted out so I will simply release it as a beta until I do.

 

Release will be in about a week to ten days for the Tamriel Worldspace Complete 0.8 Beta

[nosisab]

No public release yet as i am having a problem with land textures. seem that each quad in a cell can only have so many texture layers. when the layers are maxed and the first layer is visible, simply clicking on that texture replaces the original with your new texture. if it is not visable then the quad remains unchanged as you texture all around it and it appears to hover there over your newly textured cell. i cant figure out how to delete textures so i have to resort to overwriting them and this is posing a problem. I can't seem to get it sorted out so I will simply release it as a beta until I do.

 

Release will be in about a week to ten days for the Tamriel Worldspace Complete 0.8 Beta

 

I can see you were not kidding when said about massive and repetitive work :)

 

Don't need to say as much this work will benefit us modders out there, aways looking ahead for the release.

[worm82075]

As it stands now this mod is at about .6 but due to the lack of interest, production has been halted for the time being while I construct a new Wharehouse for CLShade's Craftybits. When I am done with that i shall return to this project with renewed vigor, regardless of the interest shown in it's completion.