Issgard

[PrometheusTS]

I have posted a list of some brainstormed quest ideas on the main Issgard forums, if you want to contribute with your own ideas feel free to post there your possible ideas for side quests, ( don't post megaquests or main quests ) and use in case the spoiler and the format sugested there thanks :smile:....

[Kraeten]

I am also starting to think of interiors right now , I have not yet tested vanilla ones , but if I have to make each interior. For each home I did I will take anoer set of months to complete that stage , wich I would like to shorten.

Now this might lead to an approximation of the exterior to interior matching.... How much of an issue would that be ?

 

Retextured vanilla interiors would probably work well enough. The developers themselves didn't exactly make their own interiors match the exeriors in the first place.

[firepower02]

Will there be an underwater kingdom underneaath it?

[PrometheusTS]

No.

[Witcher5688]

It's just awesome, looks like a 2nd falskaar :D

Can't wait to see new armors, weapons and progress on the fantastic world of this mod...

You would get +10 kudos for this work from me, but there's that limit of 1 :-/

[PrometheusTS]

It's just awesome, looks like a 2nd falskaar :D

Can't wait to see new armors, weapons and progress on the fantastic world of this mod...

You would get +10 kudos for this work from me, but there's that limit of 1 :-/

Whats looking like that other mod?

[taleden]

 

It's just awesome, looks like a 2nd falskaar :D

Can't wait to see new armors, weapons and progress on the fantastic world of this mod...

You would get +10 kudos for this work from me, but there's that limit of 1 :-/

Whats looking like that other mod?

 

 

I think he meant the scale and general quality of it; not many new lands mods really offer professional-level quality.

 

That said, even though I did enjoy Falskaar, I hope Issgard is scaled a little better, geographically. Falskaar was physically something like half the size of Skyrim, but had the locations and content of maybe one vanilla hold, so everything was super spread out with a lot of empty same-ness in between. So I hope you aim for a location-density more like Wyrmstooth, Solstheim and Skyrim proper; the land doesn't have to be geographilly big to be impressive, I think it's more important for it to feel "full" and populated.

[PrometheusTS]

 

 

It's just awesome, looks like a 2nd falskaar :D

Can't wait to see new armors, weapons and progress on the fantastic world of this mod...

You would get +10 kudos for this work from me, but there's that limit of 1 :-/

Whats looking like that other mod?

 

I think he meant the scale and general quality of it; not many new lands mods really offer professional-level quality.

 

That said, even though I did enjoy Falskaar, I hope Issgard is scaled a little better, geographically. Falskaar was physically something like half the size of Skyrim, but had the locations and content of maybe one vanilla hold, so everything was super spread out with a lot of empty same-ness in between. So I hope you aim for a location-density more like Wyrmstooth, Solstheim and Skyrim proper; the land doesn't have to be geographilly big to be impressive, I think it's more important for it to feel "full" and populated.

 

Comparison

of Falskaar , Wyrmstooth , Moonpath to Elseweyr , Skyrim and Issgard

Dimensions:

 

The size in pixels of the image will determine the size of the world in Oblivion/Skyrim. The game is built up by quadrants, with 32 x 32 cells in each. One quadrant is 1024 x 1024 pixels. As a reference, Skyrim is 3808 x 3008 pixels (not all of which is playable). A world can be up to 16 x 16 quadrants (16384 x 16384 pix) in size , but due to a bug the maximum designeable dimensions are 128x128 cells ( just as Issgard map) .

Every cell is 4096 game units wide 70 game units are equal to 1 meter thus one cell is 58,5 meters wide.

Skyrim imports worldspaces as square RAW images 1024 pixel wide. The area resulting

from a 1024x1024 pixels RAW is called “quad”: a quad is composed of 32x32 cells thus a quad is 1.872 meters wide.

That said Let's make a comparison with Falskaar , Wyrmstooth and Issgard in terms of dimensions .

Falskaar

The map size is 2048x2048 pixels , but only a small part looks like playable in particular the actual Island size is ranging from -21 to 21 x and -32 to 1 in y so a rough 43x33 cells more or less ;

Now, considering every game pixel is 1.8 m and so every cell holds 32 pixels the resulting landscape dimensions are : 32x1.8 x 43

Wyrmstooth I counted more or less the playable area as it lacked a region weather border to judge so I roughly checked the sea borders of the island that ranges so approximatively from -15/12 y to -15/25 x so roughly a playable area of 40x27 cells

I couln't compare Moonpath as seems to be an interior so I couln't really check the size of cells.Moonpath is so instead a series of interior cells linked together to give the feeling of beeing like exteriors , more or less I could count 12 interiors so it could be considered the smallest of all .

 

Skyrim is 3800x3008 pixels and playable space area but not all is playable 6946 m x 5499 m

Falskaar is 2048x2048 pixels and 1376x1056 pixels of playable space with a real 2515 m x 1930 m

Wyrmstooth is 2048x2048 pixels and 1280x864 pixels of playable space with a real 2340 m x 1580 m

Issgard is 4096x4096 pixels and 3072x3072 pixels of playable space with a real 5616 m x 5616 m

 

So in terms of dimensions the Falskaar and Wyrmstooth are more or less similar and the dimensions of one Hold of Skyrim .

Issgard covers an area of at least 3 holds of skyrim also it includes further territory in the forms of extra worldspaces like Dragonskull Island and Three fangs islands , and Atmora . The first are small islands on a territory similar to half of Falskaar or Wyrmstooth , the last is larger than Skyrim and mostly covers the whole area from 4096 to 3072 cells . but that will be relatively limited in gameplay as is intended to be mostly a white snow covered andmostly empty but harsh ice desert.

 

Landscape

 

In terms of Landscape Wyrmstooth looks more varied and in general better shaped than Falskaar wich seems to have a rather limited variation in its geography looking mostly like a caldera Island qith a squared shape and few changes , while Wyrmstooth looks more like a realistic Island with fragmented coastline and properly placed mountain ranges .

Issgard is based on a heightmap generated from several handwork and 3d tools of terrain procedural erosion to give a degree of realism , but since Skyrim doesn't allow to use the actual terrain and covers most of it with premade items of mountains then the realism is relative .

 

Population

 

Issgard so far has 0 inhabitants , I can't compare wyrmstooth and Falskaar but both look rather filled with varied and voice acted Npcs.With Falskaar looking quite more populated than Wyrmstooth.Moonpath looks the more exotic and varied compared to the other two due to the particular setting .

 

Quests:

 

Issgard so far has 0 quests, with a planned one of several stages lenght that shoudl bring the player to have a rather long voyage from Skyrim up to Atmora .and some side ones still in concept stage .

Wyrmstooth looks like is a focused on one main quest while Falskaar adds also a lot of other minor side quests as is usually done in vanilla dlcs , all beeing voice acted .Also Moonpath is looking like a single themed focused quest with some minor ones like Wyrmstooth.

 

New items :

Falskaar features almoust no new items apart some few ones , Wyrmstooth on the other side features a few more , but still bases itself on the same Vanilla ones.Moonpath is the one that beats all the other two in terms of new content and new creatures and items .

Issgard features several gbs of new content ranging from new architecture, new landscape,new creatures, new armors and weapons, new interiors and new item clutters.

 

So in terms of Landscape density it is an issue of the one man teams , as it takes a huge load of time to create mods of that magnitude . Now consider that Issgard is way bigger than Falskaar and Wyrmstooth put together , it will be pretty hard to fill it all, so be prepared to probably have a rather less dense of events landscape . But I am trying to make it as varied as possible so you shouln't feel in places that look all the same and repetitive. Each hill follows the natural evolution of the landscape , rivers flow from glaciers and climatic zones are well defined . The main focus I wanted is to give the player the feeling of vastity and distance in the game between locations , avoiding actually on purpouse the too much crowded area feeling of Skyrim .

In Skyrim I do not really get the feel of beeing in a barren tundra because every 2 seconds I met someone or something ... while I would like to have the feeling of loleniness when wandering on the Ice pack of Atmora or stuff like that .

 

I hope that explains the overall difficulties and differences that lie behind the development of a large mod like those and in particular of Issgard .

Consider also that I have released 3 spin offs from Issgard that were originally tought to be mod content , like the beast skeletons, the riekling porter and the Conan Hyborian age mod .

Edited December 3, 2013 by PROMETHEUS_ts

[PrometheusTS]

This is how the Walls look in the second phase of the process, the first was the blocking out , the second , vertex paint , precision texturing and other stuff ...

Check on left the new one and right the old one .

http://img593.imageshack.us/img593/1870/d4v9.jpg

[PrometheusTS]

Double .

Edited December 3, 2013 by PROMETHEUS_ts