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Distances in Skyrim


LuckyLucianoO

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I do not know where you get the Australia or Alaska comparison. Tamriel is teeny tiny.

 

 

Since Morrowind, the game has been scaled. Daggerfall and Arena were both to a 1:1 scale. That is, the actual, traversable landscape in Daggerfall was almost 420,000 square km. You could, quite literally, spend days (IRL) walking from one town to the next. It has over 10,000 visitable locations, and cities with populations in the thousands (almost all randomly generated, generic and totally uninteresting).

 

unfortunately, it killed computers. a lot of computers, to this day, have trouble running the damned thing. It just isn't feasable to make a game to that scale.

 

Because of that, with Morrowind, they scaled things down. There may only be 30 people in Ald'Ruhn in Morrowind, but it's actually the Redoran capital, with a population of several thousand. If we assume that Daggerfall was aprox 640km accross (the aprox. Root of 420k) and Skyrim is slightly narrower than the area in that game (say 600km), then we can calculate the scale of Skyrim. 3.5 miles, converted to km, is about 5.7. So 600, divided by 5.7, is 105. That means Skyrim is 1:105th scale, or less than 1% true size.

 

I think... math never was my strong suit. Still, the important fact is that Skyrim is NOT made to scale. There are not 20 people in Windhelm, it has hundreds, if not thousands of citizens. There should be hundreds of thousands of people in Skyrim, not the few hundred you see in game.

 

Game < Reality.

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Because of that, with Morrowind, they scaled things down. There may only be 30 people in Ald'Ruhn in Morrowind, but it's actually the Redoran capital, with a population of several thousand. If we assume that Daggerfall was aprox 640km accross (the aprox. Root of 420k) and Skyrim is slightly narrower than the area in that game (say 600km), then we can calculate the scale of Skyrim. 3.5 miles, converted to km, is about 5.7. So 600, divided by 5.7, is 105. That means Skyrim is 1:105th scale, or less than 1% true size.

 

I think... math never was my strong suit. Still, the important fact is that Skyrim is NOT made to scale. There are not 20 people in Windhelm, it has hundreds, if not thousands of citizens. There should be hundreds of thousands of people in Skyrim, not the few hundred you see in game.

 

Game < Reality.

I think many of us would be happy if it were scaled up even just a teeny bit, like say twice the current size along either axis. The current scale isn't bad, but many places seem as if they're within yelling distance of another location - which makes creating, say, roving town border patrols unfeasible because they'd sight others way too often. With a larger area animals would have more 'breathing space' too - struck me as odd that people-shy creatures were as close to encampments as they are.

 

Didn't have the fortune to play either Arena or Daggerfall :(

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Because of that, with Morrowind, they scaled things down. There may only be 30 people in Ald'Ruhn in Morrowind, but it's actually the Redoran capital, with a population of several thousand. If we assume that Daggerfall was aprox 640km accross (the aprox. Root of 420k) and Skyrim is slightly narrower than the area in that game (say 600km), then we can calculate the scale of Skyrim. 3.5 miles, converted to km, is about 5.7. So 600, divided by 5.7, is 105. That means Skyrim is 1:105th scale, or less than 1% true size.

 

I think... math never was my strong suit. Still, the important fact is that Skyrim is NOT made to scale. There are not 20 people in Windhelm, it has hundreds, if not thousands of citizens. There should be hundreds of thousands of people in Skyrim, not the few hundred you see in game.

 

Game < Reality.

I think many of us would be happy if it were scaled up even just a teeny bit, like say twice the current size along either axis. The current scale isn't bad, but many places seem as if they're within yelling distance of another location - which makes creating, say, roving town border patrols unfeasible because they'd sight others way too often. With a larger area animals would have more 'breathing space' too - struck me as odd that people-shy creatures were as close to encampments as they are.

 

Didn't have the fortune to play either Arena or Daggerfall :(

 

You can download Daggerfall and Arena for free (FREE!!! :biggrin: ) at the Elder Scrolls Official website. They also have unofficial stuff (mods, translations, etc) for both of them at UESP wiki (Daggerfall, Arena).

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Well, I sure hope they fix this scale issue with the Elder Scrolls Online. Not sure how they would do it without some random generation, but I hope they figure it out. Because, as it stands now, with the current scale, I could travel on foot, in real time, from the top of Tamriel to the bottom, and back, in just a few hours, if the entire continent was in the game.
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Because of that, with Morrowind, they scaled things down. There may only be 30 people in Ald'Ruhn in Morrowind, but it's actually the Redoran capital, with a population of several thousand. If we assume that Daggerfall was aprox 640km accross (the aprox. Root of 420k) and Skyrim is slightly narrower than the area in that game (say 600km), then we can calculate the scale of Skyrim. 3.5 miles, converted to km, is about 5.7. So 600, divided by 5.7, is 105. That means Skyrim is 1:105th scale, or less than 1% true size.

 

I think... math never was my strong suit. Still, the important fact is that Skyrim is NOT made to scale. There are not 20 people in Windhelm, it has hundreds, if not thousands of citizens. There should be hundreds of thousands of people in Skyrim, not the few hundred you see in game.

 

Game < Reality.

I think many of us would be happy if it were scaled up even just a teeny bit, like say twice the current size along either axis. The current scale isn't bad, but many places seem as if they're within yelling distance of another location - which makes creating, say, roving town border patrols unfeasible because they'd sight others way too often. With a larger area animals would have more 'breathing space' too - struck me as odd that people-shy creatures were as close to encampments as they are.

 

Didn't have the fortune to play either Arena or Daggerfall :(

 

 

 

Something else people don't realize, is that Morrowind was based out of Vvardenfell ( I think that is how it's spelled) which is only a single island within the province of Morrowind, giving the aspect of Morrowind's size enormous. With TES IV, they kept things relatively the same size, but tried to make it an entire province, instead of just an area within the province. Skyrim is massive, but the time it takes you to cross it from one end to the other isn't realistic. It should have been either scaled at least a bit more, or should have made it only an area within the province instead.

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Well, I sure hope they fix this scale issue with the Elder Scrolls Online. Not sure how they would do it without some random generation, but I hope they figure it out. Because, as it stands now, with the current scale, I could travel on foot, in real time, from the top of Tamriel to the bottom, and back, in just a few hours, if the entire continent was in the game.

 

Thats no different that Warcraft. In the lore, it takes 3 days to ride from Capital City to Southshore. in game i can do it in about 10 minutes. Scaling is an integral part of rendering full fantasy worlds, and TES online is almost certianly going to be to the same, if not smaller scale. The game world its self may end up being bigger, but hoping it'll be true scale is one step from lunacy.

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@People complaining about performance with large map: Low-polygon models. Render-fog. Transitional borders.

 

All things people already complain about. Poor graphics, short view distances and too many loading screens. Surefire wat to make sure TES online dies before it even releases.

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Eh, let the masses have their high def but tiny maps. Surely I'm not the only one who'd take a larger map and improved NPC AI over graphics in a singleplayer game. Low poly, render fog, pop in, transition screens... bah, nothing can be as bad as the BBS games and roguelikes we played back in the day. It's criminal how little else other than the UI has really improved.

 

You can download Daggerfall and Arena for free (FREE!!! :biggrin: ) at the Elder Scrolls Official website. They also have unofficial stuff (mods, translations, etc) for both of them at UESP wiki (Daggerfall, Arena).

brain_exploded.gif

 

Well damn, there go my plans for 2013...

Edited by Trucidation
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