How Big is TOO Big?

[armageddon818]

For my glacier city, I want to go BIG, but obviously so does everyone else too. But that leads me to a question. Back during the summer, my city was of a different vision, surrounded by huge ice walls ALMOST (but not really) making a dome. Sure, if you were in the MIDDLE of the place you could see them, but get too close, and they would disappear, leaving the player to "explore" the blank expanse of the worldspace.

So that leads me to my question...what aspect of a models classifies it as TOO BIG for oblivion?

Faces?

Sheer size?

I ask because for me it is mainly easier to create an entire room at once rather than to break it all up. So that makes me think...how much detail can I add if i wanted to ...say... make the entire mountain out of one model? (It would be easier...sigh)

Long question short: How BIG is TOO BIG and WHY?!

 

Thanks!

[exanimis]

There's an old saying "If you want something done, do it yourself" and that is pretty much the way it is around here. There are a lot of friendly people here on the Nexus and they will offer advice but when it comes to actually building or creating your mod, you're on your own. In my opinion a city is only too big if it is too much for you to populate yourself. How many NPC's are you willing to create knowing that you have to add AI, dialogs and quests? Then there is the clutter, cluttering an entire city, Man I hate to clutter!

[Vagrant0]

As far as I know, the limit on how big something is, is rather massive if you do it right. One example of this was a domelike structure I had made a few years back for a worldspace mod.

http://209.85.48.8/252/133/upload/p2025398.jpg

It is atleast 43008 units from edge to edge, (forget the actual numbers (the buildings in the center are full scale and the picture is taken from the edge)) and can fit an area of 7x7 cells. if it is placed in the center of a cell. I would imagine that one could go larger, but given that objects more than 2 cells away cannot be seen, going larger on a flat plane wouldn't look very good. Technically, you can have a single mesh which extends the width of 1-2 quads, or about as far a distance away that you can see the IC tower... it's the very same concept. However, when working with something that large, you kinda need to plan out alot more since you can never see the edge of the mesh if the mesh is not part of a loaded cell.

 

The reason why your walls did not work is because you did not have _far.nifs made for them, and did not have working vwd for that worldspace. Just keep in mind, that like all vwd objects, they should be as optimized as possible since they will always be visable. My _far.nifs also had collision, which may or may not be needed depending on how you were doing this.

[exanimis]

Wow! That's impressive Vagrant.

 

Sorry Armageddon for my misunderstanding.

[armageddon818]

Wow that IS impressive! And yes that is exactly what I meant...now more specifically...what if i am talking about a mountain...? And it IS a pretty big one, I think i plan on having it being as tall as the IC tower, but it'a a MOUNTAIN so its isnt going to be thin exactly...I dont even know if I would be able to model something so intense! That semi-dome didnt seem like it had too many faces...I just want to make sure that if i spend a lot of time making something so enormously hard, it will actually be usable. Thanks!

[Vagrant0]

Wow that IS impressive! And yes that is exactly what I meant...now more specifically...what if i am talking about a mountain...? And it IS a pretty big one, I think i plan on having it being as tall as the IC tower, but it'a a MOUNTAIN so its isnt going to be thin exactly...I dont even know if I would be able to model something so intense! That semi-dome didnt seem like it had too many faces...I just want to make sure that if i spend a lot of time making something so enormously hard, it will actually be usable. Thanks!

For the most part, things like mountains and other landforms are usually best off being done within the landscape editor. If you are trying to do a city inside the mountain, that becomes a much bigger problem. Really large statics are only practical if the player never gets close enough to them. So a dome like shown, would work either from far away, or from inside, not from the edge looking in. if that makes sense. This is because the static has to be simple enough in shape and appearance, which usually means low detail on the _far.nif. This is not to suggest that it cannot be done, where you walk up to the edge, and enter (like the IC) it just requires a bit more planning.

 

Same thing with a town inside a mountain (with an opening in the top). What you would essentially have to do is make a mountain with landscaping tools, raising up the sides, but lowering the top. Generate LOD meshes, then use the LOD mesh to determine the height and proportions of the mesh for the interior. Use 2 worldspaces, one for the exterior, one for the interior, and using collision boxes, border regions, or killboxes, prevent the player from ever climbing to the top of the mountain.

[armageddon818]

Yikes!

[exanimis]

I wanted the player to have to climb the outside of a volcano and enter a cave where he would find a dragon. I built the volcano in the landscape editor but there were no caves that I could use. I wanted the cave to be open with no load doors. I placed an exterior section of a castle with an incomplete section inside the volcano and added and interior to it I then used the editor tool to raise and lower the landscape around the building to hide the odd parts. It had the effect that I wanted with a ruin instead of a cave and the ruin was open with no load doors. I have remade the continent of Pellucidar but plan to do that same thing again. I need the dragon to be able to fly out of it's lair so it has to be open.

 

I don't know exactly what you are hoping to do but hopefully this can give you a new perspective on how to accomplish it.