The issue is not making a script that teleports actors, the issue is making actors use them properly like the world is seamless. It's not impossible but just an insane pain and time consuming.

We do have a third option, and that is developing in the safe zone which buys us a lot of time to find a fix/workaround, without losing any valuable development time. If there's one thing I learnt from MERP in Oblivion, then it's that a big total conversion cannot afford being put on hold. You need every single month of the youth of the game. Speed is most important, it's the difference between the project dying a slow death or actually finishing it. Accommodating for the supportive workarounds (like the teleport script) that would be required when splitting up will consume so much time when actually developing content... That step should only be taken if a death of the project is otherwise guaranteed.

My whole problem is just why this wasn't taken care of months ahead of time. The large scale mods brought in a lot of publicity for them and I'd have thought "Lets see what they can really do and give them a lot more room." Hopefully there's a fix for it soon. I was hoping to begin work on a bigger worldspace than my oblivion one. But it looks like I'll be working with Oblivion to reach the scale I originally want.

Again, I find myself agreeing completely with your points. I have watched the MERP project almost from the beginning several years ago now, and I have noticed the lulls from time to time. At times I have even thought it really was dead. We just can't afford this.
My two cents worth on this issue is that a large project like MERP needs [1] a significant number of people involved - call it 'critical mass' - to ensure there is continuous development (without compromising the cohesiveness of the project and the steady direction the project is moving in), and [2] that the momentum of the project is being kept up with new releases, sneak previews (like the awesome Misty Mountain fly-by on YouTube) etc, so that modders (and also fans) don't lose heart and stop offering their assistance. Any lull risks becoming the beginning of the end, as dramatic as it may sound.

Anyway, sorry about the tirade, but even though I have not been actively involved in MERP as a modder, I feel quite invested in it and I really hope it will continue steadily towards its eventual completion.
And on that note, can I just say that if there were to be a first release of say Gondor (including Minas Tirith, Isengard, Helms Deep, Edoras etc), I am utterly convinced that that would spark off a whole new wave of enthusiasm and offers of assistence in further development of Middle Earth.
I, for one, can't wait for it to happen

I want to try to understand something, so please do not think I am trying to be rude. I am a life-long fan of Professor Tolkien's work, and look at any attempt to bring the world and lore he invented to life as something to be respected. But to my mind, a 4x4 quad area with the focal point of a battle located at its center should be plenty large enough to adequately simulate that battle. In fact, it seems to me that a 4x4 quad area would be large enough to hold a full scale representation of Minas Tirith and a significant stretch of land surrounding it in in all directions. If I created a 4x4 quad area that was completely flat and started walking from one side of it to the other, it would take a while to get there. And there are no regions of Middle-Earth that are completely flat or devoid of obstructions. So to my mind, whatever event or point of interest you guys wish to produce should be possible within a world space the size of vanilla skyrim.

Create the full scale height map and use it as a reference. Break down your worldspaces into 6x6 quad areas. 4x4 quad would be traverable with a remaining quad in either direction surrounding it for LOD. Copy and past the relevant section of the master height map and center it with your world space.

I know there is a great desire to have a contiguous massive world that one can walk from one end of to the other. But let me ask you this. How much of that contiguous world, with the exception of this or that ancient ruin scattered few and far between, would actually contain anything worth experiencing by the player? If it took a full professional team at Bethesda as long as it did to create just the content within skyrim's 4x4 quad area, with much of that being empty wilderness, How long will it take the MERP team to create and fill a 16x16 quad area that will be more wilderness than anything else? Just creating the Shire, or Rivendell, or lothlorien will be a major undertaking.

The thing with the large world spaces is that it provides meaningful content in tight packed pockets but also vast, and I mean vast areas for modders to come in and work on even if not affiliated to the project. That was always the idea with Mesogea. Provide a vast area and showcase what the mod can provide and a fairly detailed history and theme, then let the community loose on a huge area that they can really get their teeth into rather than worrying that if they put a house here, wont several people also be developing that area? With Oblivion and Skyrim, you just watch how quickly the available space gets populated. Oblivion was daft to begin with, you cant walk five minutes from the Imperial city without tripping over the kind of places that any half decent civilisation would have put to the torch decades ago. I could image the hard bitten, goblin irritated, wolf, rat, scamp plagued population beyond city walls to look at white gold tower and think "Look at that, he sits in there with an army the useless tw;t and we cant walk to the pub without risking an a&& kicking from a troll, ogre, goblin, thief, bandit etc.

The large world spaces may have areas of true wilderness, but there is also a lot of fun seriously planning any journey. Want to go from Illusidum (capital of the Holorian City states in Mesogea) to some far flung fort in Scatha? You will need food, horse possibly, something to carry water in and clothing for the desert when you get to Karithia, some way of getting past the Karithian tribes (so need contacts in one of the desert edge towns), then some form of permission to get through military borders and back in again, perhaps tag onto a trade caravan as a guard? need to find when one is setting out, is your name mud in certain places and so on. Travel can be part of the adventure rather than hack and slay. Of course there is plenty of hack and slay, but variety is also important. The option to fast travel has to be partly involved but fast travel should be randomly interupted by bandits and the like, etc etc.

Sadly it seems as we get further ahead with technology, gameplay and the ability to go and make such huge world spaces seems to be flung to the wayside. We want the prettiest the loudest the best everything for visual and audio. While yeah they're nice, what happened to the immersion. Middle Earth if you ever looked at the maps that were drawn up, much was left to the imagination. As thekarithian said, a large worldspace with vast spaces to travel between towns/cities/outposts are filled with forgotten history, places man(or any civilized race) has not touched in eons. I personally do not want to be bothered with having to add teleport zones all over the "borders" of my worldspaces to make up for "seamless" land traversing because the engine cannot handle large worldspaces. If I have too I'll go the route I said and hope players have the willpower to hold back and not "explore" outside borders. Whether I could reward them for it, remains the case.

My core problem is my worldspace can easily go so large that my PC cannot handle the workload on the cs. I know in theory I could seriously make a world that would easily take up the 16x16 grid, and then need to make another esm for a second area. Why? because the mod I've been slowly working on (not currently due to college) is a prototype of a game I want to build with a story that's as vast and deep as the land itself. I know a lot of people will not be happy with having to go through loading screens to reach the next zone. We shouldn't have to go through that however as we for a game like this should be able to go from Skyrim to cyrodiil, to morrowind all in one trip... like middle earth I should be able to go from the Shire to Mordor without a loading screen. In theory, however as a hopeful future developer I see the need, however this "grid" issue I don't think I could tolerate from the standpoint of adding DLC in the case of more landspace.

Well, that does make sense. But 4x4 quad chunks surrounded by a 1-quad thick LOD area surrounding the 4x4-quad areas where core points of interest like cities or battlefields exist adds significant wilderness space for a lot of modder expansion potential.

Its a pain to create. I am looking at the idea now as being feasible and to be entirely honest I think the best way is to learn from Skyrim then go back to Oblivion and continue to build on what I already know and find works perfectly well. I would love for a workaround for this but there are other issues with Skyrim. Aesthetically its pleasing and there is a lot added, but the crucial issues are:

1. Worldspace errors (this thread)
2, Flawed LOD generation
3. So many bugs that the CK is painful to operate.
4. Such limited flora and fauna that it will take years to provide what Oblivion already has.

Oblivion will learn much from Skyrim. Look at Morrowind. Its still appealing!

IF the 64x64 bug can be overcome, great, but there are already masses of other bugs and problems that are not small issues. I agree with Maegfaer that its better to get stuck in whilst the early interest is there, but personally I think the decline with Skyrim will be fast. Too many hurdles, people dont want to fight for every single footstep forward. At present its a battle to get the basics done, and even they are flawed.

Anyway, we need to really focus back in on solving the issue. I am afraid I am at the end of my knowledge and ability to test now. I have tried all the ideas put forward and tried a few things myself that were useless. I am in a quandry. Either push on with the sliced up world. Work on the central 16x4 quad workable area in the vain hope of a workaround, or plough back into Oblivion.

This is true, and I'm thinking I'll do "smaller" stuff for skyrim but the bigger/biggest projects will remain for oblivion. Unless all the issues are fixed. I'm seriously hoping it's being taken note. that the next installment needs a solid foundation. If they want to have a modding community certain things need to be addressed. I plan on taking my worldspace possibly stripping things down and starting over and go to the scale I want. Seeing I have a large grid to work with and plenty of landscape bundles such as deserts, I'll have plenty to work with.

Oblivion where amazing things are always possible.
Skyrim where the ordinary is impossible.

Joy. No, deep joy. Deep joy indeed.

Edited after Vou's comment below: the next bit isnt the funny bit he's talking about, I just didnt want to cram the thread whilst trying to be a comedian (and failing)

Oblivion is like a nice car, not too swish and fancy but it just always delivers you where you want to go. Skyrim was the sports car you sold the other one to get a deposit for. Just that ten miles out of the garage both wheels fell off, the engine backfired all the time and the warranty you thought youd got turned out to be a bit of a "might do it, might not" Now shall I spend the next year trying to get the Sportscar to go properly, or shall I just sell it on to some other svcker and go get the old car back?

best quote I've heard thus far. Seriously it's kinda true.. I heard Morrowind was incredible and awesome. Oblivion is great for the mods. Skyrim... it's pretty right?

I'll be a bit more constructive than I was a 3am last night ...

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1352988-fixing-the-64x64-cell-havok-bug-for-when-you-just-want-a-bigger-world/page__view__findpost__p__20416244 is really what I was getting at. If you spend the next XXX-man-months trying to fix an "issue with [the implementation of] HAVOK [In Skyrim]" then you will lose most of the momentum that the very large projects planned need to keep, if they are ever to be finished.

It's good to see a few of the proper propellor-heads () looking at the "issue with [the implementation of] HAVOK [In Skyrim]", but if you're leading a MOD team, or one of the lead-devs on a MOD team, you need to plan to cope with the fact that the issue may not be solveable.

• Deciding to work inside a safe zone is a good plan - Especially when you are looking at 12 months work inside that zone. Just don't box yourself into requiring the fix after that period
  
• Looking at how you can divide up your worldspace and what mechanisms/designs are needed to make that work in your world, is also a good and valid tactic (you never know, someone might make you very happy, down the road, and fix this issue, allowing you to do one big merge and celebrate)
  
• Going back to Oblivion may also be the only work-around that is available to you/your team ... Personally, I think that would be a shame, considering the very large customer base and beautifulness of it all; but if that seems the only viable way to you ... Then that's that

As Mag said, sitting on your hands waiting to see if this issue is ever fixed is almost certainly not the way to go ... If you've got the team resources available and someone with the right skillset, let that resource keep delving away at this ... but get the rest focused on a workable way forward (whatever that is)


As ever, from someone who does systems project management/design for a day job, I wish you the best of luck

Dunno if you've been over to the other, main worldspace thread yet but I think we've got a lot of that cracked now using a new version of Oscape. This is my current result - which will admittedly look a lot better with some clutter;

http://imageshack.us/f/641/screenshot16wp.jpg/

Only issue is some people still get brown textures but that's fixed if you copy all the actual texture file references then point your texture containers at the copies. It might not even occur if you use the high res texture packs. A bit off-topic I know but one less thing to worry about. Oh and if you're using all custom textures it definitely doesn't occur.

Also, more on-topic, I can't help think sometimes in terms of game design about stuff like the old GTA games. They had kinda large (for the time) areas and I don't think gameplay suffered for the fact you had to unlock them. In fact I find games like that guarantee that you explore the areas more and also give a sense of reward when you open up new ones. Admittedly in a TES-style game you probably don't want to "unlock" areas, but still I think as a 'canvas' it's great - what I don't get is the huge worry that people will fill it up as the answer is obvious - make more than one canvas!
I also know there's this holy cow of "immersion" always rearing it's ugly head, but one has to draw a line between genuine immersion in a game or just being a [censored] cos you had to sit through a loading screen once every few hours. If that really ruins your entire gaming experience then god help you. The only things that really break my sense of 'immersion' in a game are crappy stories and bad acting.

My preference is:

1. Fix the bug
2. If not 1 then slice the world in 16x4 slices with LOD beyond each
3. Go back to Oblivion if 1 is impossible and 2 is either ludicrous or causes such file sizes as to be practically impossible to download and update.

1. Looks unlikely or will take months
2. I have no idea how to start with this one.
3. Getting more temptin by the hour.

If anyone has any idea of how to slice up a 16x16 quad world into 16x4 useable quad slices, with matching LOD to either side (I can re-do Mesogea sufficiently to let this happen). then please shout up and post here how it is feasible to do. I suspect others may well be planning the same workaround. It isnt ideal and it isnt my first choice but if I think too much about choice 1 I get annoyed that having pushed the large world possibilities and there being an obvious appetite for them in Oblivion, Bethesda didnt listen, didnt care, or didnt want to for some reason.

[HAVOK]bUseCharacterRB=0

Add the above bit to your Skyrim.ini file - It ought to 'fix' the bug. I'm yet to fully understand what the issue is, but I think it's related to Bethesda's implementation of rigid bodies for characters (bhkCharacterRigidBody). It appears that the landscape MOPP generation code doesn't correctly queue welding tasks for cells outside the -64/64 range, causing CRB entities to 'hop' about (due to collisions with the terrain mesh's triangles). The INI tweak causes the physics engine to fallback to the older (i.e., tried and true) AABB-phantom (bhkCharacterProxy) character controller implementation.

I'll pass along my findings to the devs - If I'm right, it would be a relatively easy fix for them.

PS: There may be side effects to this workaround, so keep an eye out.

You are a god amongst mortals.

I just tested it, and it works!!

shadeMe, you're now officially my most favourite modder ever, and you already were in the top 3!

Thanks so much shademe, this is by far the most important bug to eradicate for large WRLDs.

Winner. Please lock thread

No, and stop saying that, hehe.

We need to get the word out, so Bethesda notices and can create an official fix without potential side effects. They now got a solid idea where to look and can't simply blame Havok anymore imo.

Wait! We need to buy him a bunch of flowers and a box of milk tray! Well done sir!!!

Amazing how 21 numbers and letters could cause all this ??

Did i just read this? Somebody poke me, I think I am dreaming. Have you just single handedly sorted out this entire -64,+64 bug. Flowers and Milk tray! and the rest. Absolutely brilliant, absolutely fanstastically, brilliantly fanstasically brilliant.

Top bloke and top of the modders list for life.



And the crowd go wild!

S it is, in some way, related to how the hkx is implemented in NPCs/Critters and their interaction with the NavMesh... maybe? Wow... If so, that was a vague, gut feeling, W.A.G. (Wild Ass Guess) on my part.

You sir, are a freakin genius!

Thank you for coming up with a solution even if the exact issue is still specifically unknown... With narrowing it down, perhaps The Hologram could find something in the NPC/Critter files for another fix (although a simple ini change/addition is a pretty easy solution to implement!)

I'm glad to see that thekarithian is smiling again

What is the loss of efficiency that comes with this? Are there any critical bugs that it may cause? I might run the tweak on my game for a while to test.

Yeah you can stop pulling your hair out now.