Thanks for the replies, I'm glad this discussion is generating so many great, well thought out responses. This is just my opinion, and I completely respect your own. Heck, I respect yours more than my own since I have zero modding experience. All my thoughts come from a player's point of view, and from heavily modding both Morrowind and Oblivion over the years.

Have you seen http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=29688 mod? It was built on inspiration from Onra's heightmaps, allowing players to purchase boats and ships from a harbour near Anvil and sail them across the seas of Tamriel and up any river that connected to the oceans. With the right mods, I was able to sail from Anvil, up to the Iliac Bay where I explored a High Rock mod; back out and across to the Summerset Isles to explore that province mod; East from there to sail around the coast of Valenwood that StarX had put so much effort into landscaping (I even went up a river in-land there for a while, though I forget its name); then further East along the southern coast of Elsweyr and into the Topal Bay; finally heading up the Niben, passing Leyawiin and Bravil before finally docking in the Imperial City. I never got around to checking out Blackmarsh, but I fully intend to return to Oblivion once I've finished the main quests in Skyrim.

Without Onra's heightmaps, sailing in this fashion just wouldn't be feasible. Those mountains are fantastic for keeping players at bay on foot, and ensuring that border passes from Skyrim can be heavily detailed by modders for a richer experience. And although you could choose to use that to keep worldspaces separate, I know that personally the prospect of setting sale from Dawnstar or Solitude and exploring the oceans once more, 200 years later on (and with a slightly larger worldspace to boot, thanks to Skyrim's scale ) makes me really excited!

I can completely understand that. But from what I understand about Onra's heightmaps, they're designed as a base for others to work from. Those heightmaps can then be altered as much as a team wants, even completely altering the position of mountains and rivers if they choose. A player's load order would have the heightmaps loaded first, and then mods based on those heightmaps loaded afterwards. So I might have Onra's Heightmap first, Morcoft Darke's Elsweyr mod second, and RandomModderNumber736's Player Owned Elsweyr Manor loaded third. The heightmaps are a base for other modders to build upon and edit as much as they choose. They're designed to help unite the province teams and create a seamless experience for players, rather than to enforce strict rules and regulations.

So long as the mountains from one province's borders match up to those of another's, then their positioning aren't an issue. The easiest way to ensure that is to leave the base heightmaps intact at the very edges (assuming they're high enough quality and lore correct) so that the provinces blend perfectly, but I see no reason a patch couldn't be created for situations where two provinces have edited the same section of a border significantly, such as raising mountain heights to obscure views of the forests and grasslands in Cyrodiil from the Alik'r Desert. Again, it all comes down to discussion and contact between the modding groups.

But with this method, there's also no reason a single modder or smaller team couldn't decide to build a detailed border passage between two team's provinces once they've been created. It's one big open-source project, and up to the player how many mods based on the heightmaps he downloads. I might want the Elsweyr and Valenwood mods, but feel that Modder X's additional border pass mod detracts from the quality that the two province mods have created. Modder Y's Thalmor Outpost in Valenwood might greatly add to the experience though. And Side's Sailing Ships Elsweyr Harbour in the Topal Bay could be a must have!

You get the idea

True, but surely there's no reason a teleport method could be included as well? Whether from a Mage at the College of Winterhold, a ship from Solitude, or a carriage from Riften. I'm just a fan of choice, and the illusion of immersion. If I want a quick teleport, I can grab one. If I want to walk or ride through wilderness (Onra filled even the un-modded regions with trees, rocks, and grasses) then I can get that experience. If I want to sail, the I can do that too.

I apologize if I came across as forceful. That really wasn't my intent. I love province mods, and had a lot of fun in Elsweyr with Iliana's mod. I'd love to return there in Skyrim! I fell in love with the freedom that Onra's heightmaps provided in Oblivion and I'd love to see that become a standard in Skyrim. I honestly can't see any downsides to creating a province mod on his heightmaps unless you don't like the scale set by Skyrim. And even then, if you're trying to create a province that's heavily scaled up, you might be biting off more than you can chew. Iliana's Elsweyr is the most complete province mod available for Oblivion, and it's only the northern half of Elsweyr. The Tamriel Rebuilt team is still barely half way through creating Morrowind. Both of these mods are excellent examples of detailed and lore-correct province mods, and both go to show just how much time and work are involved.

I'm not trying to force anyone to develop in a specific way. It's your call in the end, and I'm sure I will love your Elsweyr mod whatever you do with it. I just know that I'll love it even more if I have the freedom to sail towards the sunset, climb the mountains into the Nibenay Valley, or cross freely into the treacherous forests of Valenwood. That sense of immersion is the greatest aspect of an Elder Scrolls game imo, and Onra's heightmaps seem tailored to extend that immersion across the whole of Tamriel.

I'd love to hear your thoughts about this all, and there's a damn good chance I'm missing something important that hinders development on Onra's heightmaps. From what I saw in Oblivion though, they led to some marvelous creations, and it always pained me to know that mods like Lady Nerevar's amazing Hammerfell province would never be compatible.

2 pages?! This is why I'm not allowed to sleep till 1PM

I have a website and am willing to host a wiki/forum/whatever. I'm willing to do it for free, because my server is already paid for. I'd love donations and contributions, of course, but that's not the same as having to pay up front for something that we've got no experience with.

I do not think that the projects can be forced to be officially associated with each other (as any sort of name/grouping implies) - the wiki should just be a resource that encourages cooperation. Sticking names on things and putting things under unified banners hasn't worked out in the past. I would call it something like "Mod Support Group" or similar (like I said, I just woke up, my creative cap ain't on yet).

Likewise, I do not think that this should be a hosting service, or a huge forum with subforums for all the mods, etc. The projects would still have their own websites, forums, etc., this would just be a place where they can ask eachother questions and collaborate. I don't think that the forums need to have a subforum for each mod with subforums for each aspect of each mod ( ), rather, just a single forum or a couple forums where the teams can ask each other questions and suggest common solutions. A forum for lore, one for organization, and one for resources would be more than enough. Same thing with the wiki: basic page for each mod, including their team, goals, progress, requests. Anything bigger becomes exponentially more difficult to maintain, moderate, and keep up to date. It goes from a resource for modder's to a whole new modding group, which not all modders want to associate themselves with (especially if it is essentially forced on them).

Agreed. Just because a mod isn't set in Tamriel doesn't mean that it wouldn't benefit from cooperating or from the resources the wiki would offer. Perhaps split the wiki off into "Province Mods" and "Other Land Mods" (or similar), that way the distinction is clear. I would go so far as to include mods that don't add any land at all but instead do huge things on/in/beneath/above Skyrim. If this is intended to help huge mods succeed and work smarter then there's no reason to exclude people based on the location of their content.

Well, yea. There's not much you can really do to force people to conform to a standard, and I don't feel right about doing it. All we can do is present the benefits, and if they choose not to follow them, then there's nothing we can do. Even if they don't want to use Onra's maps they can still cooperate in other ways - ensure that their crossings can be used alongside other mods, help out with finding/creating lore and resources, etc. Even if the mods are isolated spatially they can still help out and benefit from help.

That's true, but I think at this point, largely due to your mod, people expect to have things in the same worldspace. Of course, once we move away from Skyrim's mountainous borders, we again have very smooth crossings. If teams collaborated in the same worldspace we'd be able to cross between province mods, not just from skyrim into a province mod.

That being said, I'm more than fine with using separate worldspaces. It has a lot of advantages, especially if your map is already made.

Tamriel's world has magic and astronauts, they can manage to make a decent map. Not all maps are exactly alike, of course, but they all fit within more or less the same proportional framework.

Re: this and common resources in general: How often would we run into this, though? Would a Hammerfell mod share enough resources with a Morrowind mod or an Elsweyr mod to make a common esm worthwhile? I can't think that it would, or should. I would hate for the mods to look the same due to the tendency to use the same resources (as happened in Oblivion).

That's more of an issue of Onra showing up years and years after Hammerfell. We had our reasons for making it in a separate worldspace (namely engine limitations that were later overcome). Had we gone with the same worldspace originally, Onra might have incorporated our mod as he did Iliana's.

I like that idea - Keep it Simple.

I'd love to contribute to this wiki too, especially through lore discussion since TES lore is something I've become immensely fascinated with over the last year. If enough groups can agree to use this site for design documentation and regular discussion, then I'd also be more than happy to contribute to your costs through donations. I don't really have any spare time to offer for mod teams, but I can offer help with financial upkeep easily enough if this becomes a useful and important tool.

Ok, I think I'm done with edits to my obscenely long uberpost.

Just thought I'd throw my hat into the ring...

First of all, I just want to say how glad I am that this thread has been made. I was almost thinking I might have to do this myself...

I'm 100% behind the idea of a shared discussion website and as much collaboration as possible, and I'm perfectly willing to offer help and advice to any other projects which want to produce lore-accurate expansions.

A shared resource list would also be ideal (well, not as good as all the teams agreeing to work on one province at a time, but the best that could realistically be hoped for) as it would considerably enrich all these projects where appropriate (whilst I agree with Lady N that all provinces should look as different as possible, there will always be overlap such as travellers and ambiguous border settlements that have mixed cultural influences).

Two things, though:

(1) Has anyone got in touch with the German High Rock modding group already? I have already corresponded with them about my own project, but I think their input would be very useful for this discussion.

(2) I can see a lot of enthusiasm for a Cyrodiil mod. It strikes me that the logical starting point would be to produce a re-imagining of the Imperial City, as it would be walled off and would not need to wait for extensive landscaping.

(3) We should also get in touch with the Silgrad Tower team. Their input could also be very useful here.

Specifically with regards to the heightmap issue:

(1) I am currently undecided about whether or not the single heightmap is a good idea. There are obvious benefits and drawbacks, which I would like to see fully discussed here.

(2) My own mod here: http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1264259-wipz-announcing-the-elder-scrolls-archipelago/ is concerned with islands on the edges of the known world. If I were to use a single heightmap, I would need assurance that the extremes of the heightmap would not by performance issues.

(3) An explanation of how onra's mod works would also be useful. Is it just a bare-bones heightmap, on which each province would be dependent via a separate esm?

I gave up trying to find things in one of Lady N's posts that make anything less than perfect sense. So yes, ditto all of that.

On the common heightmap issue, I have three concerns - any one of which would prevent this working. Two are technical, one political.
Technically:
1) Can Skyrim actually support a worldspace big enough? No - don't answer this one: Lightwave's already posted some preliminary testing results that are encouraging but we aren't going to know until someone tries out a landmass near the Summersets in the CK.

2) Can a heightmap section be edited externally using proper tools (ie not the CK) and be inserted back into the common heightmap so as to replace the content there? Certainly Darkstorne suggests the over-ride operation can be made to work, but is it possible to "inject" my heightmap into Onra's world? Can I do this without waiting for Onra to finish the entire world?

And Politically
3) Can we agree universal borders so that the heightmaps built in different mods can line up as jigsaw pieces? The proposed wiki / common forum seems like an essential step towards this.

Oh, and Darkstorne: no offence taken or intended! I think one needs a pretty thick skin in the modding business!

This thread was only created 4 days ago, and in the Skyrim section. I still mainly frequent the Oblivion section, and not the Skyrim forum area. Onra and me have already discussed, a while back, the feasibility of incorporating the Blackmarsh mod into his comprehensive heightmap, and I said our mod was too far into production to transfer it. Onra agreed.


I believe you're specifically talking about Elswyr, but on behalf of the other separate worldspace mods - Of course we don't want to throw our heightmap work away! It's tedious, time-consuming work. We've hand-fixed and hand-placed many items in our mod. But you said you're not a modder..so I guess you wouldn't understand how much work goes into even just the sole landscaping part.


We're not dead; we still have our esm, meshes, textures, etc. We now reside here, with the Elswyr team: http://darkcreations.arthmoor.com/forums/
Progress is still being made by us, too.


You are anguishing over separate worldspace mods not using Onra's heightmap and seeming to blame us for our non-use of it, yet you also hit the nail on the head for the main reason we other worldspace mods don't use it: "Onra's heightmap arrived too late".

Please don't judge us for "isolating" ourselves. It's our choice if we wish to keep most of our plans/files private for now. I can work in an isolated manner, or in an open manner. But tending to lean towards more "isolated," was the choice for the Blackmarsh team. Since I can operate in either environment, I am respecting the decision, and am happily helping Blackmarsh.

Koniption

I largely agree with morcroft's points. There are two things there which are largely beyond our control, but the third is hopefully something we can do something about by discussing amongst ourselves.

Because it's about upcoming mods for Skyrim, I think it is their leaders that Darkstone meant. Not that the input of Oblivion mod leaders isn't wanted, of course.

For Oblivion? Sure. But this has nothing to do with transferring the mod over to Skyrim. New heightmap, old heightmap, no heightmap - you're still rebuilding it from scratch. That's one thing I'm rather confused about in terms of heightmaps and resources. I understand the amount of work that goes into making a mod, and I understand the want to preserve it, but I don't think that its the best way to go about modding for Skyrim. Like I said earlier, I think it is preferable to start largely from scratch and make a whole new mod up to Skyrim's standards, rather than porting over the old mod wholesale. New time, new land, new engine... why the same old content?

I suppose that's my TR background showing We've redone everything more times than I can count.


I think yes. Doing it before Onra is finished will probably run into conflicts. I don't know for certain either way, since I've not worked with things like that before. However, if we manage to set up cooperation between teams, this really shouldn't be needed. If onra is considering other teams from the begining, he can take the heightmaps that already exist for Oblivion (Elsweyr, Hammerfell, whoever else wants to share) and port them over, combine them, and edit them into one ubermap that will please the teams and won't need major modification. Or make his heightmap from scratch with input of those who will be using it.

Hopefully yes. Province borders are pretty clear already, it would just come down to deciding exact cell coordinates. In case of overlap, patches can be created if needed. I doubt that Valenwood would infringe hundreds of cells into Elsweyr land or anything that drastic.

I thought the plan was to have the provinces on separate world spaces. In my mind, it would be safer that way. No border disputes, no performance issues, no worries about the heightmap.

Regardless of how seamless the transition between the worldspaces might be (as in a separate worldspaces mod), simply being able to cross the border and seeing where you are heading to, in addition, to having one unified map, add so much to the immersion and feeling of scale of the world.

I realize that this approach might be much more difficult and problematic, but I would think that the upsides are such that it is worth giving a good shot.

Both have their pros and cons. A separate worldspace gets rid of most incompatibility and generally gives you more freedom, but creates issues with tying it back to the main world. Building in the same worldspace lets you transition organically, but you have less freedom and may run into more incompatibility. Building in a separate worldspace also forces you to create a heightmap from scratch, while expanding on Skyrim gives you a good chunk of land to start with (or all the land, if/when Onra makes his maps). As a generality, I would say that the separate worldspace is a better option for modders, but the same worldspace is a better option for players.

Either way, its a personal choice for modders. We should really wait for the CK to see how things are set up, either of the choices could become problematic due to the engine or the program.

I see Deeza is contacting modders directly, nice. Maybe PM the ones whose mods aren't on the first few pages? More discreet, and probably easier for them to see (since they'll be notified instead of having to look through the forum).

Exactly. However, since mods are ultimately for players to play with (including the modders who become players themselves after they create the mods), same worldspace mods seem to make more sense, at least to me.

But it's the modders who spend thousands of hours making the mods. It's perfectly reasonable to make sure that your mods are playable and appeal to a wide demographic, however, appealing to all whims of the (often fickle, uneducated, and contradictory) player base is not.

Agreed. I have sent PMs to the OPs with more details, the messages in the threads are just notices that this thread exists.

I believe that for now, we use separate world spaces. Different teams will be working on different provinces at different speeds.
When and if every province is finished we combine them all into one worldspace.
I'm not opposed to the idea of one world space, but it makes more sense to be cautious and not try bite off more then we can chew.
As stated earlier, we don't know if the CK can handle large world spaces.

That's almost certainly not worth the work that it would take. Moving things whole-sale isn't as simple as clicking a button.

Gosh all these replies over the debate of one heightmap to rule them all or not. so may counter views and I have to say that Darkstorne did a great job and pretty much what I would have said. so +1 there.

Iliana made a good point about Skyrim being isolated by high mountains, but yeah the oceans would be a factor - as would the porous boundaries of all the other provinces. Maybe have all of them in one world space except for Skyrim. Just a thought. Not that I'd want it.

The thing is that for the Oblivion province mods the one world map was not even an option - it is now - and while we are all waiting for the CK to be able to do preliminary testing I'd still advocate for the idea that if it is possible - it is worth the wait. For a few reasons ...
- As we know there are often a lot of vapor WIP that are steam driven and will soon run out - a waiting period might help weed those out.

- Once a separate world space is created there is that dividing line of no turning back. This is what happened when Onra came along - most of the province mods were too far along to port anything. And to be clear Valewood Improved, Elsewyr, Syrim Improved are not separate world spaces they are in the Oblivon world space. The problem just becomes that it is more difficult to make them work with a united world space, but it can be done as evidenced by how Onra's mod works with Iliana's mod. So having other mods in the same world space as Skyrim is not really as big an issue - it is just that it would be even better if they start with the same heightmap. What made Oblivion so nauseating was the lack of real estate a few years into its modding cycle overmodding the same land over and over again. To keep one world province mods somewhat friendly with each other could be easy by starting with the same heightmap then backing off of modding the boundary regions much.

For truly separate world provinces there is that dividing line ... having a shared base heightmap then modding on it can then be opened up. Say a person doesn't want to mod the entire province - they are then able to do just a part. Even just a house. While ideally a landscape/city overhaul of the region should be a start - it doesn't have to be. Patches can be made and so on. contrast this with closed team/separate world space modding and the you have longer development time, less people able to join in, less output, etc. Further compound this by what the average mod user will choose -- a separate world space province or a single one with 3 or more provinces already having a lot to explore. By default what is done/available will be more appealing.

And to be clear about shared resources - the tamriel heightmaps use vanilla resources - it is not till you get into Tamriel landscapes that open resources are collected into an esm/bsa format. I'd think for a complete tamriel that several may be possible (landscapes/Architecture/clutter etc). All optional. While I get that it could limit what one chooses - one is not bound to using them - and options to add or not use should be available. Shared resources would be a godsend though for some future when there are multiple provinces in the same worldspace installed in the same game.

But as this discussion goes on I see now Onra's reason to not make announcements or generate too much interest. What if it cannot be done. So I'd like to echo Darkstorne's point that I'm not trying to strong arm interest or anything - instead this is about generating interest in a shared vision of the tamriel we all adore so much. An open world pseudu sandbox game that is morrowind-Oblivion-skyrim deserves open provinces in all directions. Closed spaces move counter to this current.

this is why i love MW... the CS can handle cells no matter where they are (although, ingame you get stuttering, but only in valenwood, western hammerfell and the summerset. )
i'd rather they were all in the same world space. UNLESS, that's not possible.

i don't even want to think about all the necessary steps that might have to be taken to take a WHOLE province out of one world space just to stick it with the others. that could kill scripts (atleast in MW), cause giant clipping and other [censored] things along the borders not worth it, imo.

Hey guys!

I'm a team leader from MERP and have been working on a new heightmap for our project the last months. This project is very interesting as well so I'll try to help by giving my insights (though some other people may know more than me).


I agree, combining worldspaces later on is definitely not going to work, especially because every separate worldspace province will have a different scale and different dimensions compared to the other provinces. You either do it in one worldspace right from the start, or you do it in different worldspaces and keep them separate forever.



1) We indeed can't know for sure, but I'm optimistic myself, considering my 14x13 quads heightmap works perfectly fine in Oblivion.

2) Definitely possible, at least the first part. Injecting your heightmap in Onra's probably won't work, at least not without pretty major modifications to make it fit. This is because the scale and dimensions of the two heightmaps will be different.

What is possible, is that one huge heightmap is created as a base, and that each province team tailors their own area to their liking afterwards. This could be done both in the CK or in a third party tool by simply exporting the RAW file, editing the RAW file (only your area!) and then importing it back in this global master file of the Tamriel worldspace. During the creation of this heightmap there would need to be agreement on the general scale and dimensions of the map, so that every team is content with their section.


So, if you decide to go this one-worldspace road, the first thing you'll need is this base heightmap. I recommend doing it from scratch, don't import it from a previous mod, and don't use the existing land that Bethesda already put in the game (except for Skyrim ofcourse). The existing out-of-border lands made by Bethesda will definitely not offer what the province teams will require from their area.

@ Psymon:

Your reasoning appears sound. We must wait and see whether or not this is feasible, given the as yet unknown limitations of the CK.

In the meantime, however, we should try to help each other out as much as possible.

One thing that a unified worldspace offers that having seperate cells doesn't is easy LOD'ing. With separate worldspaces you effectively have to reconstruct everything from the outer provinces in order to see it distantly, but with a unified worldspace it's way easier ( at least with a tool like tes4lodgen, like we had for oblivion, and it can be added to the "merged patch" as well).

Aaaaanyhow. Lady Nerevar, if you'd be willing to set up the forum/wiki, that would be fantastic. I gave it a look last night, and I think I could, but I know little to nothing about website management, and I have college taking up most of my time for the next couple of weeks.

Alternatively, there is a possibility that we might be able to ask the site Elsweyr and Archipelago are hosted at to host additional projects, though I would of course need to talk to my fellow admins there. Wouldn't affect the need for a separate wiki, however (assuming we decide to go that route).

I'm not sure if Onra would be the one to make this Heightmap to Rule them All or how he works (probably with the CS/CK heightmap editor), but I'll tell here how I made my new 14x13 quads Middle Earth heightmap for MERP. Just in case this plan actually goes through.


I used a program called http://www.bundysoft.com/L3DT/ to create my heightmap. It provides both heightmap generation through a rough design map (useless in this case because you already have Skyrim), and also a full 3D editor with brushes to manipulate the land directly in any way you like. In my experience, this is far more user-friendly than the CS/CK heightmap editor, because you manipulate the land there in 2D first.

L3DT is very versatile and can export heightmaps in practically every format that you need, so don't worry about Skyrim using different parameters/settings for it's heightmaps.


These are WIP images taken from high above in the air in the 3D editor in L3DT. Notice that I use a huge texture overlay of a 'real' map of Middle Earth in the second picture, which allows me to see where everything is supposed to be (and sometimes purposefully stray off if I think it's necessary):

http://img684.imageshack.us/img684/9500/anduinfixed.png
http://img607.imageshack.us/img607/1687/anduinfixed2.png


This is a picture of where Minas Tirith will be located in the game:

http://img705.imageshack.us/img705/9975/mindoluin3.png

And this is a video I made in Oblivion of the White Mountains range, to prove that what you see in the L3DT 3D editor is exactly what you get in the game:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fiu4Bp2QSho


Anyway, L3DT is what I would recommend for something like this... It's direct editing is delicious. The first step would be to export the RAW image from the Tamriel heightmap of Skyrim, and then import it in L3DT. Then the rough layout of the new provinces would be made, while communicating with the province teams to fulfil their requests. After that the new RAW image could be distributed and edited by every team to their liking, as long as they stay within their own borders. Whenever changes of the different teams would need to be merged, you can just cut out the area of each province version and stick them together in Photoshop (or another image editor that supports RAW brightness levels), and then reimport them in the master Master file.

I've got remember of an issue with very large worldspace,

more far you travelling from the "point zero" of the worldspace (i don't know the exact Terminology) , more game lags will come out.

So: this will be present in Skyrim engine too ?

Sorry for bad english, i hope you understand the mean of my questions.