Alright, does anyone know of a good free forum/wiki host? I can help get it set up but I'm not so great at website-type stuff....

A quick google search yielded Lefora, which is more for forums than wikis, but it has plugin support. Anybody have experience with them?

WikiSpot looks good for a wiki host...

We could attack and take over http://www.tamriel-rebuilt.org/. Everything is all set up for us.

I've no qualms being associated with TR. They're well-known and they do good work. Would they allow us some space on their site/forums, though...?

We certainly don't want to "attack" them lol...

lol, I kid.

I think TR is more or less dedicated to Morrowind. I am afraid that this project would be pushed away by TR.

We could give the project a name, and start a series of threads here to gain the interest(which you already seemed to have gotten with this one) of someone who is more knowledgable on websites and wikis(maybe even some members of TR themselves).

I know absolutely nothing about setting up a wiki, but http://www.wikispaces.com/content/wiki looks like it might have a good one. I don't mod, but I do support mods and would be more then willing to set aside time to try and help setup and collaborate with others on setting up a wiki for the idea you all are going for.

Well, it depends, do we want just a forum, just a wiki, or a forum/wiki combo?

Also, what should we call the project? (or meta-project to help the projects, I guess)

Can't say on what to call the project, but I think it would have to be a wiki/forum combo. The wiki would be used to separate projects and then sub-separate different aspects of the projects like work done/lore/etc. The forum would be the major area where the members from different groups would get together to discuss certain aspects of a project. One main forum thread for the mod, and then subthreads under for the aspects of the mods.

I am unsure a wiki would support that type of discussion which is why I thought of a wiki/forum combo.

Well I've found forum hosts, and wiki hosts, but do you know of any good free combo hosts?

Wikia are probably the better of the free ones, but you dont have to combine the two in one place. We can set up a website anywhere then provide a navigable link to the wiki, unless youre looking at it being integrated which will probably result in a cost implication.

Spruz provide a wiki facility and forum, full website etc and the costs are quite low. Ive been using the free service for quite a while.
This is definitely a good idea though. Wikia will allow membership to be ported between wikis, basically join wikia and you can access any of the wikis. So it would be possible to use a wiki per worldspace and have membership across them all, also sharing between them. I would definitely go with a collaboration over large landmass developement as there will be a lot of progress obtained by sharing knowledge and combining efforts rather than several projects going it alone.

This is one of the first things that popped up that said forums for the description:
http://www.wikidot.com/more:explore-features
Has different plans for 12 months also:
http://www.wikidot.com/plans

Edit:
Also found this one:
http://forums.informe.com/index.html
It seems to have wiki and forum capability.

Wikidot looks nice. Not a big fan of a 300mb storage limit, but we can always host the data files themselves elsewhere if we have to. Or, if we manage to get donations, we could upgrade to the 15gb one...

Well, it does say 5X300 MB. I take that to mean 1.5 GB storage. Can't be 100% sure that is the meaning though.

Also, depending on how many groups come to exchange ideas and maybe work together on the mod if it is like 50 people they could donate a dollar each and bam, paid for for one year.

Edit:
I was reading it wrong. It looks confusing and someone who initially sets it up will have to go over this faqs for all the details:
http://www.wikidot.com/faq:upgrades



Edit 2: In the end I guess you could administrate 5 'sites' with up to 300MB of storage for each of the 'sites'. So in that way you would have 1.5GB total. Depending on how it all worked together, and if sites you administrate are connected in some way, it would seem that you could host certain aspects or even different projects on each of the sites. Not sure how the forums work that way, but if it is one forum for all the sites it wouldn't matter.

Nope, "Max upload storage per site 300 MB"

Well, ultimately, we're not really hosting the projects themselves here, this would just be the middle ground - each project could still have it's own site, and each team would worry about their own hosting...

Tamriel Reconstructed... I kid.

"Tamriel Provinces". And subnames like "TP: Elsweyr", "TP: Morrowind" etc etc.
"Tamriel Province Expansion", maybe.

A forum is needed for comunication and organization. Its easier to update threads with news and organize projects into subforums.

Elder Scrolls Provinces...

Tamriel Provinces,
Tamriel Expanded,
Lands of Tamriel,


Hmmm, Lands of Tamriel could be good.. The lot project, where lots of modders do lots of work to make lots of new land with lots of exploration... lol

Candlemaster: Yea I caught that looking over the faqs more. If it is only 5 teams that would work. If more then 5 teams got together then we could always create another free account and work with adding a main page that links to each site for a mod. So 1 main page where it is used to consolidate the other groups wiki sites and make direct links to whatever information they might have made for the wiki.

x_death: Exactly what I was thinking for the forums. You have main threads that link to what each project is. Also one main thread with subthreads about forum rules and stuff like that. Each project will have its own main thread and I guess one person from that group would have to moderate their groups threads. Not to sure about the moderator positions. It would all have to be worked out over the course of making and setting up everything.

To make all this work though it would be nice to find out exactly what teams would mind actually working with a wiki for their projects. It would be nice if every group worked on this together, but it would be great if all the teams would be setting up there anyways just for feedback and to let others know how work is progressing. All details can still be worked out early because this is the best time with no release of the CK and no release date in sight yet.

Well, I assume many projects will have or want their own site, but if we get well-known at all then some new projects will want us to host them, which we can I suppose, but we can't host every team of course...

Anyhow, do you like Lands of Tamriel for a name? I'm about to register "lands_of_tamriel.wikidot.com"

Well to answer the first thing. While we cannot accommodate everyone we could help other set up their own wiki. We could also use the main site as a link to any site that sets up a wiki and wants others to see it. So linking to other projects wikis would be beneficial for them. Also the forum might be made to handle them, or they could setup their own forum for others to talk to them about their project.

I do like the sound of Lands of Tamriel. It gives the feeling of encompassing everyone.

Edit: Off to bed now. I hate college sometimes.

How about keeping it broader, as was mentioned before there are a few large landmass mods that arent Tamriel related but would certainly overlap in much of the work, such as flora and fauna, some architecture and so forth.

As much of a lore purist as I am, yeah, we can be open to non-lore-friendly projects as well. We would just have to flag which projects are lore-friendly and which aren't.

Mind that it doesn't have to be on Tamriel to be lore-friendly. There are at *least* 16 realms of Oblivion, plus 4 known landmasses beyond Tamriel, and all of which are canon.

Some really great discussion in this forum, and it pains me to see a lack of input from members who have already created threads for province mods. In every province mod I've seen I've suggested getting in contact with Onra to at least discuss the pros and cons of using his heightmaps for their province, and it usually goes nowhere. The Elsweyr team responded with:

"I do like the idea of a fully open world but the necessary compromises are not acceptable. We considered building the mod under tes4 in the main game worldspace but there is no way to perform this kind of computational modelling inside the CS: the heightmap editor is far too crude. There was also no way that we could find to merge a new, graphical heightmap into the default worldspace."

I'm really not sure they understand how Onra's heightmaps worked, and they don't seem keen to discuss it with him. They've clearly spent a lot of time creating a heightmap in Oblivion already, ready to port over into Skyrim, and it seems they don't want to throw that work away and build on someone else's. Kind of understandable, but still a shame they won't even consider it. The worst thing I can imagine for Skyrim is a plethora of half-completed province mods, some set in their own worldspaces, some set in Onra's heightmaps and fully explorable by foot/horse/ship, and sadly not able to be played together, just like we ended up with in Oblivion. Just check out Morrowind's mods: Tamriel Rebuilt team working on Morrowind, another team building up Cyrodiil, another team working on Skyrim, and there was even a small group working on Blackmarsh until they lost their data for it. All of them being built within the same worldspace, and because they constantly talk amongst each other on the forums they're ensuring that their provinces link up and play well together.

This Wiki is a fantastic idea, and would really help to ensure teams collaborate and discuss their work, but only if they're open to collaborating in the first place. Onra's heightmap arrived too late for it to be the key to uniting all province mods in Oblivion, but this time we can avoid that issue (so long as modders are in agreement with Onra's designs and lore consistencies, which I'm sure he would be open to discussing). Trouble is, it seems like a lot of teams don't want to communicate. This Elsweyr mod has apparently been in development since 2010, and I only heard about it after Skyrim launched. Suggesting they talk with Onra was essentially met with "no thanks", and the other province mods don't seem much different. They all seem very intent on... calculated isolation. Like they've already made up their minds within their team about how the province will be developed, and only want to use the forums to showcase their work every now and again and get some "Oooo wow that looks awesome, can't wait!" comments.

I know I'm ranting. And I know I shouldn't be criticizing given my complete lack of modding work, and the lack of time I have to aid projects like this in the future. It would just be a shame to see Skyrim mod teams repeat the mistakes made by some of the Oblivion mod teams, when we have some fantastic Morrowind mod teams to look to for examples of how to communicate and share ideas/work.

Rant over, I need some coffee. Phew.

Lady Nerevar, if you ever do start work on a mod for northern Hammerfell that is something I would really love to help out with. It sounded like you were mulling it over.


There is probably no great advantage of having province mods in Skyrim's main worldspace because it is surrounded by high mountains with only a few narrow passes leading out. A load screen appearing if you walked into one of those to move you to the next area would be easy to implement. Its not like the porous borders of Cyrodiil as it was in TESIV where you could feasibly cross the border into the neighbouring provinces almost anywhere.

Another thing about heightmaps is that the team creating the region will want a large say in how it looks as it will impact on their entire mod. The placement of mountains is extremely important if you want to add several distinct regions that are separate from one another. For example, if you were creating an arid region you would not want to see forests in the distant view because that would ruin the desert ambience. The same goes for the city locations where you need a suitable landscape.

And many of the provinces are so far from Skyrim that unless you found some people who wanted to work on Cyrodiil then there would be a huge swathe of blank territory to cross to reach them.

@Darkstorne
Sorry for the perceived lack of interest - I was only alerted to this thread this morning and I've been busy since.

I appreciate your enthusiasm but you do come over as insisting everyone drop their own work and use whatever Onra creates. If this was not your intention then I apologize for letting it rub me up the wrong way.

My understanding has been that import directly into the default worldspace is fraught with problems and cannot be done incrementally - and as I have said, we do have the heightmap we intend to use. Beyond that it's all really a matter of what is technically possible or practical. You're right that I don't understand Onra's work, in particular how it can be possible to work in a modular way using separate, externally maintained heightmaps withing the single default worldspace. Lack of that capability would be a show-stopper for us. If this is possible then we are open to discussion.

I'd already PM'd Onra before today - I expect he'll respond when he can.

For anyone interested, our WIP thread is http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1259832-wip-the-elder-scrolls-elsweyr/ and yes, we are a full-province mod. This will be our third build. The first fell victim to an over-ambitious heightmap (about double-scale, I think) but the second managed to create the heightmap, complete region generation (including Tenmar forest with mostly all-new speedtrees) and the external walls of five of the seven cities - all in a year and most of it after the announcement of Skyrim so the supply of keen modders had abated somewhat.

As to the rest of the content of this thread - I very much support the idea of a central wiki and collaboration between teams, whether a single-worldspace solution proves to be feasable or not.

EDIT: I've just read Iliana's post and completely agree. A single worldspace mod would be a bonus, but only if it can be achieved without losing more than is gained.

Let me just throw in a couple of thoughts before I forget them, although I haven't read whole thread yet.
About...
Endless lore accuracy discussion of Onra's map - It's not so hard to imagine that in a quasi-medieval world without GPS and all other knick-knacks, without known data about map projection systems, it isn't so hard to imagine that maps aren't always correct.
Nathalia Dravalor didn't have gps.
Just like http://cartographic-images.net/Cartographic_Images/109_Herodotus_files/droppedImage.png 'world' map isn't correct.

Common resources - while I don't have a harsh stand on this, I find it annoying when I have multiple versions of sujamma or gold bar or some Daggerfall book and even worse if NPCs don't recognise it for quest. So I'm pro-cobl or something similar.

Same worldspace or not - I prefer same world, but again everything has advantages and disadvantages. All the reasons that Iliana mentioned are good reasons, but sailing anywhere if priceless. As well as riding in. In the end, it's a hard decision.

I also hope that different teams (I'm sure there will exist more teams on same/similar project)will be more firendly and sharing, but maybe that's too much to expect.
People always want to have something unique, exclusive, never-seen-before etc, but in the end they don't get the effect they wanted. Either nothing is released, or project is dead, or eternal alpha... or something else.
I had experienced that myself while making Morrowind drinks for Oblivion.