I'm sure a lot of people around here are excited about Skyrim, and want to start working on other provinces as soon as the CK is out. I've already seen threads regarding Hammerfell, Cyrodill, and Elswyr, and I'm sure there's more plans that I've missed.

I'm making this thread to urge you all to not rush into such a huge project. What a project like this needs more than anything else is leadership and organization. I've seen so many huge mods for Oblivion that I was super-excited for, only to have them fall off the face of the earth because they didn't have dedicated leaders.

Not only do we need good leaders for these projects, but we need inter-project communication, possibly even someone to oversee them and make sure they all work together properly. For instance, how does one get to the new province? Everybody and their dog wants to be able to simply walk there, and the ideal way to do so would be to simply make the standard worldspace big enough to fit all of Tamriel inside. Problem is, we don't know if this is even possible, and if it is, it might not be practical performance-wise. A good alternative, in my opinion, is to place "walk-through" doors at the paths between provinces, so while you still get the loading screen between each province, you can still walk between provinces (No levitation means it's easy to define borders that you can't walk over - Skyrim does this perfectly, imo). We need to be able to agree on one method, and have each province project follow it, so mods don't feel jarringly different. Sharing assets would also be incredibly valuable for all teams involved.

One thing that we seriously need to avoid is multiple teams working on the same area. I've already seen 3 different people/teams considering working on Solstheim. Ideally, these teams would merge, and would be able to work together, getting the same area finished in 1/3 of the time as they would have alone. And of course, there's the matter of quality - Everybody wants to visit Morrowind again, but I don't think anybody wants to see old Morrowind's 10-year-old models and textures next to Skyrim's works of art. Voice acting for quests is not just recommended, but required to avoid making jarringly out of place mods. Very careful attention needs to be payed to lore, as well - 200 years have passed since the time of Morrowind and Oblivion, and the province mods need to reflect that.

In summary, what we need for "Other Province" mods is:
- Good leadership and organization
- Inter-project communication
- No multiple teams working separately on the same area (lookin' at you, Solstheim)
- Quality control for artwork
- Voice acting
- Careful attention to lore

I can personally say that I fully intend to join one of these "other province mods" and help in any way I can to make Skyrim a better place for both modders and players, though I haven't decided on a team/project to join yet.


P.S. Slightly off topic, but does anybody know what happened to Silgrad Tower? Their site's been down for a while and I don't know where they moved to or what.

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ATTENTION: This thread is closed, as it got too big.

Please continue the discussion here: http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1295487-province-mod-collaboration-thread-2/

I got into this thread thinking "oh no, another one thinking they can tackle a province " but was happily proven wrong. Hopefully people read and pay attention to this thread. Making a province mod is ridiculously hard, thankless, and tedious work, and no one should be getting into it just because they feel like it. It takes incredible amounts of planing and dedication to get anything done.


Looks like their domain name registration ran out. Happens periodically, since their host is no longer actively with the project there are sometimes troubles renewing it on time. Or so I recall.

So is it true that the game actually includes all the provinces or was that just someone photoshopping ?

Link http://ppsh-41.tumblr.com/post/13145143504/entire-tamriel-landmass-built-into-skyrim

Images

http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6217/6385494675_0214121ddd_z.jpg

http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6046/6385504367_7119fe9b38_z.jpg

@Lady Nerevar

Glad to hear your input. Do you have any plans for joining/starting a province team, personally?

@illuminiel

I've explored it personally, and can confirm that it is, in fact, there. However, the majority of what people are so excited about is just LOD, which may or may not be convertable to a heightmap. If not, all it's good for is as a rough guide to use. I can confirm, however, that a ridiculous amount of land beyond Skyrim does exist.

All I would add is that if you are planning a province mod, I strongly strongly strongly suggest fully making one of the cities first. With NPCs and maybe a few quests. Stick it in its own "inside the city walls" worldspace and make up something about needing to teleport there or something. And super easy to slot into your new world later. If you want some enemies to fight, stick a dungeon underneath as well; you can always move it later.
It's quite easy to make a heightmap, throw a few rocks around and plonk a few buildings down and think you're almost there. And then you start the interiors and realise that you need more than you thought, they'll take five times as long as the exteriors, and are less fun. Then you'll add the NPCs, with all their pathing and scheduling, and realise that will also take five times as long and be far less fun. Then you'll add the dialogue, which will also take five times as long and be so very much less fun. And finally you'll add the quests, which will take five times as long and another five times as long to debug, and be immensely less fun.

By the end of making that one city, you'll realise what an immense amount of work is involved in creating new areas, and you'll have made something complete and self-contained that you can release, show off and get feedback from.
If you can get through all that and still want to make the rest of the province, all the very best to you! Based on your city mod, you might even get more people to help.
If not, you've made something useful that you can put out, rather than just throwing away all the immense amounts of work of the talented people involved, like so often happens.

Starting? Nah, I learned my lesson the last time. I'm a svcker for punishment, but I'm getting more than enough of it from my studies and my involvement with the community.

Joining? Probably not, at least not in a full-time fashion. The exception being if one of the handful of people I'd really like to work with join/start one, or if it looks really, really good. I do plan on helping out teams and individuals with content creation, modeling/texturing, and consultation if something catches my eye. I've found that sort of work far more rewarding than fixing floaters in 500 cells. I'm keeping my projects much smaller this time around.

This is good advice. Islands are also great 'teaser' mod candidates.

@Poly, I couldn't agree more. That would be an excellent way to start working on another province, and cities (realistically) are some of the hardest work anyway.

Who's up for workin' on Sotha Sil with me? lol, kidding, kidding... for now

Would be fun to have some radiant infinite invasion quests.

Hammerfell, with nice warm deserts and some Sahel music.

I'd love to see Hammerfell. What I don't want to see is a [wip] thread advertising it for 7 years and never actually releasing anything, or else dying out and being forgotten.

I would say Tamriel Rebuilt is a good example of a team that actually released their work. They take small chunks at a time, and divide those chunks up even further among their modders. May not be the BEST system, but they've actually released 2 maps, and I can honestly say it's one of the best Morrowind mods out there. There's also Elswyr for Oblivion, but, I don't know, something about it just felt... off, to me... like, "This is not Oblivion"...

Bump, because I think it's important

The two most successful projects like this were/are Tamriel Rebuilt with the Morrowind set and Elsweyr by Iliana with the Oblivion set. These are vast projects, that were very taxing on the designers and organizers. I suspect most modders should start out with something small to get their feet wet. The fact that Bethesda gave us the basic topography for much of Cyrodil and Morrowind (doesn't seem to be the whole continent, though, but wouldn't that have been a massive experiment in fan mod coordination?), means there might be a common ground, so to speak, to start such a project with.

Fixed

I always enjoyed the idea of a single city. Not to downplay the amount of work involved (which is substantial), but it allows for a relatively brief amount of content, but that content can be extremely polished and unique. I think Tamriel Rebuilt's Stirk is an excellent example of how a small amount of new land can provide a great interactive experience and advance the game's lore.

-RDST

There's a bit of a problem with the existing architecture, it fits well with Skyrim but not with any other province, and that, like Morrowind, will limit resources, with Oblivion, being more generalist, you could use/adapt/retext most of it to fit human provinces, even the elven architecture was OK for Summerset/Valenwood, we had 2 big examples on how you had to start from zero if you wanted to mod outside the Imperial province, Silgrad Tower spent years modelling their tile sets and TR/Lady Nerevar the same with Southern Hammerfell, I mark these as a big initial obstacle and to consider properly if you want to go ahead with any projects, there's a lot of background work before you even start the CK.

I think its better to concentrate on smaller regions rather than trying to create an entire province, like for example the city of Elinhir in Hammerfell near Falkreath and its surroundings.
My own Elsweyr Anequina mod began as just the town of Riverhold near Skingrad, which was my first release and I gradually expanded it from there to include some more of the province. I also started the mod a couple of years after Oblivion had been released so there were modders resources I could draw on to go on to build a desert region.

Perhaps many of the architecture resources modders have created for Oblivion could be transferred to Skyrim which would give many projects a huge boost, such as all the sets that Mr Siika has created for different mods.

I don't think the individual province or region mods need to coordinate too much. Patches can be made later to link them. Its a hobby after all, not a corporate project, so people will create what they want to create according to their own visions. Trying to pressure everyone to work under the same umbrella will just stifle things.


Thanks Candlemaster

@iliana no offense meant of cource lol. I think the biggest things I didn't like about it was how the art style in general didn't fit well with Oblivion's, but that may just me being nitpicky lol.

If I may remind people of a very important mod project that unfortunately started late in Oblivion mod cycle and only really became finished earlier this year.

It is called http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=27235 by Onra.

It placed within the same worldspace as Cyrodiil the entire continent plus summerset isles. The design philosophy was different in that instead of being a closed team approach the goal was to make the landscape and LOD of the regions then leave it open for others to mod on. This is contrary to the design philosophy of either lone people or teams that do the land first and then the entire province including people, quests, all that.

I'm of the mind that closed teams have been tried and the results are dismal (present company excluded of course). Further, the development period is extremely long. Onra got most of the work done in a year or so with the heightmaps and I know he is looking at being able to do this with Skyrim as well. But like Lightwave, Karithian and others he is waiting on the Ck to be released. Certainly the experience is there as is the information and collected sizes and heightmaps as that was all already done for Oblivion.

If it is possible I urge you future province modders to consider helping him if you can then working off of that heightmap so that we can have a one world tamriel.

thanks for reading

Most likely true. Oblivion had the entire Tamriel land mass with one or two testing areas in it but the overwhelming majority was just basic land without grass and often with poorly fitted scenery.

It looks to be LOD, distant land thats been rendered to exist but has had the actual landmass removed. It leaves a ghost of land to be seen in the distance but has no substance to walk on (so far as I can tell). Its promising but also a worry. If Bethesda have allowed editing and production of land beyond the currently created land then there is no reason why modders can produce concurrent land with Skyrim, as in no need to teleport through a gate to get to the new land, players can simply walk there. This all hinges upon the CK being able (ergo Bethesda allowing) modders to create land, rocks, trees, and LOD content beyond the current.

Well did they do this with Fallout 3 and NV?

I can't recall any beyond the borders for Fallout 3 and have not yet for NV.

If they did make it possible there then it is a high chance it will be here.

And that LOD stuff beyond the borders does not even line up right and it is cut off too if you go out to the edges. Just ~coe -100,100 or any -100,-100 you will see it is giant square. Cyrodiil is cut off about where Bravil would be and red mountain is cut in half. Their off kilter alignments and that only two landscapes from the last two games indicate that it was only meant for backdrop in certain high areas of Skyrim. Hammerfell is near featureless. It is only a vague resemblance of these provinces nothing more. Kind of a neat Easter egg though for those with console powers and big dreams.

If a tamriel heightmap is created it would have to be from scratch LOD as that is not going to work.

Great idea. However I'd say that I think all of those things are actually fun to do. That's just me.

Phitt released some rebuilt and fancied Morrowind models as an Oblivion resource just a year or so ago (Velothi, Daedric, Ashlander, Dwemer, and Common, plus some Emperor Parasols). I suggest possibly starting with those, as they are original content (not Bethesda-owned) and may be close enough in quality to modify for Skyrim.

Someone who knows a massive amount about voice altering software, could probably voice at least 40 different people. So I don't think a ton of willing actors would be necessary, just so long as the voice altering software doesn't sound sci-fish/out of place of the lore. As for buildings, yes buildings will be a complication, especially with Morrowinds ultra unique buildings. Considering that people have made very classic looking Silt Striders from scratch, I think it can eventually be done by those with the skill though. The hardest part is making models from scratch, which seems to be significantly harder than retexturing. Also the unique creatures, I have no experience with model making, but that sounds even harder. If Morrowind had it's unique creatures exclusive to it's land, it would add massively to the touch. If it had stuff like Bonemold armor that'd be even more amazing.

It would also be interesting to explore the ruins of various cities, though I wonder if there's enough info on the lore to portray that accurately. Morrowind/Oblivion lore spoilers behind cut, DON'T highlight the spoilers if you don't wanna see them. These are huge one's too... If you never beat Morrowind you REALLY probably don't wanna highlight the spoiler okay?


Oblivion on the other hand seems far less mysterious, in what it would accurately look like lore wise now.

@theKarithian And if not, we now have doors that you can simply walk through instead of having to click on to open. It's not the ideal solution obviously, but it is an option in case making one massive worldspace isn't possible/practical.