» Wed Nov 21, 2012 1:13 am Open Cities Skyrim
Open Cities Skyrim is a comprehensive project that aims to bring back at least part of the feel of Morrowind - specifically how most of the cities were a natural part of the world and you could just walk in without loading screens. The added immersion and realism goes a long way, probably a lot more than you might think. Ever wanted to ride your horse into the center of Riften? Well now you can. Need to get some help from the city guards to vanquish a foe? Run toward the gates and the guards will do their duty while you can seek safety within the walls. The town guards make for some very interesting interactions this way. This will also make running dragon battles that much more interesting since the flow of the battle won't be interrupted by the loading screen and all of the city guards can be involved at the same time.
Downloads
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=7320
http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/8058
http://tesalliance.org/forums/index.php?/files/file/1096-open-cities-skyrim/
http://www.darkcreations.org/forums/files/file/269-open-cities-skyrim/
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?showtopic=1395935
Installation Requirements
Official Skyrim patch 1.8.151.0.7 or greater.
Installation - Wrye Bash BAIN
Drop the archive into your Skyrim Mods\Bash Installers folder, then install as usual.
Make sure the mod is active in the Wrye Bash mods tab.
Installation - Steam Workshop
Subscribe to the mod via the Workshop page, then use the Skyrim launcher to allow it to download and install.
Make sure it's active in the Data Files menu.
Installation - Nexus Mod Manager
Use the "Download with Manager" button on the Open Cities Skyrim page at Skyrim Nexus. The installer should take care of things from there.
Then simply make sure NMM has the mod activated.
Installation - Manual
Drop the Open Cities Skyrim.esp and Open Cities Skyrim.bsa files into your Data folder.
Activate the mod using whatever management tool suits you.
Post Install Setup
Set the mod's load order using whatever management tool you feel most comfortable with.
BOSS for Skyrim should set the proper load order, and is the recommended method for doing so.
It may also be necessary to rebuild your Bashed Patch if you're using one.
Once the game loads, you need to allow 24+ game hours to pass for AI to fully update in each city.
Uninstalling Open Cities Skyrim
Oh, now why would you want to go and do a thing like that?
But, since this isn't going to be for everyone, and you may decide you don't like what it does, the following procedure needs to be followed to remove the mod:
* Load your game, and move to a location away from any of the cities. Don't use an interior attached to a city for this. Save and exit the game.
* Deactivate any patches you installed for other mods first. Load your game, then save in a new slot and exit the game.
* Remove the patch ESPs from your Data folder.
* Deactivate the ESP. Load the save you just made and save again in another new slot.
* Uninstall Open Cities Skyrim from the game. Steam Workshop users should unsubscribe first.
* Be sure the ESP and BSA files are removed from your Data folder.
* Rebuild your Bashed Patch if you have one, as it is possible it may have pulled records from the mod.
You will need to allow 48+ game hours to pass for AI to recover before returning to the cities.
If NPCs are missing, you need to LEAVE AGAIN and either go do something else for awhile or wait for a longer time period before coming back.
This procedure has been thoroughly tested and if followed correctly will return your game to the vanilla state.
Load Order
Open Cities Skyrim should be loaded as late as possible in order to preserve changes to navmeshes and other exterior city data.
Compatibility Patches
None yet, but sure to be some soon!
Incompatible Mods
Generally speaking, any mod which adds things to the closed cities will be incompatible.
City mods that add some details to the open worldspace will be partially compatible.
The Last Defeat of the Dragon Cult - The mod hasn't been updated since March. It's navmeshes are partially corrupted and must be repaired.
More Dynamic Shadows & Striping Fix - Numerous dirty edits that cause some interiors to cease functioning.
Known Issues
Extremely long loading screens that never seem to end (they take 10+ minutes to load) have been traced back to anti Z-fighting tweaks that have been provided by the STEP Guide. You will need to reverse these changes in order to resolve the problem. It may be possible to refine these to allow you to keep them, but I know nothing about what's being done so you'd need to ask for that advice on the STEP forum.
The Stormcloak assault on Whiterun does not currently change the state of the city to it's ruined version due to an unresolved conflict with quest aliases in CWAttackCity. As soon as a cause for this can be found this issue will be resolved.
The same sort of problem is suspected, but not yet confirmed, for the Stormcloak assault on Solitude.
Troubleshooting Problems
If you have a problem with an Open Cities mod and wish to report it, I'd appreciate as much information as possible, preferably in the form of a screenshot with console data showing if it's something that can be screened. The FormID of the affected object would help greatly to narrow down any problems that might result. Post this information along with your load order. Reports with less than detailed information may result in delays in getting it fixed, or result in being ignored entirely. It helps everyone to provide details. I am especially interested in verifiable conflicts, as I wish for Open Cities Skyrim to be as conflict-free as is humanly possible given the circumstances. If the situation requires a patch, I can only work something out if I know what to look for.
I am seeing extremely long load times when exiting into Whiterun from an interior.
It has been confirmed from several sources that this is due to some anti Z-fighting tweaks that have been provided by the STEP Guide. You will need to reverse these changes in order to resolve the problem. It may be possible to refine these to allow you to keep them, but I know nothing about what's being done so you'd need to ask for that advice on the STEP forum.
The doors inside Warmaidens (in Whiterun) are missing, what have you done with them!
The More Dynamic Shadows & Striping Fix mod makes a bunch of dirty edits in Warmaidens that will cause the doors to disappear. This mod has several other problem locations as well and it isn't recommended to be used in general until the author fixes the problem.
I am getting unexplained CTDs when using Open Cities with other mods. What gives?
Open Cities Skyrim requires the latest version of Skyrim, Patch 1.6.89 as of the writing of this document.
Many mods have not been updated since their creation. The most likely causes of issues will be from mods that have navmeshes but have not had them properly redone using CK 1.6.89. These mods need to be updated by their authors or they will simply not be compatible with the updated navmesh formats and will cause CTDs in any configuration that includes updated mods.
When a mod is reported and confirmed to suffer from this problem, it will be listed in the Incompatible Mods section until such time as it is updated by its author.
Locations of AI Doors
The AI doors are entry ways into the closed wordspaces should it become necessary. Not everything that is placed in a city by a mod is worth the time it takes to create a patch. Mods that drop items for a one-time pickup are a good example of this. It's much easier to just go through the door, get what you need, then exit the city as normal.
Riften: East of the main city gate, next to the alley gate.
Markarth: South of the main gate, along the eastern wall. Directly east of the small bridge.
Whiterun #1: East side of the bridge into the city, right next to the brazier.
Whiterun #2: North side of Jorvaskr, on the side of the path up to the Skyforge.
Solitude #1: In the rock pile between the city gate and the executioner's platform.
Solitude #2: In the rock pile across from the Bard's College, immediately to the south of the manhole cover.
Performance and FPS
Open Cities Skyrim should not produce a significant change in your frame rates and performance. Due to the liberal use of occlusion planes in the mod, the game will not render anything on the opposite side of the city walls in any given location. So your viewing content will be limited to roughly what you'd see if you were in the closed city worldspaces. The closed city worldspace system was NOT devised by Bethesda to improve frame rates. It was devised to conserve system memory on the XBox 360 and PS3. You're playing on a PC. Or, at least legally speaking you ought to be anyway.
Anyone who insists that this mod is a framerate destroyer is already experiencing other problems with their game. Do keep in mind, Skyrim is not one of those silly shooters that requires 60fps at all times in order to be playable. Dropping from 60 to 55 would go absolutely unnoticed. Even playing with 30-40 frames would go unnoticed to those folks who keep those dumb little indicators running while they play.
If you're seeing a massive frame rate drop, point the finger somewhere else. This mod is absolutely not the cause of your problems. I know this may seem harsh, but this sort of disinformation was rampant with the Oblivion mod and wasn't true then either and I absolutely will not stand for this sort of disinformation being spread now either.
Why are there dead Oblivion gates in the cities now?
While the gates in TES4 were shown to collapse into their debris piles, the only known reason for why the physical parts vanished is because that's just how the animation was done. All gates used the same resource file so they all collapse the same way. Further, the gates that you as the player close down are done via removal of the sigil stone power source. So when those close, they're doing so under a controlled set of conditions and the physical portal withdraws as per whatever designed system the Daedra use for that.
When Martin pulls the Akatosh avatar bit at the end of TES4, whatever gates were standing open would have had their dimensional bridge abruptly severed, and I believe that would result in the physical manifestation remaining behind since it was NOT properly shut down. The end result of this should logically have been a series of gates still standing but with no portal. This was limited by how the scripting works to call their shutdown code though. All it did was instruct every gate to run the reverse animation. The code was also supposed to have caused all the debris everywhere to vanish as well but that doesn't happen, nobody reported it as a bug, and Bethesda didn't care enough to fix it.
So there ought to be various gates all over Tamriel that were left intact, including gates within cities. 200 years isn't long enough for solid stone to crumble into nothing. It is long enough for those gates which aren't being marginally maintained by those near them to become overgrown, cracked, damaged by weather, wars, etc. Could be up for debate as to weather the Nords would leave them sitting around like this or not, but there's nothing in the lore that says these couldn't simply have been left there as monuments to the Crisis.
Even here on Earth we build monuments to incredibly painful events in our history - like the WWII memorial at Pearl Harbor where they left the sunken ships in the harbor and turned it into a national monument. The statue representing the Battle of Iwo Jima. Whole museums dedicated to WWII history, and other wars fought as well. Battlefield memorials for the Civil War are everywhere. People even reenact these battles on a regular basis.
Arguments of it being feature creep don't fly either. No more so than a smelter in Riften where none exists, or gatesmen who open the gates for you if you're on horseback. These gates add a touch of uniqueness to the mod, and pay what I believe is an homage to TES4:Oblivion as one of the best games of its time. They are not active portals and nor are they eyesores. They're not even in your way.
Still not happy? Thomas Kaira has created a http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/19706. His is the only authorized patch, any others have been produced without permission and are likely to have game killing bugs in them.
Credits
Throttlekitty - Help with the Riften city gate collision sizing.
Bassix - Corrections made to the Markarth dam mesh.
Hannaise - Oblivion Gates in Skyrim (http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/18957)
