Loving to see the creative thought being put into this particular idea. Seems a lot more grounded given that we have a reference point for everything, as well as the circumstances leading to the event in full. Would love to see what becomes of this, if someone can manage it. Wouldn't take nearly as long as some of the other TCs about the place.

This is probably the project I'm most interested in at the moment; even more so than the brainstorming I've seen over a Skyrim x2 mod. Tangentially related to that, though, I've got a question. Will you be putting Solstheim in the main worldspace or in its own? Both obviously have pros and cons, the main pro being it'd be much more compatible with any future DLC and landmass mods, a big con being you can't see it in the distance from Skyrim, which might break immersion for some. (At the same time, though, I remember when I added Bloodmoon to Morrowind, it made me feel odd, knowing I could swim over. Just made the world feel smaller, in a way, having something so close to Vvardenfell.)

Imperial Knight: Thanks for the feedback! We appriciate all the lore tips we can get and will take them all into account when we begin designing the general storyline. In regards to the architecture we already talked about making a mixed architecture of pinewood and Gnisis'ish materials. We'll keep throwing up renders and hear what people think of the general direction that takes. If there's a lot of negative feedback we'll change it of course.

Evencharmer: We're glad to have caught your interrest! If the Skyrim engine will allow it, we will preferably keep Solstheim in the Skyrim world map. That said, we want to see how far we can push it North-East without overstepping the world space bounderies. If that's impossible, we'll make it a seperate cell area. We're also hoping that the 3D Map that Skyrim uses, allows for dynamic modification. Meaning that we can change something in the world and it will automaticly add the specific landscapes.

Just throwing you all an update.

We have been given a group assignment at our college which includes making a small comerical/trailer. So we thought, why not make a teaser for Project Skyrim? And so we did! We're working on bringing you the teaser as soon as possible. In the meantime here's a few renders from our early production including some extensive bump-mapping and a high-poly candle.
candle

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/15415212/candle.jpg/#

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/15415212/Teaseriscoming.png/#

enormous amounts of coffee has been consumed so far...

In TES IV me and a few other people recreated Solstheim in Oblivion's timeline. It took some time, but now it's a fully functional island, minus the main questline (it has a few scattered side-quests though).

My advice, play Skyrim first, exhaust all questlines, replay Morrowind and Oblivion if necessary too. You might even need to read about the Infernal City and anything else that's changed in the last 200 years. Then get used to the Construction Set, I imagine it's similar to TESIV so if you know what well you'll adapt in no time. Then decide on what you want the gameplay to be as well. Do you want leveled content or static? Do you want new loot tables? That sort of thing.

Okay now the island. The first thing you need is the heightmap. (That's basically the shape of the island.) For such projects modders usually used a tool like TESPort to import it from Bloodmoon. It's NOT the same thing as Morroblivion and hasn't raised issues. You still need to place all the trees and stuff yourself with your own models or Skyrim vanilla models.

Then you'll probably want to procedurally generate landscape for each region based on various parameters like how many rocks and trees you want per cell, how much snow etc. Don't go through the trouble of doing every single thing manually it's just an insane task and unless you have a really talented group, it's not very precise either. Rather just do procedural generation and then manual edit the things you want to feel unique.


Overall, there's nothing wrong with being patient and waiting for the right moment to really start doing things. Give it a month or two, maybe more. A year maybe, but do not delay indefinitely as other projects have done because they get stuck in one aspect and never go beyond that or because they want a perfect map that simply isn't going to be made by a non-professional (unpayed) modding team. I think this was the case with a few of the Beyond Cyrodiil projects, Vvardenfell for example changed several leaders and never went beyond a simple TESPort import and the Skyrim for Oblivion team never actually released Solstheim, despite having an impressive ice cave.

For example, if you have to use vanilla models, use them. The landscape of Solstheim in my opinion can be recreated entirely using Skyrim models and even if some things are off, you can just use placeholders. There's no shame in taking a regular Dwarven Helm and calling it "Mask of Dagoth Ur" if that is required to progress. You can always change the model later. Functionality before looks should be prio in my opinion.


I'm considering making Solstheim for Skyrim too, but not for competition. I'll be happy to exchange tips/resources/dungeons if you're interested. PM for details if you want.

Thanks for the Feedback thePOSTALdude! We've already decided to take our time and not rush ahead of ourselves. We will most likely create a heightmap of Solstheim and if that doesn't work, then manually create the landscape cell by cell We've got a team of 12 so far, most people experienced with 3Ds Max modelling, but we know our way around textures and landscaping aswell

really? wouldn't of thought so, Hlaalu Imperials so i thought they would of moved south?

well, the werewolves destroyed the place at the start. And i was told by "someone-who-somehow-knows-all-the-lore" that they left... maybe not though. But a lack of imperials could make for some nicer quests, Dunmer VS nords? etc.

I think a Nord/Dunmer conflict is going to be one of the themes of the game

Another update to the teaser: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/15415212/HD%20Render%20Shot%20Castle.png/#

Thought I might mention, http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1264541-skyrimoblivionmorrowind-heightmap-comparison/page__view__findpost__p__19341901. You ought to contact him if you think you might want to put your Solstheim on his heightmaps.

Here's an idea that can't fail: Bloodmoon of the 4th Era.

Every era Hircine comes to for the Hunt. It's been over 200 years into the 4th Era, maybe it's time the cycle repeats.


I'm not sure if Bloodmoon is meant to happen at the END of an Era or DURING an Era though, but if it's DURING an Era, a Bloodmoon for Skyrim Solstheim is definitely feasible.

Thanks for the heads up, i contacted him to see if he'd be willing to create some heightmaps.

It's definatly unavoidable to exclude the aspect of hircine and werewolves so there will definatly be something in that direction in the main storyline

Hello, i'm a part of the team, i'm going to create and update a homepage and forum where everyone can follow our progress in the creation. So as soon as the homepage goes online (beta mode) i will poste the link.

Looking forward to work on this projekt.

And i want to start with sorrying for eny spelling mistakes. im suffering from dylexia witch makes it kinda hard to spell

Another update!

We've gotten even futher in our development of the teaser. Here's another sneakpeak/proof of concept

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/15415212/HD%20Poster%20Text.png/#

Frontpage updated with latest information about the mod! Website link also added.

Is it going to be an exclusive team, because im interested in this as well .

You should fix your spelling, it's not very professional. It's too late to fix it on the url, but you can at least run your intro through Word or something

SOLSTHEIM*

my poor baby.

Sorry, I don't know much lore but...


This word Solstheim keeps getting thrown around. What the hell is Solstheim?

That http://uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Solstheim north-east of Skyrim, north-west of Morrowind. The TES3 expansion Bloodmoon took place there.

Damn, and I'd thought I'd played all the TES content since morrrowind. I have no recolection of this.

From a cynical, talent less, and eager TES fan - good luck with this project!!

With 12 people, this may actually happen. Good luck to you guys, hoping to see this reach fruition.

Our Web-designer is dyslexic We'll fix the spelling errors later, he's a masterfull artist when it comes to webpages though

Hopefully we'll have a full animated teaser up in a week or less.

Saw his post above. Dyslexia is not an excuse for not running something through a spellcheck (which is found in every piece of software these days) Look at it from a user's point of view: a website that is hard to read is less likely to keep a viewer's attention, and makes the team look less professional, both of which either detract people from trying/helping with your mod. Would you release a mod before checking it for bugs? Same sort of deal.