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Expanding Skyrim - An extremely ambitious endeavor

Trykz

By Trykz,
in Skyrim General Discussion

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Trykz

Trykz

Posted
Posted

So.......


 


ever since I began playing and modding Skyrim, I've created a fair number of race mods, 


and even a new area I carved into Skyrim's landscape. Things like Mjana's Labyrinth,


races such as the Skyrim version of Moonshadow Elves. And even a few races recreated


from other games entirely.


 


But.....


 


It's long been my ultimate ambition to expand Skyrim's worldspace, and recreating


locations from previous Elder Scrolls games, as well as providing new location homes for my races.


A daunting task for sure, but nevertheless, not at all impossible.


 


Today I begin that endeavor......


 


what will come of this initially, will be the expansion of Skyrim's playable space.


It will increase the area of Skyrim by more than 300%, adding new regions to the 


East, West, and South of Skyrim's borders. To begin, my plan is to duplicate the


whole of Skyrim 3 times, and then adjusting the landscapes to suit this purpose. I 


first intend to create new areas in these new worldspaces for the many races I've


already created, and have yet to create.


 


Now I have no intention of modifying the existing Skyrim landscape, save for adding


three autoload doorways (like what you use to enter an exterior cave) to adequately


placed locations on the three borders I intend to use. Cell by cell I intend to remove


every map marker, humanoid NPC, quest or otherwise (with the exception of wanderers


like critters, and general wildlife, such as deer, wolves, sabrecats, giants, etc...).


Dungeon exterior locations will be left mostly intact, but their interiors will


be inaccessible. It's my hope that other modders will find adequate use for these


entrances, to expand upon what this mod hopes to achieve.


 


I also don't intend to *open up* Skyrim's borders. Other mods do this already, and many


cause major conflicts with other mods that use the same method. By recreating Skyrim's


entire exterior worldspace, I can avoid conflicts with other mods entirely.


 


Needless to say, this is a MAJOR undertaking, and no offer of assistance will be immediately


dismissed. So if anyone would like to work on this (adding interior spaces and such), it's certainly


a discussion I'm eager to have.


 


And so it begins......


 


Trykz


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Neffy

Neffy

Posted
Posted

This would kick huge ass! Mods like Moonpath to Eslwyer are only a snippet of what you are trying to accomplish! If you ever need a writer/voice actor for this endeavor, I'm willing to give a helping hand!

 

Contact @

 

Skype: nefurnest

Email: acheson_johnathan@hotmail.com

 

And good luck!

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Monsto Brukes

Monsto Brukes

Posted
Posted

I totally support the idea, same here for writing (I doubt I would be any good at voice acting unless you need a NPC with a french accent)

 

I'll bet you can imitate a Spanish accent pretty well . . . and there's your Khajiit dialog!

 

 

 

Same here for writing. As for accent it would be eastern-european i guess.

 

For some reason, I always thought that Morrowind citizens should have had that accent.

 

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Trykz

Trykz

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I totally support the idea, same here for writing (I doubt I would be any good at voice acting unless you need a NPC with a french accent)

 

I'll bet you can imitate a Spanish accent pretty well . . . and there's your Khajiit dialog!

 

 

 

Same here for writing. As for accent it would be eastern-european i guess.

 

For some reason, I always thought that Morrowind citizens should have had that accent.

 

 

LOL.....

 

what I'll be looking for mostly is quest and dungeon modders. My plan is to build the world spaces required to house them myself (increasing total gamep space by around 300%), and enable anyone to hook into them with their dungeons, quests, etc.. Essentially, if cell mods are created to replicate the Imperial City, Bruma, Leyawiin, etc., they would be hooked into the world space of Cyrodiil. Same goes for locations created for Hammerfell, or Morrowind.

 

Let's say you wanted to visit Leyawiin. Instead of heading for some door in southern Skyrim, you would actually need to head through southern Skyrim, load into Cyrodiil, and then proceed to make the trek all the way to Leyawiin to discover it. And along the way, you'll find other locations created for my custom races, encountering the usual wanderers and wildlife you find in Skyrim.

 

More to come......

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  • 1 month later...
Guest Vendayn

Guest Vendayn

Posted
Posted

Well, I'd help...but I'm not that great at using the Creation Kit and definitely not at custom models. :P

So I'll leave with encouragement instead.

 

This sounds amazing. :) Skyrim is already pretty big as it is, and a 300% increase is huge (3 x ? bigger!). This definitely sounds like a big project, but I'm sure there would be people that offer their help and speed things along. :)

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Xxantoss

Xxantoss

Posted
Posted

I would like to point out that this would require users to have a top of the line computer to avoid lag, and reduce the amount of other mods the player would be able to use. I'm not sure if a lot of people have that capability yet. But if you do go in on this project I must say it is a wonderful idea. I'm sure lots of people would be willing to fill up the places with dungeons and such, just need to ask around this and other modding communities.

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Trykz

Trykz

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I would like to point out that this would require users to have a top of the line computer to avoid lag, and reduce the amount of other mods the player would be able to use. I'm not sure if a lot of people have that capability yet. But if you do go in on this project I must say it is a wonderful idea. I'm sure lots of people would be willing to fill up the places with dungeons and such, just need to ask around this and other modding communities.

 

Falskaar is roughly one third the size of Skyrim all by itself, and doesn't have any real impact on Skyrim's performance.

 

Performance hits don't generally come from vanilla assets (unless it's cluttered to hell and back), but from mods that utilize hi-res textures or things with high polygon models. Neither of which I plan to use. Perhaps in a dungeon or two, but definitely not in the open world spaces (there will be three separate world spaces). Each world space will be roughly the same landmass as each of their respective provinces, and will be individual downloads. Mods would be built under the specific province ESM the modder chooses to place their content in.

 

Trykz

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  • 7 months later...
Trykz

Trykz

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So.....

 

last night I finally had the breakthrough I was hoping to achieve. It took 3 separate programs to do it, but whatever.

 

Over the past 2 evenings, I've been feverishly trying to devise a method of working around the Creation Kit's problem with copying entire worldspaces. For those who are unaware of this issue, this function has been broken in the CK for quite some time, and Bethesda doesn't seem to much care about fixing it. My primary reason for wanting this to work, is so I can start expanding Skyrim one worldspace at a time. Mainly to expand upon my race mods, giving each race a new homeland in which to build entire towns/villages, etc..

 

I love building race mods. But ever since I started, I've always felt like something was missing. The biggest question in my mind with every race mod I ever built was "why am I the only one of my kind?"

 

Most modders know that expanding the Skyrim world outward is VERY taxing on the game's already overworked engine. So how to achieve this without overtaxing the engine? Simply put:

 

Don't.

 

Instead, expand "within". Also, stick with vanilla world assets as much as possible, because the engine is already accustomed to dealing with loading them. Adding new, custom assets puts additional strain on the engine, which inevitably causes it to lag. Placing entrances to new outdoor worldspaces (via autoload doors, which have no physical parts.... you just run through them) gives the appearance of moving to an area outside of the game map, without actually going beyond any border. This actually lowers the strain on the engine, because it only needs to load that worldspace's assets. Just like going from an outdoor area to an interior cell in the vanilla game.

 

Anyway, this is how I did it for those interested:

 

First, I loaded up the CK with only Skyrim.esm loaded as a master for a new plugin. Next, I created a "new" worldspace (I didn't actually build anything. Just added a new empty worldspace to the list), and saved it to a new plugin.

 

I closed the CK and loaded up TESVSnip. I loaded in Skyrim.esm AND my new plugin, and copied the exterior worldspace I wanted to use to the new plugin (but NOT under the empty worldspace I created in the CK). Saved it and closed TESVSnip.

 

Next, I loaded up TES5Edit, and loaded in Skyrim.esm and my new plugin. Here, I edited all of the necessary information (renamed the worldspace and it's child cells), and then DELETED the empty worldspace I created in the CK. Saved it and closed TES5Edit.

 

Finally, I loaded the new plugin back into the CK, and found everything intact, just like it was in the vanilla worldspace. Navmesh and all! I removed all NPCs, activators, triggers, and the original autoload door which hooked it into Skyrim (this will be replaced later with a new entry point created within the race mod I made to work with it).

 

Convention wisdom dictates that one mod depends on another master. Here, I hope to prove that multiple mods (3-4 or more) can depend on each other without overworking the game engine. (base game -> race mods -> new worldspaces)  ;)

 

It may not seem like much right now, but this was a huge step for me. And it will vastly change how I build my race mods in the future. I'm finishing up a few things, and I'll try to get some screens up later today.

 

Trykz

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Trykz

Trykz

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I just hope this awesome mod will retain compatibility with other new worldspace mods like Skywind, wryrmstooth, discworld etc...

 

But sounds cool!

 

As long as anything I make is loaded last (since I make minor additions to the Tamriel worldspace), they should be fully compatible. Unless those mods make changes in the same exterior cells I do (which are on the edges of the vanilla map), nothing should conflict

 

I came across a copy of the Tamriel worldspace awhile back on this site http://www.darkcreations.org/forums/files/file/832-tamriel-worldspace-copy/  Maybe that will help out.

 

Already have it.

 

Unfortunately, it's too loaded with reference errors to be usable. Loading it in the CK works fine once you click through all the errors, but it needs far too much repair to make it worthwhile. I'd spend more time fixing it than it would take to simply make a new copy without the errors. That said, I don't need "all" of Tamriel for what I'm doing. Just pieces of it where I make my connections to the new worldspaces I'm adding.

 

Trykz

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Trykz

Trykz

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Have you checked out the Beyond Skyrim project? I believe they are trying to do the same thing.

 

Yep. That's actually where I got that Tamriel copied ESP from.

 

As much as I'd like to see them succeed, it's most likely that they won't. They're making the same mistake so many others have:

 

They're trying to expand Skyrim "outward" via the map. And it's highly unlikely to work.

 

Expanding Skyrim beyond it's current borders taxes the game engine FAR too much. I know.... because I tried it. Beyond a certain distance from the vanilla borders, things start to become extremely unstable. This is why Bethesda did EXACTLY what I'm doing here. I know the worldspace where the Dawnguard headquarters is "looks" like it's outside Skyrim's vanilla border, it actually isn't.

 

How can you tell? Easy......

 

try crossing the border anywhere in the area of the passage, and you CANNOT get to that same area other than "through" that passage. In fact, Blackbriar Lodge would be smack in the middle of the trail leading to the Dawnguard Headquarters  :P

 

The area I built was well beyond the distance Bethesda "supposedly" expanded the map. (I went well into Cyrodiil). It worked out pretty well at first. But then I started adding more mods to my game, and tweaking the new area with houses, NPCs, roads, trees, etc.....

that's when it all came crashing down and I had to re-install the game  :angry:

 

If you follow the road from Riften, past the passage to Dawnguard Headquarters, you'll come to a gate structure a lot like the one at Helgen, but with no gate. That's where I opened up the border. In the vanilla game, attempting to run through will give you the message "You cannot go this way".

 

Bethesda built the Skyrim engine with just enough balls to run Skyrim and everything it contains. Trying to push it much further just causes it to fail.

 

Trykz

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Kaz Aanh

Kaz Aanh

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For what purpouse? Skyrim is already a walking simulator why make it bigger and more repetive looking?

 

It would be easier to generate a Tamriel heightmap but in the smaller size ( 4096x4096 ) instead of copying tamriel 3 x times and then manualy reshaping the land uhh tedious work and Landscaping in the CK ? Its a real pain and tries to crash anytime it can.

 

And also Creation Engine limits are 4096x4096 when it comes to world size, if its bigger the game bugs out like hell. Its nearly unplayable. It could work if you would like just to travel around and look at nice things . Guys from BeyondSkyrim had a simillar problems afaik.

Skyrim's Creation engine barely holds it together , few more additions and it would just explode into the pieces leaving nothing but a duct tape that was used to keep it together.

 

I was messing with a custom made heightmaps for Skyrim becouse I work on my own little world. Its a 2048x2048 ( and its already holy crap big ) but I never really intended to fill it hand by hand ( I just wanted to have those sweet LOD mountains ) or use the flora/landscape generator to make it look like a Falskaar ( large open and boring areas ). 

 

I'm just painting a bit of small things here and here when I have some neat ideas ( more like a little hobby in spare time ). It has a more linear design,though. Instead of adding 500 trees I preffer to add 2 trees but with more details.

 

In my opinion we should start a collaboration project to make our unique world. Someone will just have to generate ( and shape ) a blank heightmap world, make it as an .esm file so everyone could download this world file and then start adding everything from ourself by making several .esp addons.

 

After this we could merge these .esp's into the .esm main world file and that way instead of one person working we would get a intersting world being shaped by many people. And who knows what later? Quests? Storyline ? Races ?

 

Well no Idea how I could help , I don't want to make any premises but I really wish you best of luck.

 

 

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dje34

dje34

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That is one fuckin' good idea imho ! Even if I have absolutely no idea what a heightmap is and how to create a map, 2 brains are in general working better than just one ! Of course it will need some project management and virtual brainstorming !

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Trykz

Trykz

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For what purpouse? Skyrim is already a walking simulator why make it bigger and more repetive looking?

 

It would be easier to generate a Tamriel heightmap but in the smaller size ( 4096x4096 ) instead of copying tamriel 3 x times and then manualy reshaping the land uhh tedious work and Landscaping in the CK ? Its a real pain and tries to crash anytime it can.

 

And also Creation Engine limits are 4096x4096 when it comes to world size, if its bigger the game bugs out like hell. Its nearly unplayable. It could work if you would like just to travel around and look at nice things . Guys from BeyondSkyrim had a simillar problems afaik.

Skyrim's Creation engine barely holds it together , few more additions and it would just explode into the pieces leaving nothing but a duct tape that was used to keep it together.

 

I was messing with a custom made heightmaps for Skyrim becouse I work on my own little world. Its a 2048x2048 ( and its already holy crap big ) but I never really intended to fill it hand by hand ( I just wanted to have those sweet LOD mountains ) or use the flora/landscape generator to make it look like a Falskaar ( large open and boring areas ). 

 

I'm just painting a bit of small things here and here when I have some neat ideas ( more like a little hobby in spare time ). It has a more linear design,though. Instead of adding 500 trees I preffer to add 2 trees but with more details.

 

In my opinion we should start a collaboration project to make our unique world. Someone will just have to generate ( and shape ) a blank heightmap world, make it as an .esm file so everyone could download this world file and then start adding everything from ourself by making several .esp addons.

 

After this we could merge these .esp's into the .esm main world file and that way instead of one person working we would get a intersting world being shaped by many people. And who knows what later? Quests? Storyline ? Races ?

 

Well no Idea how I could help , I don't want to make any premises but I really wish you best of luck.

 

This was my idea initially. But the problem with collaborative works, is that something inevitably breaks down not in the project, but in the collaboration. Which effectively slows the project immensely, if not stopping it entirely. Eventually, I hope to release Tamriel worldspace "chunk" ESMs. Each chunk will rely on Skyrim.esm as it's primary master, and will house a single exterior cell (perhaps more when necessary), located at a sensible location near the map borders to add a new exterior worldspace connection via autoload door (typically a cave opening you just run into). DLC related chunks would use Skyrim.esm and (DLC).esm as it's primary masters. From these connection points, anything is possible. We know this to be true because this is exactly how Bethesda set up Dawnguard Headquarters AND Solstheim. One via autoload doorway, and the other by boat.

 

Real life strikes everyone from time to time. Hell, for me it's almost monthly  :P But I always manage to get back to it as soon as things are sorted. Using the method described above, each author is only responsible for the chunk they're working on, without the need for multiple authors, and without the fear of mod incompatibility.

 

Also, passing around an editable master is generally a bad idea. Primarily because one bad edit by one author, carries the high potential for screwing up another author's work, days, weeks, or even months down the road. It's not a practice I would even consider to be honest.

 

That is one fuckin' good idea imho ! Even if I have absolutely no idea what a heightmap is and how to create a map, 2 brains are in general working better than just one ! Of course it will need some project management and virtual brainstorming !

 

Generally speaking, you're absolutely correct. But we're talking about Skyrim here  ;)

 

I appreciate the thought, but in this such case I'm of the opinion that each author should manage their own project exclusively. At least where exterior worldspaces are concerned.

 

Trykz

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Trykz

Trykz

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Dunno if you know about this one (recently came out)

 

But maybe it can be of use to you?

Some people say the new land is about as large as Skyrim and it seems like he's cleared it out of stuff already:

 

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/52049/?tab=1&navtag=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nexusmods.com%2Fskyrim%2Fajax%2Fmoddescription%2F%3Fid%3D52049%26preview%3D&pUp=1

 

Hmm..... now this looks interesting.

 

I wonder if he navmeshed the entirety of it, or just the most interesting locations. I'm downloading it now, and I'll have a good look at it over the weekend.

 

Thanks for the heads up  :)

 

Trykz

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