Landing Area Mod for More Custom Tiles, Align Boundaries, Increase Max Size

[Kathylady]

Each planetary landing area (tile) is circa 2x Skyrim with invisible boundaries at the edges. So you have to board the ship and pick the next landing spot to continue. I'd like a mod that enables walking between the areas for immersion. For example you can walk to the boundary and choose to continue walking in the next landing area. The brief loading of the next area would be hidden by a walking animation.

 

Update:

The custom landing areas (tiles) are partially generated so we need a mod to:

1. Save more of the seeds / tiles per planet for persistence. = solved with the mod More Custom Landing Sites
2. Increase the max size per tile so you're less likely to reach the border. = unsolved, you can make it a bit bigger, but there's a limit.
3. WhiteLight506 found that you can see New Atlantis from adjacent tiles. It's a bit challenging to land correctly for the view. He landed nearby by hiding map markers (icons) with a console command. The tiles of the planets are connected. The tiles are relatively small compared to the planet so the Landing Area icon overlaps numerous tiles. Between 2 tiles is a thin restricted zone which you cannot walk on from both sides.

 

Update 2: 

• More Custom Landing Sites = this mod by keanuWheeze (NexusGuy999) increases the landing areas from 3 (Vanilla) to = 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 20, 30, 50.
• Real-time flight between planets and natural satellites is possible. Zombiefruit flew from Mars to Phobos in 27 hours without fast travel. From Charon to Pluto is also possible. However, landing on planets directly from orbit is impossible, since there's no planetary collision.
• Remove Planetary Tile Boundary = this mod by Draspian disables the boundary at the border of planetary tiles. Lets you wander around more, but at a certain distance the game crashes. Draspian said "the game can't handle being too far from your home ship... the game consistently freezes the very moment the Frontier falls beyond the unloaded area."
• Starfield's Planetary Tiles Are Connected - Definitive Proof
• Starfield Console Command List
• Cruising Between Planets - This mod by busylancer allows you to cruise between planets
• Longer Spaceship Travel = Slightly prolongs the duration of the spaceship far travel animations (video).
• Exit Ship = This is a basic batch command mod that allows you to exit your ship by typing in bat "bum\exit" and float around in orbit.

• Real Grav Drive Supercruise and EVA Spacewalk with Hotkeys - Interplanetary space travel, zero-G EVA spacewalk with hotkey support (video)

• Call Your Ship = lets the player call and launch the ship with a button.

---------------
Related stuff:
 

• Can You Fly To A Planet Without Loading In Starfield? = if you fly towards a planet the ship stops after 4 hours at 9995 meters above the surface. 
• Can You Fly Between Starfield’s Planets Without Fast Travel? = "No matter how long you spend flying towards it, you will never reach another planet."
• Starfield's space exploration isn't what you think. - video
   

If planets have no continuity or persistence there is no point in exploring them - steam discussion about the issue.

Old School Player wrote: "This is not a criticism or a complaint, it is what it is. If the leaks are confirmed The free exploration of a planet was just marketing. It's not the game many of us dreamed of, I would have preferred a single planet with the detail and freedom of Flight Simulator. but at least we'll have 1000 planets to visit."
123 wrote: "The lack of continuity totally kills it for me. You cant follow that stream, that canyon, go over that hilltop, get to the other side of the mountain all because the stupid game generates only 4 areas that arent even connected to the one you're in. Not only that it ERASES your FIRST landing area after you land 5 times. What's to explore ? Just keep landing until something you like pops up, total bs."

Edited October 8, 2023 by Kathylady
info

[d4rkn3v4r1n]

interesting. did they say they recently that it works like that?

[Reigor]

Remember how Skyrim and Fallout 4 had a Border ini that could be true/false? I think this is similar. Planets are created as spheres with with map chunks wrapped around them, but maybe having a boarder for one chunk or small collection of them helps with game performance or save size. So should find out why BGS put in limits before tinkering with them, not that the OP was suggesting removing them.

 

One thought is to have a simplistic vehicle mod that spawns a static vehicle next to the player which acts as an immersive fast travel point (and item storage). So instead of going back to the spaceship, launching, orbit, pick new spot, land, that instead clicking the vehicle would create a zoomed in map of the nearby map chunks and the player can select a point on one of them. The screen goes black, there is a zoom zoom sound, covering the coc transition to the new space, which the game then generates POI as normal. 

[bjornk]

On 8/26/2023 at 10:44 PM, Kathylady said:

Each planetary landing zone is 2-4x Skyrim with invisible boundaries at the edges. So you have to board the ship and pick the next landing spot to continue.

 

What makes you think that there's more than one on each planet?

[Miauzi]

Vor 22 Minuten sagte Björnk:

 

Warum glauben Sie, dass es auf jedem Planeten mehr als einen gibt?

 

how do you say in my mother tongue? -> "according to unconfirmed rumours" probably 1-5 zones for each planet or moon - there won't be more.

if you can enter all 100 cosmic objects? ... is probably also still open

[bjornk]

10 minutes ago, Miauzi said:

"according to unconfirmed rumours" probably 1-5 zones for each planet or moon - there won't be more.

The OP seems to assume there are at least four adjacent zones (since each map resides inside a cube) for each map (so that you can traverse between them on foot), one you are currently in, plus one more at each direction (North, South, East and West), which makes a total of five zones. For Bethesda's claim that each planet is fully explorable to be true, the entire surface of each planet needs to be divided into multiple zones, each of which has 4 neighboring zones. If each zone has a fixed size map (e.g. the size of Skyrim's map), depending on the size of the planet, there must be varying amount of zones on each planet, covering the entire surface, i.e. the planet landscape viewed from space. All of which sounds extremely unlikely. The game most likely has one procedurally generated generic landing zone, in addition to handcrafted areas for points of interest, e.g. cities, mines. Planets aren't fully explorable in the way people imagine, they are most likely similar to Mass Effect 1's planets. Each planet has a generic map, representative of their landscape which you can explore, plus some special areas. It seems to me Bethesda is lying and overselling their game again and people seem to believe in their BS.

[Kathylady]

According to leaked info by u/coheedme:
 

TILES ARE NOT CONNECTED. I dont care what your favorite Xbox shill told you, tiles are NOT connected. End of subject, there is no 'you dont know the story' its literally just bullshit. I am not gonna comment on this again so please get over it.

Here is the definitive proof for once and all taken from literally New Atlantis.
 

https://streamable.com/x2j5p8

 

The custom landing spots are procedurally generated with some handcrafted content. They do not align topographically with adjacent tiles. This is why we cannot see New Atlantis if we land directly next to it in another tile. Update: you can see New Atlantis from adjacent tiles.

A custom landing spot is deleted if there are more than 4 per planet. Maybe Bethesda did this cause the save files would get too big. I hope it's not 4 custom landing spots per game.

So we need a mod that:

1. Saves more of the seeds / tiles per planet for persistence. 
2. Aligns the boundaries of neighboring tiles.
3. Increases the max size per tile so you're less likely to reach the border. 

Edited September 4, 2023 by Kathylady

[Miauzi]

33 minutes ago, Kathylady said:

Laut durchgesickerten Informationen von u/coheedme :
 

FLIESEN SIND NICHT VERBUNDEN. Es ist mir egal, was Ihr Lieblings-Xbox-Gerät Ihnen gesagt hat, die Kacheln sind NICHT verbunden. Ende des Themas, es gibt kein „Du kennst die Geschichte nicht“, es ist im wahrsten Sinne des Wortes nur Blödsinn. Ich werde das nicht noch einmal kommentieren, also kommen Sie bitte darüber hinweg.

Hier ist der endgültige Beweis, der buchstäblich aus Neu-Atlantis stammt:
 

https://streamable.com/x2j5p8

 

Die benutzerdefinierten Landeplätze werden prozedural mit einigen handgefertigten Inhalten generiert. Sie sind nicht topographisch auf benachbarte Kacheln ausgerichtet. Aus diesem Grund können wir Neu-Atlantis nicht sehen, wenn wir direkt daneben auf einem anderen Plättchen landen.

Ein benutzerdefinierter Landeplatz wird gelöscht, wenn es mehr als 4 pro Planet gibt. Möglicherweise hat Bethesda dies getan, weil die Sicherungsdateien zu groß werden würden. Ich hoffe, es sind nicht 4 benutzerdefinierte Landeplätze pro Spiel.

Wir brauchen also einen Mod, der:

1. Spart mehr Samen/Kacheln pro Planet für die Persistenz. 
2. Richtet die Grenzen benachbarter Kacheln aus.
3. Erhöht die maximale Größe pro Kachel, sodass die Wahrscheinlichkeit geringer ist, dass Sie den Rand erreichen. 

 

How do many of the potential players imagine such a planet or its size?

Flat and at most 120 to 200 km in diameter ... but the planet Earth has a diameter of 12600 km - so much for the "realism" of this approach to the game.

(You need more than 10,000 such "land zones" to be able to depict only the planet Earth COMPLETELY in real terms).

If you were to look at a REAL overview map of adjacent landing zones - the view from space from a greater distance, so to speak ... they would all be so close to each other - that their symbols would already overlap/intersect.

But is anyone interested in this except people with a little basic knowledge of geography or astronomy? -> NO!

(not having an education is not a disgrace - but to proudly boast that you don't want to know ... something else - because you can sell them any kind of crap)

[Kathylady]

On 8/29/2023 at 10:41 AM, Miauzi said:

 

How do many of the potential players imagine such a planet or its size?

Flat and at most 120 to 200 km in diameter ... but the planet Earth has a diameter of 12600 km - so much for the "realism" of this approach to the game.

(You need more than 10,000 such "land zones" to be able to depict only the planet Earth COMPLETELY in real terms).

 

The engine cannot do 1:1 scale so it would be very downscaled for the landing areas.

 

When I land in an adjacent area next to the New Atlantis maps, I would like to see New Atlantis in the background (update: it is possible to see New Atlantis from adjacent tiles). Another example: after I climb a mountain and reach the planet boundary -> I go back to the ship, land in the neighboring area to continue exploring. It's more immersive to see the same mountain in the background. Otherwise, we're not really exploring the planet, just individual random maps. SF has a very limited permanence, because when you pick a 5th landing area on the planet, a previous landing area will be deleted. This makes exploration feel shallow.

So lots of people would prefer to have landing areas that connect rather than separate chunks of procedural maps, because it's more immersive.
 

Edited September 4, 2023 by Kathylady

[Miauzi]

Vor 31 Minuten sagte Kathylady:

 

Der Motor kann nicht im Maßstab 1:1 dargestellt werden, daher wäre er für die Landebereiche stark verkleinert.

 

Wenn ich in einem angrenzenden Gebiet neben den Karten von New Atlantis lande, möchte ich New Atlantis im Hintergrund sehen. Ein weiteres Beispiel: Nachdem ich einen Berg bestiegen und die Planetengrenze erreicht habe -> gehe ich zurück zum Schiff, lande im Nachbargebiet, um die Erkundung fortzusetzen. Es ist noch eindringlicher, denselben Berg im Hintergrund zu sehen. Ansonsten erforschen wir den Planeten nicht wirklich, sondern nur einzelne zufällige Karten. SF hat eine sehr begrenzte Beständigkeit, denn wenn Sie einen fünften Landeplatz auf dem Planeten auswählen, wird ein vorheriger Landeplatz gelöscht.

Daher würden viele Leute lieber Landebereiche haben, die miteinander verbunden sind, anstatt Teile prozeduraler Karten zu trennen, weil es immersiver ist.
 

 

That it is not depicted 1:1 ... has been known to me at least since Fallout 4.

Here in the forum is a user from the Boston area - who (like me) tells a blog story with this game.

So he knows this landscape with HIS OWN eyes and told me - that the distances (coupled with the time of day) were shortened by a factor of 4 in the game.

But even with that, you still need more than 10,000 "tile maps" to represent just one planet the size of Earth.

If you refer to the map of Skyrim available on the internet with a real distance - this area is something like the size of D-Land.

In relation to the main continent with the other provinces - it is not even as big as Europe.

If you put its size in relation to the rest of the earth ... Nirn as a whole planet is perhaps as big as Earth's moon.

Exploring the planet? What are you dreaming about? That was a pure advertising promise and has absolutely nothing to do with the implementation of this game!

[bjornk]

3 hours ago, Kathylady said:

According to leaked info by u/coheedme:
 

TILES ARE NOT CONNECTED. I dont care what your favorite Xbox shill told you, tiles are NOT connected. End of subject, there is no 'you dont know the story' its literally just bullshit. I am not gonna comment on this again so please get over it.

Here is the definitive proof for once and all taken from literally New Atlantis:
 

https://streamable.com/x2j5p8

 

The custom landing spots are procedurally generated with some handcrafted content. They do not align topographically with adjacent tiles. This is why we cannot see New Atlantis if we land directly next to it in another tile.

A custom landing spot is deleted if there are more than 4 per planet. Maybe Bethesda did this cause the save files would get too big. I hope it's not 4 custom landing spots per game.

So we need a mod that:

1. Saves more of the seeds / tiles per planet for persistence. 
2. Aligns the boundaries of neighboring tiles.
3. Increases the max size per tile so you're less likely to reach the border. 

 

1 hour ago, Kathylady said:

When I land in an adjacent area next to the New Atlantis maps, I would like to see New Atlantis in the background. Another example: after I climb a mountain and reach the planet boundary -> I go back to the ship, land in the neighboring area to continue exploring. It's more immersive to see the same mountain in the background. Otherwise, we're not really exploring the planet, just individual random maps. SF has a very limited permanence, because when you pick a 5th landing area on the planet, a previous landing area will be deleted. This makes exploration feel shallow.

So lots of people would prefer to have landing areas that connect rather than separate chunks of procedural maps, because it's more immersive.
 

 

What you're asking is impossible to make, because a procedurally generated map in the way you describe (doesn't matter if it's premade or created on the fly) would have to include the exact knowledge of all neighboring maps as well as part of their assets (e.g. 3d models), to show you a distant view of the areas in them. This would only be possible if all maps were handcrafted and included the low poly models of the terrain and objects of the neighboring areas inside adjacent maps, such as the view of Vvardenfell and the White Gold Tower in Cyrodiil seen in Skyrim's map. There's no way BGS would even attempt to do something like that for all the "tiles" covering surfaces of thousand planets.

 

If the topography of a "tile" is generated by a seed and all planets were divided into tiles with known seeds, you could perhaps replicate at least the topography of the surrounding regions by partially creating them on the "same" map, if the size of a "tile" is smaller than the actual 3d map. However, distant view of objects in neighboring regions, such as buildings, forests etc. would still not be included.

 

Edited August 29, 2023 by bjornk

[31971207]

2 hours ago, Kathylady said:

 

Otherwise, we're not really exploring the planet, just individual random maps. SF has a very limited permanence, because when you pick a 5th landing area on the planet, a previous landing area will be deleted. This makes exploration feel shallow.

 

 

This is pretty much how I expected the vanilla Starfield to be. Instead of a bigger world to explore it's a game of multiple FO3/Skyrim/FO4 style maps connected by cell-loading/landing areas. I have zero interest in those procedurally generated maps because they are nothing but fetching quest fillers. Bethesda can have 1mln planets instead of 1000 and that wouldn't make any difference. I am sure there will be some "planet" size mods like Falskaar that hardly anyone played or one of a kind Wyrmstooth but most modding will focus on improving the handcrafted maps that establish Starfield lore. Those and those alone is THE game and my interests are how many and how big each.

 

PS: I am sure Bethesda will revert to one big map design for TES6 instead of the multiple maps design of Starfield.

Edited August 29, 2023 by 31971207

[Liriel-666]

full Landing everywhere with some POI that can be Explore to foot, on Wheels or flying.

every 74.800.000km² to explore!

Without Zone or loading SCreens.

The Mercury.

 

 

And whe have Wheels!

Edited August 29, 2023 by Liriel-666

[alcurad90]

8 hours ago, Kathylady said:

According to leaked info by u/coheedme:
 

TILES ARE NOT CONNECTED. I dont care what your favorite Xbox shill told you, tiles are NOT connected. End of subject, there is no 'you dont know the story' its literally just bullshit. I am not gonna comment on this again so please get over it.

Here is the definitive proof for once and all taken from literally New Atlantis:
 

https://streamable.com/x2j5p8

 

The custom landing spots are procedurally generated with some handcrafted content. They do not align topographically with adjacent tiles. This is why we cannot see New Atlantis if we land directly next to it in another tile.

A custom landing spot is deleted if there are more than 4 per planet. Maybe Bethesda did this cause the save files would get too big. I hope it's not 4 custom landing spots per game.

So we need a mod that:

1. Saves more of the seeds / tiles per planet for persistence. 
2. Aligns the boundaries of neighboring tiles.
3. Increases the max size per tile so you're less likely to reach the border. 

 

 

The landing zone is at least x1 the size of skyrim. Sinice you cannot see Whiterun from Markarth, It's not a problem that you cannot see Atlantis outside the Atlantis  zone.

 

[alcurad90]

5 hours ago, bjornk said:

This would only be possible if all maps were handcrafted and included the low poly models of the terrain and objects of the neighboring areas inside adjacent maps, such as the view of Vvardenfell and the White Gold Tower in Cyrodiil seen in Skyrim's map.

 

Errr......

It's 2023 pal. We have so many terrain generators and automatically LOD builders.

That's not really need to be hand-made

Edited August 29, 2023 by alcurad90

[bjornk]

3 hours ago, alcurad90 said:

 

Errr......

It's 2023 pal. We have so many terrain generators and automatically LOD builders.

That's not really need to be hand-made

 

I'm curious how you plan to use a LOD builder to replicate a procedurally generated map inside another procedurally generated map adjacent to it.

[Liriel-666]

People always complain that worlds are created procedurally and now he wants to do that with something like this. LOL

[Kathylady]

On 8/29/2023 at 6:38 PM, alcurad90 said:

 

 

The landing zone is at least x1 the size of skyrim. Sinice you cannot see Whiterun from Markarth, It's not a problem that you cannot see Atlantis outside the Atlantis  zone.

 

The point is we're exploring self-contained landing areas (aka tiles or maps). Each map does not show a view of the adjacent maps. We cannot see New Atlantis in the distance from an adjacent map. Update: if you land correctly, you can see New Atlantis from adjacent tiles, but it's difficult to select a correct landing area. Starfield has dozens of loading screens as well.

In vanilla Starfield we cannot explore planets; merely separate square proc-gen maps. Bethesda set a very low limit so we cannot have more than 4 custom landing zones per planet. It auto-deletes previous ones if you create more. If you recreate an old landing area that was auto-deleted in the exact same location: the game creates a brand-new area that does NOT match the planetary location nor the topography of the original area.
 

• No Man's Sky looks cartoony, but it has seamless planets and you can share coordinates of POI with other players. The terrain can be deformed and created by the player.
• Star Citizen is buggy, but it has seamless planets with persistence.
• Elite Dangerous has seamless, full scale planets which are mostly barren, but it doesn't load in tiny, disconnected chunks.
• Starfield has a nice level of detail, handcrafted stuff, and much more interesting content. However, many people expect more from Starfield after 7+ years of development. The Creation Engine 2 feels old under the hood compared to other space games which were released 7+ years earlier.

 

I hope Bethesda or modders can find a solution to ensure that the custom landing areas retain the same topography and connect at the boundaries.

Edited September 4, 2023 by Kathylady

[bjornk]

3 minutes ago, Kathylady said:

We can't explore planets, merely separate square proc-gen maps.

 

What Bethesda understands from exploring a planet is probably different than what people thought or hoped it would be.

 

Spoiler

 

 

[Miauzi]

Vor 6 Minuten sagte Bjornk:

 

Was Bethesda aus der Erforschung eines Planeten versteht , ist wahrscheinlich anders als das, was die Leute dachten oder erhofften.

 

  Inhalte ausblenden

 

 

 

and this is exactly what my wife and I were trying to point out with our examples from "Elite Dangerous" and the comparisons to the REAL geography and astronomy of the earth and the solar system.

People who have no idea about these (ancient) natural sciences - can obviously be told a lot of lies - as MS and "Bugdesta" very obviously do.

Of course, this will not stop many people from buying the game full of expectation and anticipation ... but there will be quite a few who will be very disappointed. Only in this case exactly the following has happened -> to cheat there are always two:

a) the cheater

b) the deceived - who in this case wants to be deceived.

[alcurad90]

17 hours ago, Kathylady said:

In vanilla Starfield we cannot explore planets; merely separate square proc-gen maps. Bethesda set a very low limit so we cannot have more than 4 custom landing zones per planet. It auto-deletes previous ones if you create more. If you recreate an old landing area that was auto-deleted in the exact same location: the game creates a brand-new area that does NOT match the planetary location nor the topography of the original area.

 

No evidence shows that the titles are "created" when you landing. In my opinion they are prebuilt map titles that you just land in one of them. The game just put POIs automatically.

The 4 landing zone limit maybe just for multi-points loading system like how it works in Fallout 76

 

[Kathylady]

4 minutes ago, alcurad90 said:

 

No evidence shows that the titles are "created" when you landing. In my opinion they are prebuilt map titles that you just land in one of them. The game just put POIs automatically.

The 4 landing zone limit maybe just for multi-points loading system like how it works in Fallout 76

 

We'll see when the full game is released.

[alcurad90]

19 hours ago, bjornk said:

 

I'm curious how you plan to use a LOD builder to replicate a procedurally generated map inside another procedurally generated map adjacent to it.

Quote

This would only be possible if all maps were handcrafted and included the low poly models of the terrain and objects of the neighboring areas inside adjacent maps, such as the view of Vvardenfell and the White Gold Tower in Cyrodiil seen in Skyrim's map.

 

 

With the new tools Beth just do not have to handcrafted these thing, "the low poly models of the terrain “ could be generated by scripts, while the " objects of the neighboring areas " are not needed since the title is too big that these objects are just too far to be seen

[bjornk]

 

1 hour ago, alcurad90 said:

 

With the new tools Beth just do not have to handcrafted these thing, "the low poly models of the terrain “ could be generated by scripts, while the " objects of the neighboring areas " are not needed since the title is too big that these objects are just too far to be seen

 

The low poly models of objects in neighboring areas are necessary if you want the objects (e.g. important features such as landmarks or cityscapes) to be seen, because the OP wants them to be seen from a distance. I've already explained how the topology (i.e. the terrain) could possibly be replicated in the post you quoted. Since procedural generation involves a degree of randomness, it would be quite a challenge to replicate a map that has randomized features inside another map that also has randomized features. You won't be able to use LOD builders if your map has randomized features, unless you built it beforehand, which would defeat the purpose of procedural generation and would only mean that you have only automated the handcrafing process. which is what generation by a script is.

 

By the way, what I've been talking about is completely from the modding perspective, I don't care what tools available to Bethesda unless modders also have access to them. It's possible to create an engine that would do multiple passes on each planet in order to place all procedural/randomized elements on maps first and then do additional passes to replicate low poly versions of neighboring areas in them. However, this is far out of scope of this topic and Starfield's engine doesn't seem to have the capability.

 

 

Edited August 30, 2023 by bjornk

[Liriel-666]

I think the People that want generated Worlds want every Planet with Live and Vegitation but thats not Space! Space has 99% planets without any live and planets like earth are super rare in this massive Planets list.

And the Space between Planets are Gigantic and Empty. You dont meet every minutes People in this Emptyness.

In our Milkyway we have around 400.000.000.000 Stars and not even 0,1% of it will have Planets with Live.

With 99,9% most of the Planet are Empty Rocks or Gas.