Morroblivion

Sneak preview of new cave interior tileset (no level design in these screenshots)

Original

New

There are mold caves, lava caves, mud caves and a couple others to a lesser extent.

Those who have done some level design for caves already have been spending a lot of effort making them look like they are made from rock...well because it just looks better and more realistic. Plenty of scope to leave some of the caves the smooth surfaces, if you want variety and nostalgia. But imo you don't want to be looking at that for the entire game, it shows its age and lack of detail. It reads like "placed rock here, inserted rock there, transition join there...". You can easily see where the level design is done. Well I don't know maybe you do? I tell you what I'll make this a beautification mod and see if people find it a little more immersive than the original tileset. "Bags not" redoing the original to make it legal, I'll leave that one up to somebody else. Doing one set is enough for me!

Its hard to see in screenshots but in game its more noticeable with texture changes. Because the Skyrim engine is so good at using bump mapping, the texture used makes a lot of difference between the general effect of smooth to rocky surfaces. The Skyrim cave textures are super effective at convincing the gamer that they are looking at uneven surfaces.

Maybe we can use the ice models for the lava caves of Vardenfell to maintain that original look. For the mean time, I'm not going to replace the lava caves models, so that gamers can get that contrast between cave systems. That should give a real feeling between what type geology they are walking through, rather than just texture swapping. The disadvantage of course being that objects (rocks) do stand out as placed rather than seamless compared to updated cave systems. But you cant win them all.

The screenshots I have here are for the damp Bitter Coast caves. There will also be variants without the hanging moss and ferns.

One problem with current cave systems is that they look like somebody sweeps them on a daily bases. They are certainly home to many an individual, so maybe they do get out the old brush and shovel.

"Mud" caves can be serviced with more earthy looking textures

Finally for any haters, in my box of tricks is mixing old and new for getting a look in between smooth and rocky :) I call it smocky.

Man do our gamers get spoiled! I'm a bit obsessed with making as much variety as possible, so between 3 tilesets (5 if you count inclusion of moss and ferns) and as many texture varieties as we want, its possible to get almost every cave with its own slightly unique look, even before we do some level design.