[idea] Closed cities - worldspaces for various areas/cities

No no noooo no no. No. Just no.

Modders have been creating "open cities" mods for all games since Morrowind, and you propose the opposite? Please no.

I think it's a good idea but given not many people like it, it should be an option inside the installer.

I'm not facing any particular framerate issues so that wouldn't be the incentive for me. I can understand if other people do. The things I fear in that are:

- extra workload

- error prone

The only good point I can see would be that you can make things bigger in cities worldspaces without impacting surrounding landscaping, I think (though that might look weird)

zilav

No no noooo no no. No. Just no.

Modders have been creating "open cities" mods for all games since Morrowind, and you propose the opposite? Please no.

No one likes loading screens, and the developers of all games know it. So there is always a good reason for having them. And Skyrim is no exception.

Unless you have a very powerful PC, you will likely see performance issues the same way as described by happychappy. The load on the CPU and GPU will be likely unacceptable with open cities, if we intend to make them as detailed as vanilla Skyrim ones. So, if I, as a developer had a choice of either putting loading screens or telling a possible customer to fill his boots untill he spends another 200-300$ for a better processor and/or GPU, I would choose the former.

On the other hand, however, the layout of the cities in Morrowind is VERY unfriendly to the idea. We must limit levitation in order to prevent people from flying into the cities, the walls have to be high enough to occlude the lack of detail from the outside/inside view (think Vivec here - it will require a significant rework of the canton shape), and we must make walls and gates around cities that did not have any (Ald'ruhn for example).

So, either way the decision goes, we will have difficulties to solve.

Happychappy, if you Youtube Morroblivion review, a guy who couldn't get into Morrowind (GeneralLotz) LOVED the idea that you can go to a city "without ever reaching a loading door" in Morroblivion. His exact words.

Also, I don't think it was just the open cities that posed a problem for Morroblivion. It was everything moving about at once so even if we do that, it may not solve the issue.

I like it. I've never been a fan of open cities due to the obvious fps drop. I'd rather have high fps than low loading screens. IDK why people had such a problem with loading screens in Oblivion though, loading screens were only 5-10 seconds and it was even lower in Morrowind.

Closed Cities should be separate as a mod for those whose computers can't handle Skywind's open cities. Breaking closeness to the original Morrowind in a way that people hate in exchange for working with older hardware is really something that shouldn't be in the main download. As for Ghostgate, though, it was an interior location in Morrowind anyways, so if you're just going to expand that interior, feel free to.

Also, the problem with loading screens in cities is that the player often has to go back to the city over and over again, and once inside, must go into buildings to do anything useful. Putting an extra loading screen each travel direction for a commonly used location is bad. The very nature of loading screens is that it's focusing all that loading at once. You're looking at a huge crash potential right then (I had to start a habit of saving before loading screens in my highly modded save because of this, and Morroblivion is luck of the draw when a loading screen comes up as to whether it crashes), and a noticible load time with modded Skyrim stuff.

Leaving things open could cause crashes as well, but I don't expect it to be an issue except in a few locations and even then most PCs can handle it (closed cities was one of the things that allowed Skyrim, a modern game, to come out on consoles nearing their end of life).

Actually I don't mind loading screens, well that is if they have nice art like the ones happy threw together or if they are interactive, one game let you play pong at the loading screens that was nice

I recall a post a few months ago either by you happychappy or was it shadow? oh well whoever posted it is irrelevant. 

What this post said is that their should be more put into this mod than Skyrim because we are not bound by the limitation Bethesda had to work around such as having to "optimize" the game to work on both Xbox360 and Ps3 however the PC potential was limitless or at least what the game engine allows us to do. So why downgrade? 

 

(also i use the term optimize lightly because look at the hackjob they did to the PS3.)

Drakonman

 PC potential was limitless or at least what the game engine allows us to do. So why downgrade? 

 

(also i use the term optimize lightly because look at the hackjob they did to the PS3.)

 

Because there are thousands of Skyrim players who play on lower than medium graphics settings because they don't have computers that can run any higher. Just because we can, doesn't mean everybody can :P

I honestly think that a closed cities optional version is a must. I can guarantee that if we don't, it will be on the top of the complaints list.

If you have a good PC, play default (Open cities) Skywind, but having the option for a closed cities would make it much, much easier for people with lower-end PCs to play it.

I think people here can't imagine how hard it is to make an opened/closed worldspace mod, how much things it must alter to keep all the quests, packages, scripts, (dis)enabled references, etc working.

Feels like another "transition" thread because such decisions should not be discussed until development is mostly finished. And by the time it happens somewhere in 2015 there is a good chance that completely different people will be here discussing it.

Or the same people with better PCs...

This should defiantly be done once the game is further off the ground. Obviously, doing it now would be a waste of time considering the NPCs don't even have clothes yet.  People weren't making Oblivion mods before Oblivion was released.

Consider the fact that the a large amount of the people who would really, really want to play this mod don't have very powerful PCs. Just because some extra work would have to be done, that really shouldn't stop thousands of people from playing a mod that so much work has gone into. We can't punish people for not coughing up a bunch of cash so that their game is playable.

exactly

TheMaskedFelon

We can't punish people for not coughing up a bunch of cash so that their game is playable.

Considering the amount of time I spend on Skywind, I hardly feel like I'm punishing anyone............   And it's not like we were selling a videogame $50. It's free.

So, I understand the point raised by happy and I certainly respect it, there are however a number of issues to overcome before even starting such a project, the main one being the workload added by this change. Who would work on that? How would that delay other work? Compatibility, issues?

The point of saying people have old rigs is kinda moot IMHO. To play Skyrim, you need to have a decent rig. To play with a large mod you'll certainly need a little bit more than the strict minimum, for sure. That's PC Gaming 101... If we want to go to the extreme of that logic, you can tell Eloth to stop improving the textures!

With that in mind, I certainly don't say that we mustn't strive to optimize our content.

PS: I think we would have at least as many people who would benefit from this change as those who would say morrowind wasn't like this.

@TheMaskedFelon and @LASentry

So I guess you both will do it, right? It is a fan driven mod, you want something - do it yourself. Discussing what should be done is pointless.

Instead of wasting time on forum, learn how to use CK and start a separate closed cities addon for Skywind. It can be done even now, you'll just need to synchronize all the future changes to Skywind with closed cities mod.

That's the most straight answer to the question of this thread. Nothing else to discuss really because such mod is stand alone (like Open Cities for Skyrim) and doesn't affect Skywind's development in any way.

 

@TheMaskedFelon

And to the guy that says you're being punished for having a bad computer, try making a mod. It's not something that magically appears overnight. It takes a lot of time and commitment. There's the mesh making, the texture making, the scripting and the CK placing. And simply one of those steps takes tons of hours. If modding was just a button in the Ck that makes your imagination appear in Skyrim, Skywind would be long finished and there would be way more people who were working on it.

My only problem with this is how are we going to work around the levitation issue?

I do think that it could be an optional "mod" to download for skywind from the download page or in the installer. A good idea and will be much appreciated by those whichout top notch hardwarez in there machines! although this would mean extra work on developers :(

But yes the whole open cities thing is nice and i loved that about morrowind but with modern games its just too power hungry for the systems owned by the majority, hence the reason oblivion and skyrim were released as closed cities! well that and they were created for a console base and then ported over :( biggest mistake ever! :(

But yes i agree Closed cities is a great idea for some, however it would be nice for those with beastly machines to have the option of open cities like the original

happychappy

recall a post a few months ago either by you happychappy or was it shadow? oh well whoever posted it is irrelevant. 

What this post said is that their should be more put into this mod than Skyrim because we are not bound by the limitation Bethesda had to work around such as having to "optimize" the game to work on both Xbox360 and Ps3 however the PC potential was limitless or at least what the game engine allows us to do. So why downgrade?

Good memory, I did a post on Performance Vs Quality. We have managed to do a lot towards some of these goals of utilizing the Skyrim engine and probably best example of this is with the level design on landscapes being done. However the reality is that Bethesda Skyrim engine, basically thorough a bit of trial and error is still susceptible to performance issues. I have had to spend some time on optimizing some models because they are crashing the game.

But the purpose was to make sure that we push those limits for the sake of making the game as good as we can make it. We still probably don't know where those limits are yet.

I don't want to blow anything out of proportions here. I think open cities will be okay. Zilav is right, the amount of effort to make an optional mod will probably not be undertaken without a huge demand for it. Creating and maintaining two streams of worldspaces is probably too much of an ask. My thoughts were debate about it for a decision on one or another.

I think at this point we get Balmora populated with NPCs and their full AI packages, level designed fully and use it as a test bed to see if people have too many performance issues.

 

Fair enough. Even with the open cities or no open cities it would be possible to make it so you have teleport zones at the entrance of every city or border the city so when you enter it you don't have to click a door. You walk in, it will take you to a loading screen then you're in the city at the area were you walked in to. I know this is possible in the games engine a lot of mods use this method. Hell Skyrim uses it for its cave entrances. If you want to argue it that teleport zones would still be using the Engines full potential. 

Also I apologize if I came off as being rude with my last post. I meant no disrespect. 

Thread necromancy! Hopefully that's permissible here in the forums - I was a lurker for the past year or so before I joined a little while back...

I definitely think this conversation is worth a visit. With all the ongoing conversations going on concerning changing cities (such as expanding and changing Balmora, enclosing and changing Vivec to open cantons, etc) I think it's worth having a project consensus. This will make ongoing conversations a bit easier.

Thoughts?

It's It's a alright idea but it might be hard to start making enclosed city's now since so much has been done already and Morrowind was made with open cities and putting enclosure city's might not give morrowind that Morrowind feel that most people like

Most people don't know what they want.

Most people know what they want, most people don't know how to reach it in specific way.
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I think any closed city will be look very unnatural in this game.
Even Almalexia in orig. MW was looked obviously limited.
Alteration magic is 1/5 of awesomeness of MW. Will be bad if some edits will limit it.

I think stress testing is in order.

My fear is that open cities may just be too idealistic (although I believe it's preferable by pretty much everyone).

Make open cities. This will release in 2015 and in 2015 most gamers will be able to handle it. Don't skimp on quality to make it more accessible. If lowering settings is required to have open cities then that is what most people would want.. I hate loading screens! especially when I don't even need them!

Just do stress test with worst situation (number of assets) about 20 NPCs wears bone armor going forward and backward and pile of bottles between buildings and then this person will share his benchmark. In other way this conversation is quite pointless because we don't discuss on facts but opinions.

Keep in mind your all building a masterpiece that will be amazing years from now when average peoples computers are even better than right now. It seems like a tough choice.. but you probably want to make it as detailed and immersive as possible for later when the game is completely finished.

griff5nKeep in mind your all building a masterpiece that will be amazing years from now when average peoples computers are even better than right now. It seems like a tough choice.. but you probably want to make it as detailed and immersive as possible for later when the game is completely finished.

I'd agree :) 

Although having Vivec in its own worldspace wouldn't be so problematic I think... Just have a ''you can't levitate here'' message popup, telling us Vivec doesn't want us to fly around his city! Similarly, levitating over the Ghostfence seems sort of pointless... but perhaps that's something people want to do! Is it?

My opinion: Vivec and Ghostgate closed, everything else open.  The Ghostgate is, obviously, a giant gate, you have to go through the portal.  The new Vivec is going to have massive walls surrounding it, so you will only be able to enter through two gates I believe.  

is there way to test game with distant land now?
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because i always using maximal range of view (except grass) and i like mods, increasing population - and newer got any valuable slow FPS (in catg of Bethesda games, except FNV).

I have an ATI Radeon HD 7970 (which is a GDDR5, 3GB card) and I play on max Skyrim settings with all 2k textures. If I do many 4k textures or lots of mods (especially those with new or edited scripts), the game becomes extremely unstable. So I play fairly safe graphics-wise -- no ENB.

I haven't touched the actual Skywind alpha yet, but if we can decide upon a benchmark I would be willing to do some testing. That means I would need the files, textures, meshes, etc. that we expect to come with vanilla Skywind, or at least the closest we can figure at this stage... I assume these were in the most recent Skywind package that is no longer available.

I haven't done any beta testing for any video games before, so I may need someone to help point out what all I should monitor for outside of crashes and speed drops. I can also use MSI afterburner to watch temps and GPU usage for my own awareness (or if that data should be useful).

Just throwing that out there.

Not to be rude or anything, but beta testing is meaningless as worldspaces are not even finished.

We aren't talking about beta testing -- we're talking about getting a feel for CPU requirements in a mock open city.

First of all, you did say beta testing in your previous post. Secondly, don't you think the devs haven't already tested this before? If not, I'll give you my result: no ctd in open cities, as of now. Achieved with i7 4770k, 280x. As I said before, my results as well as yours will be useless because the worldspace is going to change a lot.

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Want to... digress... but time better spent... more productively than continuing... :)

...Okay, whatever you say, chief. :)

Moving back to the actual conversation that began this thread necromancy: has a concensus for open cities been decided? This thread is a year old, sure, but it's a lot of opinion and hopes without really pulling a trigger on development decision making. Based on the post above, it seems like open cities (as is) is fine. Granted, he has a quality rig that not everyone has, but that's at least a good idea of where things stand.

Edit: I just reread through the thread and saw this quote: "I think at this point we get Balmora populated with NPCs and their full AI packages, level designed fully and use it as a test bed to see if people have too many performance issues." That pretty much answers my question - for now, everything is being developed as open cities. Someone can feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. :)

My concerns are about loading time in some places like in this example. Or just is this some exception?

The thing with Morrowind and closed cities is that unlike in Oblivion and Skyrim, the cities are not designed with closedness in mind. Many have no walls or walls that you can clearly see over. Adding and making walls bigger could really make the towns look a lot worse.

Vivec said the essence.

Balmora and Suran for example, are bigger than any other city in Oblivion (Except the Imperial City, obviously, but that was cut into different areas) or Skyrim, especially with the additions of clutter and the advancements in AI. Closed cities are almost a necessity for places like that. The buildings in some of these places are very close together, so you barely see the outside as it is. I do not thinking closed cities are a big deal, with these places in particular. Ald'Ruhn is a bit different through.

But isn't Ald-Ruhn as large as Balmora and/or Sadrith Mora? And from a technical standpoint, how would it be handled?

How are you going to approach Vivec? I mean it's a bunch of buildings floating in the beaches of the Azura's Coast region... Cities are usually cut-off from the world by some giant wall around the damn place, it's your idea to have "floating walls"? What sense does that make? Water in itself is a barrier!

The only viable solution to me it's to cut-off Vivec and make it completely non-continental, like a stranded city in the middle of the ocean that you can only access by boat. But that is a big leap of faith when it comes to the fans of the original game, but in my head seems more reasonable than having a walled floating city.

On a second thought maybe having a main bridge to connect Vivec city with the Azura's Coast it's not a bad idea either it's a little more "lore friendly" and you can make it work, add an entrance in the middle of the bridge and then load the new world space.

Sorry if I'm rambling... [External image]

What do we plan to do with levitation if cities are closed? Will there be flying player-teleporting inside<>out markers?