[WIP] Balmora Exterior Redesign (Iceflame)

Having received the OK, I am now working on Balmora. Here's some progress:

The Odai Canal:

The Overlook:

The overlook will house the nine or so npc's that need a place to sleep, as well as the Skooma den that Balmora is so notorious for, which also has Balmora Blue.

Last edited by grumpycat on 8 Dec 2014 - 20:04.

i have an idea for levitation

i have an idea for levitation. Why not make it extremely taking on magika? preventing people from gaining too much altitude or just being able to go over walls and barriers. for most players they wont be able to get their magika up to a level where they are able to sustain flight for more than a few seconds. just an idea towards the behavior of Levitation, I post this here because of the discussion about open world space or closed. PS i am for closed world spaces, it is foolish to limit design ambition because of one spell.

While bringing things over

While bringing things over into the new space, I'm transferring small areas at a time in order to focus on making changes that better utilize the capability of the extra space. So the areas that I have shown before are being worked over to make things better than they were before. A start on the ceramics workshop:

This part is mostly empty due to a lack of a potter's wheel mesh, however, I'll link my inspiration source to get an idea of how it will look later on in development.

Is this texture for the

Is this texture for the pavement final? I can't help but feel it looks way too modern. A more durable way to arrange the bricks would be to have them overlap like this:

[External image]

That way they're much more likely to stay in place. Remember it's not ceramic bathroom tiles.

It might also be a cool addition to have the streets dedicated to different crafts signed like this:

[External image]

Though I'm not sure if the effort would be worth the effect in this case.

I'd save intricate details

I'd save intricate details like that for Vivec.

drago that flooring he's

drago that flooring he's using is usually for housing interiors and balconies. I,m only doing some stone floor placeholder textures for now.

Veloth the ashlander wrote:

Edit: For some reason the contents of my post disappeared when I saved it, don't know why.

But anyway, those tiles are meant for the interior, and are temporally being used as a placeholder on the exterior. The final should look much closer to the original stone streets.

It's your city updates that

It's your city updates that make me check back every day. Great.

Iceflame, when you say you

Iceflame, when you say you are moving stuff over and re-designing to take advantage of the extra space, so you mean the interior worldspace will be larger than the exterior LOD version? Personally, if this is the case, that's quite different than how cities have been represented in the elder scrolls and would make it impossible to ever "re-open" the cities if someone had a machine that could handle it. I'd be careful with doing this if it is the case, as I know it could be quite jarring seeing the city from the inside versus outside. There's quite a bit of wasted space in Balmora as is that could be re-utilized through slight movement of structures (as you've been doing) I don't know if we really need to expand the interior anymore (with the exception of perhaps caves). There's also a bit of space outside the walls that could have a building or two if not all of the new ideas fit inside. My overall vote is to keep them open (which I know may not be possible), or at least design most of it when its open before boxing them to help with seamless transitions from the worldspaces.

On a different note,
I understand the need for closing some of the larger cities for performance purposes, but some time does have to be put into how the player will enter the city when hopping over the walls (either via levitation or just a high rock ledge like around Balmora). some of the proposed teleportation offset theories that have been thrown around are not currently possible. when you enter the cave entrance doorboxes, they're nothing more than glorified activation trigger boxes than work on a yes/no basis and do not take in account where the player is within the box, just that they are in it. they also only transport to a set coordinaate and I believe they will only spawn the player on the ground, not in the air (I could be wrong). Which would make levitation really strange to enter/exit, much less jumping. There's always the really annoying invisible "you shall not pass" mesh blocks but that doesn't seem ideal either...

P.S. It's looking really good btw, sorry for raining on the parade..

I understand the concern, but

I understand the concern, but it might be a bit too late at this point. The size difference is only by moving things out a bit, not by changing the terrain itself. This has the potential still to be made open with some creative repositioning later down the line by a modder willing to do so.

So do you mean the walls have

So do you mean the walls have been moved farther out? I think that could be worked back into the exterior world version easily as long as the terrain heightmap stays about the same. Even if it is just to update the exterior walls and LOD buildings and not a full blown open city.

Aaaand I'd still keep some

Aaaand I'd still keep some outskirts of the city open, outside of the wall ;) That would make the transition much less sudden. Compare cities in Oblivion, that felt totally isolated (with the exception of maybe Skingrad thanks to the wineries), and cities in Skyrim like Whiterun - which had some good bits in the exterior and that made them feel more connected to the outer world.

IMO, that was a plan? I mean

IMO, that was a plan? I mean only 'old' Balmora must be closed, isnt it?
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and all the same: optional open version would be useful.
or maybe with contextually closed city parts (that small district in cave for example).
maybe that would be good variant to make some parts of the city closed in walls and dome as that was in Vivec.