River Samsi, Gnisis, and Landlocked Lakes

I'm going to start off this thread by saying to please keep this discussion civil. What I am proposing here is quite the change, and requires a lot of planning before execution, for me to not waste a bunch of time that could have been better used, so keep in mind that nothing here is set in stone. Oh, and I wont even try to make the pictures in this thread pretty, too much work.

So what am I proposing, I hear you ask?

I have a couple of ideas ;

Numer One : Keep it the same

Keep it the same : Nothing much to say here, we would keep it like Morrowind's. Meh.

Number Two : Raising River Samsi

Raising River Samsi : Still quite boring IMO, but a bit of a step up from the Morrowind version. I would create a waterfall next to Gnisis, this would be a bit more traditional and natural looking. Extra gif.

Number Three : Lowering River Samsi

Landlocked River (suggested by Grumpycat) : This is what I would go with, since this is what was intended by MK (I think (durr)), here is a good remake of the original concept, and it is what I took most of my inspiration from. This would basically require me to lower all, or most of river Samsi, making it a lake that would get all of its water by a (massive) waterfall that would be either next to the Inner sea, or next to Gnisis (as shown in this map (yellow is the lowered land, red is the potential waterfall next to the inner sea, orange is the potential waterfall next to Gnisis)). River Samsi would now look like this. This would also require me to cooperate with Iceflame, as to not completely demolish his Gnisis work. There is a real life equivalent to this called Okavango (google it). It loses 97 % of its water by evaporating into the air, so I would place steam effects at a lot of places in river samsi. This is what Gnisis would now look like (I just jammed everything in here, it was done in a rush).

So, what do you guys think? I really think number three is the way to go, it would allow me to do so much more with West Gash.

Last edited by Crestycomb on 23 Feb 2015 - 13:48.

I just wanted to clarify, I

I just wanted to clarify, I am currently working on and hold the claim for the city of Gnisis, editing the cells that contain parts of the city would cause conflict.

I understand, but if we do go

I understand, but if we do go with idea number three, we would need to work closely with each other, or I could wait until you finish Gnisis, and then I would work on the surrounding landscape, trying to keep as much of your cluttering as possible.

And FYI, the pictures of Gnisis you see in this thread are not in my main esp, those are just mockups of what it might look like if we went with a certain idea.

New geo features would be

New geo features would be great! Also smallest rivers and sources.

"Landlocked river" has this association.

Maybe astroblema would be too strange even for this world (humans mostly dont notice them on earth surface), but a bit more chaotic ring of another volcanic caldera can be better. Game has one caldera, they can be plural.

If you still make it connected with sea - that would be salt-water ring-lake (or lagoon), and it can be used to show to player more sea-life (such as Dreughs and Crabs) in more obligate way.

Option three is definetly

Option three is definetly what I'd choose, without a single doubt. Don't forget the giant Kwama poop pile though! That weird blobby rock formed by the earth output of Kwama building the biggest hive on Vvardenfell, a lot like what termites build. It's not by chance that it was featured in this concept art:

[External image]

I'm going to make the call

I'm going to make the call the Cresty does all of the region around the river and that iceflame needs to hold off on any landscaping around Gnisis until this is done. It needs to be a consistent approach to that whole area, its more a paradigm at the moment.

Just a few points I'd make on

Just a few points I'd make on this topic. If Cresty is going to be editing the Gnisis region it seems he may not be working with the latest version, as all the changes Iceflame has made don't seem to be reflected in his screenshot. I'd recommend that Cresty either update or/and also get Iceflame's .esp for gnisis so no progress is lost. There is quite a bit of new stuff with a clay quarry on the banks and such which would be terrible to lose.

The third proposed model, as I've mentioned in chat in the past doesn't make a lot of real world sense. What is being proposed actually isn't a landlocked river like the example. Landlocked rivers simply never meet the ocean so they end up losing their water to evaporation and you'll get inland salt deltaplains from the mineral content found in the river silt. If we were to add a waterfall, lowering the level of the river, it technically would fill up and become a lagoon and wouldn't be a river. The only situation where it might have a waterfall flowing inwards is if it was a slow trickle when it was high tide so that the volume of water had enough time to evaporate and the resulting salt river would have to be very shallow. Still a lagoon type situation though, so it would be lagoon samsi now.

I was initially interested in the third model before going through the logistics of it because I like the idea of the river actually flowing rather than being more of a fjord/sound as it is in morrowind. That's why I proposed the second model after noticing the issues I've mentioned above. The second model would lead to small increases in the water height as the river gets farther away from gnisis and it would allow the river to flow outward. It would be fed by small streams from the canyons in the north. This makes more real world sense imo and from testing is quite doable due to the steepness of the terrain around the river. Also, it would be far less of a shock/less likely to get people scratching their heads and would make the river samsi, actually a river. Here's what it could look like.

Concepts

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I love the idea of number two

I love the idea of number two, It feels like a river and adds a lot of animated life to an otherwise lifeless area, there could also have some sort of little floating fishing platform in the middle of the lake/river?

Just to address Taerkalith, I

Just to address Taerkalith, I am using the latest version, in the screens for idea number three, I moved Gnisis around quite a lot, so most of it just got trapped under the ground, or deleted. If I were to do this properly, I would take my time and make sure to keep it as intact as possible.

You can always make flowing

You can always make flowing underground river between lagoon and sea. Sth different.

I have idea for two version,

- one with some kind of tunnel (exterior) where river meets sea (just bunch of rocks above it, maybe some arcs?). It can be polluted with rocks to stop a flow a bit.

- second version is totally closed with just "flowing stream from rocks".

IHMO underground river sounds most cool.

Alright, I should probably

Alright, I should probably clarify. I misunderstood what was exactly option 3 was about.

I really wouldn't want the river to be powered by the sea and flow backwards. That'd be really silly.

In the chat we've established that the most sensible thing would be to raise Gnisis and have river Samsi flow from the land to the sea, starting around the canyons from underground stream sources.

After some more discussion

After some more discussion with Iceflame, we wanted to destroy as little of his work as humanely possible, so we will most likely go with almost the same as morrowind, but we will slightly raise the parts of Samsi which are the farthest away from the Inner sea. This will require for someone to do a custom cliff model which would replace all of the "want to remove" cliffs around Gnisis[External image]