Morroblivion

if your stuck on what to do with canyon tops, the solution is simple.
have less of them. Instead, replace lots of them with seperate thin "ridges".
new assets will make that another wait though :(

I agree with Max about emptiness sometimes being a good thing. One example I can think of is the differences in the way GTA San Andreas handled a natural landscape compared to GTA V. In the former there were wide areas of completely barren, almost flat landscape, wheras in the latter every square meter of landscape was packed.

In a lot of ways, I preferred having a break from being bombarded with assets in the older game, though the choice might come from the memory a PS2 had to work with. Either way, the game felt creepy at night being all alone in a desert, and is probably why so many "conspiracy theories" about serial killers and bigfoot came about.

Compare that with the world presented in the new game, and there is so much "stuff" going on at one time I feel like having a break now and then and actively look for areas without much action, to no avail.

Either way, thats just a case study on how less is more. I think the canyon tops should be barren, with lots of dead shrubs and tumbleweeds and deadwood, (make sure to have constant howling wind sounds to reflect this environment) while in the canyons there are all the pretty assets, with bandits and what have you (sort of the opposite to that scene in finding nemo where the deadly looking canyon is actually the safe route)

It would also be a good idea to have varied looking canyons. For example, one could have a beautiful glistening stream running through it that reflects the patterns of water on the canyon walls, while another could be crumbling away and filled with falling boulders, making it dangerous to cross. And all the while the player can hear the howling winds above them and dust streaming across the roof.

Actually, i would look even on ruined settlement.
Completely broken ruins are cool place to walk around.
They are adding sense of history.

Yep, Nord ones would be really good one step.
However, they must be more coastal.
Would be nice to add some lost in Bitter Coast.

Of course I'm biased in this case, but most fits me, little sand desert (do we have dunes?) with WG assets. Maybe where is "main gate" it would be cool to add small elevation to cut off sudden transition.

Nice progress there cresty! :-)

I'm kind of in the same boat as grumpy, Like the landscaping so far but I feel it needs something to tie it into morrowind a bit more. Vegetation might do this seeing that it would be in a similar rain situation in the valleys as the BitterCoast. Definitely worth playing around with when the rock formations are finished up.

West Gash really needs scrubland terrain. Most of the textures for the region were always listed as some variant of scrub, but Morrowind's terrain never really was capable of rendering that kind of flora. These small bushes would dominate the landscape, thriving from the frequent rainfall, and would be vital in preventing desertification from the east.

Mid West Gash:

Southern West Gash:

Do you happen to have a link to any of the references? Because right now I'm not too confident about Wild West fitting in for the West Gash. In Morrowind it looked so much more unique, quite fitting for the traveling ash storms that shape the rock, and scrubland flora resting on dunes of dust, fueled by frequent rainfall that serves to protect against the growing ashland of the east.

I feel like a Wild West approach seems overdone and cliché to be honest, like the All Deserts have Cacti trope.

I have to agree with ice and disco on this opinion, West Gash is suppose to be a highlands type of region, your areas of North and South Gash fit this perfectly, but this area of mid gash with the overuse of monument rocks doesn't fit the region at all, it does feel as if it was a region of Hammerfell as stated previously. Without grass as well, this region just feels like an empty dessert.

The Wild West doesn't fit too well. The Badlands however, keep popping up in my head when the West Gash is brought up.

Smitehammer wrote:

Grass is for the grasslands. I would go with a more prehistoric feel to fit the general 'feel' of Morrowind. Grass is a relatively young organism for Earth.

Yeah, I agree, it could be even some grass but in small quantities and mainly yellow/orange/pale green. I don't want to see grassland 2.0

Smitehammer wrote:

Lichens might be a good alternative ground-cover, along with something akin to horsetails or scouring rush around shallow standing pools of water.

Honestly I think it's better to preserve it for Sheogorad. They remind me more north climate than some arid badlands.

Smitehammer wrote:

While the region may be generally arid, the ground textures could also hint at intermittent rain by having an appearance of cracked red clay. I could see the weather of West Gash being long periods of drought, interspersed with sudden torrential downpours and flash flooding. Look at dry creek-beds for some inspiration.

In Tennessee we also have regions called Cedar Glades with very shallow soil and bare rock which are bone-dry in the summer, and standing water when it rains. The prarie plants in these regions have to be able to handle very arid conditions and poor soils, as well as flooding conditions. It's a way to match the atmosphere of what the West Gash might be like without going for the 'wild west' look. Replace the 'cedar' with 'roobrush' and you're good to go!

I think this is good direction. Just making slopes more gentle and less monolith (a lot of rubble), making ground more rocky will solve most problems IMHO.

Well i made those pieces deliberately at the time for a wild west feel. Nobody complained at the time. Or did u not have the guts to disapprove of the design when I did it, but only when cresty uses them, 4 months too late?

I don't think assets are a problem Rav, I think it's the placement that is causing the association. Mind you we're making all these judgments from a single screenshot so maybe we should all stop armchairing a bit and wait for these to be in the game so we can walk around and really get a feel for the general idea.

Sigh