Atm there seems to be a lot of talk about remaking Vvardenfell (or morrowind)
now: my http://i740.photobucket.com/albums/xx49/wollibeebee/mywipz.jpg?t=1288832603 atm so...
i'm pretty keen to do something along these lines, now alot of people want to remake the whole place 4x as large. though with all the new landmass mods coming out that'll be a problem.

pros and cons of each one:

4x as large landmass:
pros:
more to explore
game worlds WAYYY bigger
cities will be the right size
more immersive with such a big landmass
red MOUNTAIN

cons:
it'd probably be incompatible with all the landmass mods that have been released so far, including TR, though i'm not sure about skyrim it might not be close enough.
it'd take AGES
most landmarks would have to be replaced (if some thing was meant to go on a certain road you'd have to find that road on this way bigger map, so it'd be in another cell and you'd hav to track it down)
items would be scattered everywhere waiting to be replaced
there wouldn't be a very good reference to use, so most of it would be guessing where things should go.
making sure things are still climbable (steep roads might end up to steep)

unique places for MW:
pros:
the original game could be used for references, say you saw a water fall you could build on that changing the land around it rather than having to find out. (it be pretty hard to find out that a waterfall used to go on this stretched piece of land.
whole regions could be done in one go, not just a small chunk.
red mountain could still be made a mountain (i've tried it)
places could easily be made how they should of. you could delete most the mountain behind gnisis and make\use some new models to make the cliffs
wouldn't conflict with landmass mods unless you expanded the ocean type areas.
well... it'd just be ALOT easier
and faster.

cons:
it'd wouldn't make Vvardenfell massive... more enjoyable perhaps.
it's still conflict with house mods or grass mods (like the 4x mod)
still quite a lot of work, though easier.

yeah.. i'm pretty biased, but i wanna know what people would prefer.

i'm pretty keen to actually do the Unique landscapes one (mainly west gash)
not so keen for the whole 4x the size morrowind, though i'd still do it (again mainly west gash )

well, any comments? or am i just rambling?

my bad for the horrible spelling

I've been thinking about this last couple of years as well, To be more specific, I've been thinking of starting on a massive version of Vvanderfell, using all the updated meshes and textures, replacing them as people would release new stuff.

Few things I found problems with this were- not all would agree on using/not using some new stuff, this would pretty much take a big chunk of people's freedom to use some graphic replacers, and finally, that lore freaks will take Morrowind's original layout too serious and would want to literally copy the original landscape, where I think most of the landscape should not look even close to the original. We're going for better, not a copy. So what I mean is, not every waterfall that was somewhere around in original has to be there in this version as well.

Good things in this are more or less all mentioned by you, but I'll add to it. I've seen some original concepts for game's towns. Aaaand I can say that what they did in-game is pretty missed in ideas from concepts. So another good thing is, we could use those concepts more closely, and like Vivec, make it a real metropolis.

Sorry for my rambling, in short, I'm for bigger version of Vvanderfell, obviously. Might finally tackle the thing myself..


To mention, this is all just a one big ESP, so incompatibilities don't matter so much. They could enjoy the big Vvanderfell and all, and when getting sick of it, simply turn it off, and get back to the old one and all it's mods. I personally never understood the fuss about big incompatible mods, where it takes only a second to turn things on and off.

As much as I adore the idea of exploring a more realistically-sized Vvardenfell, the conflicts, amount of time required to complete, and inability to release it in small chunks (even TR can release their stuff in chunks!) just seem too great a negative force against it. Though if it were done, I would be one of the first to use it! If only temporarily, depending on the quality of work.

On the other hand, a lot can be done with what already exists, as you've suggested. I'd go the unique landscapes route. It'll be difficult to make things too epic, simply due to size constraints on the landmass itself. But it could still be made even more interesting than it already is.

And yes, you're rambling, but no, don't be sorry. Modders thrive on occasionally senseless rants. Hence some of the greatest mods in existence today. :celebration:

Neither.
Both would cause too many mod conflicts.

And unlike Oblivion, the landscape of Morrowind is already quite interesting and varied, and doesn't need a series of mods like the Unique Landscapes for OB.
(some could be neat, but the entire island? no thanks)

Remaking Vvardenfell a lot bigger or remaking Vvardenfell a lot prettier. Hm...
Is there a technical reason that would prevent a third possibility, that is, to create a whole new continent far away beyond the ocean?
As much as I like Vvardenfell, I wouldn't mind having a new, mysterious land to explore instead.

By the way, I'm curious to know what's in that "Redoran crap" folder. :deal:

Landscapes, preferably without too many new meshes. Bigger landmass would be amazing, but seems somewhat insanely difficult and conflicts with TR.

What Pluto said.

I could almost see making the wilderness to scale and leaving the cities alone to try and minimize mod conflicts - but that would still conflict with all the islands around Morrowind. Including Solstiem.

gotta love rambling yeah, i guess u wouldn't want to remake that waterfall... but things like random shrines in the middle of nowhere should ideally go where they belong.


agreed agreed agreed!



well.. i honestly believe that if you're scared of mods conflicts then this is not the thing for you, something like this is an overhaul, not something to add to your game. OOO and all that for OB are sorta bases that you add to unless you cant because a mod is incompatible with it, if it's incompatible then you could fix it yourself or get someone else to. the same could easily be done for a mod like this.



Tamriel rebuilt
project skyrim - home of the nords
P:C (province cryodiiil)

(redoran folder is a small armor set with a quest i'm trying to make, just to learn to quest-script-make)


there wouldn't need to be many new meshes, maybe some cliff meshes by N'bid and the TR cliffs, and some more much needed rocks. the rest should be left for personal replacers etc etc

and......

i reckon it'd be good when\if a mod like this is made as many vanilla models should be used, so that people can still choose what they want.
and no new textures should be used, ie: if new rocks are made then they should use vanilla rock textures so they merge in with the other rocks when using texture replacers

alright, thats 7 votes for the unique idea

i've been thinking about this al day now (wow what a long time!)
i'm gonna finish up my skyrim claim, and my exterior for my island so i can join P:C
then i'm gonna remake the whole of west gash, even if there is no interest, cause i really REALLY want it.

:celebration:

(i'm crazy right?)

There's a big consideration here which is technical. Landmass changes are what gobble up the most memory in the construction set. If you try to add too much land, you might not be able to load it without the CS crashing.
This is what I ran into anyway with my ridiculous MW Amalgamated project. Unless there's a way around this I don't know about, I reached a wall at about 2.15 GB of memory being consumed (I'm guessing a 32-bit limit) and the CS would tolerate no more. I've had to break the mod into 2 modules; a Main .esp at around 223 MB and a Lesser one at around 73 MB. I can load and work on them separately, but trying to load them together is impossible.

Which leads us to a third possibility, and that's the MWAM approach; just add a whole whack of other mods to give both expanse and variety. I've got everything from the barren dunes of Sandstra in the south to the frozen forests of Whispering Woods in the north, wild and wooly Silgrad Tower to the west and the semi-featureless flats of Gianluca's Tribute to the east. It's been a heck of a ride for the past 2 1/2 years, but I've got this thing to a playable state now and I must say it's a gas. Of course it might not fit with what you have in mind exactly. But I think it exemplifies 2 things: size DOES matter and variety is the spice of life!

This pretty much expresses my opinion as well, although I still voted for a larger Vvardenfell just for the heck of it.

why would you install it if it conflicts with things you want on you load list anyway?

as much as I would like a massive, up to scale version of morrowind, it would probably take years... But it would be awesome to play the vanilla game on a much larger scale, I have to admit that.
So I would go for the unique landscapes...

The idea of a larger Morrowind to play in is too appealing so it got an affirmative from me . As for mod conflicts , there are so many already that I think I would be inclined to take it in my stride to see what wouldn't conflict .

I would have to disagree there, while the landscape is admitably more interesting than Oblivion due to being more exotic, and the individual regions feel pretty different (The Ashlands are very different from the Ascadian Isles, for example.) but within each individual area, there isn't that much that really stands out. While I do agree that volcanic wastes and giant mushrooms are more interesting to see than Generic Fantasy Land at first, when they're everywhere, it still starts to get a little repetitive once you've seen them enough, and I've seen them enough.

As for which to make, I'd go with unique landscapes, because honestly, I don't think Morrowind NEEDS to be made bigger. While the map isn't entirely to scale, it's already big enough as far as I'm concerned, I've never once looked at the game and felt that the landmass just isn't big enough. As far as I'm concerned, if large areas of the map still remain brown once I've finished with my current character, then the game really doesn't need to be bigger. On the other hand, making the landscape more interesting to explore is something I always welcome. Plus, while certainly, unique landscapes for Morrowind would cause conflicts with some mods, it wouldn't be as bad as expanding the size of the map, as unique landscapes would really only conflict with mods that happen to add something to places changed by them, plus, such mods could be released in a modular fashion like Oblivion's Unique Landscapes, in other words, you could release the mods as separate ESPs for each location that's changed, this way, if players have mods that would conflict with one of these locations, they could simply not use them, on the other hand, expanding Vvardenfell will conflict with pretty much any mod that adds anything to the game by default, because it would need to move the location of towns, objects, rocks, and so on, so you'd get things like buildings that were originally meant to be in towns out in the middle of nowhere, or things added by mods getting stuck in objects or floating in mid air. Lastly, considering the size of such an undertaking, it would probably take years, it wouldn't just be a matter of recreating the landscape of Morrowind on a bigger scale, you'd also need to add lots of new things, new buildings, new objects, new characters, new dungeons, and so on, because otherwise, the game would become large, but extremely empty, and the mod would just take too long to make, while it's true that I might be playing Morrowind when it's released, I certainly wouldn't stick around just to wait for it if I lost interest in the game. With a unique landscapes mod, if it were done in a modular fashion, you could release each location when it's ready, while it would take a while if you wanted to finish the entire world, we would be able to enjoy some of thwe project's benefits sooner. If nothing else, I'd vote for unique landscapes because the chances of at least part of the project being finished when I'm still playing Morrowind are higher.

My votes goes to Unique Landscapes as well...There are already at least two or three mods which changes a whole region to be more diverse too.

I am half-tempted to suggest that you just shrink every object, item and race in the entire game and give the player the illusion of everything being bigger, but that would probably involve a ton of problems too.

Well said!

Selbeth, he did say some could be neat, but not the entire island. I think that's fair. The whole island really doesn't need replacing.
As for making Red Mountain a Mountain, sounds cool, just make sure you don't make levitation a necessity. :frog:

edit:



That's kind of the point, you're asking people's opinions. If conflicts is a reason why they don't like this idea, I think it's a fair point.

Since I think Vvardenfell is big enough as it is, and playing without Tamriel Rebuilt just isn't acceptable, and Tamriel Rebuilt's landscapes are awesome, I vote for unique Vvardenfellian landscapes!

Given that such a project would not only conflict with TR, but also practically every landmass altering mod made, I'd have to go with more unique, up-to-date landscapes instead as well.

Sure, texture replacers and grass get you a lot of the way there, but there is a lot of wilderness that could be made more unique, or at least more interesting. The grazelands, for example, seem to be crying out for "more"

In my opinion, the effort to remake the part of the game that's already had countless hours of mod work put into it seems like a waste of time. If you want it badly enough, then that's your choice, but I think that the TR project is already doing a lot of what CAN be done, without affecting the basic island.

Beside the enormous amount of work it would take to "reinvent the wheel", scaling up the entire island would mean that it would take 30X as long to get from one town to another.....and I'm STILL occasionally finding things in the basic game that I haven't seen before, after all these years.

I really don't see what's wrong with Morrowind as is. Making it BIGGER seems utterly ridiculous to me, but I wouldn't mind a few nice touches added here and there. However, there's a problem with that as well. I'm extremely picky and probably wouldn't like your changes.

(/end unhelpful post )

I really wouldn't bother. With either idea.

First of all I think Vvardenfell is big enough as it is. I'm willing to bet very few people have seen everything there is to see on it and after that there is still TR. In addition, when you look at Morrowind on a map the island of Vvardenfell is a very small part of it. The size it's at at the moment seems to be sufficiant. Instead of attempting to rebuild the whole of Vvardenfell why not put the same effort into helping with a province mod like TR, Skyrim or P:C? Not only will you work in a team and therefor probably achieve something you will also expand the world the people can explore and make it more interesting. If you enlarge Vvardenfell it will probably start to feel very boring and samey as you treck acrossthe vast expanse of the Grazelands. If you put the same effort into, for example, TR, you will end up with just as big a land but far more varied with more places to visit and more varied terrain.

As for the unique landscapes idea, it just isn't needed. Morrowind isn't Oblivion and to me it feels like it has just the right amount of detail. If you cram every available space with waterfalls and farms and ponds it will stop feeling like an actual varied world and more like a museum of odd bits of landscape. It will stop feeling real. Put your effort into somewhere where it will be put to better use.

While a larger land mass would be awesome, it would also be a herculean undertaking - not only making the landscape and towns, but also putting back in the NPCs and re-doing all the quest triggers and such. I'm not sure how readily you could transfer the existing MW stuff onto a new landmass.

More unique landscapes is a nice alternative to getting the most out of the vanilla-sized landscape. I've been watching many nature documentaries about animal migrations (bison, the Serengeti migration, etc.) and I had a vision of a huge herd of guar making an annual migration around the Grazelands.

And when you run out of space above ground, you can always work on the caves. And if you run out of space there, there is the entire underwater coastal area and sea floor to work on.

If you worry about incompatibility, maybe a good place to start would be the marine coastal areas - the shallow sea floors, coral reefs, kelp forests, sea grass meadows, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunicate communities, communities of invertebrates (sea star, urchin, barnacle, etc.). There are also deep-water corals, you can try to go for very deep trenches and hydrothermal vents, etc.

gonna answer this with another quote.



well, i sorta feel offended by that, + i'm already working on skyrim i've nearly done my showcase for P:C and maybe i'll do TR when i get a chance, though it's gonna be hard to make a showcase for, just wish i'd joined TR first before skyrim seeing as TR members dont have to showcase for skyrim XD

edit: plus also, i dont use ANY mods that add stuff like buidlings and new places to the game, just my house mods, and they can be move sooooo easily. i try to keep the game as close to vanilla as possible, so this would just be like a beautification, i am gonna work on this. but i'd like to see if other people are keen aswell before i do so some sorta..... strategy can be brought up 1st.

With my TC you could say that the landscapes will be a bit more unique. It all depends on how you define "unique". Some might want to see drastic changes in the landscape, while others want to keep it close to vanilla. I tend to lean towards something in between