TESGecko should let you copy cells jus be sure to copy the item you wish with them,.. they show as cat; static, cells, weapons etc and you need scroll through and copy them to clipboard and save that to a defauly Gecko Clipboard.esp

You dont have to worry about the distant land stuff at the moment. I only do a distant land update with TES4QLOD when lots of changes have taken place as the whole process is visual and takes time anyway. Just work on the city and landscaping for now, place whatever you need to place and so on and dont try to do any distant view stuff as the game wont recognise it as the entire distant land has to be run from a master file. What major world projects like this do are farm out areas to be modded, that are then done in esp format where no distant land will appear in game. Once the esp is finished, send the esp is sent to the mod collator who will then merge the esp to the master file and run a distant land generation tool, which is what I will do with a number of esp merges.

The best way is not to worry about distant land generation at all. I can do an entire merge with TES4Gecko as I use vista 64 with no memory limits (or a huge memory dump available anyway.)

Create the city, land etc as you fancy and how you wish it to be, in game it wont show up in the distance anyway and the city should be placed in a small world rather than done as an open city as the game will lag so badly it will be impossible to play on anything than a very high end rig.

Place the city exterior walls only and set them all as visible when distant, place the rocks, trees, land etc with the landscape editor and dont try to do any distant land generation as you would need to merge the esp into the master file to do it anyway, and I will do that my end. Once the exterior walls are placed create a small world with the parent world as Hiboria. You will then need to open this small world and navigate to the same cells that your city is located.

You can then go to the hollow outline of walls and select and copy all of them or as many as each set of cells will allow. Then go into the small world "HIBastaroth" or whatever you choose to call it, then navigate so all the cells from which you selected and copied are visible in the render window. Then paste in place these copied walls. They will appear in exactly the same spot in your HIBastaroth small world as they are in Hiboria main world. Repeat until all the walls and gates etc are in place. You can then work on the small world city and link the two via teleport doors. So you see the exterior walls are only ever going to be a hollow shell, though you would need to do the copy and paste in place thing so you can align a few houses etc in the main Hiboria world hollow walls area that will then be ticked as visible when distant. So in the Hiboria main world (hiboria is the working name for the Mesogea worldspace) from a distance the player will see walls and house roofs etc that are an illusion. Climbing over the walls would drop the player into a no detail dummy city. However when the player goes in through the gate they will teleport to the other side of that gate in the small world and look out onto a dummy main world with the real detail inside the city.

This is the start of a basic tutorial explaining worldspaces: http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/World_Space_Tutorial

Also, take a look at Hazelgate in the construction set, or Anvil or another of the cities. All I do when making a city is start with a fresh esp where nothing else has been touched or changed, go direct to the cells of the city in the region editor, place the exterior walls etc and landscape the immediate surrounds, then make the small world interior for the town or city, copy and paste in place the walls, then do all the major work in the small world on the town. When all is done, I go outside and do some landscaping. I never touch the distant land stuff other than ticking certain buildings as visible when distant.

After all that is done I probably move on to another couple of esp's then finally merge them in time and date order via Gecko, then run a distant land thing with TES4QLOD as a finishing touch and only at the point of releasing the whole mod.

Thanks for the in-depth response. I won't worry about the distant land for now then.

Yeah, I had already reluctantly decided to go with an interior world design on this after some pondering on the design details. The main sticking point was the dockside areas and just the immersion value of having an open city design. I decided it wasn't worth the performance loss, however - potentially making it unplayable on lower-end (or even mid-range) machines. What I will have is 2 main sections of the city, East and West of the river. Both will be separated by walls and there will be a few small areas outside the city gates, mostly near the docks or the riverside; I would have to wall up the river/sea otherwise and that is just unrealistic. Now I understand why Bethesda designed the waterfront of IC and part of Anvil as an open design. I almost considered doing the whole West side of the city as open, since it will be the more crumbling, dilapidated part of town, but that would put limits on me as far as how much detail I could put there.

The landscaping is coming along, more slowly with the landscaping tool, but safer in the long run than trying to do anything with that heightmap editor.

Sounds like youve thought this through really well. Are you going to do the dock front as an open design then, sort of Anvil like, as I am doing that kind of thing with Port Deboran or will the port be incorportated into the small world city?

Ive pretty much finished doing the port of Deboran main part and planning the NPC's I will also add. Ive done the small world and placed the walls and a few interior buildings so know exactly what youre going through. As I said with the heightmap editor, its a total pest, so I just never bother with it now other than to update the LOD meshes after merging to master.

Wow, you are either really quick and/or have alot of free time! So far I have a river, part of an island, a bridge and a bunch of rocks! Not to mention a few mix-n-match textures that I'm still sorting through. I'm trying a few different textures to see what looks best in that area. Do you have any particular climate in mind for that region? My first instinct was to go for a somewhat marshy (but not swamp) area with a rolling coastal plain between the cliffs/headlands. I almost went for a Leyawiin/Bravil feel, but it seems from the lattitude and your story the climate there would be cooler with mild summers and fairly cold winter season.

I'm starting to get the hang of it, but there's been a bit of a learning curve, figuring out settings that work best, etc. I wasted alot of time trying to get an imperial bridge mesh to 'snap' together, tried changing "snap to grid", "snap to angle", "snap to selected reference object." Seems like it was hit or miss until the last few pieces just wouldn't line up perfectly (just a tiny little seam); after fighting with the fiddly, jittery little object manipulation interface for what was probably way too long, I finally got smart and clicked on the object reference to truncate the extra floating decimal "change" that was attached to its locational data. Apparently, the "snap to" functions do not automatically round off the fractional parts. Anyway, I finally built the bridge, though it's similar to your Illusidum one, and not covered as in the Astaroth Approach story. I couldn't find a covered bridge anywhere... Do you know of any?

And, yes, I'm planning on having a waterfront 'district' if you will, which is open, and part of the main world, rather than the smaller city worldspace. Otherwise, I'd have to put barriers out in the water to keep people from swimming out into the 'never-never land' of the false world-space. Also, this may work better when/if I can incorporate that ship script idea. Don't worry, I'll try not to crowd it with so much detail and npcs that it will crash a supercomputer. My laptop should be a good gauge of performance. It's not brand new, so if it is playable on mine, it should be playable on the average system.

No, I cant think of or find any decent covered bridges, so that looks like a re-write of the story bridge than a new mesh idea. I had a few hours over the weekend to get to work on things but remember Ive been fighting the construction set for some years, though it really just took a couple of weeks to beat it to submission and to learn what to do and what not to do. Sometimes rotating meshes around their central axis will get them to line up better. At some angles they just dont line up at all.

The open port bit sounds very sensible. I wanted open cities originally but making just one district of Illusidum with twenty or so NPC's (imagine the days of work that took!) and the fps hit was astounding, so I dumped the esp and started a new one as a small world. Its much better and allows for more detail and NPC's etc.

would the bridge to Skingraf Castle work it's in parts,.. I think thats it a found a demo in testworld I thin it was

That bridge is better than some, but for any bridge to work as a city approach it needs to be visible when distant, that is have a specific mesh duplicating the original but very much trimmed down in poly count, then with the suffix _far at the end of it.

I looked all around that TestWorld (with just Oblivion.esm loaded) but all I got was a plethora of errors about lights and a "re-exported Tree" something like Mopp/carofano or some such thing.

I think I know which bridge you are referring to though - the heavily arched aquaduct-like bridge with the torches along the sides? I was thinking of that one, but didn't think it was high enough for ships to go under (and neither is the IC bridge) but after looking at the bridge to the SE of Imperial City (which also uses the Skingrad Bridge, I think), I think adding the supports to the bottom, so that the arch is entirely out of the water should make the bridge tall enough.

Still not sure if it even needs to be that tall, depending on where it ends up in the final version, but I wanted to have that option in case ships have to pas underneath.

But that bridge isn't covered? Were you talking about a different Skingrad bridge?
So we don't have have a distant model for that bridge? How hard would it be to get one made? (once we figure out which bridge looks best!)

Don't worry too much about it, btw. If it is not a big issue whether the bridge is covered or not, it's not a biggie. I'll end up using whichever one looks best, anyway, covered or no. I am just trying to stick as close to your story design as I can. It's not squelching my creativity or anything either; I relate it to co-writing a song in a band - you take what someone else created and add to it, mold it, etc. until it becomes better than either of you would have imagined.

Choose whichever bridge you want to use, then let me know. I will dig out the mesh and make a distant version of it, no probs.

Cool. Thanks. I'll hopefully have decided in the next couple of days. I've gotten a bit more landscaping done. Fixed some land errors - open seams, textures, etc. and continued the formation of the harbor.

The Astaroth area concept is coming along nicely, I think. When I'm finished, the should look quite different from anything in TES4, and yet still a believable place. I even took some "time off" to do a bit of exploring and plan out the approaches to the city, and where the causway will be, etc. since that has to work with the layout of the city (i.e. gate placement and such). I can't wait to get on to the city building part, but I think it will be worth it to get the area -river, harbour, headlands and island just right.

When I get the land looking the way I want, I want to see if it's possible to generate the land for the area, that way I can look out over the harbor and see if the scale feels right. Then I'll also be able to take panoramic screenshots from a high vantage point without pieces of land missing.

But, for today, I'm done.

The only way to test the distant land would be to merge the plugin to the hiboriamaster file using Gecko. You will only be able to do this on a 64bit rig owing to memory limits in Gecko. Once this is done you would need to load up the esm then using the heightmap editor run a create LOD on the specific quad you worked on, so the land mesh matches the textures you will later produce.

The textures then need to be done in TES4QLOD. Basically I never do distant land tests and views until the very last move as with a WIP plugin you would then need to delete the newly merged esm and go back to the original one, deleting all the LOD textures and replacing the newly created LOD quad mesh with the earlier one. Then load up the CS with the original esp you were working on before merge, and the hiboriamain.esm before merge. Otherwise just loading up the newly merged esm and the original esp will cause all kinds of errors and duplications.

I know its a pain, but I did the whole of Illusidum without doing any distant land stuff at all until I merged the whole finished product.

Once youve done the esp city and its all finished, just send me the esp and I will merge it straight away, run distant land and produce everything for you within 24 hours.

Thanks. Well, I knew there would be a bit of work involved, but it sounds like a bit of a hassle to go through at this point. I have a Vista x64 computer that may be able to do it. Maybe once all the land is done, if I'm feeling frisky, I'll try it just to test it out. I have backups of everything in case it screws anything up. For now, I'll just keep truckin' along. And if all else fails, when I'm done, you can merge it on your computer.

After a few close calls with landscape errors, I started backing up my esp in between CS sessions, and indeed, some times during a session if I'm worried something might get screwed up. Every now and then I got a seemingly random landscape error in a cell I thought I didn't alter, or maybe barely touched. I think what happened, is there was some "mesh weirdness" that the CS "didn't notice" until I made changes to that cell - whether by smoothing or texture, etc. - and it tried to save the "bad" cell. The support for this theory is that the errors tended to happen around areas where there was some bad/open mesh seams or some artifacts of the fractal land generation algoriths. Just a guess, really, but as a self-taught programmer, I've come to rely on intuition about stuff like this, and it usually serves me well. I always say, let the Q/A people worry about duplicating the bugs, it's my job to force the thing to work somehow.

Anyway, it dawned on me that what Mesogea could use more than anything right now, aside from the obvious, adding more npcs and quests, etc. is good landscapers who would be willing to take a section - x number of cells or quads and go over it, looking for errors or problem areas, whether it's just odd looking textures, or fractal artifacts, etc. All that would really be required is smoothing in places, some retexturing etc., but if it got the "Unique Landscapes" treatment in special areas, that would be awesome. I know most modders are probably still busy beautifying Cyrodiil and building parts of Tamriel, but there have got to be a few out there wanting to work on an entirely new land. Most areas are looking really nice, it's just the weird spots here and there.

It's just going to take a while to give each area its own uniqueness, and the whole thing may never be "finished", but that's the beauty of it, I think. You can have a huge open land like this, as long as we get it fairly "polished" throughout, and add a few complete towns with npcs, and some quests and a few dungeon crawls, etc. then what we'll have is a completely playable mod that other modders can just add on to. There is so much area to create stuff, you don't have to fret about the "real-estate" shortages of Cyrodiil. It's like an open canvas for people who might have some ideas that don't quite fit into Tamriel.

Maybe people don't realize Mesogea is not a history mod, per se, it's basically a Sword and Sorcery meets Cloak and Sword type fantasy world. Anything is possible from Conan the Barbarian to Greek mythology, the Lost city of Atlantis, etc.

Well, it's here for those who want to step outside the safety net of Cyrodiil and into some truly uncharted territory!

Good post, ElricWulf, certainly people need to read what youve just written as its a good summary of what Mesogea is. Ive come to learn through trial and error that a modder has to get things to a certain stage before lots of people flock to the banner. I found that when I last released Mesogea, a couple of years ago now. It took months and months before a few people showed an interest, then there was a gradual turnover of modders who dropped in, worked on it, then were slowly but regularly replaced, or stuck it out for the long run. Its following the same pattern now. A few months ago it was just me. Now there are about half a dozen of us either working on it, or already submitted content and a small number more who are busy on other things but already planning Mesogea content. So gradually and slowly interest is building.

I honestly think though, that until we have a few quests and working locations the main interest wont come along because many modders are players to begin with, and if they cant yet play in a world, they dont have an interest in modding it. When our current locations are in working order we should see a change.

That's pretty much my thoughts on it. I know the current consensus with Oblivion modders and especially the old Morrowind modders seems to be "quality over quantity" and the prospect of a huge mod like this can be very intimidating. I'm sure most people immediately think of the trials and tribulations of mods like Tamriel Rebuilt and with a wry head shake and think "that mod is never going to be released/playable."

The old consensus from the Daggerfall folks when Morrowind was first released was disappointment at the relatively small size of Vvardenfell. People would refer to the absolutely huge size of Daggerfall's world and its cities and it's immense, labyrinthine dungeons and thus conclude that TES games were getting increasingly smaller as they got more focused/polished. There used to be a joke - I wish I could remember it exactly - that went something like "The next TES game will take place in Elsweyr in the backyard of an average Khajiit family with 3.5 kittens." Now many people seem content to have a small village-town that is supposed to represent a city where you can walk out the front gate and trip over an Aylied ruin on your way to the goblin cave just a few dozen yards away.

There are obviously teams working on various province expansions to Cyrodiil, and I love those efforts and look forward to being able to be able to go to all the places I haven't been since Arena and see how they've changed from my imaginings of them (Arena's cookie cutter towns left alot to the imagination ) However, I think there is room for a big mod like this with a more realistic sense of scale and balance between settlements and wilderness, that isn't limited by the scale of what is already there in Cyrodiil. I feel like Mesogea can still be polished and quality throughout, without having settlements packed together on a small map with ruins and monster-infested caves a stones throw away from everything.

It will just take some time to finish, but hopefully settlements like Astaroth will eventually be showpieces for Mesogea to demonstrate what can be done with the space available for modders and a bit of playable content that players can enjoy and whet their appetite for more. And there should be plenty of space left over (abandoned buildings, etc.) for someone to come along and say "this is a cool town to base an adventure out of - I think I'll put another tavern here where you can get a quest that leads you to some ruins up river from here..." and so on and so forth...

Thought I'd shoot you a post to see if I could catch up with you here, as you missed my post on the Mesogea forums:

I was looking for some guidance on the lighthouse for the Astaroth harbor mouth. There would definitely be one there, whether it would be still in operation on perhaps ruined is another story, but anyways there are a few models I could use... one is the big black towers like at the gate of Illusidum, and the other is that square sort of tower that I've seen for a monument or two. The latter could have a fire added atop it, but I'm not sure about the former. If I make the lighthouse operational, I'd need a way to light it. It doesn't have to be an animated beacon or anything, maybe something similar to http://sites.google.com/site/don7aw/IMG_2347.JPG on a slightly smaller scale, even. In fact, seems like I've seen that as a modders resource somewhere... or maybe not.

Anyway, If you come up with any ideas on that or the Druid's tower, shoot them my way. I'm still thinking about ways to make that tower look "just right", too.

I made another post to the Astaroth description thread, too, just in case you check there. Gotta go now, but I figure you're usually around at this time, so I'll check for replies in the morning.

Your mod looks very impressive. I downloaded the files, but haven't installed them yet as I'm busy playing other games at the moment. But when I get back to Oblivion it will be to Mesogea, not to Cyrodiil. Keep up the good work.

I'll thank you in thekarithian's stead since he hasn't gotten back on yet.

It's still more a modders game atm; Although there are several settlements from large cities to big towns and villages, we havent finished populating them yet. There are a few areas with npcs, but you will have to console "cow x,y" locate to get to them. It can be fun just to explore the world and see what locations you can find and wildlife you encounter. Some areas are less finished than others, though, so if you go to the wrong places, you may not see much, and since it's alot bigger than Cyrodiil (or even Tamriel, I believe), you could spend a long time wandering before you find anything.

People are working on adding npcs and quests and additional content right now, including the port city I'm building, but we have a small team and it will take time. We are trying to get more modders involved since it is such a monumental task.

Hopefully we'll be able to release some content in the near future that will give you a real starting location and a few quests and things to give you a taste of what the final gameplay in mesogea will be.

Thanks for your interest and support!

Hello, I posted back in mesogea.org as soon as I could. I was busy with the CS yesterday and also with home life, so didnt have time, then work today until about an hour ago.

Thanks. I guess we were on the same wavelength with the lighthouse thing. Life, work and sleep huh? Oh yeah, that's the stuff that gets in the way of modding.

Yep. Ive found a good one for a lighthouse on a large scale, try under static "holquad9" Its also visible when distant!!!
It might look a bit too neat so if you want me to do a model that looks a bit scruffed up, a bit collapsed etc, then use this one and I will replace it with the new model when the esp is finished. Let me know if you want to use it in the first place, and secondly what you would like me to change for a more ruined look.

Also Id like to welcome Joffenz back, he was in from an early stage with the planning of this mod and has now come back from other stuff to work on it. Looks like we have a nice little team coming together.

Awesome, maybe we can get some momentum going with enough people.

I'll try that model out as a placeholder, at least, and let you know how it works out. I'm still landscaping a bit in that area, but I needed something to get an idea of the scale of the bluff that I set up for the lighthouse.

I'll talk more specifics on the Mesogea site.

Kia Ora

Is it normal for me to find places where I fall through the landscape or have I installed things wrong,.. theres only 2 files right?

Ouch. Well, not exactly "normal", but I'm not surprised. I've heard this before, but the only place I've seen it happen is when you have inadvertently gone "outside" of a city interior cell by going through a wall or an unfinished region. There are a few unfinished areas like this. Last time I went to Illusidum I found a place like this. I don't know if that has been fixed in the latest update or not. Only Valisarius would know for sure, but he had mainly mentioned changes to the desert regions in the latest file update.

Maybe if you could describe where you were when that happened and what you did that brought you there (i.e. going through a specific load door, walked through an alley, etc. then we can fix it by the next release.

These Console commands could help: (press the Tilde "~" key)
tdt - To toggle debugging text, then
sdt <#> - Cycle through the numbers, which give different debug readouts. One of them has coordinates; possibly:
"sdt 31"

Until we get things more "polished up" and maybe get more modders on board, it's a work in progress.

kiwi_hawk

As ElricWulf says, there are numerous areas, especially walking from inside a city back into the main land without going through a doorway via teleport that will take you into dummy, visible when distant only land. Let me know exactly where you were when this happened.