Open Cities Reborn takes the concept of Open Cities and steps it up to the next level. The project aims to redesign each city covered by the original Open Cities in such a way that would make more sense strategically. This will revolve around having the castles be the central structure of each city with the layout altered to put the housing, shops, and cathedrals around them. Where possible, Bethesda's concept art is being used to follow the layouts. Where none is available, I will exercise my own creativity. The city walls in each affected city will also be modified to suit the environment. For example, Bruma now has wooden palisades instead of ginormous brick walls. The idea behind this is that with the cities in the open worldspace, they should be visible behind the walls. The primary reason for such tall walls wasn't for realism, it was to block out the unpopulated closed city spaces behind them.

For reasons of compatibility and lore, Kvatch will not be affected in any way. The Imperial City will also remain untouched, for obvious reasons.

The plan breaks down as such for each city:

Anvil: Will be transformed into as close a representation as I can make of the concept art included on the Oblivion Collector's Edition DVD. Due to content distribution rules, I cannot link to it, so if you don't know what this layout looks like, just trust that it's pretty cool and will justify Anvil keeping its high city walls. Content from the Anvil Bay Expansion may end up being removed if there's no need for it with the new layout. Otherwise it will be kept to fill in any needed spaces.

http://img685.imageshack.us/img685/7948/bravilrebornoverhead.jpg: The castle area retains its walls, the rest of the city loses them entirely and relies instead on their island nature to be used as a defense. A dock has been added to the south side of the city, along with a small farm to at least make it appear as though they can feed themselves. Every 5th day of the month, a ship will show up at the dock, to simulate ongoing trade. You can also see that in the SW corner next to the cathedral that the book store for Lost Spires fit in nicely and that patch is untouched. Pretty much all compatibility for Bravil will be unaffected.

http://img693.imageshack.us/img693/9128/brumaeastgateoverhead.jpg: The city has been reorganized with the castle as the central feature, and the rest organized into districts. A lower class district along the north side, with the cathedral. The market district in the NE corner where all of the shops and guilds have been moved to. The upper class district on the SE side of the outer castle wall, where the Jerall View Inn now resides. And the middle class district along the SE wall of the city. The city walls surrounding all of this have been replaced with wooden palisades. Land space has been reserved for the two patches which place buildings in the city.

Cheydinhal: The castle will be moved to occupy a central position, with a similar reorganization of the commerce and lodging around that, and residential surrounding that. No work has been done on this yet as no suitable city wall replacements have been found.

Chorrol: The castle area will be repositioned into a more central spot, with the rest of the city being realigned around it. Giving some strong thought to eliminating the outer walls on this one entirely. But if not, I may go with resized stonewall meshes if something more appropriate doesn't come along. No work has happened on this yet.

http://img43.imageshack.us/img43/1396/leyawiinrebornoverhead.jpg: The existing layout for OC Leyawiin Reborn is being retained, though I may see if I can bring it http://www.elderscrolls.com/images/art/ob_concept/ob_concept03B.jpg Bethesda provided.

Skingrad: Undecided as of right now. The place is pretty tightly packed and more or less laid out nicely as it is. One of the few places that followed the concept art as-is. So it may not need to be bothered at all other than to get some slightly more appropriate walls.

I'm not ready to put out a WiP package just yet because I'd like to get Anvil included with it. I just wanted to show off what's been done so far. Bravil and Bruma look great, and performance in both cities has been boosted some as a bonus. Certainly wasn't expecting that, especially in Bruma since the palisades are much smaller than city wall pieces and therefore required MANY more of them to be placed.

I understand Phitt will soon be releasing resources which will contain walls that should be fitting for use in Cheydinhal. So if nothing else comes along there I'm content to wait for those. I'm wide open to suggestions and/or contributions for Chorrol and Skingrad though.

Also worth noting I will not be altering the layout or fortifications for New Sheoth as it has a valid lore based reason for needing ridiculous walls. Plus, Sheogorath's prerogative. Who am I to argue with the Mad God?

The open version of Bartholm will also remain untouched as I figure if J.Sera wants it changed he'll change it and I'll simply follow suit.

Do not ask for time estimates. I wouldn't be able to give you one even if I knew I had everything I needed.

Also, because there was a clear lack of use shown in the poll (sorry to the 9 of you who say otherwise) the open version of Bravil Blood&Mud will not be supported in this at all. There are techincal issues which make supporting the merge package more pain than its worth to maintain. Plus, with all of the additional clutter burden imposed by B&M, frame rates with it are unacceptable. Sorry, you'll just have to play that mod closed if you want it.

Well, I'll be getting this mod whenever it comes out. I was interested to see what you would do with the walls, but I was a bit dubious. But looking at this, Bravil and Bruma look great.

I'm liking the look of those palisades around Bruma, it just fits so much better with the Norse feel of the Nord culture and architecture. I'll be eagerly awaiting my chance to re-explore these cities. I'm sure I won't be disappointed.

Looks amazing, thanks for the preview. I eagerly await the first release. Regarding Chorrol, I think it should have some form of walls. It's a fairly affluent city and is nearby a mountainous region, so I think walls would make sense.

Looking good! I will surely use the Bruma and Leyawiin ones, because I never really liked the Better Cities versions (either super laggy, or just not my taste).

I mean, really! These places look great!

What's going to happen with the

If you mean

Yeah, that's what I meant. That's simple then.

i like alot

Looks interesting.

One thing that has always bugged me (about Oblivion in general, not this mod) is how wide all streets are. I would love to see much more narrow streets. I realize from the preview pictures that Bruma is pretty far along in its redesign, but the two arched rows of houses on the left side would have been a prime candidate for a long narrow street.

Bruma isn't just pretty far along, it's finished. I have no intention of narrowing the streets or doing any further rearrangement, except perhaps to move the player statue since it exhibits twitchy behavior that's visible from parts of the city. I tried to block it with trees, but there's too much space to cover for that. Would be nice to leave it in the prominent space I chose, but if the twitchy thing bothers me, it'll bother other people too.

Well it's probably late in the day given how far along your are with this, but as you are giving the cities major makeovers have you considered adding some variety to the chapel exteriors. It's always bothered me that the chapels are identical. I appreciate this may be beyond the scope of the project.

Cliffworm's is (as far as I know) working on a mod that does exactly this, and a whole bunch more. Look up "Losing My Religion."

EDIT: BTW this looks fantastic.

Great work, Bruma's looking great! Unfortunately I don't reallly have any suggestions as I kind of agree with all your plans, so all I can say is keep up the good work!

Cliff's "Losing my Religion" overhauls the interiors of the chapels, not the exteriors. He's done and doing some amazing work on it though.

As for this, I am eagerly waiting whatever you release Arthmoor. :twirl: Your mods always make my game better and the world seem more real and lifelike.

Those wood walls around Bruma look perfect! I'm going to have to abandon Better Cities for at least one game when this is released. :wub:

this looks nice, but i'd like to know how compatible it is with the major mods (e.g. FCOM). i know there theoretically shouldn't be any incompatibilities, but you never know...

also, could you somehow modify the meshes of the castle leyawiin to include a high tower to serve as a beacon, instead of adding the whole light-tower behind the castle?

There will be minor incompatibilities in the form of some spawn points that end up closer to the cities than they used to be, but so far this is mostly within Leyawiin and from what I could tell only due to the ones OOO drops. The patch file up on the Open Cities Classic entry on Nexus already covers it and I don't imagine much will change there.

I have no plans to modify the castle meshes. Leyawiin is already pretty well set unless I decide to more accurately reflect the concept art for it. Either way, the lighthouse behind the castle isn't going anywhere.

Maybe it's a bit early to ask, but what about TIE? Will OCReborn be compatible with it straight away, like OCClassic was? I mean pure TIE, not TIE4Mods etc.

Thank you.

Yes. TIE 1.26 already takes the altered Bruma and Leyawiin layouts into consideration. Obviously it can't do that for other cities that haven't been worked on yet though so those will have to wait for a future TIE release.

I encourage the idea/{WIPz}

I like options.

Wow, looks great Arthmoor! The huge walls have always been an immersion breaker for me, this will make open cities how it should be!

I always thought the cathedrals looked wrong. Oblivion towns are small so smaller types of temples would have been more appropriate.

Also, Oblivion towns and walls are bland. Is it possible to include more wall decorations gargoyles , water features , etc? Individual types for each district.

I tend to agree with this, but I've got no intention of overhauling the temple interiors with this. So they'll be left as is, though relocated as needed.



Possible, but not something I had planned. Adding too much of that sort of thing ends up dragging performance down and I'd rather avoid doing that.

Bruma in particular looks fantastic. I keep visiting this thread so that I can look at it again.