At the Narrows of the Niben: Leyawiin Rebuilt

My version of the grand, southern city, inspired by Bethesda's original http://www.elderscrolls.com/images/art/ob_concept/ob_concept03B.jpg for Leyawiin.

I bought Oblivion on the day it came out in 2006. I rushed home, loaded it up, and for hours I wandered happily around Cyrodiil, just taking in the cities and the sights. As I went south along the wide River Niben, I approached the southern city of Leyawiin, looking forward to another interesting settlement to explore. I ran up to the city gates, stepped through...and you should know the rest. :blink: What in the heck happened here? Why did the city look like it was just plopped down in the middle of the river? And where in tarnation had the river gone?

This mod is my attempt to redesign the city to be more like Bethesda's original concept art...How Leyawiin was meant to be. I've been working on and off on this mod since the summer of 2006.


Overview:

Leyawiin will be a closed city in this mod. (Yep, with big stone walls all around...And load doors. ^_^ ) I will be making an open version as well...

The city has been raised up so that it now is perched on the edge of several high, rocky cliffs with the River Niben flowing far below.

Ships will be able to fit under the two bridges that span the river! (That was the first thing that I tested when I started the design process.)

Ships will be able to actually sail past the city! The river channel has been widened and deepened upstream and downstream.

The city is divided into three sections (all located in the original Leyawiin worldspace).

• The eastern section of the city is home to the cathedral, cemetery, and the guilds (including the Blackwood Company).
  
• The central section of the city is located on a long, narrow island in the middle of the river. It is home to the grand Castle Leyawiin and the castle courtyard. (The other structures on the island are located in the Tamriel worldspace, including the harbor, several lower-class homes, two lighthouses, and the Five Claws Inn.)
  
• The western section of the city is home to the merchants, several parks, and most of the houses.

Important Points:

My version of Leyawiin will not correspond exactly to Bethesda's concept art...I used it more as a guide while I was coming up with the layout for the city.

The rocky cliffs will stretch upstream and downstream from the city for a short distance, gradually blending in with the original topography.

The high bluffs/hills that the city sits on will eventually be seamlessly "blended in" with the hills and valleys around the outside of the city.

The land surface is being raised, but the city is occupying almost the exact same location as the original (vanilla) city.

I'm leaving most of the building interiors untouched (except for changing their north markers). The castle, however, is getting a major interior and exterior redesign.

I'm leaving all the X markers in their original worldspaces...I'm simply moving them around.

I'm not adding many new buildings or features to this mod that weren't in the vanilla city. (There will be a few new structures though, like two lighthouses, a farm outside the city walls, and a second upper-class home for the player...)

I haven't messed with any of the Oblivion gates in the area. So hopefully, there won't be any problems with those.

As well as releasing it as a stand-alone mod, I am also planning to make this a modder's resource when it's finished...I would like this mod to be a 'base' that other modders can build off of.

Eventual compatibility with other mods is also a goal of mine.

New Screenshots (December 1st, 2010)

http://i.imgur.com/Q7M2o.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/XRn8C.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/6hUlG.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/Eyqnh.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/OfKDt.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/rhLwG.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/I8vs0.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/BOAQ9.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/VxYJS.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/th3fT.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/txuu9.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/W3jhA.jpg

An upper level castle hallway in the http://i.imgur.com/7muay.jpg, http://i.imgur.com/hfyzT.jpg, http://i.imgur.com/6fbk4.jpg, and http://i.imgur.com/PD3Ia.jpg


Overall Progress: |||||||||||||||||||| roughly 93% complete! (as of January 13th, 2011)


I'm not an experienced modder, but I'm committed to getting this finished...eventually. From the modder who brought you...um...nothing previously...Bananaman

Acknowledgments:

Thanks to Arthmoor for taking Texian and Godhugh's original Leyawiin Reborn mod and making it into an even better mod!

Thanks to the amazing team that made All Natural, the ultimate weather mod!

Thanks to Texian, XMarksTheSpot, Brumbek, and Ismelda for their Animated Window Lighting System (AWLS)! :goodjob:

Thanks to LprMan for his Enhanced Vegetation!

Thanks to Bomret for his detailed normal maps. They look great! :rock:

Thanks to Arthmoor for Really Almost Everything Visible When Distant (RAEVWD)!

Thanks a lot to ChainsawXIV, Zeroed, and Qarl for Detailed Terrain.

And thanks especially to Mr_Siika for his amazing castle and ship meshes! I couldn't make my mod without them! B)

Reserved...

OOoooh I can't wait to check this out in-game. *waits* For some reason I can only view your thumbnails.... looks very nice tho.

I saw that same concept art of the city ages ago (or so it seems) and I wondered why they made Leyawiin lite instead...

been lurking this thread for a while now.

Its looking amazing. I'm glad I can finally appreciate Leyawiin, it was incredibly bad in Vanilla.

Any chance you'll retexture and get rid of the ugly orange wall color?

22% left...

I predict it will take him about 4 months. Then the world will rejoice at the new Leyawiin!

Nice! The new topology seems to fit the surrounding terrain well, and the castle's placing makes a lot of sense. And it seems to fit ES lore better than vanilla Leyawiin, so even lore freaks should be pleased. But most essentially, it looks totally fantastic in every way.

I don't really have anything constructive to add, but i just hope you can eventually get it finished .

Edit: @Larianov8: With these big projects the most time consuming and difficult tasks tend to crop up toward the end, and people are generally surprised of the amount of work in getting the last little details right. So with the work having been going for something like two years (?), i'm guessing it'll be more like a year left. Of course i'd be happily proven wrong otherwise .

Oh yeah ... it's really nice to see, that you've made some progress :clap:

Keep up the great work.

Just a question, i was very dissapointed at the shack you get in leyawin vannilla after looking forward to owning one of those large colourful mansions that the majority of other citizens own, do you plan to change this?

@Richard7666 -- The rearranged castle interior I'm doing will probably be incompatible with some other mods, but I will release a patch for OOO, MMM, and some of the other major ones...I think that the new, narrower interior just makes more sense.

@Seigfried -- Thanks! I've already downloaded Mr_Siika's rocks. Now I just need to get someone to retexture them into the Great Forest Mossy texture for me...

I'm not having any problems viewing them -- anyone else not able to see the full sized screenshots??

You mean the orange walls of the http://server6.theimagehosting.com/image.php?img=LR_2.jpg&public_view=1&album=22952&fullsize=1?


Oooo, feedback! :goodjob: I'm glad you like the city's placement. Thanks!

I will eventually get it finished and uploaded. No hope is required! ^_^

I know what you mean...I'm still in the thick of modding Leyawiin. While almost all of the buildings and walls have been placed, the cliffs and pathgrids are gonna take a while. And all the other stuff I've got to do...But I'm still having fun modding it!

@Ratskeller -- Leyawiin will now have two player homes you can buy from Marius Caro -- The original shack (now located right on the docks down by the river) and a new, dark green, upperclass home (with buyable furnishings) in the 'nice' part of town in the western section of the city!

Great to see the new pictures. I'm glad you are stil enjoying modding. I am patiently waiting for it to be done. Wonderful work.

Have you got nifskope and obmm on your computer? If so retexturing is really simple to do yourself, you just extract the textures to your data folder using obmm's bsa browser. After that you open the meshes up in nifskope, and you click on the flower icons you see in the nodelist of nifskope. That will open up your textures folder for you and allow you to replace textures. Once you've applied the textures you want you just have to rename the mesh and save it wherever you want, then bring it ingame as a static.

Suggestion:

When making those new interiors, maybe try to make all light come primarily from light sources and less from ambient background lighting? Makes everything a lot more atmospheric, and a lot of people use similar lighting mods anyway. It would also be nice to have compatibility with weather inside type mods, but that's not so important.

I've not been working on the mod much lately, because I just installed a shiny, new video card! ^_^ To celebrate, I did a clean installl of Oblivion and I'm currently downloading lots of mods...So I guess I'll be playing the game as well as modding Leyawiin for a while.

More updates soon!

Ehhhxcellent! I thought you had slipped on a banana and rendered yourself out of action.

I want this bad.

Really bad.

Im really quite looking forward to this.

Leyawiin is the only city ive visited that doesnt seem quite right; though I do think Bravil could be a bit more of a "hole" than it is lol.

Keep it up man, keep it up. This is one of my most anticipated mods. Leyawiin and its environs really needs a change.

Looking forward to this Bananaman!

I'm hoping and praying that this will be out before the end of the year.

This looks like a mod I'd want to use, so I have a question:

If I make a mod that adds an NPC to Leyawiin, how do I make it compatible with this one? For example, the start position of my new character may be in the river, or locked in a castle dungeon if that's what occupies the point I place the NPC at.

Is there a safe spot that's in both old and new? I suppose I could always start outside and have an initial travel AI package move inside, but that would be extra work!

Almost certainly all vanilla interiors for Leyawiin will still exist, so placing an NPC in one of these interiors rather than in the exterior should ensure compatibility.

Thanks a bunch for all your great comments, folks! :wub:
So am I! An alpha release could be out by then, at least...

Leyawiin is coming along well, It's still rolling along...I just learned to retexture in NifScope and I'm attempting to wrap my brain around UVmapping. :banghead: I'm currently retexturing mr_siika's excellent rock meshes (and some of the vanilla and SI rocks) to look more mossy. Once I get the cliffs along the river done, the whole modding process will go a little faster, hopefully. Then I get to finish the castle interiors and start work on the farms outside the western city walls.

@ghastley -- The new city will be a bit higher in elevation than the old city, so there won't be any exterior spots that will be unchanged. And Vorians is correct...Hmm, perhaps I'll post some new screenshots in a few more days?

I love what you are doing. Re. compatibility, when the time comes, there is a small, but wonderful mod that adds a horse and cart to the game. For some reason, the pathing on it at Leyawiin doesn't work in 3rd person. Maybe that is something you can fix to go with your mod.

I'm looking forward to new pictures!

very awesome, leyawiin would've been my favorite city if beth kept it like the concept. now it will be again! on of the reasons i liked the concept (and this mod) so much is it actually resembled a real castle