Thursday, January 17, 2013

New beta worldspace released

I just updated the worldspace esm on Nexus. This is the functional base esm containing the imported height map that we are using when developing the mod. Some things have changed compared to the old release.
  • The new esm now works, no more save and load issues or CTD.
  • The size of the world is slightly smaller, 14x14 quads compared to the old one that was 16x16 quads. We did not want the files to become to big to run, and this is the reason for the change in size. The side effect is that the land is a bit more dramatic in the elevation changes.
  • Sea level and lowest land levels are shifted upwards. Now the sea level is at -6144 units, and the lowest land (sea bottom) at -8192 units. Before the sea level was at -14000 units, and lowest land at -16048. This is because of the way I had to imported the height map using the Height Map editor in the CK. 

Future releases

We will be making several esms containing the populated lands, at least 12 of them. I have tried to divide the world in to meaningful chunks, and not to make any of the planned esm cover a region that is larger than 18 quads in total, some will be smaller. The first esm region we are working on now covers the Hoddminir forest, Seyland and Okolnir kingdoms (the yellow region).
Each regional esm will have different biotopes in them. We are using the region generation tool in the CK to make them, and when one such biotope is done (like the conifer forest we are generation now), we will release it together with any new resources we used making it. We will also try to release the region generation settings that was used to make the biotope (just have to figure out a meaningful way to present these in).
After generating the flora, we will start building the cites, town, farms etc.

Climate Zones  

The world is large enough to include climate zones range from cold to temperate. Generally speaking, there will be early spring in the north, spring/early summer around the middle of the map (cell Y 0), full summer in and below south of Illwadon, Andlang/Svallin (cell Y -128 and below).

In the far north mountains ranges have glaciers, just south there is tundra, this is the region called Hel. In Jotunn (purple) and Hoddminir (yellow) regions there is generally conifer forests or moorland (Scandinavian climate), with the exception of the Ymir river valley (in the Hoddminir region) that has northers type deciduous forests (Aspen, Birches and Alder). South of the Ymir river in Okolnir (yellow), Vidblain/Svallin (darkblue) and Illwadon (pink) the climate is temperate with leaf trees with Oak and Beech forests, similar to the north and mid European continent. In the west, with the high mountain ranges going from north to south there are glacier all the way down. In the south there are two different zones. In Andlang/Surtsland (lightblue) the climate is more Mediterranean like, where as the west of Falarion (brown) is more jungle like.

Seyland and Okolnir

So how will the the first regional esm look?
It includes three distinct regions. Hoddminir and Seyland, which both are part of the Seyland kingdom and the Okolnir kingdom. In the map you can see the land controlled by each of the two kingdoms Seyland and Okolnir are represented in black dots. The different colors indicate the approximate biotope types.

  • In the north lays the inhospitable moorland called the Jotunn moor (purple). There are some small farms living on sheep herding on the edges of the moor. Some parts of the moor will be included in this first regional esm.
  • The dark green region is the largely uninhabited conifer forest of Hoddminir, thick with spruce and pine. The Hoddminir and Ymin mountain region is rich in ore, especially iron.
  • Light green represent a more deciduous forest, in seyland this will contain for example Aspen, Birch, Willow and Alder. In Okolnir the deciduous forest also has Beeches, Maple and Oak. The majority of the population in Seyland lives in the valley around the river Ymir and the lake of Sey.
  • Yellow has a stormy coast flora, with low and thorny trees and bushes. There are many small fishing villages in the relative shelter of the valleys.
  • The reddish brow of Okolnir is a very rich agricultural land and is densely populated with lots of small villages and farms dotting the lands. Most of the original forest is cleared away for fields and pastures, but some small forest crops remain in hilly terrain. 
/E




2 comments:

  1. Congratulations on your beta. I've been reading your blog for several months now and it's been a lot of fun tracking your mod's progress. This was actually where I learned a lot of the basics of worldspace editing so it's good to see your own creations come to fruition.

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  2. Superb. I've never tried previous version, so I just got blown away with the size of this world. This is the scale Skyrim should have been made in.

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