Thirith on 18/9/2006 at 07:48

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First of all, let me state quite clearly that, although I don't have much of an idea of modding Oblivion (or modding in general), I know that the following would be a huge undertaking. I am curious as to how huge an undertaking it would be.

As an oldish Ultima fan (I started playing the series with U5 on my C64, and I've played all of the following titles on PC), I've been thinking how cool it'd be to be walking Britannia in the Oblivion engine. One of the biggest problem with Ultima IX for me was that the world was tiny... and, judging from the size of Cyrodiil, Oblivion should be able to handle a Britannia that feels as big as it did in U7. Although I do have one or two problems with the Oblivion gameplay, the world feels amazing (especially now that I've got Unique Landscapes, Natural Environments and Open Cities installed). Walking through dense forests during a storm, seeing the sun rise from a mountain peak, or watching it set over a large, beautiful lake - these moments are magical. Being able to do the same in Britannia would be doubly so, I imagine.

Now, if any of you have much experience with modding in general and with TESCS4, could you give me rough estimates of how much work the following would be, and how feasible they'd be?

1) Creating the map of Britannia; height map, textures.
2) Adding things such as forests, rock formations, 'natural' (i.e. non-cultural) landscape features

If all of this were feasible, it would of course make sense to make it available to the modding public. Beyond that, there'd be a number of mod resources that would prove useful to anyone making an Ultima remake, such as scripts, custom textures and models etc. However, I wouldn't even want to think this far. (However, at some point I'd want to be able to walk from Trinsic to Cove to Britain, explore Castle British, head over to Yew, stopping by Iolo's hut and finally going to Empath Abbey for some honey and wine. :))

Thirith on 18/9/2006 at 09:10

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Thanks for the links. I've looked at these in the past; the Titans of Ether project looks good so far, but having played Oblivion, I would say that the engine is capable of creating worlds that are much more alive. I'm somewhat doubtful about the Infinity Eternal mod. Perhaps the guy simply needs a capable team, but more than that he simply seems to ambitious, to the point where his project doesn't sound very feasible to me.

Then again, he actually has a project, whereas I just have a silly dream. :p

Makahlua on 29/9/2006 at 10:17

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1) Shouldn' t be that hard to do, I once did a rather simplistic height map for SimCity 4 of britannia, basing it directly off of the 1/4 size jpeg you can see on this page: (http://ian-albert.com/misc/ultima7maps.php) http://ian-albert.com/misc/ultima7maps.php Map textures should be relatively simple as well, would just take some time.

2) This would be the extremely time consuming part, because even doing a -small- bit of exterior detailing when I do house mods, or a simple island in MW makes me all something something after a while. :weird: This is the part you'd need a team for, methinks ...

Makahlua on 29/9/2006 at 17:40

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Yeah I saw you over @ the official forums earlier! (Or rather, saw your post asking about heightmaps and such ^^) If it does work out, please at least release it as a mod resource if nothing else :thumb:

Renzatic on 1/10/2006 at 01:10

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It's kinda weird posting this in the Oblivion forum and all, but you could always consider using the (http://www.gamebanshee.com/neverwinternights2/screenshots.php#null) NWN2 Toolkit.

Since it's primarily an online DM game, it'll have a pretty active modding community and alot of attention paid to it...provided that the game is more than halfway decent anyway.