[Sub mod in developement] ARGH's Campaign map improvement

[ARGH0use]

Ugghh, Imgur seems to have wrecked all the images I uploaded. I might have to go back to the drawing board and start again, I know where to start and what to do, just lots of tedious work with the polygon lasso and magic wand.

[ARGH0use]

I have managed to bring the map back to life with Necromancy, all it took was some dealings with the Ideal Masters... no kidding. I had to start off from square one, starting with a 20000 px wide HD version then once it was all pieced together it was shrunk down to 1024 px. Starting off from square 1 has payed off, new Summerset isles, East/West Morrowind, Black Marsh, Southern Hammerfell and Gold Coast, credit goes to Beyond Skyrim. I'm now up to polishing the silhouette, finished with sections A & B, Glenumbra, Rivenspire, Stormhaven Bangorkai, High Rock, Craglorn and Skyrim. There are 7 more sections left to work on, and it's very tedious, if anybody wants to help out and work on a section feel free to ask ( it is preferable if you are using Photoshop).

[cloudfly]

if you want to send me a copy of the map I can try my hand at working on it

[ARGH0use]

Very late update: I finished the hand work at the original size, got to de-res it. I went on a tangent... and used it to create a 1:1 Tamriel world in Terragen 3.

[ARGH0use]

And here is the hand painted map, finally bothered to shrink it. I painted at 19000 px, with a series of geo elevation brushes, my gaming computer allowed for me to get away with the amount of detail. Needs a bit of cleaning up.

After playing Rome 2 and Attila I can't wait for CA to actually release the campaign tools. Can't wait to one day play an EBIII or Elder Scrolls Total War 2.

[ARGH0use]

I just saw the news about the Attila assembly kit, I've been a bit behind the news regarding that event. I will releasing a larger, if not the original version of this map at 19000px or smaller (it is 1 GB large, I will need a hell of good internet connection which I don't have, or I will cut it up into parts which can be assembled on the other side).

[Vladyvid]

Why do you make a map that is too large for the game to handle? It wont be playable if it stays that size. You will have to scale it down meaning you lose a lot of details youve been working on, meaning a lot of time wasted working on details that are impossible to present in game.

Not only that but if you scale it down to the size that game can handle, you will most likely have to rework the map fixing a lot of things like for example all those navigable rivers that may end up (after resize) unsailable in places. Not to mention that a lot of elevation needs to be checked in game to see how it appears, if its flat/mountainous enough and that means a lot of testing and correcting.

Whats most important is how it all looks in game, and with very large maps the elevation tends to look more flat, so you dont only need to represent what Tamriel's "proper" elevation would be (according to sources), but you have to adapt it to the size of the map so that specific mountains or valleys look "realistic". From what I can tell looking at your map, a lot of areas will look pretty flat, even the mountainous Vvardenfel will look pretty flat because there is not enough elevation difference there to give the impression of tall mountains, valleys, ridges. You cant just follow the lore but have to exaggerate a lot of elevation differences to make them appear as mountains in game, otherwise you will end up with a lot of gentle hills on the camp map. Another thing are all the rivers crossing high elevation areas and lakes in those areas, they will need to have their banks made much lower otherwise you will end up with something that looks like minecraft rivers with vertical walls on their banks.

From the artistic point of view, as a picture of a map it looks nice, but from the perspective of how would it look in game, there's a lot of work ahead to make it look good.

Also, not sure I follow, but is this still going to be a map for the M2TW Elder Scrolls mod, or for Attila Elder Scrolls mod?

Unfortunatelly, tho that is your time and your choice, you wasted time working on a huge map instead of working on the game size map and testing it while working on it to make sure all the details look properly in game. Wrong approach Im affraid, tho you may ofc disagree...

[ARGH0use]

If there ever is an Attila Elder Scrolls, It will be available for its development when the time comes. Indeed if I want to test this out I will have to do so ingame. Correct about the rivers and elevation, when I did put it into Terragen I got lots of sheer cliffs along the river sides.

[ARGH0use]

I mean a lot of sheer cliffs running down from the river bed, I had to fix my height values for the river beds and the ocean floor. I can expect the thing to happen to the map for M2TW, so I will need to apply value adjustments in those areas.

[K'Sharra the Conqueror]

Any news?

[Archduke of High Rock]

I'm guessing nothing new at this point or any time soon. As far as I know there is currently no support for actually changing the maps for Attila in any meaningful way. The Rise of Mordor mod compromised on this by carving a "close enough" map out of the existing map of Europe. But I would love a TES mod for Attila if it ever becomes possible.