how to do the boarders to other provinces

[Cicero]

Hey all that are reading this. Just wanted to open up a discussion about boarders involving TR with other provinces. Without a doubt this has been discussed before but I had an idea of the boarders and how they could be done.

First thing I thought was barriers. We have come across them in Mournhold before where you cannot peep over the walls for there is nothing there. So theoretically, could this not also be applied to the boarders to Skyrim, cyrodill and Black Marsh. The boarders would be placed where there is a finish on land claims. For people who like to explore every cell, it would be possible to colour the map on where you have travelled 100%. So in this case, the boarders would be moved into other cells a little more to smooth out the boarder line and not have "squares" on the map missing just because that cell was the last cell on this part of the boarder. To get a really nice shape along the boarder and script the boarders so that player cannot exceed the boarder.

This of course would bring up a rather big problem. There would be nothing but ocean beyond the boarders. to remove this problem of looking into where skyrim should be, one would think to create a background out of terrain, but this of course would disrupt the map and would falsely indicate that you can explore beyond the boarder, which you cant, and would also ruin the shape of the province. So an idea to fix this (and something people with mods that push back the draw distance would benefit from) would be to make the back ground out of statics. Make the terrain out of a mesh instead of sculpting with the terrain tool and make the background terrain an in-game static object that can be placed in. This will reduce the use of V RAM and also will keep the in-game map intact and you would not be staring into an ocean once you reach the end of morrowind. The statics could be joined to the land with small objects like rocks, trees to give you close up detail. But the further it goes, (and you the player of course can not go to explore) could be placed in land mass to keep the land consistent.

I hope this was easy to follow and I'm curious to see what the game plan is and what other people think the boarders should be. Just had the feeling to bring this up with you fine people here at TR. I've done my part for the day, I think it's time to nap.

Peace !!

[Why]

The Velothi Mountains line Morrowind's entire western border, and they've been made in such a way that you can't climb them and peek over them. You can, presently, levitate (or superpower jump) over them - we figured that if the player desperately wants to go where they're not supposed to go, there's no way we can stop them, so why try. Our latest alpha actually includes a whole stretch of mountain, and exterior-wise it's pretty much completed, so you'll be able to see for yourself how we've done things.

As for the border with Argonia, I don't think anything has been decided for that region yet.

[gro-Dhal]

The idea once upon a time was that the jungle on the Black Marsh border gradually becomes so dense as to be impassable.

[Nemon]

The idea once upon a time was that the jungle on the Black Marsh border gradually becomes so dense as to be impassable.

That is difficult to achieve, but it is possible. Also, we can use tesfaith# to simply copy a few cell rows to create a visible border, i.e something to look at with distant land enabled but with no actual function besides eye candy.

[TheUnending]

At one point I asked a similar question and actually had a cool idea of making a new tree model that you could not jump through the canopy of. Then have the trees become more dense and combine that with invisible walls so you could still see the forest in the distance. Then when hitting the invisble walls you would get a message, like you do in Mournhold when jumping too high, that says the forest has become too dense for you to continue onward.

I got a lot of weird looks from people when I suggested that.

[Cicero]

I understand that it would be alot more work to create land beyond the velothi mountains, but I just thought it was strange to have the option to actually levitate over the top of them. The idea of the invisible walls with a message saying the mountains are to big/treacherous to levitate over would add realism and hence not break immersion. If you continue to just levitate upwards along the invisible wall and clearly see that there's nothing there, that's when I though the use of static terrain would become handy. Same goes for the argon jungle. I did like the idea of trees becoming dense and inaccessible but what would the trees be on? Terrain that the player cannot explore? Static terrain could be used instead. The reason that I think static terrain would be a good solution would be so that you could 100% the map by exploring every cell and getting that nicely coloured in map on your map menu .

Thank you for all the replies, I didn't think many people would be interested .

[Gnomey]

I still like the idea of impassible trees for the Argon Jungle, though that may require some simple wall-of-jungle models where the actual barrier is. The collision on the canopy would also work, though it should probably only be on the underside of the canopy, otherwise players could just run on top of the canopy over the border. (Which would be kind of hilarious, though).
I think a lot of player's don't like invisible barriers. In Almalexia, god-magic is given as the reason for not being able to levitate, but that explanation doesn't really work so well for such a long range of mountains. Altitude is also never shown as limiting ones ability to levitate or jump; it makes for a pretty thin excuse for an invisible wall.
Instead, most players will (hopefully) notice an impassible barrier, be it of mountains or jungle, for what it is and not go any further, while those who want to go further shouldn't have their fun spoiled by an invisible barrier. In the end, the people who see an impassible natural barrier and still try and cross it probably want to see beyond the canvas, so to speak.

[TheUnending]

I still like the idea of impassible trees for the Argon Jungle, though that may require some simple wall-of-jungle models where the actual barrier is. The collision on the canopy would also work, though it should probably only be on the underside of the canopy, otherwise players could just run on top of the canopy over the border. (Which would be kind of hilarious, though).
I think a lot of player's don't like invisible barriers. In Almalexia, god-magic is given as the reason for not being able to levitate, but that explanation doesn't really work so well for such a long range of mountains. Altitude is also never shown as limiting ones ability to levitate or jump; it makes for a pretty thin excuse for an invisible wall.
Instead, most players will (hopefully) notice an impassible barrier, be it of mountains or jungle, for what it is and not go any further, while those who want to go further shouldn't have their fun spoiled by an invisible barrier. In the end, the people who see an impassible natural barrier and still try and cross it probably want to see beyond the canvas, so to speak.

I agree with your ideas on a canopy being impassible from one direction and passable from the other side. It'd be realistic too since sometimes you can't jump up through big branches, but when all your weight is on them they may break causing you to fall which may incur health damage which would make the player less likely to try it again.

[Dragon32]

Just on the whole "impenetrable trees" thing. Shannon released a [url=http://mw.modhistory.com/download-55-6249]forest tileset[/url] (I think I have v2 somewhere on my HDD which I'll have to upload to MMH) designed for people making forests in interior cells.

One of the clever things in there were billboard tree-based meshes. So, conceivably one could create the edges of the Argonia border using standard Morrowind meshes but deeper into the forest transition to using a billboard tree-based mesh like the ones in that pack.

[Dar]

When users try to levitate over the Velothi mountains, tell them that the air is too thin to breathe, so they can't safely levitate any higher. This is much more explicit and should make proper sense

[Cicero]

That kind of rolls into the whole thing of "The Mountains are trecherous/dangerous". But that would definetly be the more logical way to explain it.

[Dar]

That kind of rolls into the whole thing of "The Mountains are trecherous/dangerous". But that would definetly be the more logical way to explain it.

That was the intent of it. It also helps that no spell exists to fix this, where levitation could invalidate the height idea

[Gnomey]

That could work, but, at least according to the [url=http://www.imperial-library.info/content/pocket-guide-empire-first-edition-skyrim]First Pocket Guide[/url] (see the entry on Throat of the World at the bottom), Red Mountain is the tallest mountain in Tamriel. If you can breathe and levitate fine there, (ash, blight and cliff racers aside), you should be able to breathe fine and levitate pretty much anywhere else on the continent.

[Dar]

If that's the case, no height-related explanation will do.

Is there any lore concerning rules about inter-province travel?