How is Tamriel made?

Ynrael

I'm curious to know how the concept of an island like Summerset (or any other zone for that matter) get's translated from an idea into a 3D world with rivers, trees, boulders, cities etc. Is every tree individually placed in the world or is there an engine that takes a raw design and produces an environment with the help of a random number generator?
Are there any videos or descriptions of the process that's gone through to create a new piece of the world?

idk

There are some ESO Live sessions that would answer your question. I do recall one for Morrowind that discussed the rough means they designed the zone. Might take some work to find it though.

Just off the top of my head. A group works together for the overall idea. One person starts with a rough design and slowly they add and modify it to the point they start adding details.

There is a history with much of this that is considered sicne there are different TES games that occur at differing time periods and some aspects should show up multiple games. So that is considered first, then artistic license comes next since nothing is exact. Bou lders and such would be later as they are more details.

Zypheran

Assuming the ZOS use a creation engine similar to Bethesda, see video below of the very first steps of rising a zone out of the sea.
This was my favourite thing about Skyrim, being able to mod and create your own new world's
https://youtu.be/QmyfzRjae7I

Jayman1000

All objects are placed by the level designers. They plop objects here and there, either one at a time or multiple, like for example spraying multiple bush objects etc, then editing some out and in to make it like they want. Actually I dont really know how they do it. But if this is not how they do it, there would be something wrong. Because that is the way you should do it today.

Diminish

It's all handled by the engine. You can choose from all sorts of different compositions, terrains, meshes, etc. You can place individual objects or huge amounts of objects all with different densities (much like a brush stroke in any paint/photoshop application). You can use heat maps to generate terrain. Etc. Etc. Etc.

Your question is too technical to be described in a forum post without each answer just barely scratching the surface. If you want to truly know how it is done, go check out things like World Creator (
https://www.world-creator.com)

ArchMikem

I take it's like playing a city simulator. You morph the terrain with a brush tool. Then you just take and plop all the props and assets down wherever you click. Nothing is randomly generated, they have artists and designers who shape and mold these zones by hand.

zaria

Zypheran wrote: »

Assuming the ZOS use a creation engine similar to Bethesda, see video below of the very first steps of rising a zone out of the sea.
This was my favourite thing about Skyrim, being able to mod and create your own new world's
https://youtu.be/QmyfzRjae7I

Yes, I assume they uses much the same types of tools for ESO, not identical but much the same functionality.
You would also need 3d software for all objects, creating textures, then creating quests and so on.

SantieClaws

From sugar and spice and all things nice.

Also some fish. Probably some sort of magic dust too.

That is how Tamriel is made.

Yours with paws
Santie Claws

aaisoaho

So, you'd like to dive into the ocean of game design? Let me start my quick intro by saying: "Well planned is half done".

In game industry, the design documents are loooong and detailed. A good game design document let's the reader to play the game in their mind, without a finished product. The contents of such document is way more than a finished product has.

It is quite obvious, that TES universe has designs for every aspect of a world: terrains & biomes, flora and fauna, culture, history and religion, cultural structures etc. They are most likely set as a guidelines for writing a story.

From such guidelines, they start designing the content, like Summerset for example. They look what sort of place it has to be and create a rough design. From a rough design, you can move into finer details etc. In the end, everything is placed by hand and everything has a meaning. (Check: Scott Rogers - Everything I learned about level design I learned from Disneyland, https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1305/Everything-I-Learned-About-Level )

I could go on about this forever and create a long post, but long texts are something that turns most people off, so if you'd like to know more about something, hit me up, I have 70+ pages of memos about game design and game industry, collected by visiting lectures at local Uni. (Preferably in this thread so others could see it that are interested in such info)

EDIT: I recommend reading a book called Rules of Play by Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman. Almost every single scientific publication refers to it and for a good reason.

Ynrael

Thanks to all of you for replying.
That World Creator software looks incredible and way beyond the sophistication of what I imagined was available.
I've tracked down the ESO live videos, so will go through them and see what's in there, but now I at least know the the rough outline of how it was done.

Thanks again
Ynrael