Housing Request in Bthar-Zel Style

katanagirl1 · November 2020

I finally got the storyline for The Reach finished, and I must say that it is probably the best since Murkmire, maybe even better! Really great story!

I loved the area of Bthar-Zel with all of the hallways and doors, kinda hard to describe, but all the doors were chained off. It was near the void portals. It looked like an area with many small dwellings.

Given this was inside a delve, it wouldn’t be a good place for housing. Could it be possible to recreate a small area like this just outside the delve (with the hallways and doors) and have a small or medium size player housing there?

I really love the Markarth style furnishings but the larger notable housing is an awkward layout and I’m not sure I will purchase it when it becomes available.

Please, please consider this! I’m thinking something similar to the Proudspire model with gold.

Raideen · November 2020

I agree. I especially love the area across the river with all the dwellings. That area turned into homes would be amazing!

I really wish they would offer 2 to 3 house options in an area, with all the instance doors relatively close. Put some stables, bank, merchants, writs outside and housing goes from being an isolated (not seeing people in game) to a hub of people, making the world feel alive and rich.

The new Markarth house is a good example. There are other doors around there that could have been made/used for other player housing. Offer different tiers/price points to appeal to a wider audience. The smaller homes could literally be copy/paste files of the larger ones, remove all the extras and just keep two rooms. Lots of ways to handle this with minimal investment.

katanagirl1 · December 2020

That was my first thought @Raideen since like you say Markarth has lots of chained up doors.

Lots of people were disappointed when Bastion Sanguinarus (or however you spell it) was the housing in Western Skyrim’s Blackreach, hoping for a Blackreach Dwemer home. Here is a chance to satisfy a lot of housing enthusiasts.

Bthar-Zel is very close to a wayshrine in Blackreach, and if they do like they did when putting the player house near Frostvault, they could add it outside Bthar-Zel but down a short corridor with other chained up houses (just like in the delve).

Raideen · December 2020

Another area I absolutely love is Parasite's Cave (the crafting area) in Blackreach: Greymoor Caverns. I would love to have a Blackreach cave with all the purple crystals etc. I think that zone is one of my favorite in game. I wish I could buy the artist a drink.

Ruhlf · December 2020

Raideen wrote: »

Another area I absolutely love is Parasite's Cave (the crafting area) in Blackreach: Greymoor Caverns. I would love to have a Blackreach cave with all the purple crystals etc. I think that zone is one of my favorite in game. I wish I could buy the artist a drink.

I agree. Almost all the crafting areas based in caves or little rooms would make great housing. I’d love to see some new houses at that scale.

And yeah, I also agree on Bthar-Zel. An old abandoned dwarven apartment would be a cool place to stash my loot.

Raideen · December 2020

Ruhlf wrote: »

Raideen wrote: »

Another area I absolutely love is Parasite's Cave (the crafting area) in Blackreach: Greymoor Caverns. I would love to have a Blackreach cave with all the purple crystals etc. I think that zone is one of my favorite in game. I wish I could buy the artist a drink.

I agree. Almost all the crafting areas based in caves or little rooms would make great housing. I’d love to see some new houses at that scale.

And yeah, I also agree on Bthar-Zel. An old abandoned dwarven apartment would be a cool place to stash my loot.

Ya I really love those little caves. When I play minecraft I always build my house out of a cave. I love the juxtaposition of the organic nature of the cave married with angular, hand crafted/manmade stuff.

katanagirl1 · December 2020

Ruhlf wrote: »

Raideen wrote: »

Another area I absolutely love is Parasite's Cave (the crafting area) in Blackreach: Greymoor Caverns. I would love to have a Blackreach cave with all the purple crystals etc. I think that zone is one of my favorite in game. I wish I could buy the artist a drink.

I agree. Almost all the crafting areas based in caves or little rooms would make great housing. I’d love to see some new houses at that scale.

And yeah, I also agree on Bthar-Zel. An old abandoned dwarven apartment would be a cool place to stash my loot.

There are one or two small Ayleid ruins that are crafting areas. That is sort of what I’d like for housing as well but with few added side rooms in addition to the main room.

katanagirl1 · December 2020

Raideen wrote: »

Another area I absolutely love is Parasite's Cave (the crafting area) in Blackreach: Greymoor Caverns. I would love to have a Blackreach cave with all the purple crystals etc. I think that zone is one of my favorite in game. I wish I could buy the artist a drink.

I can never remember to multi-quote, sorry.

I vaguely remember this site but haven’t gone back to craft.

I have, however, run The Scraps for the Western Skyrim daily a number of times and wish I had the creativity to do a custom build similar to that, with the narrow passages and glowing crystals.

Raideen · December 2020

katanagirl1 wrote: »

Raideen wrote: »

Another area I absolutely love is Parasite's Cave (the crafting area) in Blackreach: Greymoor Caverns. I would love to have a Blackreach cave with all the purple crystals etc. I think that zone is one of my favorite in game. I wish I could buy the artist a drink.

I can never remember to multi-quote, sorry.

I vaguely remember this site but haven’t gone back to craft.

I have, however, run The Scraps for the Western Skyrim daily a number of times and wish I had the creativity to do a custom build similar to that, with the narrow passages and glowing crystals.

You should go check the site out again. Its literally right next to the Scraps Delve. If you are at the delve entrance, the crafting site is literally straight ahead and about 10 seconds on a mount away. Its REALLY close. Its an amazing area.

As far as "wishing you had the creativity to do a custom....", I bet you do. The issue we face is not creativity (for those of us whom are creative), the issue is severe limit on amount of furnishing items we can place, the severe limit on the type of furnishing items we can place and the inability to do custom shapes for things like cave walls along with their textures.

Go to that crafting area and study its size (on the smaller side), then study all the various props placed.

I always find it interesting that we are told the furnishing limits are to "ensure all players have good performance", yet if you go to any city in game, or crafting area like this, the amount of items crammed into the small space is insane. In this crafting area, there are no less than a few hundred "furniture" items placed. If we could place at this density in our homes we would need 4x or greater the furnishing limits, and a vastly greater pool of items to choose from.

I mean, I feel your pain. When I decorate a house, I try to make it look as if it would take place in game, but it's not easy because of the limitations imposed on housing.

katanagirl1 · December 2020

Thanks for the kind words and support @Raideen . There are many creative people here in this section of the forums, but I am probably the least of them. I am good at re-creating things but not so good at creating with original ideas. I was a programmer, not an artist.

I often wonder about the playable areas in the game like you in that they seem very dense compared to housing requirements. I can only speculate that because these areas are already curated and static that it allows for a different kind of design since it will always be that way. Housing perhaps is different because player can choose from so many different items and combinations and placements. Perhaps objects are grouped in a manner in playable areas that allows for fewer ray tracing paths compared to individual items in housing.

Then again, my programming experience was about processing large amounts of data quickly and not related to graphics rendering.

I am still a beginner in housing, I have 5 notable houses but they are barely past half full now.

Raideen · December 2020

I have considered that the playable areas are baked or curated (as you put it), but when Markarth released the Stillwaters Retreat house had invisible walls added (more likely moved) which allowed me to walk right through the walls (dound accidentally) of part of the home and see how everything is put together.
Here is a link to the bug report.

In this picture you can see how parts of old dwarven assets were used to create the space. The player will never see most of the assets circled, but they are still rendered by the computer because the game (from what I can tell) does not use occlusion culling.

In this image the items circled are placed trees and rocks, placed exactly how a player would place them. They are not baked into the terrain as evidence of being able to see the bottoms. Those parts unseen are all rendered.

Sadly I did not screenshot or film the entirety of the property from the glitch side, but there were entire buildings and structures placed in the property that the player can not even see, those items are rendered.

So, if it was about "player performance", surely they would clean up all these unnecessary rendered areas to ensure performance is better. Every polygon removed counts towards better performance.

katanagirl1 · December 2020

I read your post and remember the issues you had with your house.

My only experience with game creation are my own created levels within LittleBigPlanet games. It did give me a lot of insight into how games are designed and work though, so don’t laugh just yet. If you are not familiar with it, the same tools that the devs use to create the game are given to the player for creating levels to share with the community. What that really means is the very tools I was using are those used to create the whole game. Even as I write that it doesn’t seem to convey the magnitude of what I am trying to say.

Within that game, there were tools that allowed me to dephysicalize objects that the player would not come into contact with, so that the complexity of the level was lowered. (These would be things in the background or up high, for example.) I believe that equates to not having to account for player collision at the very least, so any physics calculations would not be made. There was a thermometer to show how complex the level was, and when dephysicalizing objects I could see that level lowered.

I think other games probably work the same way. I am going to go out on a limb and say the devs probably did something like that so they could use some parts of existing assets visually but not increase the complexity of the area. I could be wrong, though.

spartaxoxo · December 2020

katanagirl1 wrote: »

I often wonder about the playable areas in the game like you in that they seem very dense compared to housing requirements. I can only speculate that because these areas are already curated and static that it allows for a different kind of design since it will always be that way.

@katanagirl1

They are one big item instead of lots of small ones. Because they don't need to let people move it around and the positioning is static.

kind_hero · December 2020

I would like a dwemer house outside of Markarth, like the existing ones.

One with a courtyard and maybe a shed.

But I think there are plenty of houses already. What is missing is more empty land areas to build your own stuff, AND enough prefabs or building blocks to do so. I say that would bring housing to totally new levels, because there are some very creative people here who are limited by the lack of building blocks and space to build cool stuff.

katanagirl1 · December 2020

kind_hero wrote: »

I would like a dwemer house outside of Markarth, like the existing ones.

One with a courtyard and maybe a shed.

But I think there are plenty of houses already. What is missing is more empty land areas to build your own stuff, AND enough prefabs or building blocks to do so. I say that would bring housing to totally new levels, because there are some very creative people here who are limited by the lack of building blocks and space to build cool stuff.

That would be great too, but we do need more structural plans and building from scratch takes a lot of slots.

I personally would need some kind of LEGO type kit with pieces and instructions to purchase to be able make my own, lol!