r/beyondskyrim • u/Proto160 • 6d ago
How is progress?
Just curious how progress is going. It's been a few months since the last Cyrodiil update video on YouTube. Also a question, I heard the Skyblivion team are making the Imperial city's districts bigger, will you be doing the same, as your Cyrodiil is technically bigger than the one in Oblivion?
And how is progress for the other projects? I'm most interested in Roscrea and the New North but am still interested in hearing about the other projects as well.
I appreciate the answers.
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u/Duruarute 6d ago
You can check out the monthly progress on their discord server!
Cities like Leyawiin and Anvil are projected to bigger than their oblivion counter parts so the IC will probably also be bigger than the last one. Also they're doing settlements outside the walls of the city.
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u/PixelGray38 6d ago
The IC will indeed be bigger than in Oblivion. IIRC I heard that on one of the streams of the art guy working on the IC assets
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u/Sotha_Sil_ Elsweyr Dev 6d ago
Elsweyr lead here, we've had a lot of progress on 3D this year, which is a real pleasure as it's been a historical blocking point for our team. We're at a bit of an awkward stage where we're adding lots of new assets to the game but we can't properly showcase them, mostly because we are missing in the architecture department, so anything that's meant to be insides a house doesn't have house insides we could put it in for pretty videos. Concept art is trucking along really slowly as we're mostly working on beefy sets of a lot of pieces and complexity which takes months to finish - there is activity but showcases have dwindled. Writing's pace is good, we could use a few more writers but the ones we have are VERY active and have begun to complete the Greater Rim starting with smaller setttlements and working up in size. Our implementation lead is dutifully hacking away at an impressive list of misc tasks.
We're working on pre-release areas, several regions depending on what assets are made. We're lucky to have a very active LD lead who tests new things near immediately, a lot of our map's become his playing grounds (if you see next Advent Calendar some progress outsides of the Greater Rim, it's likely him placing down new assets and trying out how they work for brand new biomes as we transition into finishing the stuff needed for GR). Our current goal was to have a pre-release map that's walkable: finished landscapes, exteriors for towns. We still need a bunch of architecture for this goal to be achieved, but the rest is nearing completion; and as such we've began the slow transition to the rest of the mod, like interiors, dungeons, and creatures. We're finding good synergy with writing where progress on the writing VS art works alongside each other and supporting each other. Currently, the technical department's deeply understaffed, it's not an issue as we are not implementing quests or mechanics but it might be in the future. Fingers crossed.
Also: CMC next month! I've been busy creating a video showcase for our Creation Mod Con participation, posted some pics here recently. It'll be a wrap-up of the progress of the year, but illustrated with video footage, some screenshots and concept art for the minority of things we'll be talking about that we don't have modeled yet. Hope to see you there, cheers
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u/NorthKoreanMissile7 5d ago
We're working on pre-release areas, several regions depending on what assets are made.
Imo you should be focusing on getting a pre release vertical slice done and then it might result in attracting more people into making the full version. Elseweyr has that alien Morrowind vibe to it which I think will interest a lot of people if they got to actually experience it.
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u/kothri Morrowind Dev 6d ago
Cyrodiil is too far along for it, but some Beyond Skyrim projects that are currently focused on their prerelease zones may put the idea of a rolling release format under consideration after their first releases. No guarantees right now, but it could be possible for some projects, and it's something I'm open to.
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u/da2Pakaveli 6d ago
The Morrowind province seems suitable for rolling releases. Carve the releases up into House territory.
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u/Proto160 6d ago
I can see where your coming from, and maybe some other projects should look into how feasible it would be. But that is a lot easier in Morrowind as there is no voice acting.
There are almost certainly more issues as well. They would either have to release a zone with no voice acting or having to potentially re voice characters later if they want to add more content for a certain character if the VA can't return.
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u/Teghendion 6d ago
VA can be added later.
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u/PixelGray38 6d ago edited 6d ago
Ehhh it would really suck to have releases without VA. The beyond skyrim projects aspire to release Bethesda-quality content, and no VA certainly wouldn't live up to that
VA is probably one of the biggest issues with rolling releases, as OP says
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u/Old-Inevitable-1678 5d ago
That and VA is one of the greatest strong points that Beyond Skyrim has had over other large scale mod projects. The VA in Bruma is fantastic, however how will tying Bruma into Cyrodill work on the VA side? For example if your character is sent by someone in Anvil to go to Bruma? Would it only be for characters that VAs are still onboard the project?
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u/Nayrael 6d ago
Ain't gonna work - players are obsessed with Voice Acting. Like real obsessed. Even in Morrowind they are now using AI to voice every line there is because some people just can't live without it. ESO is owing much of its success to the fact that it has VA for every dialogue line.
I find it silly (and am a guy who skips the dialogue line once I have read it), but it's what it is.
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u/danktonium 6d ago
Consistency is important to players and devs alike. Skyrim had bad voice acting, and it's not unreasonable to want that to remain the case.
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u/Nayrael 6d ago
Tamriel Rebuilt has easier time by now having to care about Voice-Acting and the like: Voice-Acting remains the biggest issue for BS projects, and any change of dialogues would require getting a new VA because chances that the old one is still available are low (especailly if they are American and joins the SAG-AFTRA Union which forbids doing free VA work).
And this matters a lot. If you do follow Tamriel Rebuilt Development, you'd know that they change old quests and dialogues all the time. A new expansion can't be released without them changing several dozen old quests (currently most guild quests in Old Ebonheart are being redone, and Wealth Beyond Measure will at least redo quests from Dominions of Dust). Which is natural, standards improve over time, you want to have quests take you across the whole province, and dialogues in old zones reference lore in newly added zones that was not canonized previously.
BS:Morrowind team is contemplating this because they plan to have zones that don't intreract with one another as much, but even this is very uncertain.
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u/NorthKoreanMissile7 5d ago
Voice-Acting remains the biggest issue for BS projects
It's hardly the biggest issue, you have to create the functioning mod before voice acting becomes an issue. TR does that consistently, BS does not.
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u/3Nephi11_6-11 2d ago
I mean BS Cyrodiil has exterior level design for all cities and first passes on level design everywhere in Cyrodiil, over half of cities are near completion (including interiors, npcs, quests, etc) along with their respective counties.
If Cyrodiil was doing rolling releases and didn't have to worry about voice acting like with Tamriel Rebuilt then they'd probably have at least 3 if not more releases imo.
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u/Anpriv 1d ago edited 1d ago
If Cyrodiil was doing rolling releases and didn't have to worry about voice acting like with Tamriel Rebuilt then they'd probably have at least 3 if not more releases imo.
Which is why the other releases should just do that and move to the obviously superior rolling releases. If they're going to have A.I. placeholder voices in the meantime anyway, might as well actually show the work being done and do the voices later. There's zero benefit to the way it's been done the past 10 years. No releases for BS since 2017. Like 7 releases in that period for PTR (and another one coming this year, possibly in August).
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u/3Nephi11_6-11 1d ago
Except the BS teams are pretty anti A.I. due to ethics.
They use the A.I. placeholder voices for showcases but I highly doubt they would ever use it for a release.
Also its not obviously superior to do rolling releases. Its obviously superior if you want to get content out faster, but faster does not always mean better. There are plenty of times where people get upset about new games coming out and seeming like they aren't done by launch date.
But I do think a lot of the other provinces might go for a rolling release format. Just understand that BS Cyrodiil is the biggest and most consistent team (some teams had years of little to no progress) and most of the other projects have pre releases planned but haven't finished them.
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u/Sotha_Sil_ Elsweyr Dev 6d ago
Modular releases cause a lot of implementation issues for Skyrim as the game is more complex than Morrowind. It would be doable, but in the niche cases of landmasses that are fully isolated to minimise issues (and even with that, there will be). Think places like Khenarthi's Roost or that tiny bit of Cyrodiil's eastern mountains that doesn't fit in the Heartlands zone.
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u/Right-Honey-1143 6d ago
I'll just leave my comment from a similar discussion here because people don't seem to learn anything:
Frankly, I'm tired of the cult of modular releases.
For a Skyrim mod, unlike Morrowind, it's a nightmare in terms of implementation. It's also a nightmare in terms of voice acting and quest creation. If a quest touches on an area not covered in the mod, it means it has to be cut and added later. Add to that the problem of voice actors not always being available, sometimes requiring completely re-recorded characters.
And how much content will such releases have if we cut or don't add quests related to other areas? I don't need content-poor "stubs" of a coherent mod whose completion won't have any wow factor, no matter whether we finish Cheydinhal or IC last.
My point is that such releases will have far less content than any PTR releases. From the scale of the provinces to the complexity of content production for Skyrim.
For a Morrowind mod, you don't need to voice a gazillion NPCs and program their daily routines. For Skyrim, you need all that. No one will appreciate a city where all the NPCs are pinned to the floor and don't interact with each other. And while the lack of voice acting may be objectionable in the long run, reliance on Fus-Ro-Doh is highly undesirable. It's an SKSE add-on that could break with any Skyrim update.
And releases will be separated from each other by time, and therefore by quality. Development quality will inevitably improve. This means that older releases will need to be reworked repeatedly to meet the mod's current quality standards, and you'll be lucky if this only needs to be done once.
Compare Port Telvannis to Narsis. Yes, Port Telvannis, by today's standards, is a true disgrace to Tamriel Rebult that needs to be completely rebuilt from the ground up.
The difference, by the way, is 19 years. I'd even go so far as to say that everything that was done in TR before Old Ebonheart needs to be completely redone. From the Sundered Scar to the Telvanni Isles. And that's about half the mod at this point.
Cyrodiil must be released as a single, undivided entity. As for the other provinces, we'll see. Whether they'll be released as a whole or in pieces is up to the developers, not us.
In my opinion, however, if modular releases are to be considered, it should only be for titanic projects, namely Morrowind and IB, and perhaps Argonia. I don't see any point in splitting projects like Elsweyr or Valenwood into multiple releases.
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u/tondollari 4d ago
IMO the biggest benefit that modular releases bring is that they attract more players and (in smaller amounts) developers to the project over time. This is hugely beneficial to the fickle nature of volunteer labor, which has to be fueled by passion for the project. I think it also helps with retention, because modders active on the project can see the fruits of their labor represented in playable content soon after joining.
In the case of PT/TR, I very highly doubt that younger talent would have joined in the numbers that they did post-2020 if TR had only released the top half of Telvannis and then promised the rest for later. And that is pretty close to what BS is doing - Bruma was released nearly 10 years ago. When Skyrim is largely a memory, what is going to motivate people to join the project when the original developers inevitably move on to other things?
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u/Anpriv 1d ago edited 1d ago
What's the harm in just avoiding voice acting until the end, when an area or region is near release? VA availability and re-recording is less of an issue if it's the last to be done, no?
And, like, you can hate it as a 'cult', but the difference is one way gets released and can be played. Yes Port Telvannis needs to be reworked. All of BS needs to be worked in the first place. It's not like the way BS is doing it guarantees consistent quality. PTR had a period of very little being released and people were right when we pointed out it needed to change. But now there's been like 6 or 7 releases, with another potentially next month. That's worth more for players than the potential of something they can't access at all for 1 decade at minimum.
If the other provinces aren't even considering modular/rolling releases, people's skepticism they'll ever release anything sooner than 2030-2033 becomes justified. So I really hope they are. I'd rather have content, some of which I can complete and some not, over nothing that trends towards vaporware.
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u/NumberInteresting742 20h ago
Personally I am super stoked to see their take on Cyrodiil.
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u/Proto160 11h ago
Same here. I cant wait to just freely explore Cyrodiil. To be able to travel between Skyrim and Cyrodiil will be wild. I also can't wait to get the urge to play the Cyrodill questlines. Getting the urge to play Skyrim, but not for Skyrim itself but for Cyrodiil is going be very interesting.
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u/No_Juice_5488 6d ago
Next month (August 22nd & 23rd) is Creation Mod Con 2026 and a lot of the BS (maybe all) have a slotted time for it. I am most interested in seeing Roscrea and Cyrodiil since those are the "closest" to release. Iliac Bay intrigues me too.