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I mean, TES lore is designed on purpose to be inconsistent. It allows for retcons without invalidating fan works. Todd's Vision for TES is totally different than Julian's, and the games before Redguard should honestly be considered as a different franchise at this point. At least the current lore masters agree that what you see in game does not equal what real Tamriel is. But this is a discussion for some other thread.

The reason I'm making Cyrodiil as a jungle is because Tiber didn't CHIM it away until the end of the 2nd era, after the period Elder Kings is set in. Also, we never see a jungle cyrodiil represented, nor the 7 islands imperial city, both which I'm keeping in my map (the IC mesh actually does fit on the 7 islands look). If you prefer the modern look of Tamriel, don't worry, because I'm making 3 versions. The mix between old and new is why it's time consuming, I have to do a ton of research and consultations from various communities, while making both maps at the same time to merge later.

I would talk about it more in the discord, but the devs I guess don't appreciate me talking about it there and I left after they muted me and deleted my posts without warning when I replied to people about it. I get the feeling they don't even like me making this for them, which is disheartening but I continue because multiple people have shown support on this project. Once I finish the map, hopefully within the next month, all three versions will be uploaded to the steam workshop, along with 3 versions of my music mod and an "all in one" mod which will later include nomadic Khajiits if I can figure that part out. Whether or not it appears in the official mod is up to the devs, I'm just taking on projects they refuse to do because of the workload and I have nothing better to do.
 
I would talk about it more in the discord, but the devs I guess don't appreciate me talking about it there and I left after they muted me and deleted my posts without warning when I replied to people about it. I get the feeling they don't even like me making this for them, which is disheartening but I continue because multiple people have shown support on this project. Once I finish the map, hopefully within the next month, all three versions will be uploaded to the steam workshop, along with 3 versions of my music mod and an "all in one" mod which will later include nomadic Khajiits if I can figure that part out. Whether or not it appears in the official mod is up to the devs, I'm just taking on projects they refuse to do because of the workload and I have nothing better to do.

I've never been on the Discord, but I'd say it's probably because you're not on the dev team but you're taking it upon yourself to just redo the map "for them" regardless of the fact that they don't want the map redone. You're blatantly stepping on toes because you don't like the work they've done and feel you can do better, then when the devs made their stance clear regarding updating the map you've gone ahead with massive changes anyways. You're making a bad faith submod that now THEY will have to deal with when people come here, to Steam, and to the Discord and complain about not working.

This isn't to say that you're not working hard or that it won't turn out well. It's just that taking their project and completely changing it, then releasing it for others. If you're changing Khajiit entirely too that's more than just a "flavor submod" like you'll see others posting here; that's completely changing the mod. Such work is fine when you're doing it for your own version, but you're basically rewriting parts of the mod, that people have been working on for years, and releasing it separately because the devs "refuse to do it". You're almost holding the mod hostage to get them to work on what you want them to so that you don't release your version and cause problems. It's not a cool thing to do.
 
There's also the fact that for every other mod of this size (see Warhammer Gehemnisnacht and the Game of Thrones mod for examples), submods that have such vast changes are made by members of the dev team as well, or at least have their approval. I'm not on the EK Discord, but from here it seems as if you're talking as if there's a potential for your submod (in some form or another) to be added to the main mod by the dev team and that you're making it "for them," which does imply that they've given you the go-ahead or even asked you to update the map, something that they made clear they don't want changed. When most people assume that submods of this scope for a mod of this scale are either made by the dev team or with their approval, using the language you're using rather than saying "this is a personal project that isn't connected to the EK dev team in any way" gives the project an authority it doesn't have, which puts the mod's team in a difficult spot since they may have exhausted every polite way of saying "we neither want to nor see a need to change the map" already.

If your submod becomes popular and there's even a slight suggestion that it has the support of the mod's dev team, there's always a chance people will hound the dev team to make it the official map, which forces them to either give up some creative freedom on their end (which could open the way for more people to do this) or be pestered for weeks (at best).

At least, that's a theory for why. It could be anything really.
 
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I mean, I personally think it's a stretch people will complain to the dev team if my mod breaks anything. The khajiit mod I can see potentially causing issues, but the map and music mods are so simple I doubt they would cause any issues. Even if they did, calling it a submod and releasing it as a separate entity tends to negate the projected issue of complainers because anyone with two brain cells will know it's my mod and will complain on my steam page. There's always a few people who wouldn't know the difference, but in my experience of modding that's super rare. People are smarter than that, and any implications that it's ek dev approved simply wouldn't pass a sane person's mind. If it was, they would just shove it in their main release.

As for the discussion on why they won't touch it, the quotes are along the lines of "We could, but the amount of work it would take isn't worth the small changes." or "I don't own the horse lords DLC and don't care to learn how nomads work. Societies and guilds was already a clusterfuck."

So I take that as an invitation to just do it for them. Their map doesn't suck, I keep complimenting all the work they've done on it and the beauty of their territory map, but people like to get offended because I want to make their work a little better. Nothing is ever perfect, and if someone took what I spent months making as a basis for their own better version, I would be flattered that my work is continuing on, passed the torch so to speak. But, people don't see it that way, which I don't understand. I don't mean to offend, I don't understand how it's offensive when the phrase "standing on the shoulders of giants" appears to me as the highest form of flattery.

It also sucks the way they handled things on the discord by effectively picking on me. At least they didn't make an emote just to make fun of me like they have to other people.
 
As the originator of the map I'm fine with you taking it and improving it for your own submod, I applauded your initiative on reddit even. That said, the team (of which I'm really just an honourary member these days due to my history with the mod) made it clear they didn't want you to continue using their discord to discuss your submod, filling up the general chat; you were asked several times to stop and it is after all "their house". When in another’s lair, show him respect or else do not go there. No one has an issue with your working on your map as far as I know, just an issue with you using their discord to discuss it.

Word of warning (as in a friendly one since I no longer moderate here either); The forum staff don't particularly like people bringing drama from outside the forums to the forums, if you want to keep your thread open, I'd move on and just get back to discussing the important subject, your map.
 
I would talk about it more in the discord, but the devs I guess don't appreciate me talking about it there and I left after they muted me and deleted my posts without warning when I replied to people about it. I get the feeling they don't even like me making this for them, which is disheartening but I continue because multiple people have shown support on this project. Once I finish the map, hopefully within the next month, all three versions will be uploaded to the steam workshop, along with 3 versions of my music mod and an "all in one" mod which will later include nomadic Khajiits if I can figure that part out. Whether or not it appears in the official mod is up to the devs, I'm just taking on projects they refuse to do because of the workload and I have nothing better to do.

My understanding of the situation is that you were muted because you were repeatedly talking about it after you were asked not to. We just needed you to chill out about it for a little bit, but you decided that wasn't for you and you left.

Their map doesn't suck, I keep complimenting all the work they've done on it and the beauty of their territory map, but people like to get offended because I want to make their work a little better.

It's not that simple. You have an idea of what you want, but that idea doesn't necessarily align with what the dev team wants. You're not making our work better, you're making a map according to your own interpretation. It's inherently neither better nor worse, bearing in mind that Tamriel is a different shape in every game. Like Korbah said, there's nothing wrong with what you're producing. The issue is how you approached things. We're not offended; there's merely a way how one should conduct his or her self.

On another note: the Khajiit of Pellitine aren't nomadic, and many of the Anequinan Khajiit are also sedentary. I've entertained the idea of making some of the Anequinan provinces tribal, but I'm not keen on nomadism because the basic nomad system is very different gameplay-wise and we are of the opinion that CK2 nomadism doesn't really fit the Khajiit. It's similar to why we have tribal (but not nomadic) Alik'r in Hammerfell. There's also the matter of independent nomads having titular Empire-tier titles and their nomadic vassals being kings, which I'd consider less than ideal.
 
As for the discussion on why they won't touch it, the quotes are along the lines of "We could, but the amount of work it would take isn't worth the small changes."
I'm not a dev, never claimed to be one, so don't try to use my words to discredit the dev team, thank you.
 
I'd like to point out that the person who said this is NOT a dev. You've quoted this person as if they were a dev several times, but they are but a lowly lore keeper and don't actually work on the mod.

'Le gasp!

That said, the team made it clear they didn't want you to continue using their discord to discuss your submod, filling up the general chat; you were asked several times to stop and it is after all "their house".

They told me once to stop talking about the map a while ago, which I did. Then they muted me later on anyways and I left. I later returned some time later for support, and someone mentioned the map mod I was making, I replied to them, and they removed both of our comments and muted me, again. Without beating around the bush, I consider that basically being a jerk admin. Submod conversation is directly related to the topic of the server, and they have plenty of rooms they could have asked me to move it to, and I would have copied my posts and deleted them in the general room, but they just decide to silently delete and mute, without any warning or statement of any kind, usually much later after the post was made, leaving me to be confused on why I was even muted in the first place (I seriously thought it was because I was discussing khajiit lore in their lore channel until I noticed the map comments were deleted). I consider it admin bullying because there are plenty of other topics unrelated to the mod that they don't care about, and they only seem to take action if someone mentions the word map, or shares porn. It's an oddly specific thing to care about, and it seems directed towards me. But maybe I should consider myself lucky, some places actually just ban people they don't like and use some stretch reason to justify it.

I'm not a dev, never claimed to be one, so don't try to use my words to discredit the dev team, thank you.

How am I discrediting the mod team? Again, people are taking this offensively and I have no idea why. I believe someone talked about implications with words used earlier, I find it backwards that speaking for the devs shouldn't be seen as official/approved, yet making a submod should.

Word of warning (as in a friendly one since I no longer moderate here either); The forum staff don't particularly like people bringing drama from outside the forums to the forums, if you want to keep your thread open, I'd move on and just get back to discussing the important subject, your map.

I'll reply to people as they comment about it, but won't bring it up by itself anymore. Hopefully that's enough to not get on the staff's bad side. This thread also isn't mine, so hopefully this isn't seen as hijacking. Someone made a comment about the map, I'm sharing the relevant news that I'm making one.

It's not that simple. You have an idea of what you want, but that idea doesn't necessarily align with what the dev team wants. You're not making our work better, you're making a map according to your own interpretation. It's inherently neither better nor worse, bearing in mind that Tamriel is a different shape in every game. Like Korbah said, there's nothing wrong with what you're producing. The issue is how you approached things. We're not offended; there's merely a way how one should conduct his or her self.

Which is fine, that's why I'm making it as a submod and offering to donate the work when it's completed. I totally understand if they devs don't want to use any of my modifications, sometimes there's reasons the way things are, and changing some details for better can make other details worse. Quite a number of people though want to see a map along the lines of what I'm making, so the best option is to make it a submod and see how it plays. If it's good without any issues, integrate it, if not then it's left up as a "this is why it doesn't work" statement. If the reasons it doesn't play well are easily fixed, that's also an option. Right now I'm interested to see how the heightmap works in game. Will it look good? Will it be too much for the game to handle and cause performance issues? Will the lack of flat terrain be as much of an issue as one dev stated? I myself am curious to see how it turns out, it'll be a learning lesson if it doesn't, and in the end I still made a pretty good map of Nirn that can be used for reference elsewhere.

On another note: the Khajiit of Pellitine aren't nomadic, and many of the Anequinan Khajiit are also sedentary. I've entertained the idea of making some of the Anequinan provinces tribal, but I'm not keen on nomadism because the basic nomad system is very different gameplay-wise and we are of the opinion that CK2 nomadism doesn't really fit the Khajiit. It's similar to why we have tribal (but not nomadic) Alik'r in Hammerfell. There's also the matter of independent nomads having titular Empire-tier titles and their nomadic vassals being kings, which I'd consider less than ideal.

I myself have no idea how the nomad or tribes work, I'll have to do my own research and actually play the vanilla game a few times before I crack open the files and try to emulate them for the khajiit, and see if it works out. Unlike the devs, I have the time and motivation to do a large amount of work for such a small detail (that isn't an insult, real life comes first, their time is better spent doing other things, and I just happen to have no life so it's worth it to me to do it.)

Khajiit are kind of tricky to nail down, because a lot of sources mention kingdoms and holdings, while others call them nomads and tribes. It's hard to find out where the clan mothers fit into everything, they might just be on the religious side of things, and clans govern separately from kingdoms, using the Mane as the bridge between the two while he rules the confederacy. Honestly doing a bit of research as I type this, I can see why the current method to play khajiit in game is pretty close to what we know about their government.
 
About the Cyrodiil being a jungle thing, isn't taht still the case near the borders with Elsweyr and Black Marsh anyway. And I think large parts of Nibenay Basin too. But Colovia and Bruma have always been Skyrim-lite I think.

In Arena, which takes place in the 3rd Era, Cyrodiil is a jungle because Talos hasn't removed it in the 2nd Era yet (don't think about it too hard, time in TES is beyond mortal comprehension). It's shown to basically be 100% jungle, all the way up to Bruma, down to the gold coast, and along the dominion borders. However, the Arena map kind of generalized all the provinces, Skyrim was shown to be 100% snow, Cyrodiil was 100% jungle, and once we actually saw them in game we saw there's a lot more variance to them. So to appease everyone, my map is going to include multiple versions: one for Oblivion, one for Arena, and (the main one) a mix between the two. So basically gold coast will be sandy, Bruma will be snowy, and everything else even along the Topal Bay and sands of Elsweyr will be jungle, with maybe a bit of Elsweyr bleed-through. I haven't gotten around to the actual terrain part of the map yet though, I'll likely be copy pasting sections from the vanilla map to make it look really high quality, softing and morphing as I go, and doing research on how biomes in real life like to change.

CK2 has 16 terrain types: plains, farmland, coast, desert, steppe, arctic, forest, jungle, sandy mountain, desert mountain, snowless mountain, snow mountain, super snowy mountain, water, and two of which aren't used in the base game. Trees and rivers are a separate .bmp file, along with hieghtmap, topology, lightmap, and province map. I've just been using photoshop with different layers to first draw the shape, then use it to make a heightmap, generate a lightmap, color the rivers, redraw in the provinces, and the terrain will be the last one I touch.

I'm wondering at what point I should make my own thread, or if it's ok to keep discussing it here given the relevant topic.
 
How am I discrediting the mod team? Again, people are taking this offensively and I have no idea why. I believe someone talked about implications with words used earlier, I find it backwards that speaking for the devs shouldn't be seen as official/approved, yet making a submod should.
I never spoke for the dev team, never claimed to do so. I only said what I felt, you know, trying to put yourself in the place of someone else so you can know if what you think is a good idea or not.
 
Unlike the devs, I have the time and motivation to do a large amount of work for such a small detail (that isn't an insult, real life comes first, their time is better spent doing other things, and I just happen to have no life so it's worth it to me to do it.)

This is so incredibly passive aggressive. Your heart may be in the right place but I see so much P-A crap in your posts this may be why you've met resistance from the devs. It's usually not all that endearing, especially as an "independent contractor" being told by the devs to back off.
 
I'm not being passive aggressive though. I literally insulted myself if anything in that sentence, and clarified why it wasn't towards them. How am I supposed to communicate what I've been told without sounding passive aggressive? Why is repeating what you guys are saying for clarification taken as PA crap?

I never spoke for the dev team, never claimed to do so. I only said what I felt, you know, trying to put yourself in the place of someone else so you can know if what you think is a good idea or not.

This post grammatically doesn't make sense to me.
 
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This is extremely impressive. I hope you continue, despite this bizarre negativity.

i dont get this backlash, the tes modding community is routinely full of folks who claim to improve upon the games with their mods. and nobody heckin cares

Some people have pointed out it's the way I came across doing this. You can't read tone over text, and people have put in a different tone of voice than I intended because of the wording I used. I'm a little bit (ok very) autistic, so I come out very bluntly and accidentally use social phrasing that have different meanings than what I try to convey. It's not something I'm very open about because people treat you differently once they find out, or will claim you use it to excuse your behavior, neither of which I want. I would rather be accountable when I mess up and treated the same as everyone else. Lately though I've gotten a bit sick of the constant aggressive rejection everywhere I go, and people just think I feign ignorance on the matter and refuse to explain anything to me, so I've been a bit more forthcoming about it recently hoping it helps, since my mental health really needs it. So, that's why there's backlash, I'm just literally and medically retarded.

But enough of that drama, I have an update.

I've finished the base map with help from Lady Nerevar herself. I haven't posted an update recently because I've started working again. So I've had a lot less time to actually work on it, and honestly I get a lot more work done focusing on it instead of writing out my process and posting constant updates on imgur. But I'm nearly done with the river map thats 1:1 with what we've seen in the games, including a lot of features missing from nearly all released maps, both official and fanmade. The Tamriel is about the same width, but twice as tall as the vanilla one, and the map itself will be about 50% wider to accommodate lore accurate traveling distances between Yokuda and Akavir based on entries in the Imperial Library.

The heightmap is half done, High Hrothgar and Red Mountain look sexy as hell thanks to help from the Beyond Skyrim team, and The Rift has it's iconic cliffs. I've been working a bunch with the TESIII Cartography Club making sure the map is also as realistic as we can get it without cutting into what people consider lore friendly. So the biomes, tectonics, and ecosystem for the lakes and rivers all make sense. Thankfully, the designers of TESV actually kind of knew what they were doing geography wise, ESO on the other hand...

I also still need to produce a color map, tree map, terrain map, and redraw the territory map (which will take forever), but progress is pretty neat so far. I'll share an update when I finish with the river and heightmap, seeing how they'll be useful to the TES community as a whole. Note, because the rivers had to be one pixel wide, I had to shrink the map a lot to get it to fit, but I can probably easily remake them in inkscape if people wanted quality. Some of the larger rivers are actually considered sea or lakes in game, so they're navigable by everyone.

The soundmod is awaiting permissions from some of the writers before I release it. It includes a lot cultural music from the TES games for all of the human races, plus Altmer and Orsimer from ESO, but the Khajiit, Bosmer, and Argonian tracks are from Beyond Skyrim, and the CK2 DLC will cover Tsaesci among others like it does in the original mod (otherwise just standard TES and CK music for them).

I'm not even going to bother with nomadic khajiit unless amends are made with the Dev Team. It'll change way too much that will be broken every time they update to get it working the way it does in lore (which is super complicated and not like vanilla nomads at all). It's honestly something that should either be released in the official mod, or not made at all, and I lack knowledge to get it working well enough.
 
LadyN sent me a 2mb .ai file to work with, and I've already blown up to a 181mb .svg

I added rivers that were missing, I added in overlays for all of the games, including Tamriel Rebuilt for Oblivion and Morrowind, and Skyrim + Anthology, and ESO + all the concept maps, and I make them 50% opaque and trace over them, trying to include details from all of the games while greatly increasing my understanding of the differences between the regions. When I'm finished, I'll have a more complete river map, a territory map, a road map, and more marked cities/locations. Basically a super overpopulated Lady Nerevar map.

I'll release the SVG file when I'm done, that way people can easily compile their own map simply by hiding layers or making simple edits off of all the work I've done off of all the work LadyN has done. Yay cathedral!

This little side project has set me back a bit, but it'll allow me to produce a better more accurate and detailed map with a few clicks, while also giving the community a great resource to use. I'll upload some more pics to my imgur gallery later, I finally got a job and I really need to pay off three months of late payments. My current goal is to be done by the end of the month before I start school, but even if I don't finish I'll upload and release my work so someone else can.
 
Due to my failing battle with multiple mental illnesses, financial situation, and other personal details I'd rather not go into, I haven't been able to work on my map since my last update, and I don't see myself being able to continue it any time soon, if ever. Maybe if things ever get better in the far future I can return to it, but the better option is to just share my entire work folder and hope someone continues where I left off, or at the very least let people explore what I learned examining all maps of nirn and tamriel I could find.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CDG40m_7L8A24ARiu7jJ4snP_rtKtVQT/view?usp=sharing

You'll need inkspace (it's free) to open the .svg and AI files, and I use paint.net for the picture editing and L3DT for the heightmap render. All also free programs. The .svg file is the best one to use if you wanted to just explore the various maps from all the games with different overlays to pick apart the differences and compare them. Don't forget to turn on layers and mess with the opacity. Do note, I did mess with a bunch of parts of the map trying to work it all onto the "main" map, mostly with the current and alpha versions of the ESO map, craglorn especially. So it's not a perfect ready to go file.

Sorry this is how it turned out and I couldn't complete it, thanks for the motivation to work on this when I had time and was in a rough spot, it was a great distraction until things deteriorated to this point. Again, I hope I can return to it eventually, but without getting too personal, it's unlikely.