This will be an album of success as I map out various infrastructure I get taken by when things work out very well. Currently I'm trying to cram as much villages and infrastructure into a load order as I can, so it really changes the tamriel world space a lot.
There may be mistakes in the background, but the focus of the picture may be what I'm trying to capture. At this point mostly seeing if I can get various town, villages, farms, UL, Hesu, and quests all jiving. Will add more details later.
Unlike the album getting it wrong, these screens will attempt to show off getting it correct, or you know ... well enough to be expected depending on how complete the mods are. The goal here is to move toward a better cartography regarding mapping out mod compatibilities.
I've taken to editing my own .psd cell grid map to outline what mods affect what cells, so no longer just loading the mod into the game, looking for a patch, then going to see how it looks in game, or more clumsily in the CS, Now I map out the cells altered and then look for patches and less going in game to see if there are problems.
The upside being that it could then be faster at identifying what mods have the most conflicts and what groupings or arrangements of mods require the least amount of patching as well as finding great balance between the types of mods altering the tamriel world space.
What would be great is a cartographers guild or Oblivion real estate where modders could add their own layers to a group map that is passed around. The advantages for the mod users already outlined and at least one advantage of the mod maker is to outline what areas are more open to modding without conflicts.
This to me is way faster than reading over all the descriptions and then looking in edit. This is meant to compliment what Vorians and others have contributed. As for color schemes I plan to as much as possible leave that color scheme alone. This is more about finding conflicts with infrastructure, but of course it will eventually include accounting for regional and landsacpe mods as well.
The method by which I'm using is this:
1. Grab this .psd file.
2. Open a group of mods in TES4Edit. Within each mod scroll to the world space mods, then rearange the columns such that ordered reading of the cells affected are displayed. Only concerning the tamriel world space.
3. Use an image editor that can work with .psd files. (that is proprietary Photo Shop file). In terms of freeware I have been able to work on them with Gimp and to a lesser degree paint.NET after adding an add on allowing for it. I've heard infra can work too, never tried. With Gimp it wants to save the results as an .xfc file but you can export your work as a .psd file at any point.
4. Each mod being a separate layer. The following are the steps for Gimp: First make sure the layers you need are visible, then add a new later named after the mod you want to map. find the cells in question then draw a rectangle over said cells, Then right click inside the rectangle and choose fill BG (back ground). The amount of this greatly varies.
Apparently there are few different thoughts as to what counts as to whether a cell gets highlighted. I opted for anything short of just placing a creature or NPC in a cell. Meaning that even a pathgrid or landscape height alteration gets included. Pathgrids may not be important if you play without companions or all in the wilds, but they can be more essential for any where NPCs need pathing.The philosophy of patching is beyond the scope of just mapping potential problems.
The color scheme I'm so far following will be something like: Tan or bright beige = Legion or guard oriented mods that ad legionaries or overhauls the forts. Also since there is much overlap ... any dungeons that affect only forts. Most don't so this is the Empire's military hand being present.
Blue colors = Infrastructure. This will including city mods, including eventually even OCR , but mostly the initial focus will be on mapping out the various mod added villages.
Green = UL and region landscape mods. This is in keeping with UL patching project, which also uses red and yellow for planned and WIP UL projects. I will probably ignore those for now.
Red or Purple = quest mods. Figure that out later.
On the tip of my tongue is the notion that if the primary colors can be done right then the resulting colors of their overlays would indicate what sort of patch or where to look for one could then result. Probably not, but worth considering for that synergistic effect.
I could be wrong but I think this map is based on this layered image affects. Imagine going to a site and either by options or typing in nexus mod id #s having cell grid map out all the areas affected. It could be a new way of shopping for mods or planning that load order that is just so.
Also I may take all this down if the mods say this is out of the scope of a gallery. Not wanting to abuse this feature here.
Updates may be sporadic.
Also if anyone has an idea of how to create a similar cell grid map to incorprate all of TWMP or knows of one ,,, please let me know.
hya
Just some pics from:
Akaviri Kojima Extended @ https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/40832/?
ImpIsle Walkabout (junglised) @ https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/41089/?
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