Open Cities Classic

Open Cities Classic is a comprehensive project that aims to bring back at least part of the feel of Morrowind - specifically with how most of the cities were a natural part of the world and you could just walk in without loading screens. The added immersion and realism goes a long way, probably a lot more than you might think. Ever wanted to ride your horse into the center of Cheydinhal? Well now you can. Need to get some help from the city guards to vanquish a foe? Run toward the gates and the guards will do their duty while you can seek safety within the walls. The town guards make for some very interesting interactions this way.

The only cities not covered by this project are Kvatch and the Imperial City's central districts. Kvatch has too much main quest material setup in very specific ways to mess with it, and the Imperial City is simply too large and unwieldy to properly open up.

Highly recommended complimentary mod: Animated Window Lighting System and Chimneys - This is the evolution of Texian's Window Lighting System and is fully compatible with Open Cities.

To go with that, and provide LOD for all the new goodies, I also recommend: Really AEVWD. Just be aware that there's a bit of a performance hit in activating all the extra LOD that Open Cities will provide that's directly proportional to the power of your PC, and how many other mods you have installed.

My Patreon Page: https://www.patreon.com/arthmoor

Credits

Texian & Godhugh for the original groundwork on the Open Cities mods. A hell of a lot of work went into that and I've only built upon it.

Sigurd Stormhand - Castleworks - Gates & Bridges. With minor alterations in the meshes for texture paths.

Sjors Boomscors for providing optimized and corrected meshes for the Outer Districts module.

Ryan for allowing me to produce an Open Cities extension for his Blood&Mud mod.

J. Sera for allowing me to produce an Open Cities extension for Bartholm.

Vorians and Ismelda for being cooperative on sharing compatibility tricks we can both use in each other's mods.

Firespark for the flags flying over each city's castle.

Open Cities users everywhere, for being patient enough to put up with my bumbling efforts to get things right. Maybe one day I finally will :)

Troubleshooting Problems

If you have a problem with an Open Cities mod and wish to report it, I'd appreciate as much information as possible, preferably in the form of a screenshot with console data showing if it's something that can be screened. The FormID of the affected object would help greatly to narrow down any problems that might result. Post this information along with your load order. Reports with less than detailed information may result in delays in getting it fixed, or result in being ignored entirely. It helps everyone to provide details. I am especially interested in verifiable conflicts, as I wish for Open Cities to be as conflict-free as is humanly possible given the circumstances. If the situation requires a patch, I can only work something out if I know what to look for.

I have Knights of the Nine but I can't find the Prophet!

He's there, just not where he should be. You need the patch for Knights of the Nine.

I loaded the game while near a city gate and saw it vanish in front of me, what's wrong?

Nothing. This is expected. With OCC 4.1 and higher, the OBSE plugin that comes with the mod will move the doors to the cities out of position each time the game is loaded. This was done to get around an engine bug which has plagued Open Cities for ages. Doors would get moved, then snap back if you reloaded without exiting to the desktop first. That should no longer happen, but as a consequence, if you saved within visual range of one of the vanilla city load doors, you will see it disappear very shortly after the game loads and the scripts have had a chance to kick in.

Ok, but I tried to walk past where the door was and something invisible is blocking me now.

This is also normal and expected, and unfortunately a side effect of the method being used to suppress the doors now. You'll need to leave the area and get far enough away for that gate to switch out to LOD view instead of close up, or enter a nearby interior and exit again. Then you'll be able to return and the obstruction will be gone. Cities are usually large enough that you should be able to use another gate instead if you REALLY don't want to leave the area.

There is a second chapel superimposed on top of the first one in Anvil.

Update the Unofficial Oblivion Patch to version 3.41 or above.

The game crashes while doing character generation.

Update "Knights - Unofficial Patch.esp" with the new version from the Unofficial Oblivion DLC Patches v16 or above.

TIE NPCs are not visiting the cities

Update to TIE 1.36 or higher.

Tamriel Travelers NPCs don't visit the cities

AI support in TT is pending an update from Corepc. In the meantime, the NPCs will be unavailable on the days they should be visiting the cities. They resume their normal schedules in the wilderness afterward.

In "Big Business", Bauggi goes to Anvil and then vanishes

He has an AI pack set to send him to Anvil, possibly just for the realism effect. He does nothing once there though, so fixing it isn't important. Just wait for him to come back out and return to your farm.

Locations of AI Doors

The AI doors are entry ways into the closed wordspaces should it become necessary. Not everything that is placed in a city by a mod is worth the time it takes to create a patch. Mods that drop items for a one-time pickup are a good example of this. It's much easier to just go through the door, get what you need, then exit the city as normal.

Anvil: Along the city wall behind the abandoned house.

Anvil Castle: In the garden that's in front of the guard barracks.

Bravil: In the garden area immediately outside the castle in the NW corner.

Bruma: A small snow rock in the castle courtyard area, along the wall south of the gateway arch.

Cheydinhal: In the castle area between the well and the guard barracks tower, along the wall.

Chorrol: On the back side of the castle, directly south of the guard tower.

Leyawiin: Southeast corner of the castle area.

Skingrad: Near the horse statue on the north side, between the red tree and the archery targets.

SKingrad Castle Courtyard: Tucked against the wall immediately to the right as you come through the gate.

New Sheoth - Bliss: Small rock cluster next to the entry to Sheogorath's Palace, right in front of the barrel.

New Sheoth - Crucible: At the bottom of the stairs to the palace, on the ledge next to the sewer grate.

Bartholm: Along the south city wall, directly behind Rufus' house.

Arcane University: On the west side, along the wall, right across from the well.

Prison District: Also on the west side, next to the wall, to the left of the practice target.

Performance and FPS

Rumors continue to persist about Open Cities being an FPS killer. In and of itself, Open Cities will not represent a significant hit to your gaming performance. If you are playing the stock game, with stock graphics, go run around near the Imperial City, then around Chorrol. Measure the performance you get. Add Open Cities, and perform the same test again. The Imperial City will remain unchanged, and your trip around Chorrol will see a minimal impact of 3-5 frames. In other words, if your system is low end, it'll still feel low end after installing Open Cities. If you have a midrange to high end system, installing Open Cities will not be a noticeable drain on your resources.

The problem most people have is that they're not playing in a stock configuration. They load up a bunch of graphical enchancers ( guilty as charged! ) and a ton of graphically heavy mods, all at the same time. So suddenly trips around the Imperial City are a bit sluggish, and that trip around Chorrol is bogging things down. In the process of adding mods, they not only activated huge memory sinks like QTP3, but also activated a large set of LOD mods, FCOM, 18 quest mods, a lighting overhaul, a weather overhaul, and higher quality sound files. So when the game slows down, it takes all of two seconds of "OC is an FPS killer" and people believe it, because, by coincidence, removing it results in what they think is smoother play. However, removing any one of the other elements would have done the same. Bog the system down with enough stuff, it will buckle. There are tradeoffs to be had. I am aware of how this may sound, but in the grand scheme of things, Open Cities is not the FPS killer everyone says it is. Do yourself a favor and be objective enough to try it first and see for yourself before believing some random forum poster. The vast majority of the negative attention was from 2006. We're entering 2009. The mod has been trimmed and polished a lot since then. Systems have also evolved considerably at the same time.

That said, there may be some additional load placed on your game if you install the new Outer Districts module. Sjors has provided me with some updated collision optimized meshes to use for the large walls and towers that enclose the two districts. Without them, there was significant lag while in the Arcane University and slight lag while in the Prison. After the optimized meshes were installed and tested, the lag is all but gone and it's about as smooth for me as it is to be in the closed versions of these districts. That does not mean however that your experience will be the same. These districts are made up of large high detail meshes. A low end machine struggling with the Imperial City in general is going to have trouble here as well. Midrange PCs may see some significant additional lag. Higher end PCs should notice little if any difference, but this will depend greatly on both your CPU and GPU. Visible images tax the GPU. Collision meshes tax the CPU due to the Havok physics involved. Be prepared for some tradeoffs. The Imperial City has always been and will likely continue to be a resource hog whether or not you fling them open to the world.

Disclaimer

This mod is not made, guaranteed, or supported by Microsoft, Zenimax, Bethesda Game Studios, or any of their affiliates.