This mod has been discontinued
I'm no longer working on this mod. Check out Interesting Eroded Terrain by Freak2121 - they've picked up where I left off and made the mod way more awesome :)

Note: This mod is still in a fairly early stage of development. Therefore, the landscape is subject to change considerably throughout development. It is, however, no longer necessary to save the game in an indoor location before updating this mod, or installing it for the first time - the player gets automatically re-positioned when the saved game is loaded.

DFWorkshop thread

Interesting Terrains
The original terrain of Daggerfall is not very interesting, which is understandably due to a lack of computing power in the '90s combined with the original view distance being very low.

This mod attempts to make the original terrain both more interesting and varied by generating various different landscapes using so-called fractional Brownian motion noise, which is fractaline and, through derivatives, able to simulate erosion. The result is a natural-looking terrain that is inherently pleasing to the eyes, as it follows the laws of nature.

The new landscape types are placed in a way that makes sense in terms of the original terrain; for example, the Ilessan Hills are more hilly and the Wrothgarian Mountains are more mountainous, while the desert regions of Hammerfell have dunes. To make the terrain even more interesting, mountains and hills can also be found, to a lesser degree, in regions that aren't mountainous or hilly. And there are variations within the individual terrain types depending on the location in the world.

This mod changes the default terrain max height (around 2000 meters) to 5000 meters, to allow for the new peaks.

Locations are kept flat, at the original terrain height, and fade smoothly into the new terrain.

Furthermore, this mod repaints the terrain in order to make the mountains and cliffs rocky - this also means there are no more random rocky patches on flat terrain.

This mod currently has the following terrain types:

• Swiss Mountains (alpine-style fold mountains, for the densest mountain areas)
• Jordan Mountains ("regular"-style mountains - varies between fold and fault types, and is repurposed for hills)
• IQ Mountains (sparsely placed fold mountains for non-mountainous areas - invented by math genius Inigo Quilez)
• Swiss Canyons (a modified variety of swiss mountains for canyons with steep cliffs)
• Dunes
• Bumpy Terrain (smooth bumps for non-mountainous areas)
• Rocky terrain (sharp bumps for mountainous areas)
  

Known issues
Until this mod reaches v. 1.0.0, issues are to be expected. As issues are found, either by myself or the community, they're listed in this section. Unless otherwise noted, the intention is that the issues are fixed in the next release.

• (none at the moment)
  

Requirements and compatibility
This mod currently only supports the DaggerfallUnity 0.10.26 release. Version 0.4.0, which works for DaggerfallUnity 0.10.24, can be found under Old Files.

This mod utilizes the GPU to generate the new terrain on top of the old one. Therefore, this mod requires higher GPU specs than the base game. How much higher is uncertain, as it's only been tested on a Geforce GTX 1070 (so far) - it may just run smooth enough on an integrated GPU, but don't count on it. It will run on any reasonably modern GPU, most likely (dedicated or integrated), but if the GPU isn't powerful, there may be noticeable sharp lags whenever new terrain is generated.

Known compatibilities

• Distant Terrain (disable Improved Terrain Sampler)
• Tedious Travel (be cautious when traveling in mountainous areas, as you can still die from fall damage)
• Airships (requires manual intervention when flying across mountainous areas)
• Realtime Reflections (some oddness occurs at times - will investigate)
• D.R.E.A.M.
• Realistic Grass
• Realistic Wagon
• New Cannon Locations
• Windmills of Daggerfall
• High-Resolution Terrain Textures/Splat Terrain Texturing
  

Known incompatibilities

• Mountains and Hills (when both are loaded, one will completely overtake the other depending on load order)
• New Locations/Location Loader, and mods depending on it (it currently doesn't support terrains with a max height that's different from vanilla terrains)
• Basic Roads (Interesting Terrains currently doesn't smooth the roads, but plans are on the drawing board)
  

Other than those listed, this mod should be compatible with most mods. However, oddities and incompatibilities may occur with mods that in any way affects or relies on the vanilla terrain, or was designed specifically with the vanilla terrain in mind.

I have attempted to test Daggerfall Skyshards and Warm Ashes v4 on 0.10.25a, but couldn't get either to work even with Interesting Terrains disabled. If anyone has those two mods successfully enabled, I'd be very interested to know if they're compatible with Interesting Terrains.

Installation

• Pick a version (Win, Mac, Linux)
• Use Vortex, or extract the contents of the downloaded zip to DaggerfallUnity_Data/StreamingAssets
  

Planned features roadmap

• Basic Roads compatibility
• Built-in far terrains, similar to Distant Terrains
• Making all noise generator parameters tweakable in a loose .ini file
• Open sourcing the code on GitHub
  

Bonus features
A couple of console commands has been added, primarily for my own development-related benefits, but I've left them in the release version because why not. Don't any important game after using any of these, as I cannot guarantee what will happen in the long run.

• clearnoon: Forwards the time to midday, sets the weather to sunny, and kills all enemies.
• speedy: Toggles "speedy" mode. When enabled, move speed and jump speed are greatly increased, and God Mode is enabled. Takes a number as an optional parameter, which multiplies the movement speed increase for even faster (or slower) speeds.