Fun with Math and Tamriel

Today, I decided to do a bunch of math to a map of Tamriel, to see how insane it would be to map out some of the other countries, like High Rock, Hammerfell, or others. This is primarily a thought experiment, to get an idea of how long it'd take to make each area of Tamriel.

We know the relative and actual area of Skyrim by a few community members. Specifically, it's about 14.5 square miles, 119 cells across, and 94 cells high, which should be around 11,186 cells(Quora). Notably, I'm taking the whole size of the world map, although his measurements work for the length and height of Skyrim, 3.2 miles across, and 2 miles high (if we calculate out the cells for the map, it's closer to 4.32 and 3.42.
Falskaar, for reference, is 64 cells by 64 cells, approximately 4096 cells total (you can check this up in the creation kit the coordinates go from -32, -32, to 32, 32).
In Sketchup, I loaded in a world map of Tamriel, relatively up to date with Skyrim, and drew a box around it, taking note of the size, in inches, of the box. Then, rotating the map around, I grabbed measurements of several other areas. Using Skyrim, I came up with a relatively good scale (15 ish inches per mile), and set to doing math.

These were the primary areas of interest to me, Hammerfell and High Rock. Starting with High Rock, if we take the areas of the two rectangles, plus the area of the triangle there at the top, we get approximately 6.04 square miles, and about 4570 cells. Actually not that much larger than Falskaar, assuming Falskaar's entire map is either close to the coast or on it. Hammerfell, is much larger, on the other hand. The trapezoidal top plus its rectangular brother is 14.8 Square Miles, and 18829 cells. So one is actually not all that bad, the other one seems bad, unless you treat the vast majority of it as a desert. Which it is.

Let's take our data further, though. I went ahead and drew boxes around the rest of the map to get the rest of the areas. Valenwood is 8.78 square miles, and 6641 cells. Elsweyr is 7.44 square miles, and 5623 cells. The Summerset Isles are 6.39 square miles, and 4830 cells. Finally, Black Marsh is 10.6 square miles and 8015 cells. So now we can gain an estimate for the total land area of Tamriel (67 square miles, and nearly 60,000 cells, not counting Morrowind, Skyrim or Cyrodiil, which are nearly 40,000 cells combined), cool right?

Alright, but let's turn these data into something useful. It took about 2000 hours to make Falskaar. If we assume that overall, each cell took the same amount of time to create, and that he spent all of his time creating cells, we can make a highballed(ish) guess as to how long it'd take to create any size area in Tamriel! So, 2000 hours to create 4096 cells means it took about 30 minutes(on average) for each cell, or about 2 cells an hour. Given how small cells are(64 by 64 yards, or 756.25 cells per square mile), this isn't too surprising.

So, what are the final numbers for each area?

Country	Square Mileage	Number of Cells	Hours to create	Velickys
High Rock	6.04	4570	2285	1
Hammerfell	14.82	18829	9414	5
Morrowind	13.76	10402	5201	3
Valenwood	8.78	6641	3320	2
Elsweyr	7.44	5623	2812	2
Summerset Isles	6.39	4831	2415	1
Black Marsh	10.6	8015	4007	2
Totals	67.83	58,913	29,456	16
Bonus: With TES 3-5	113.63	94,777	47,388	24

So, in conclusion, what have we learned? If 24 modders all work 2000 hours in a year, could they create something roughly the scale of all of the Elder Scrolls Games Combined (and then some)? Yes and no. See, here's some issues. It takes one woman 9 months to have a baby, but if 9 women work together, it doesn't take one month to have a baby. In other words, certain tasks just take a certain amount of time. This also assumes that all of them are generalists who can just move from scripting to art to writing back to scripting all in the course of a year. In reality, certain people will be good at some things, but not others, or quick at some things, but not others. A Velicky is really how much work someone can get done in a year, working 40ish hours a week. So it'd more likely take one guy 24 years to create something of that magnitude.

Really, this gives us a lesson in magnitude. These games are huge, with hundreds of hours of content apiece. It took years to make each one, and the amount of work that went into them is nuts. Falskaar is no exception, and it only was a third the size of Skyrim. In reality, the content is closer to an eighth. See, there's 201 hours in that game. Falskaar had around 25 hours of content. He didn't fill in the top half of the map, the cities aren't bustling, etc. As impressive as Falskaar is, 2000 hours wasn't enough to make it complete complete.

So what does this mean for your own projects? Keep them small, keep them manageable, keep them realistic. You likely don't have a full time job's worth of time to work on mods or games, unless that is your job already. The longer a project is from the get go, the less likely it is to get finished. Don't expect the entirety of time and space to come from dreaming up gigantic projects, especially if you haven't taken the time to learn how to do the basics. However, as you build up from small projects, as Velicky did, you can learn to reach far greater heights than you ever thought you were capable of.