We're still working on this mod, though we haven't updated for a while. I wanted to share a couple of additions and edits I've made to the terrain in order to merge together the different levels.
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The entrance to IJ from PH. Some major editing was done to ensure that the player has to cross the small stream-like thing in order to enter IJ. On the left is the stream you follow to get to the house itself.
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Here's the area between the landslide, the town's western gate and the swamp/lake. It's not very detailed yet, but the area is carved out already so that it can be created in later versions.
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One of the largest changes we made was incorporating the gorge from retail into the PCGamer version of IJ. We wanted to retain both the swamp and the gorge, so ultimately we decided to move the gorge over to the side as sort of an alternate route around the swamp. We also scaled the gorge down vertically by about 15% in order to fit it in, which is barely noticable but certainly looks more realistic. The gorge goes right up to the edge of the hills which divide IJ and PV. From its exit, you won't have far to go through the swamp before you reach the rock steps.
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The same area with terrain edit mode on. There is still much work to be done in order to properly blend the gorge with the terrain around it. Interestingly, there was already a hill present where we put the gorge in the PCGamer version, so it fit fairly naturally into the terrain.
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Here's the exit to the gorge looking toward the rock steps, visible in the distance. From here, you can follow the raised terrain around the swamp straight to the steps. I'm going to try and ensure that people who elect to take the swamp aren't able to get up here until they are at the end of it.
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The gorge exit from another angle. You can see that after crossing the log, you'll arrive on a natural slope leading down to the steps. At the bottom right of this image is Pine Valley.
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The exit to the town into the plains. I lowered the area of mountains blocking off the plains which looked to be obviously raised by the developers. There is currently a small ledge here which blocks off the entrance to the plains instead, but you'll get a sneak peek of them as you walk through here nonetheless. The Plains themselves will not be in the first release version, but we plan on adding them in the future; the seaside area where you jump down into the plains proper will become the location of the level switch.
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Turned off fog in order to show you the awesome combination tatu did of PV and LAB. That big hill in PV which wasn't there in earlier versions is gone, and the streams are connected properly to each other. You can even see the road from retail's LAB level off to the side - a future version might make use of this for a new purpose.
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Finally, the biggest addition I've made thusfar - an actual road going up from the Plains to the Summit. It's blocked off by another washout, forcing you to go through the rest of the levels, but it finally joins up that one dead-end road from AS2 with the Plains road. There's still some work to be done to make this look smooth, though I'm already quite happy with the result.
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Here's the road from the mountain. It's extremely difficult to replicate the style of the already-made road in AS2 without pulling the polycount overboard, and you won't be able to walk back down there anyway from the top (at least not in this version), so it's somewhat less detailed than the rest of the roads.
Tatu has informed me that the first half of the island, which consists of BE to IT (and eventually Plains as well) is getting closer to being finished, with his foliage work being done all the way up to IJ2.