Difference between revisions of "WorldBuilding 101"

== World Building 101 ==

== World Building 101 ==

   Ok first thing is first.  Before we can hope right into the TESCS and start building our grand new world we first need to create the land.  This is where the lazy man comes out in me.  You should have your copy of Fractal World Explorer already.  So open it up and let's get generating.

   Ok first thing is first.  Before we can hope right into the TESCS and start building our grand new world we first need to create the land.  This is where the lazy man comes out in me.  You should have your copy of Fractal World Explorer already.  So open it up and let's get generating.

First you want to Press CTL-D which will bring up your world creation dialog box.

First you want to Press CTL-D which will bring up your world creation dialog box.

Here you want to select 360x180 (globe preview) option, and this is the ONLY complete world creation option you ever want to use in FWE unless you like waiting 3-15 minutes to get a world generated.  Go ahead and click OK now and wait a few seconds for it to generate a map.  Once that comes up, if it is something you like go ahead and hit File->Save or continue on to the next step if you are using the free version.  Here is what I am going to be using for my world.

Here you want to select 360x180 (globe preview) option, and this is the ONLY complete world creation option you ever want to use in FWE unless you like waiting 3-15 minutes to get a world generated.  Go ahead and click OK now and wait a few seconds for it to generate a map.  Once that comes up, if it is something you like go ahead and hit File->Save or continue on to the next step if you are using the free version.  Here is what I am going to be using for my world.

It doesn't look like much but in a few minutes it will look ALOT better.  Ok next, it is a wee bit too small for our use so we have to do a bit of a manipulation to get it to more the size we want.  First you should see a pull down box onthe toolbar that currently says "3D Shaded Relief" you want to click that box and select the option of "Flat".  Reason being we are going to be doubling the size of our map and if we keep it in 3D shaded it takes alot longer as it keeps updating the rendered 3D image as well as the map information.  So hit Flat and you should get something green and ugly like this:

It doesn't look like much but in a few minutes it will look ALOT better.  Ok next, it is a wee bit too small for our use so we have to do a bit of a manipulation to get it to more the size we want.  First you should see a pull down box onthe toolbar that currently says "3D Shaded Relief" you want to click that box and select the option of "Flat".  Reason being we are going to be doubling the size of our map and if we keep it in 3D shaded it takes alot longer as it keeps updating the rendered 3D image as well as the map information.  So hit Flat and you should get something green and ugly like this:

Now that that is done you will want to click the Map pulldown menu and select the last option Enlarge Globe (x2).  Wait a few seconds and your map will jump up in size.  Once that is done you need to enlarge it two more times before moving on so we get a properly sized image.  It basically takes the 360x180 generated map and by the end it will be 2880x1440.  Note once you get started on the second and third enlarge, unless you have a uber computer, you might as well step away from the keyboard as it still can take quite a few minutes to blow it up.  You'll know you are done when you click the Map pull down and the Enlarge Globe (x2) option is greyed out.  You should also have something that looks like this in your render window:

Now that that is done you will want to click the Map pulldown menu and select the last option Enlarge Globe (x2).  Wait a few seconds and your map will jump up in size.  Once that is done you need to enlarge it two more times before moving on so we get a properly sized image.  It basically takes the 360x180 generated map and by the end it will be 2880x1440.  Note once you get started on the second and third enlarge, unless you have a uber computer, you might as well step away from the keyboard as it still can take quite a few minutes to blow it up.  You'll know you are done when you click the Map pull down and the Enlarge Globe (x2) option is greyed out.  You should also have something that looks like this in your render window:

Ok if you want go ahead and switch back to the 3D Shaded Relief on the toolbar and note how your world looks.  Should be looking a little better than it was, but it is still probably looking a bit-blah.  Well on to fixing that.  Switch back to flat mode as the next portion is going to kill your processor and especially so in 3D Shaded Relief and let's move on to the next part.

Ok if you want go ahead and switch back to the 3D Shaded Relief on the toolbar and note how your world looks.  Should be looking a little better than it was, but it is still probably looking a bit-blah.  Well on to fixing that.  Switch back to flat mode as the next portion is going to kill your processor and especially so in 3D Shaded Relief and let's move on to the next part.

What we need to do is "weather" our terrain a bit in order to get it looking more realistic.  This is also going to add in some plains and hills.  What you want is the forth menu over entitled processes.  Click on that and the first option down says Water Erosion.  Go ahead and highlight it so that the pop out box comes up and select one of the options there, I personally use 500,000 years  but then I like more hilly terrain with occasional flat spots.  1,000,000 years will give you a TON of plains. Fortunatly you can go in 100,000 year increments as well to get something exactly to your liking.  I suggest those who have the full FWE save here before doing any processes, and make additional new saves after each process you do so you can get it to your liking better.  I personally have always preferred 500,000 as stated earlier so that is what I used.  Ending up with a result of something like so...

What we need to do is "weather" our terrain a bit in order to get it looking more realistic.  This is also going to add in some plains and hills.  What you want is the forth menu over entitled processes.  Click on that and the first option down says Water Erosion.  Go ahead and highlight it so that the pop out box comes up and select one of the options there, I personally use 500,000 years  but then I like more hilly terrain with occasional flat spots.  1,000,000 years will give you a TON of plains. Fortunatly you can go in 100,000 year increments as well to get something exactly to your liking.  I suggest those who have the full FWE save here before doing any processes, and make additional new saves after each process you do so you can get it to your liking better.  I personally have always preferred 500,000 as stated earlier so that is what I used.  Ending up with a result of something like so...

Now that that is done let's go ahead and soften the terrain up a bit and go to processes and this time select Wind Erosion.  I myself use 1,000,000 years though you can use what you like.  Once that is done come back here and we'll continue on to the last step with the FWE.

Now that that is done let's go ahead and soften the terrain up a bit and go to processes and this time select Wind Erosion.  I myself use 1,000,000 years though you can use what you like.  Once that is done come back here and we'll continue on to the last step with the FWE.

Done?  Great, let move on to our final step before throwing it out into something closer to what Oblivion can read.  Ok there is an issue with how FWE exports it's maps to binaries.  That being it only exports out those areas above sea level, see level being at 0 units.  Oblivion on the other hand does not start it's landmass until about 4200 units up.  So now we have to lower sea level a bit.  Before we do, make sure you are in 3D Shaded Relief mode, and then go ahead and export out your map as a graphic under the File->Export as Graphic menu.  This will give you a nice pretty bmp or jpg to use for reference once we get into the photo editing portion, or a desktop wallpaper, whatever.  Now, switch back to flat mode and go under your processes menu again.  At the bottom of the menu you will see the option Lower Sea Level.  What we need to do is lower it by 4200 meters, so lower it by 1000 4 times and then by 100 twice, you should end up with something like this.

Done?  Great, let move on to our final step before throwing it out into something closer to what Oblivion can read.  Ok there is an issue with how FWE exports it's maps to binaries.  That being it only exports out those areas above sea level, see level being at 0 units.  Oblivion on the other hand does not start it's landmass until about 4200 units up.  So now we have to lower sea level a bit.  Before we do, make sure you are in 3D Shaded Relief mode, and then go ahead and export out your map as a graphic under the File->Export as Graphic menu.  This will give you a nice pretty bmp or jpg to use for reference once we get into the photo editing portion, or a desktop wallpaper, whatever.  Now, switch back to flat mode and go under your processes menu again.  At the bottom of the menu you will see the option Lower Sea Level.  What we need to do is lower it by 4200 meters, so lower it by 1000 4 times and then by 100 twice, you should end up with something like this.

If you notice there are still some locations with water.  Make sure you are in Flat mode because we are going to have to get rid of these pools before finally exporting to a binary file.  TESCS sees those as highs and it does wonky things to your heightmap when it is imported in.  Now that you are in flat mode you want to go to Toolboxes->Elevation Toolbox on your top menu bar.  It should come up looking like this except the settings will be different.  Set your settings to the same as mine and then click ok.

If you notice there are still some locations with water.  Make sure you are in Flat mode because we are going to have to get rid of these pools before finally exporting to a binary file.  TESCS sees those as highs and it does wonky things to your heightmap when it is imported in.  Now that you are in flat mode you want to go to Toolboxes->Elevation Toolbox on your top menu bar.  It should come up looking like this except the settings will be different.  Set your settings to the same as mine and then click ok.

What these settings do is prevent from raising the elevation above 0m (which is where we want the absolute bottom of the depressions to be, no lower) and also gives you a pretty good brush size and a fast change setting so it should only take a few minutes to finish up our work here.  With that done make sure the + Raise action button on the laft hand side of the FWE window is seleveted and go to painting.  Just hold down the left mouse button and drag over yoru remaining bodies of water.  You don't have to worry about being neat as it won't alter anything already at 0m or higher.  So just make sure there is no blue on the map and we are good to go.  It should look all green like so....

What these settings do is prevent from raising the elevation above 0m (which is where we want the absolute bottom of the depressions to be, no lower) and also gives you a pretty good brush size and a fast change setting so it should only take a few minutes to finish up our work here.  With that done make sure the + Raise action button on the laft hand side of the FWE window is seleveted and go to painting.  Just hold down the left mouse button and drag over yoru remaining bodies of water.  You don't have to worry about being neat as it won't alter anything already at 0m or higher.  So just make sure there is no blue on the map and we are good to go.  It should look all green like so....

Ok time to get out of this program and on the the next third of our project.  If you have the full version I HIGHLY suggest you save one more copy before we go on to the exporting portion.  Generally I have ~5-7 copies of any world I am working on to make sure if something is screwed up somewhere I can go back and touch up from a specific point.  But that is just me.  Once that is done you need to click your File->Export to Binary menu option to get the export window up which will look like this.

Ok time to get out of this program and on the the next third of our project.  If you have the full version I HIGHLY suggest you save one more copy before we go on to the exporting portion.  Generally I have ~5-7 copies of any world I am working on to make sure if something is screwed up somewhere I can go back and touch up from a specific point.  But that is just me.  Once that is done you need to click your File->Export to Binary menu option to get the export window up which will look like this.

Here you want to hit browse and put your file into a working directory.  Unlike my previous tutorial we still have a bit of work to do to it before it is ready for primetime so you do NOT want to put it in the heightfield Oblivion directory just yet.  I suggest putting it in the same place as the reference picture you exported out earlier.  So browse out to that directory, enter the file name you want including the .raw extension, and click ok on the Browse window to get back to the Binary Export dialog box where you should now have your path at, and then make sure you select the 16-bit integers option before clicking OK.  So everything SHOULD look something like this:

Here you want to hit browse and put your file into a working directory.  Unlike my previous tutorial we still have a bit of work to do to it before it is ready for primetime so you do NOT want to put it in the heightfield Oblivion directory just yet.  I suggest putting it in the same place as the reference picture you exported out earlier.  So browse out to that directory, enter the file name you want including the .raw extension, and click ok on the Browse window to get back to the Binary Export dialog box where you should now have your path at, and then make sure you select the 16-bit integers option before clicking OK.  So everything SHOULD look something like this:

Once you hit OK it will crank for a bit and then return you back to the render window.  Go ahead now and put FWE away as we won't be needing it anymore.

Once you hit OK it will crank for a bit and then return you back to the render window.  Go ahead now and put FWE away as we won't be needing it anymore.

Now that we have it out in a format Oblivion and our editing program will read it is time to do some work to get it to the right scale for Oblivion to read properly.  Oblivion is limited to ONLY pulling in 1024x1024 maps.  This really isn't that big of a deal until you consider our current heightmap is 2880x1440 which means we have some work to do.  We are actually going to be making several height maps (16 to be exact) which will end up creating a world of 128x128 cells (or 16,384 total exterior cells) when all is said and done.  Now as stated before I use Photoshop and everything will be done from a Photoshop perspective; however, the way it works is the same for any editing software you just have to find where the commands and options are for your particular package.

Now that we have it out in a format Oblivion and our editing program will read it is time to do some work to get it to the right scale for Oblivion to read properly.  Oblivion is limited to ONLY pulling in 1024x1024 maps.  This really isn't that big of a deal until you consider our current heightmap is 2880x1440 which means we have some work to do.  We are actually going to be making several height maps (16 to be exact) which will end up creating a world of 128x128 cells (or 16,384 total exterior cells) when all is said and done.  Now as stated before I use Photoshop and everything will be done from a Photoshop perspective; however, the way it works is the same for any editing software you just have to find where the commands and options are for your particular package.

So go ahead and open your graphics program up, and open up both the raw file you made and the bmp/jpg you exported earlier for reference.  When you go to open your RAW file it should pop up a dialog box looking something like this:

So go ahead and open your graphics program up, and open up both the raw file you made and the bmp/jpg you exported earlier for reference.  When you go to open your RAW file it should pop up a dialog box looking something like this:

Yes those are the options you want to have entered in there as well.  Make sure they are selected and hit OK and it should open up your file.  So you should be looking at something like this.

Yes those are the options you want to have entered in there as well.  Make sure they are selected and hit OK and it should open up your file.  So you should be looking at something like this.

Now it is time for some resizing, select the window with the raw file and go up to Image->Image Resize menu option which will give you a window for telling it how you want it resized.  You want to make sure constrain proportions is set to on, and the second selection box next to height is set to Pixels.  Now in the actual height number field you want to enter 4096 which will gives us a graphic measuring 8192x4096 so your box should look like this:

Now it is time for some resizing, select the window with the raw file and go up to Image->Image Resize menu option which will give you a window for telling it how you want it resized.  You want to make sure constrain proportions is set to on, and the second selection box next to height is set to Pixels.  Now in the actual height number field you want to enter 4096 which will gives us a graphic measuring 8192x4096 so your box should look like this:

Now do the same for your guide picture you also opened, that way you have 2 pictures of the same size.  At this point your probably going to have to change your zoom level on your windows so you can see all of both pictures.  at 1280x1024 I use a magnification of about 8.21%.  On Photoshop you can adjust the magnification on the mavigator tab which is at the top of the right hand toolbar by default, just under the preview picture with a slider.  Note make sure you have plenty of HD space because the RAW file alone is 65 megs.

Now do the same for your guide picture you also opened, that way you have 2 pictures of the same size.  At this point your probably going to have to change your zoom level on your windows so you can see all of both pictures.  at 1280x1024 I use a magnification of about 8.21%.  On Photoshop you can adjust the magnification on the mavigator tab which is at the top of the right hand toolbar by default, just under the preview picture with a slider.  Note make sure you have plenty of HD space because the RAW file alone is 65 megs.

Ok now comnes time when everyone has to figure things out on their own to a degree.  What you need to do is find a 4096x4096 space on your map that you want to see in game and outline it.  Here is how I start with Photoshop.  I go to View->Snap To and make sure Guides is set to checked.  I then go to View->New Guide and add 4 horizontal guides.  One at 0, 1024, 2048, 3072, and 4096 on both maps.  Those make up our 4 Y axis segments.  Then for the X-Axis I look at my guide picture to see what areas I want to include in the mod.  In this case I am starting with the port city of Northport which resides on the NE coast of the continent.  That being determined I go to the furthest east portion of the continent and drop a guide there (at about 7700 for me) on both graphics.  If the Guide is not situated exactly right you can undo and redo it.  Then I just step back by increments of 1024 for 4 more guides, if I was going from the west I'd step forward by that many increments.  My end result looks like this.

Ok now comnes time when everyone has to figure things out on their own to a degree.  What you need to do is find a 4096x4096 space on your map that you want to see in game and outline it.  Here is how I start with Photoshop.  I go to View->Snap To and make sure Guides is set to checked.  I then go to View->New Guide and add 4 horizontal guides.  One at 0, 1024, 2048, 3072, and 4096 on both maps.  Those make up our 4 Y axis segments.  Then for the X-Axis I look at my guide picture to see what areas I want to include in the mod.  In this case I am starting with the port city of Northport which resides on the NE coast of the continent.  That being determined I go to the furthest east portion of the continent and drop a guide there (at about 7700 for me) on both graphics.  If the Guide is not situated exactly right you can undo and redo it.  Then I just step back by increments of 1024 for 4 more guides, if I was going from the west I'd step forward by that many increments.  My end result looks like this.

Now I could keep going back west and actually get most of the world ingame, and I probably well but in the interest of time I'm just going to do it the simple way.  Now here is where the repititious tedium begins.  Photoshop itself cannot copy and paste from a 16-bit greyscale image.  So we get to learn the joys of selecting and cropping.  Before we do though I think it is very important to refer everyone to this picture.

Now I could keep going back west and actually get most of the world ingame, and I probably well but in the interest of time I'm just going to do it the simple way.  Now here is where the repititious tedium begins.  Photoshop itself cannot copy and paste from a 16-bit greyscale image.  So we get to learn the joys of selecting and cropping.  Before we do though I think it is very important to refer everyone to this picture.

Go ahead and click through it as that tells you what your files MUST be named.  we are doing a 4x4 grid so we will be using from -2_1 to 1_-2.  Remember when I said I go in to view and verify my snap is set to gridlines?  This is why.  What we are going to do is choose the select tool and drag over the NW corner box with it.  At this point you are probably going to need to enlarge the window holding your raw file in order to see the select box.  Go ahead and do this as we really don't need the other graphic any longer.  Once you have what is going to make up your NW corner selected you now need to crop your image.  In photoshop this is done under Image crop. And should leave you with something looking like so.

Go ahead and click through it as that tells you what your files MUST be named.  we are doing a 4x4 grid so we will be using from -2_1 to 1_-2.  Remember when I said I go in to view and verify my snap is set to gridlines?  This is why.  What we are going to do is choose the select tool and drag over the NW corner box with it.  At this point you are probably going to need to enlarge the window holding your raw file in order to see the select box.  Go ahead and do this as we really don't need the other graphic any longer.  Once you have what is going to make up your NW corner selected you now need to crop your image.  In photoshop this is done under Image crop. And should leave you with something looking like so.

Once that is done you need to select File->Save As and save it as a RAW file type (Photoshop defaults to psd so make sure you check that) named -2_1.raw.  When you hit OK a Raw options box will pop up asking some settings information.  Make absolutly sure the header is set to 0 and the Byte Order is set to IBM PC.  Once that is done, your program may or may not popup a warning about being unable to save print settings and such, that is fine just OK through them. Now that the file is saved go to Edit->Undo (or step backwards in the case of Photoshop) to undo the cropping and proceed to the next square over, naming this one -1_1 when you go to save it.  I'm not going to walk you through every one of them as it should be pretty self evident.  I sggest you printout or writeout the grid shown above for your reference, and just remember that everything comes off of 0_0 and it must be included whenever you do future projects.  Once done saving them come back here for the final process.  Actually putting them into the game world.

Once that is done you need to select File->Save As and save it as a RAW file type (Photoshop defaults to psd so make sure you check that) named -2_1.raw.  When you hit OK a Raw options box will pop up asking some settings information.  Make absolutly sure the header is set to 0 and the Byte Order is set to IBM PC.  Once that is done, your program may or may not popup a warning about being unable to save print settings and such, that is fine just OK through them. Now that the file is saved go to Edit->Undo (or step backwards in the case of Photoshop) to undo the cropping and proceed to the next square over, naming this one -1_1 when you go to save it.  I'm not going to walk you through every one of them as it should be pretty self evident.  I sggest you printout or writeout the grid shown above for your reference, and just remember that everything comes off of 0_0 and it must be included whenever you do future projects.  Once done saving them come back here for the final process.  Actually putting them into the game world.

Finally... I take it you got all of that mindnumbing crop and save work done.  Well now it is time for the fun part to put it into the game and see it work.  Go ahead and minimise your Photoshop window now, or if you feel really confident you can close it out, and browse out to where you saved your raw files.  What you want is to select the 16 raw files we just saved and copy them to your <wherever you installed Oblivion>\Data\HeightField directory.  You may have to create it if you haven't played with the heightmap editor in TESCS.  Once that is done pop open TESCS and we'll get started.  Also note things are going to get a bit slower from here on out.  Main reason being when you start importing height maps into the TESCS you drastically slow it down.  To the point where at times it will take 5-10 minutes to open up your final ESP and as long to save it.  Get used to CTL-ALT-DEL as well because that is the only way you are shutting it down in a timely fashion, and I suggest whenever you do finally shut it down you reboot your system as it doesn't free memory to well.  That being said let's move on.  Open up TESCS, select data and choose ONLY the Oblivion.esm file.  You know thep procedure... Wait awhile and you'll finally be ready to work.

Finally... I take it you got all of that mindnumbing crop and save work done.  Well now it is time for the fun part to put it into the game and see it work.  Go ahead and minimise your Photoshop window now, or if you feel really confident you can close it out, and browse out to where you saved your raw files.  What you want is to select the 16 raw files we just saved and copy them to your <wherever you installed Oblivion>\Data\HeightField directory.  You may have to create it if you haven't played with the heightmap editor in TESCS.  Once that is done pop open TESCS and we'll get started.  Also note things are going to get a bit slower from here on out.  Main reason being when you start importing height maps into the TESCS you drastically slow it down.  To the point where at times it will take 5-10 minutes to open up your final ESP and as long to save it.  Get used to CTL-ALT-DEL as well because that is the only way you are shutting it down in a timely fashion, and I suggest whenever you do finally shut it down you reboot your system as it doesn't free memory to well.  That being said let's move on.  Open up TESCS, select data and choose ONLY the Oblivion.esm file.  You know thep procedure... Wait awhile and you'll finally be ready to work.

First step, same as in my Fractal Terrain tutorial linked to at the top of this tutorial, create a new world space (for those who bypassed my previous tutorial it is under World->World Spaces, right click on the left pane, select new and name your world something).  You can leave everything to default, but you might want to uncheck small world.  Personally I haven't looked into what it does, but being off doesn't "seem" to break anything.  Now once your new world space is created OK out of that window and click the heightmap editor button (looks like a globe, 9th button over on the toolbar), and select your new world in the drop down box.  It'll click for a bit and then you'll see your terrain pop up in the window and it should look like this.

First step, same as in my Fractal Terrain tutorial linked to at the top of this tutorial, create a new world space (for those who bypassed my previous tutorial it is under World->World Spaces, right click on the left pane, select new and name your world something).  You can leave everything to default, but you might want to uncheck small world.  Personally I haven't looked into what it does, but being off doesn't "seem" to break anything.  Now once your new world space is created OK out of that window and click the heightmap editor button (looks like a globe, 9th button over on the toolbar), and select your new world in the drop down box.  It'll click for a bit and then you'll see your terrain pop up in the window and it should look like this.

   Actually you'll only see the central four areas.  Thanks to Seven05 on the forums I discovered that this is caused by the heightmap editor only allowing you to edit one quadrant at a time.  To get around this, once everything is loaded in the heightmap editor hit View->Regenerate Overview.  It will pop up a warning about taking a while jsut click through it.  Once everything starts responding again click the Overview window and it should pop up with some greenlines on a blue background with 4 light green boxes in the center.  This is the quadrant you are looking at right now.

   Actually you'll only see the central four areas.  Thanks to Seven05 on the forums I discovered that this is caused by the heightmap editor only allowing you to edit one quadrant at a time.  To get around this, once everything is loaded in the heightmap editor hit View->Regenerate Overview.  It will pop up a warning about taking a while jsut click through it.  Once everything starts responding again click the Overview window and it should pop up with some greenlines on a blue background with 4 light green boxes in the center.  This is the quadrant you are looking at right now.

Ok now you need to click on the line dividing the quadrant in half at the far right of the light green box.  This will jump you over once space right and will import in those files.  It will pop up a box asking about saving the current texture, hit Yes and let it crank.  It should also update your overview pick with the textures as well. Click on the new right edge of the green box again to go to the next set (which should have a texture on half the editing window and a dark blue border on the other)., this is the end of this side.  What you need to do is go around the central portion of the map until you have filled in all of your textured areas.  Note: The Overview can do some funky things, don't trust that what it shows is what is REALLY there (i've had it drop textures completely out of the overview, move them to places I knew they weren't and could verify they weren't in the height map editor).  Long as it looks resonably close and you verify that the right things are in the right places (should be fairly easy to tell) in the editor itself you are fine.

Ok now you need to click on the line dividing the quadrant in half at the far right of the light green box.  This will jump you over once space right and will import in those files.  It will pop up a box asking about saving the current texture, hit Yes and let it crank.  It should also update your overview pick with the textures as well. Click on the new right edge of the green box again to go to the next set (which should have a texture on half the editing window and a dark blue border on the other)., this is the end of this side.  What you need to do is go around the central portion of the map until you have filled in all of your textured areas.  Note: The Overview can do some funky things, don't trust that what it shows is what is REALLY there (i've had it drop textures completely out of the overview, move them to places I knew they weren't and could verify they weren't in the height map editor).  Long as it looks resonably close and you verify that the right things are in the right places (should be fairly easy to tell) in the editor itself you are fine.

Done?  Good.... Now hit file and save, get out of the heightmap editor, and let's see what we have....  In your cell view window hit the world space pull down and select your world's name, you should see a BUNCH of cells pop up.  Find cell 0,0 and double click on that to view it in the render window.  Select the render window and hit A to bring up the lighting.  Everything should look pretty bland right now because nothing is textured in anything but the base texture.  Don't worry that is for the next tutorial.  What you may notice though is some anomalies on the terrain,  Hit W to bring up wirefram mode and you will see it much better.

Done?  Good.... Now hit file and save, get out of the heightmap editor, and let's see what we have....  In your cell view window hit the world space pull down and select your world's name, you should see a BUNCH of cells pop up.  Find cell 0,0 and double click on that to view it in the render window.  Select the render window and hit A to bring up the lighting.  Everything should look pretty bland right now because nothing is textured in anything but the base texture.  Don't worry that is for the next tutorial.  What you may notice though is some anomalies on the terrain,  Hit W to bring up wirefram mode and you will see it much better.

This is the problems I was talking about with the erosion.  By doing it our way we have restricted the anomaly to purely the X/Y main Axis.  So now you want to click the 10th tool over from the left (which is the landscaping tool) and make sure soften vertices is checked.  Then just quickly run your cursor over the anamoly with the left mouse button down and it will quickly fix it.  Using your arrow keys you can quickly move up and down the two Axis to find the problems, takes about 15 minutes total so go ahead and do that and then SAVE you mod (which will take about 5-15 minutes more) and we will move on to creating new start points for your game world.  You may get some errors, just hit Yes to All and let it go.  There may or may not be a couple of holes in your world.  Not that big of a deal, and you could write down every place it thinks it has one, or you could leave it as an easter egg for your players (just kidding, seriously you'll probably find it when you are texturing/landscaping and can fix it then, no need to worry about it now).

This is the problems I was talking about with the erosion.  By doing it our way we have restricted the anomaly to purely the X/Y main Axis.  So now you want to click the 10th tool over from the left (which is the landscaping tool) and make sure soften vertices is checked.  Then just quickly run your cursor over the anamoly with the left mouse button down and it will quickly fix it.  Using your arrow keys you can quickly move up and down the two Axis to find the problems, takes about 15 minutes total so go ahead and do that and then SAVE you mod (which will take about 5-15 minutes more) and we will move on to creating new start points for your game world.  You may get some errors, just hit Yes to All and let it go.  There may or may not be a couple of holes in your world.  Not that big of a deal, and you could write down every place it thinks it has one, or you could leave it as an easter egg for your players (just kidding, seriously you'll probably find it when you are texturing/landscaping and can fix it then, no need to worry about it now).

Almost.  Last thing to do is a wee bit of scripting and changes to the base quests in order to give you a nice new start to your new world.  By the time we are done you'll be able to create a character completely and start out in the game world... Only one slight problem of course... No stores to buy anything from so you'll be stuck with just the shirt on your back and some shackles left over from that night you were WAY too drunk to remember.

Almost.  Last thing to do is a wee bit of scripting and changes to the base quests in order to give you a nice new start to your new world.  By the time we are done you'll be able to create a character completely and start out in the game world... Only one slight problem of course... No stores to buy anything from so you'll be stuck with just the shirt on your back and some shackles left over from that night you were WAY too drunk to remember.

short init

short init

short convCount

short convCount

short warnCount

short warnCount

short hurryCount

short hurryCount

end

end

Once that is done hit save and then go to Script->New.  In the Blank Script that opens copy and paste the following:

Once that is done hit save and then go to Script->New.  In the Blank Script that opens copy and paste the following:

if state == 0

if state == 0

set state to 1

set state to 1

endif

endif