A beginner's guide, lesson 1 - The Construction Set Primer
A. BUILDINGS AND STRUCTURES
Lesson One: The Construction Set Primer
This is the first in a proposed series of Tutorial Lessons aimed at teaching how to mod TES IV: Oblivion aimed at beginners. It will build up into a Complete Modding Course. Don't worry there are no exams, though there is some homework. It is not intended to aid the transfer of modders from Morrowind nor it is intended for experience modders. Although as the series develops you may find something of interest in them.
Introduction
I can tell you the exact moment I decided I wanted to try my hand at modding. I was on a quest and was riding my horse along the road from Weynon Priory to Cloud Ruler Temple. It happens quite early on in the Main Quest. The novelty of riding hadn’t yet worn off so I rode everywhere. As I rode higher into the hills on the Orange Road, I came to a narrow bridge. Crossing the bridge I looked to my right, and if my NPC could have fallen off his horse, he would have. The view took in the Imperial City and the Upper Nibbon with Bravil fading into the distance. I thought to myself, wow, this is where I want to live.
The problem of course was that to the left where the Ideal house location would be, was a sheer
wall of rock. In my imagination those rocks opened up to reveal a perfect valley and a massive
manor house, supported by a wonderful little village. I so wanted this. I wanted a mod, and since no one was going to do justice to my imagination like me, I was going to have to do it myself.
I downloaded the Construction Set (CS) and pulled up the Wiki, ready to make my dreams come true.
Then reality set in.
The Wiki is a very good solid technical manual, but it is not user friendly. All the stuff is in there, but you need to have a clue what you are looking for. I knew I was going to have to take small steps to realise my dream.
The first steps we will take will be just that. Little baby steps, that will start us off in a
long journey. Do not be discouraged. Many of the modders producing those fantastic mods you see
on sites like The Elder Scrolls Source have been modding Morrowind for years and the change to
Oblivion has been easier for them.
We ‘newbies’ have a lot of catching up to do. So let’s get started.
I suppose we should begin with the obvious question, what is a mod? A mod is an additional piece of programming that alters or modifies some aspect of the original game. Bethesda have made this process easier. They clearly recognise that games like TES thrive and gain extra longevity by encouraging mods. To aid this they have provided the interface software called the Construction Set.
YOU WILL NEED TO DOWNLOAD A COPY OF THIS BEFORE WE CAN START.
Now just before we look at the CS, let’s load up the game. Select a saved game, any will do. Now save it two or three times. It is always a good idea to make several saves before you try
modding, or indeed before you activate or deactivate any downloaded mods.
Once in the game, fast travel to the village of Weye. It’s located just outside the Imperial City west of the Talos Plaza gate. It actually doesn’t matter where we go to do this experiment but it makes sense for all of us to be in the same place.
As you look around you see a picturesque village with a few houses and an Inn. Behind you the
Imperial City looms. I’m feeling thirsty, let’s get ourselves a drink. Walk up to the inn door.
The door icon appears. You press spacebar and enter the inn… only in reality you don’t. The door doesn’t swing open to reveal the interior.
When you pressed the spacebar the loading screen appeared. This is an in-game visual clue that
you are changing location. The game consists of a huge array of locations, which the CS refers to as worlds. These are independent but linked spaces. The door you used was a portal. Activating it told the game you wished to move from an exterior world which contains the models for all the buildings and landscapes to an interior world which representing the inside of the bar. The exterior inn building you saw outside is a shell.
Basically it’s four walls a roof and a door. The door is special linking object which when
activated lets the game know which interior location you want to jump or teleport to. The two
spaces or worlds are not dimensionally linked. You could store an entire Palace worth of rooms in a small shed if you liked. It would just be a bit silly. We will do something like this when
testing our mods later in the series.
[Design note. Now that you know what to look for, make a note of any locations in the game that
you think are cool, you can then look them up later to see how they did that.]
The exterior world of Cyrodiil is made up of a number of tiles or CELLS. Each cell defines a
particular location. These are joined together to form an exterior world. You know you are
passing from one to another because that loading area bit appears. In a later lesson we will look at these exterior cells and look at how we can change these.
In the first few lessons we will concentrate only on interior cells.
Have a look around the bar, note the objects on the bar counter. In this first lesson we will
modify this.
Save your game, and exit Oblivion.
Now start up the CS.
Files Types
In most of these lessons we will concern ourselves with just three file types. Don’t worry the CS writes all the files for you.
<filename>.esm <filename>.esp <filename>.nif
For a mod to work the game needs to know 3 things. The file you plan to change. This is called the Elder Scrolls MASTER file, or esm. For all these early files this is going to be the Oblivion master file (oblivion.esm – located in the games data folder). The CS knows where it is.
It also needs the name of the Elder Scrolls PLUG-IN that you are writing (this is your mod file).
These are designated as esp files. If you don’t give it a name it will write a new one.
Finally it will need information about any objects you add to the world. These are image files
called NIF’s.
The game already knows about thousands of the objects and we can use this library of image files to populate our world with stuff. Later in the series we can look at changing and adding our own NIF files.
The developers have left the options for experienced gamers pretty open but it can be a little
awkward for us newbies. So here’s what we have to do each time we use the CS. We need to let the CS know what esm and esp files we wish to work on.
Open the file menu. From the options select Data. We will look at the other options in more
advanced lessons. The Data dialog box should open. It looks in the oblivion/data folder for all
esm and esp files it contains. If you have no mods installed, the only file to show up will be
oblivion.esm – if you have installed other mods these will show up as files with esm or esp file extensions depending on how their developers wrote them.
To choose a file, double click on it. Do this to the oblivion.esm file. Leave all the others
unchecked, we don’t want to mess up their hard work. Select Done, and a dialog warning box pops
up telling you that you haven’t selected an active file.
So what is that all about? Any changes that you make are stored by the CS until you save it. All changed information has an asterisk added. When you save you will need to tell the game the file to save the information to.
The default setup protects the original files so you can’t overwrite them. However if you wish to amend a mod and keep the same file name you can activate that file. When you save, the CS will overwrite that file. Generally speaking you should only activate a file when you want to alter it. You can not activate the oblivion.esm file. This protection means we can’t break the game.
In this first tutorial you should only select the oblivion file and click done. At the warning,
click yes. We now have no active file.
The CS will now load the data. This may take a little time depending on your system. You can see the progress along the bottom of the window. When it has loaded you are ready to mod.
The Construction Set
There should be three mini windows on display. Two on the top and one below. These are the object window, the render window and the cell window. You can open and close them using the view menu but for most tasks you will want to have all three windows open. Generally we select a cell in the Cell window, look at it in the render window and drop objects in to the render window from the object window.
Let’s look at the function of these key windows.
The Object window contains a list of all the objects in the game. These are sorted into
categories depending on the objects function. World Objects/Armor for example, contains objects
that provide combat protection in the game. We will cover each group as and when we use them. The objects can be edited and customised but we will stick to the standard objects.
The Cell window contains a list of all the cells or worlds in the game.
On the left is the cell selection lists, on the right the cell contents list which will be blank until you select a cell. A cell is a location, it could be a room, a set of rooms or an area of wilderness.
The drop down menu allows you to move from interiors to the different external worlds. We will look at the external worlds in a later lesson. The game defaults to interiors. Take a little moment to shift from one cell list to another to see how the list on the right changes, then when you’re ready to continue, select interiors again.
If you click on the first cell in the list, the abandoned mine, you should see a list of bjects
on the right hand side. These are all the elements contained in the Abandoned Mine cell, ie. all the pots, chests, NPCs and rooms that make up the space you explore in this dungeon.
Now scroll down the cell selection list to find WawnetInn Tavern.
You can speed the process up by hitting the W key to scroll down to the locations that start with letter W. When you’ve found the cell select it. The Cell contents list will fill up. If you double click on the Weynetinn cellname the object will appear in the render window.
The Render Window
The render window is your view into the world you are creating or changing. When you click again on the Wawnetinn Tavern cell the picture should appear in the render window. It is likely to be a small block in the lower left of the window.
Navigating and manipulating the render window is vital to any mod you make.
Objects are dropped into the world by dragging them from the object list into the render window.
You then manipulate the objects from that window.
It is therefore crucial that you are able to operate within the window with confidence or nothing meaningful can be achieved. I suspect this is why so many potential modders give up. This is a shame, the more modders there are the more mods we will get. This will make our gaming world more varied and interesting. So don’t give up, stick with it.
The fact is that for a beginner using the window can be a pain in the preverbal.
This is because several of the functions are counter-intuitive. Because the game world is 3-d and your screen is 2-d there is a problem. You will need to be able to move left and right (y-axis) front and back (x-axis) and up and down (z-axis). However, your mouse can only move along two of these axes, but which two.
Intuition suggests left/right and up/down. But it turn out that when using the tool you are far
more likely want to use the x and y directions. The developers recognised this so moving your
mouse up and down, moves the object backwards and forwards. It is a pain at first but you soon
get used to it.
To access the z-axis you need to hold down the Z key.
You will need to practice and be able to do two key things in the render window.
1. Move the Camera
The camera is your view of the world. To move it you will use a combination of key and mouse
commands.
First click on the grey part of the render screen away from the objects. This is the standard
deselect option. You can also press the D key. I always deselect before I move the camera. You
don’t have to but it does prevent you from moving an object by mistake if you misskey.
Now select the Wawnet object. A multi-coloured box will appear around the little block. The box
defines the area of the object in its three dimensions. It is used in Collision detection and
Havoc physics.
[Aside, double click on the block and a dialog box will open giving information about the block. Check that the name of the object is <name>. If it is not, close the dialog box, deselect and try again. In the central area is some information about the objects position. This lists the objects x, y, and z co-ords, and some info about rotation. These should all read 0,0,0. This is the default position. If in the course of the tutorial you drag the building out of the way by mistake. Don’t panic. Select it open the dialog and reset it to 0,0,0. ]
With objects selected press C. You should now have a view with the block in the centre of the
window. C is your centre tool. It always centres the selected object.
Now lets look at zoom. This is the function of the centre wheel. Scroll in and out and watch the image in the window.
Zoom out a bit and press T. The render changes to a nice top down view. Again you can zoom in and out. Till move the camera to give you a top down view of the selected object. It may however be blocked by objects which are above it.
Another way to zoom is to hold the V key while moving the mouse (no buttons pressed). This is finer move than the scroll and allows a much closer view. But usually the scroll wheel get the job done.
Practice using these and when you are ready move on.
Next let’s pan the camera. This allows you to move the camera in the normal mouse directions.
Zoom in so you can get a nice view of the inn. Now press and hold the centre wheel button or the spacebar on the keyboard. Move the mouse and you can move the camera about the room.
By combining these camera moves you can look at any of the objects in the window.
Practice makes perfect.
However, it might not be the best view. To complete the camera functions we need to be able to
rotate the camera. This is done by combining the Shift Key and a mouse move. Do not hold down any of the mouse buttons. The camera rotates about the selected object. If you have selected the Inn block it rotates about the centre of the block. Practice this. Now select an object in the inn like a table or a stool. Again try rotating. Practice selecting objects, viewing them in close up and from different angles. Remember not to press the left or right mouse buttons. When I started I was so used to drag and drop I kept doing this in camera moves.
Why shouldn’t you do this? Because this is how we move and manipulate object in the world.
Holding the left mouse key allows you to drag objects in the x, y plane. (left, right, front,
back). Combining this with the top view , T can be a very useful techniques. Click on one of the small objects like a beer mug. Use zoom, pan and rotate to get the best view of it. Now move the mug across the table. Select the mug, go to Top View, zoom out a little. Left click the mug and drag it to a new position on the table.
Believe it or not you have just done your first mod. It is a mod that shifts the position of a
beer mug in Weynet Inn. Ok it’s a pointless mod, but it is a mod nonetheless for that.
Let’s move on to a few more useful keys.
Turn your focus to the bar. It is good practice in using the camera. Now select an object on the bar. Any will do. We can now look at the cell content list on the right of the cell window. Scroll down and you should find the object highlighted. Rick click on it brings up a menu. Select delete. The object disappears. If you now use the edit menu you can undo it (or CTRL + V)
To quickly delete objects you can select it and press CTRL + X.
You can select multiple objects as well. Deselect (D), then using Left Mouse button held down draw around the objects in the render window.
Alternatively you can use CTRL + left click in the Cell content window.
Clear the bar of all objects. If you delete the bar, use CTRL + Z to undo it. (Don’t panic when using the CS, Ctrl + Z is a useful undo tool).
We have now removed objects from the Scene.
As a final part of this lesson, let’s add some objects of our own.
When I first started this was the most frustrating of all the activities. Let’s face it; this is what modding is really about. We want to add stuff that wasn’t there before. It can be awkward to get this right; hopefully this guide will ease you in.
Let’s go back to the object window. At first this can be a bewildering thing. There are just so
many things. Again gradually you will learn to use the menu and indeed the names of your favourite objects.
The objects are to a degree sorted by their function. We want to look at the WORLD OBJECTS. Ignore the rest for now. The world objects are again sorted by function or use.
For example, Armor and Weapons contain exactly what they say. All the armour and weapons contained in the game. These are further sorted by type. Ebony, Iron etc. These are objects you can pick up and equip.
Containers contain all the boxes, chests, and crates that can be used to hold things. Magic contains the potions that you can collect.
In this first tutorial we will look at using:
MiscItem
We are going to use the MiscItem menu for now. This contains all the no value and low value clutter that you can pick up but not do anything useful with. Plates, Cups, Bowls and so on. Again there is a bewildering list of bits and pieces. Practice will teach you what most of these are. Objects with names that begin with MQ are quest based items and are best avoided.
Concentrate for now on the stuff related to a class (economic).
These usually begin with the prefix LC, MC, UC, lower, middle, upper, lowerclass, middleclass,
and upperclass. Let’s find a lower class plate and drop it on the bar.
You can scroll through and try to find it. Another way is to narrow the search by using the find text option. In the edit menu select find text. A dialog box opens. Type in ‘plate’ and press go.
After a few seconds you can look under the object tab. Look for references that have the MiscItem description. You can click at the top to sort by description.
Here is where the CS has really missed a trick. Ideally you should be able to drag and drop from here but alas that is not possible. Note the name of the object and then find it in the object list.
Anyway, once you have located a plate that you want (any will do). We will set about putting it on the bar.
If you drag this onto the render screen it will appear. You may have to zoom out a bit to see it clearly. There is very little subtlety here. Trying to put this item on the bar using left click and drag, is a leftclicking drag. There is an easier way, thanks to those shortcut keys.
First select the bar and use T to get a top down view. Zoom out a little so the whole bar can be seen.
Now drag and drop the plate into the render window. You should now be able to move the object so it is directly above the bar. But it’s probably sitting in mid air a good few feet above the bar.
We now want to change the height so that it sits on the bar.
We will learn about 4 techniques today. We should practice all 4, even though some are harder
than others, because all will have some use in time.
1.
The first is the mouse method. Use the Z key and the LH mouse (=LMB, Left Mouse Button) to move
the object. The coloured box around the object is a useful guide to when it is in position. If
any part of the coloured border sinks into the bar, you have gone too far. This is a fairly slow technique and uses a lot of camera changes. Be patient. You will normally use this technique to position objects on vertical surfaces like walls rather than horizontal surfaces like the bar.
Stick with it.
2.
The second technique uses references from other similar objects, in this case the plate we have
just placed. Double Click on the plate. Remember those x,y,z co-ordinate information we mentioned before. Look at the info giving the plates positions. Write down the z co-ordinate.
Once done, select the bar again, get the top view and drop another plate into the render window
and reposition it above the bar. Now double click on this new plate and type in the z co-ord you have just written down. The new plate snaps to this new point on the bar. This is a great way to get a lot of objects at a precise height. But they must be identical objects. The xyz
co-ordinates actually refer to the location of the centre of the yellow cross inside the objects multicoloured box.
3.
Set up another plate above the bar. We are now going to learn one of the most important keys in
the CS. This is the F key. This causes the selected object to fall. It will fall until it hits
another object. It is a great way to add objects on to tables, floors etc. Take care though. The object will stop when it hits an object. Check its height later to see nothing stopped it on the way down.
(handy hint, when decorating an empty room try to work from the floor up. Start with carpets,
then furniture that stands on the floor. Then objects which stand on the furniture. This way the F key can be really powerful).
The last technique is to use the CTRL + D function. This makes a duplicate of an object in
exactly the same position. It’s brilliant for stacking and repeat tasking. Select one of the
plates on the bar and then press CTRL + D. The object may change appearance. This is a side
effect of the doubling. Now select and drag one of these plates across the bar. You will see the new plate appear. Position it so it does not collide with any other objects.
We now have 4 plates on the bar. Practice if you like dropping other objects using the F key and the CTRL + D to duplicate them.
The final part of this first lesson involves rotating objects. Select an object that will clearly show the rotation has occurred. A mug with a handle will do. You rotate using the right hand mouse button (usually referred as Right Mouse Button, RMB). But here is the thing rotation occurs only in the z axis. This is the most common type of rotation and is the easiest to perform.
[To rotate in the x axis use X + RMB]
{To rotate in the y axis use Z + RMB}
You can also use the right hand rotation boxes in the objects pop up dialog box. This is best if you want precise angles like 90, 180 and 270 etc.
Practice doing this.
Finally a couple of extra bits
Holding X when dragging an object restricts movement to the x axis only. (Very handy when hanging stuff on a wall).
Holding Y when dragging an object restricts movement to the y axis only. (Very handy for stocking shelves).
Now all we have to do is save our handy work. Select File/Save. Call it something useful like
Test-1. Close the CS.
Load the game and if you want to see the damage you did, activate your mod. Don’t save your game or you may make your damage permanent.
Congratulations you have now done your first mod. Ok it’s a useless mod that beats up a very nice bar, but a mod none the less. More importantly you have learned the techniques needed to navigate around the render screen and to manipulate objects.
To restore the inn to all its former glory, simple deactivate your mod.
Key Controls Summary
Camera Centre Wheel Scroll – Zoom Centre Wheel Hold – Pan Shift + mouse -- Rotate C – Centre On selected T – Top View selected Object D – De-select LH mouse – move x, y Z + LH mouse move z X + LH mouse move x only Y + LH mouse move y only F – Fall CTRL x – delete CTRL c – copy CTRL v – paste CTRL d – copy and paste in present position (double) LH mouse (from deselected) select multi-objects RH mouse – rotate RH mouse + y rotate about y RH mouse + x rotate about x
Ok hope this has helped get you started. Next time we will add a new basement room to the Inn and decorate it.
Bye for now, see you in Lesson Two.
Tom Dawson