Difference between revisions of "A beginner's guide, lesson 2 - Creating a room"

 

 

*'''Base Object''' - This gives you information about the file containing the data about objects. Next to it is the ‘Edit base’ button. We will use this later on.

 

We will begin with the door called < ChorrolLoadDoorMiddle01>

The tabs tell us its location, that it is owned by an NPC called Talasma and that it has an average lock.

 

 

 

 

 

In this case the ChorrolExterior 15 (-17, 22) cell. Eh!! ChorrolExterior15 is an exterior cell inside the Chorrol World. This is the area enclosed by the city walls that contain all the buildings, trees etc that make up the city of Chorrol. The (-17,22) refers to the x, y co-ordinates inside that cell.

REFERENCE -This tells you the name of the door that we are linked to.

In this case it is Chorrolloaddoormiddle01. This is the same as the reference for the interior door in the tavern. It doesn't have to be the same. But, it makes sense. Doors don't often look different on the front and back. It's a design choice.  

VIEW LINKED DOOR and VIEW TELEPORT MARKER - These buttons allow you to jump to the place where the door goes.

Click either of them and the render window will update to show you the exterior of Chorrol and the door into the tavern. Click again and you’re back where you started. Neat! In this case both buttons seem to do the same job, so why double up.

Remember, during lesson one, how we talked about spaces, worlds and cells being linked together artificially by teleport links that tell the game to load up and move you to particular location.

The fast travel operation is an obvious example, but in fact this happens every time you open a door and the load screen pops up. The doors themselves are activators. When you press the spacebar in game, the program carries out the required teleport instruction.  

The teleport marker tells the game the exact position to place you when you teleport. The marker is the yellow box with the odd pink pyramid on its side. The yellow box says where in space you will appear, and the pyramid points in the direction you will face. You don’t need to place the teleport marker near the door. Again it is a design choice. It makes sense for this to happen, so it does in most examples in the game.

Now let's investigate the two doors marked ChorrolDoorMiddleAnim04 and the oakandcrosierrentdoor.

These refer to the two upstairs guest rooms. It's a bit dark up there, so it might help to shed some light on the situation. This is done using the '''A''' key. That's much better, we can see.

The doors have similar looks. The middle04 door refers to a guest room. it has a hard lock, and it's teleport info is....

What's going on here? The teleport tick box is unchecked and there is some greyed out info about the ‘abandoned mine’.

I have to admit I panicked when this first happened. I thought I had broken the game. I know for a fact that there is a room behind that door because when I first stayed in Chorrol, I spent a night in that room levelling up. It turns out that there are two types of doors: teleport doors--like ChorrolLoadDoorMiddle01--which, when activated, transport the player to their target, and "opening" doors, which when activated physically swing open. These types of doors are used in display cases, and other doors that you don't want to teleport the player somewhere. So panic over, I haven’t broken the game...

 

 

The Tabs tell us that the door is owned by a faction called Generic Owner. (A kind of catch all faction. Faction is only really relevant if the PC can join it.) The Lock on the door is very easy. It is levelled so that it will get harder to pick as you get better in the game but doesn't require the PC to have a key to open it.

 

 

The Teleport tab tells us that this links to the Cellar of the Oak and Crosier, and that the door inside the cellar is of a similar type to this one.

 

===Unlocking the Basement===

First select the owner tab. In the Faction drop down list select NONE. Now the door belongs to no one and we can open it without triggering any alarms. Now go to the lock tab, and in the top left corner uncheck the locked tick box. The door is now unlocked. Great! However, if we go into the cellar, we are entering a room that belongs to someone else and we are trespassing. Let’s change that.

 

 

 

 

You can now save your mod (File/Save). Call it something useful like test02. Now before we go look in the game, just have a quick look at the objects inside the cellar. You'll notice that some of the objects listed under containers are still owned by an NPC. These are locked chests. If you feel you deserve a treat for all your effort so far, go ahead and change these to none and unlocked. It's a cheat. You’re getting something for nothing. If this bothers you, don't do it.  

Now Close or minimise the CS, start the game, activate your mod, and go look round the cellar. When you have had a good nose come back upstairs and Save again. DO NOT SAVE WHILE YOU’RE DOWN IN THE CELLAR because we are about to mod it out of existence.

Load up the CS. This time select BOTH the oblivion.esm and the Test02 mod you've just created. Make the TEST02 active. We might as well overwrite this mod since some of the work we need to do is already done.

Take a deep breath, we are about to get creative and carry out some real functional Modding at last.

Firstly, we will need a cell to work in. We create this by copying an existing cell. We could copy any cell but since we are altering the cellar it makes sense to copy that.

A new cell appears called ChorroltheOakandcrosierCellarCopy001. We change this by left-clicking on the name and waiting a few seconds. Change it if you like. The game has no rules about the name you give a cell as long as it is unique. Call it ChorroltheOakandcrosierCellarAlternative if you want. This will make it easier to find later.

The NORTHMARKER is an aesthetic object. It does not show up in the game but does play an important role in the immersion into the game.

When we fast travelled to Chorrol, we were facing North with the door behind us. The Entrance to the tavern was roughly to the North West. When we enter the Tavern and teleported in with our back to the door we still face North West.  

 

 

Ok, go ahead and delete these objects. You could leave the door and the Northmarker since we will be putting them back later but since this is a practice drill we should do everything from scratch.

Save it. (In fact, you should save within the CS on a regular basis. Not necessarily after every tiny change, but certainly after you perform major functions like positioning a room, Furnishing it etc. This is not only to avoid dirty mods but because, although the platform is fairly stable, it is not rock solid. So save, save and save again.)

==The Object Window Lists==

The first thing we need is a room to work in.  

The templates or artwork for these are located in the Object Window with its huge lists. The Lists are organised into five big categories:

The World Objects category is where the buildings are kept.

 

 

What we want are the static objects/ Architecture List. Select this.  

In the world objects, select doors, locate the ChorrolDoorMiddleAnim03 and drop it into the window. Use the object placement techniques we learned in Lesson 1 to put the door in position at the top of the stairs. it's not a perfect fit, but if we put it in front of the rectangular door space it will do the job fine.

Before we link it to the Tavern lets just look at the NorthMarker.

Now I have had a real problem adding NorthMakers to the window, but I have found a fix around. Try dragging and dropping first. Sometimes it works - sometimes it doesn't. If it doesn't here’s what to do. From the Static list, drag in a Night Mother Statue Base in to the window. It’s the object just above the Northmarker. Now use search and replace to replace it with the NorthMarker. Position the NorthMarker just outside the door and adjust its' Z angle to 270 so it faces left in the render window view. Now go to top view and shift it about 5 degrees. This ties in with the marker in the original cellar cell. You can move between the two to confirm the set up.  

The next task is to link the door from your room to the tavern, First we are going to disable the existing link. This is because the CS has already allocated a link to that door and will not let us use it. It’s a useful safety feature.

Load up the original tavern cell, and locate the cellar door. Open the cellar doors reference window. Now select teleport. Uncheck the teleport check. We have broken the link. Close the box and open it again. Tick the box and you will be greeted, assuming no other mods are loaded with the CELL and REFERENCE information about the Abandoned mine.

Click on the drop down menu to the right of the Cell information and scroll down to find

Now do the same to the reference box. Here we are offered only one option which is the ChorrolDoorMiddleAnim03 we have added. If we had added other doors, we would have been offered other options. That’s the link done. The CS takes care of the other side of the door (in the cellar) for us.  

Now do the same for the cellar. Save your mod. Go test it, return to the CS and reactivate it (or just save and minimise the CS).

Now let’s add some extra touches. First right-click and choose edit on the ChorroltheOakandcrosierCellarAlternative. In the Interior Data section, select the NPC owner and scroll down till you find player. You now own the cellar.

 

==Decoration==

 

 

 

 

 

Containers

 

 

Save the mod. This is a backup in case you make a mistake. Now select edit base. Now look at the ID at the top of the box. Change it to something meaningful and unique. It can be anything as long as it is unique. The CS will challenge you if you don’t do this. I prefer to name my custom objects by adding my initials and a short code about which mod I’m using then the name. So if I was about to change the barrel called BarrelMiddleClutterSame03 in a mod for a building called Verona House, I might call it:

 

TDVERHBarrelMiddleClutterSame03.

You can now add or delete items, you can decide to respawn or level.

 

 

 

 

The box will read for the above operation  

What this is saying is that you have changed the name of the Master file relating to the middle class barrel. Should I change all middle class barrels or make a new form? You want a new form, so click '''Yes'''.

 

 

 

 

 

Just a quick tip here. Position one book, on top of the bookshelf using the techniques we discussed last lesson. Now hit '''F''' repeatedly. Wait a few seconds between taps and eventually the book will fall through the bookcase top onto the shelf. If you plan to add a lot of books, try this. Lift the first book so it hovers in the air. Use '''CTRL - D''' to duplicate it and move it along so it is in the correct position next to the first book. You now have two hovering books. Leave them for now. Use Search and replace to change books to get a variety. The reason we let the books hover? Well, some books are larger than others. This method will stop these bigger books colliding with the shelf. Once the shelf is full, you can go along and make each book fall. Job done!

Lights

 

 

There are three types of lighting effects provided. One type is those which look like practical lights but don’t work. You will find these under statics.

 

 

The other two are listed under World Objects/Lights. The second type of light looks like a light emitting object (eg candle, chandelier, etc) and works. The other is simply an ambient light with no physical form. I have found that the practical working lights offer the best atmosphere but at an increased processor cost. Try to mix these up to get a smooth running mod.

 

 

In [[A beginner's guide, lesson 3 - The external world|Lesson 3]] we step out into the world and start looking at exteriors and landscaping.