Door Markers

Here I explain how to link one or more doors from an exterior cell to an interior cell.

1. Give each door you add a unique ID Name. (Do this before you try to link any doors in your cell - otherwise you get random results. So name all doors in your interior cell and any doors in your exterior cell that you have placed - regardless of whether you plan to link-to them or not. Make sure the names mean something to help you identify them when you link-to them.)

a. Once you add the door to the cell (world or interior) then double-click the door.

b. At the top of the window that appears is space for you to enter a unique door ID Name.

2. Go to one of the doors you plan to link and double-click it. (I normally go to my exterior cell door.)

3. Select Teleport tab.

4. Select Cell and select the cell you want to teleport to. (So if in exterior cell I would select my interior cell.)

5. Now a list of doors for that cell should show up in the Reference space, but mine never do and I get a blank area here.
So how do you solve that?

a. Go up and click on the Linked Door: Reference In Window button.

b. Now you have a red cross hair icon and use that to double-click the door you are linking-from in this cell (the same door you double-clicked to start all this).

c. Now you may have to go to 4 and do that again. The key is you want to be able to see the drop down list in the Reference space list of doors.

d. Now you can finally see the Reference space list of doors for the cell you want to link-to - the doors should be named so you can easily identify them.

6. It might be good at this point to click "OK" and make sure you can see the door marker you just added to this current cell - if you can't see it you might try the whole process again with the door out from the house - sometimes it gets lost in the house mesh.

7. Ok so now what? While you are here position the door marker so it faces out from the door you are linking-from and then double-click the door marker (it is yellow with an arrow coming out of it).

8. The question window that pops up asks: View Door Reference for this Door Marker? Click Yes.

9. You are teleported to the other door you just linked-to (for me the interior door - up till this point I've only been in my exterior cell).

10. Now you should be able to see the linked-to door's door marker (it is yellow with an arrow too). If you can't see it, it might be in the mesh or behind something else - it should be there - search for it you will find it - if anything just zoom in on it.

11. Position linked-to door marker so it is facing out from the door. (Note on door marker placement: Leave a little space between it and the door, I think if it gets too close you fall through the world, floor, etc.)

Repeat this for each door you plan to link. And save and save and save (just in case :) )

Hope this has helped.

Whist34 00:07, 19 April 2006 (EDT)

WARNING

(added 8/4/2006 by COMPUTWITCH, A different wikki user)

After 3 days of fighting the construction set and looking thorough the help forums, I finally found out that you CANNOT directly link together doors to create teleportation between structures that have been created and saved in different .esp files (also referred to as plugins or mods.) You can only link doors between cells that have been created and saved as part of the existing, active .esp file, then link the door(s) from your .esp file structure(s) to the door(s) placed in an existing space inside the original oblivion gameworld. (What you can see and access with no plugins running, such as a piece of wilderness or an existing gameworld structure such as a house, shop, or cave/dungeon/ruins)

Also, you cannot add a door to your existing .esp file structure, link it to another door, then save the door addition and link as a seperate .esp file, effectivly creating a plugin to a plugin. The oblivion plugin manager programming specificly prohibits crosslinking mods or running a plugin to a plugin (to a plugin to a plugin.....)in order to maintain, as much as possible, both master file and plugin stability and compatibility.

For instance, if you make or download a house mod and name it "My house 1" and add a spare door to it that goes nowhere, then at a later date make or download another house mod and name it "My house 2", and add a spare door to it going nowhere, then load up either of the house mods as the active file and attempt to link the two doors together with a teleport marker, it will not work. What will happen is when you load the mods back up in the editor, you will get several missing object errors, then several more errors stating somthing to the effect of "myhouse 1 is not a previous, unique object. previous object is type CELL. myhouse1 will be renamed myhouse1COPY001. continue playing? Yes/No/Yes to all". This error will appear between 2 and 4 times, listing both of the mods you linked and and/or listing the doors you tried to link. If you try to play the mods, the game will either crash on startup or ignore the doors you created.

This problem has plagued many of the people (myself included) I have seen posting in the help forums who have downloded a number of house mods and then tried to link them together directly via added doors or link them to the catacomb mod that is currently available, (On August 5, 2006) at www.oblivionsourse.com.

There is, fortunatly, a workaround to this problem that provides a good solution without having to copy the entire .esp file you are trying to create a link to, merging it with the current one, deleting or moving the old .esp file, then restoring the lost links, lighting, etc. (see note at end of workaround section)

The Workaround

Created by COMPUTWITCH

For my example I will use a plugin currently available (on August 5, 2006)at www.oblivion source.com: The "house tunnels/catacombs" mod.

The "housetunnels/catacombs" mod connects all of the purchasable houses in the game to one another via trap doors in the basement and a short but winding set of caves. Lets say we want to link the house in the "Myhome" mod to the catacombs in the "housetunnels" mod. If we load the construction set, put doors in the catacombs and the house, save the doors, reload the construction set, and then link them, the resulting save will crosslink the two mods together and create the aforementioned "not a unique object" errors, no matter which file is set active. The only way to make this type of link work is to link a door from the catacombs to a wilderness space just outside your house.

What I did was loaded the catacomb mod as the active file, put a door in the catacombs in a likely looking place, then saved the mod with the door added but not going anywhere. Then I reloaded the construction set, opened the myhome cell (catacombs is still the active file) and viewed the linked door going to the outside. Just outside the front door is a well door siting to the left of a stable. the well door doesn't go anywhere, but i cant use it, because it is part of the "myhome" mod and it's use would create a crosslink. Panning around the well gave me an easy reference to an available wilderness cell on the other side of the stable. Since I'm no good at landscaping yet, I dragged a matching well door from the object menu and plopped it down by the stable on the rignt side, so now looking out my front door I see a well door to the left of the stable and another well door to the right of it. Once added, I clicked the teleport tab, linked it to the previously added catacomb door, adjusted the teleport markers accordingly, then saved again.

End result: If I load the "catacombs" mod but not the "myhouse" mod, I can walk down the road by where my house should have been (but isn't,) and see a well sitting off to the side of the road. Approching the well I see it's a door and POOF!! down to the catacombs I go, meaning that the link to the catacombs is independent of the "myhome" mod and will work with or without it running. But since we intentionally placed the well door next to where the stable sits with the "myhome" mod running, the house tunnels mod now works nicely with the "myhome" mod running as well. So, if I reload the game with the "catcombs" mod and the "myhome" mods both running, I can walk out my door, go to the stables, go to the well on the rignt, and access the catacombs, and it looks like the well was originally part of the myhouse mod all along, even though it's not. WAY cool effect!!!! (I created a well and attached it to the other well door later, so both doors would go somewhere)

I can now do the same thing with each one of the other house mods I have (and mabye my favorite shops in town while i'm at it) by adding more doors to the catacombs and placing well doors, trapdoors, or whatever other portal object seems appropriate ousdide the homes, creating an interlinking set of tunnels to wherever i want to go. If winding tunnels do not suit your taste, you could create a room full of doors or Arcane Univiersity tower portals and use it as a sort of "Grand Central Station" to go anywhere in the oblivion world you wanted to go in liu of fast traveling everywhere.

Another variation of this plan would be to skip the catacombs entirely and link a door fom one house mod directly to a well door or other portal object outside the other house, saving the change, then loading the other house as the active file and linking a door from it to a portal object ouside the first house, to create two way transport.

The moral of this story: While there as many variations to the way you execute this plan as there are people to execute it, the concept of modifying .esp mod files to fit together like puzzle pieces so they appear to be joined while actually remaining independent is one of the simplest yet effective plans I can think of to solve the potential crosslinking issues that arise when trying to link structures created in different .esp mod plugin files.

Hope this has helped.

Computwitch

NOTE: There is an Article in the questions section concerning the actual merging together of mods which may be of interest to people who would rather merge the .esp files of the houses they are trying to connect together to create a single mod, making direct linking of the doors possible, rather than try to implement a workaround solution such as the one presented here.