World Space: Enemies, Pathing, and Randomly Teleporting Doors

Now, we get to place the enemies!

Before you start, remember what I said earlier about Oblivion being like hell? That doesn't apply to our enemy placement, so don't go putting twenty or so enemies guarding the Oblivion Gate. Try and have the enemies on their own, instead of in groups because any Daedra is supposed to be a challenge for the player, and, sure enough, the Daedra seem to be able to find each other without our help.

Now, that doesn't mean to make this a walk-in-the-park for the player, we've still got to get an appropriate number of enemies so the player doesn't find our Oblivion plane too easy or too hard. Depending on the size of the islands, let's start with three to five enemies on the Oblivion Gate island, and two to four on our citadel island (or vice versa if your citadel island is bigger) plus maybe one on the bridge connecting the two islands.

Use leveled enemies that begin with either the string "LL1Daedra" or "LL1Dremora".

Presuming you've done the First Dungeon Tutorial, you know the next step; pathgrid. This is probably nothing new, so get to it.

And finally, the last things we need to do!

Drag from the Static tab the object "XMarkerHeading". This is a special marker that can act as a teleport marker for randomly teleporting doors. Randomly teleporting doors are doors that randomly choose from a list of possible destinations, and teleports the player to the destination it chooses. Now, back to our marker, place it in front of the gate and rotate it so that the arrow is pointing away from the gate.

We're not done, yet! Double click on the Oblivion Gate and click on the teleport tab, then Select Object in Render Window and double-click on our marker. Our gate is now "connected" to our marker. When the player is teleported from an Oblivion Gate in Tamriel, he/she will start in front of the gate.

Now, the citadel has no door... Let's add one. Drag "OblivionRDCitadelEntrance" from the Door list (supposing you don't have more than one door on your citadel, otherwise you'll have to make your own special citadel interior) and place it on the steps of the citadel. This is also a randomly teleporting door, so repeat the steps we used for the Oblivion Gate ("Xmarkerheading").

Next, we've got to generate a LOD for the land, that means the distant landscape, and a degree of short-range landscape too. Start up the heighmap editor, and choose our World Space, click "File" and "Generate LOD". Depending on the speed of your computer, you may want to choose between quick prototype, which is faster, but less accurate, or the full version of generating an LOD, which takes longer, but is more accurate. Know that you should make any landscaping changes before generating an LOD. This could take a while, so maybe you should get a snack, or a book, or something while you wait for it to complete...

Now, to test our plane of Oblivion, we're going to tweak all the gates in Tamriel, or you'll have to have a special door leading to the plane using an X Marker if you've completed the Main Quest. Double-click on "OblivionGatetoOblivion" in WorldObjects -Door -Oblivion -Gate. You see the list of World Spaces? Delete everything in the list, and add our World Space to the list. To do this, click on the "World" Tab at the top of the screen, then click "World Spaces..." then drag ours from the World Spaces list and drop it in the Oblivion Gate list.

Add the World Space to the "randomly teleports to" list for "OblivionRDCitadelExit" too. We do this so that the doors inside and outside recognize each other as a possible destination. Now we're ready for testing! Close the TES:IV CS and start Oblivion - just make sure that our plug-in is loaded.

When you're done testing it, you can tweak it to your heart's content. Add new islands, make custom interiors for fallen towers, or whatever else you want to do! You'll get better and faster with practice. Now before wrapping up this tutorial, make sure you add the world spaces "OblivionRD001" through "OblivionRD007" back to the "randomly teleports to" list for "OblivionGatetoOblivion", so it teleports to other Oblivion World Spaces as well as your new, amazing creation!

Tutorial originally written by:TheImperialDragon