Talk:Regions

How does one zoom without a mouse wheel? Ctrl-, shift-, or alt-middle doesn't seem to do it, nor V. Nerdbeard 11:18, 29 March 2006 (EST)

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Unfortunately, I don't think it is possible to zoom in and out of the region editor preview window without a mouse wheel. If it helps, some keyboards have a scroll wheel built in to them that can act as the mouse wheel. I'll see about putting in a feature request to add hotkey support for zoom. Noah: 14 April 2006

Generate/Obliterate across sessions

I find that when I generate objects in a region/cell, save, quit, test and reload my .esp in the construction set, the generated objects are no longer "obliterateable". They are treated as hand-placed. If I want to change my generation parameters, I must visit all the cells and delete all the generated objects by hand, being careful not to also delete my actual hand-placed objects. Is this the intended behaviour, or have I done something wrong or encountered a bug? Nerdbeard 22:43, 22 April 2006 (EDT)

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Region/object generation works slightly differently without version control. The behavior described above is correct for the downloadable version of the Construction Set, in that there is ultimately only one valid user, the end user. Normally, region generated content is initially owned by the REGN user. In your case, when generated content is saved to your plugin, and the plugin is reloaded, all of the gray, REGN owned references become owned by the user and are, at that point, just references saved in your plugin. For the time being, you'll need to work with this in mind when creating generated content. We are currently looking into addressing this issue. Noah: 24 April 2006

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Changing the REGN to user owned on save makes it extremely difficult to create large terrain areas. I'm trying to create an island, and because I just went to the game to view the terrain, I now have to manually delete the objects from over 10,000 cells. Not possible without carpal tunnel syndrome. So I'ld like to encourage some sort of fix for this, even if it is an external exe that clears the objects. With some file format information I could write the exe myself. SophisticatedZombie : 26 April 2006

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As long as the editor/plugin is not closed after a generation session, all region generated objects should stay owned by the region. It isn't the cleanest way to test your results, but you could leave the editor open and run the game independently/separately to view your progress. Also, generated content can be previewed normally in the editor render window as you generate and refine settings.

Some good news however, one of our programmers has found a way to retain the REGN ownership on generated content, even after a plugin is reloaded. Whenever the next update to the public editor executable is made (apologies, I don't know any date specifics), you should be able to generate and edit region content just as you would with version control. Noah: 27 April 2006

Generating Roads?

The first paragraph in the article:

"Regions are how we store data about the exterior world and how we procedurally create content including (but not limited to) landscape textures, roads, forests, mountains and grasslands. It is strongly advised that you use this with caution and a computer that meets or exceeds recommended specification."

Seems to imply road generation with the regions tool. I see no further refernece to this, though. Does it work, and if so, how?--GhanBuriGhan 13:48, 26 July 2006 (EDT)

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Only insofar as creating a road by typical means - heightmap editing/local terrain editing - then using the region editor to generate specific objects for a road and/or to name a region surrounding a road. Noah: 31 July 2006

GhanBuriGhan I see, thanks. The above discussed fix for generated content would be really helpful, btw. Any news on an update? --GhanBuriGhan 22:51, 1 August 2006 (EDT)

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Actually the above is wrong. The tools seems to work as follows. Once you create a path grid, you convert points on the path into primary points(blue) along the path you want the road to take. Then when you generate roads, it will place the stone road texture along the path you have placed.--Bioxx

Middle mouse button?

Do they honestly still make mice with these even? Inquiring minds want to know. Stormscape 23:10, 13 January 2008 (EST)

Yes they do. All my mouses have middle buttons (I bought them a year ago), and I even have one with 8 buttons... So go fetch one! :) --HawkFest 22:29, 19 January 2008 (EST)

Merging regions and multiple landscapes in one region area

I have been doing plenty of research into the region editor. Working on a 16x16 quad world means that Ive probably hit most of the problems and overcome many. One massive problem has always been merging. There is a way, not foolproof, but better than most.

1. Merging two borders. Lets say you want to merge mountains with plains. Firstly set your mountainous area and define its content. Set each texture and item to be dropped on a specified height, lets say 15000 plus. You can deposit texture and items for instance:

1 rock 15500 2 rock 14900 3 ground texture 17000 4 ground texture 17200

This ensures that the mountain area blends into the plains or highlands and doesnt appear as a line across a certain height.

2. DO NOT POPULATE THE REGION. Lay out the region area for the mountains.

3. Create and prepare the plains items. Again merge them up gently into the mountain heights so that some rocks are higher than 15000 and some textures too, trees etc, levelled creatures, creatures. Now lay out the region and completely smother the mountains area too so that the mountains region is totally encompassed by the plains region. You may have to split this into workable areas and you will get the usual problems with workable areas having texture meeting problems.

4. In the objects tab for the plain check the override and set it to something like 51. Save the plugin as a clean save so that you have a copy of any previous plugins s o if anything goes wrong and you dont like this method you can revert to the copied plugin and continue as if nothing happened.

5. Generate each region section by right clicking in the coloured editing screen. Generate via the button in the general tab creates items etc for the entire region regardless of sections.

Ok what will now happen is that the editor will create textures and objects dependant upon height. You will notice that it will merge seamlessly between mountain and plain.

One bit of advice. If you are doing huge areas then work the regions up in layers. If you look at any real world scenery you will see that it is not dotted like a currant bun with rocks and trees. Trees cluster and rocks dont appear in the middle of nowhere. The way I do it is to lay a base with the region editor, that being the rocks, intermittent trees, land textures and levelled creatures. Then I select an area where the rocks are likely to be thickest or where I want a forest to be. I then clear all objects from that area, lay down another region over it and populate it. That way you can create huge regions of landscape with merging, then select and lay your forests, coppices, rockslides, valleys etc.

Alternatively you can superimpose again, lay down a forested region within the main landscape region, select override and set it to very high, about 80 works well for me. You will then have some of the objects and textures from the base region poking up through the forested area, as they would naturally occur and the surrounding border merges too, which is again good for you. Sometimes it draws the dratted bland border where two regions meet. The only way then is via the landscape editor.

Good luck.

Would be nice..

Why oh why didn't they make it so you can see the terrain heightfield while working in the Region editor? It would have made it so much easier to work with. As it stands it seems like a lot of guess work trying to trace complicated terrain areas. The only thing I can think to do is open the heightfield editor and write down a bunch of cell #'s that correspond to the rough outline of the region I need. Bleh. And why, despite my best efforts, do I always seem to end up with one or two quads in a cell with the default texture?--Nixlplix 18:26, 13 May 2008 (EDT)

Objects (more) bug?

Is there some bug with the Objects (more) Tab? Or some trick to getting it to work? Seems that most of the time when I enter info into it, such as Sink Variance, Size Variance, etc., it all resets when I leave the tab.