05-16-2006, 08:19 PM
The Silgrad Tower team welcomes all pioneering modders to discover the brave new lands that are - modding with custom buildings!
We're starting to gain momentum on the wealth of custom architecture that will be added to our mod. We've had custom models for quite some time, and the unique flora and miscellanous clutter - not to mention the massive bridge - has made the Imperial Districts of Reich Parkeep a memorable sight seen by thousands of players. And when it all boils down to it: what other mod lets you climb up on a house-sized emperor parasol mushroom which someone turned into a treehouse?
But now we're coming to the point where it's time to move beyond that. To really create an experience of being in the Morrowind Province it's not enough to have ambience plants or Dunmer urns, we need Dunmer houses - and we need to be able to mod with houses. And we have houses, plenty of them. What we need though, is pioneering modders who are interested in modding with these buildings in our mod.
I use the term "pioneering" because this kind of modding won't be very easy for the daredevils who would attempt it, even though the building blocks are already there. But let me tell you, seeing a custom model like the Redoran guardtower, being able to enter it, being able to walk up the levels inside it and climbing out onto the lookout deck... few experiences from modding on Reich Parkeep have been as satisfying as that was for me. Gazing out from the hut on the lookout deck over the massive Velothi Temple, crowned by the statue of Almalexia... icing on the cake. Here are some screenies for your perusal:
#1: Inside on the ground level.
#2: Second story of the interior.
#3: Trapdoors are used because of the narrow space. A larger model could have had a more open layout.
#4: A view upon entering the hut on the lookout level.
#5: Reverse angle of #4. The North Imperial District can be seen in the background. As you can see to the left, the city is a wip.
#6: The massive Velothi Temple seen from inside the hut.
#7: View of the Council Club, a Skar-inspired building created by Asylum.
#8: Vertigo!
The Claims
There are twelve open claims in our mod for modding Redoran Guardtowers. Once a Guardtower interior has been modded to completion and submitted, it will be merged with the main mod (courtesy of the wondrous TES4 Plugin Utility by ScripterRon). I'll then set up the exterior model in town and set up the teleportation points from the exterior town into your interior, and then your interior can be visited in-game when playing the mod. The exact locations of the Guardtowers haven't been decided just yet, because we're waiting on other Redoran house models to be modelled before the town exterior can be finalized. Until they are available it's not possible to decide the exact, final layout of Reich Parkeep's Redoran district, and the locations of the Guardtowers have to be decided in conjunction with setting up the rest of the layout. So, you don't have to worry about rotating northmarkers, as I promise I'll set them up once the locations have been decided.
To stake your claim to mod a Guardtower interior, please register or log onto our forum and post a reply in the Guardtower claims thread. You'll need to have an account there so you can submit your plugin and/or upload works-in-progresses before then. Reich Parkeep isn't the only Redoran town our team is planning to mod, by the way, and we'll need more Guardtowers in other Redoran settlements - so if there are more interiors modded than the twelve we're planning for Reich Parkeep I guarantee you that they will be featured in another town in the mod.
To mod a Guardtower plugin, here's what you need to do.
1. First please get a modder abbreviation, in case you don't already have one. A modder abbreviation is a four-letter code with which you must start the ID of any Construction Set entry you make. This is so we can keep track of the work created by a great number of modders, and keep the lists in the CS coherent by clumping together all the entries created by our mod. The abbreviation starts with 'ST' followed by two alphanumerical characters personal to you. My stuff in the alpha is listed as StRw for example, sandor's as StSr, and so on. The modder abbreviation thread is stickied on The Tavern board on our forum.
2. Download the -latest Alpha release- (currently Alpha 04.8, ~31mb). Then extract the contents of the archive to your Oblivion\Data folder.
3. Start a new .esp, which is only dependant on Oblivion.esm master file. If you make it dependant on the Alpha you'll actually cause a bunch of problems when the time comes to merge the plugin.
4. Start it off by rolling out the Statics tab in the Construction Set. Right-click anywhere in the list and select "New". Name the ID "StXXredoranguardtowerINT", where XX is the two alphanumerical characters of your modder abbreviation. Then click the "Add NIF File" button, and locate and double-click the file "Oblivion\Data\Meshes\ST-Razorwing\st_cs_redoran_house08int.nif". Don't tick the Quest Item checkbox. Then click the Ok button.
5. Create a new interior cell, by choosing the menu option "World > Cells..." and then right-clicking in the list and choosing 'New'. Kindly give the cell the ID "StXXredoranguardtower##" where XX is your modder abbreviation and ## an optional, arbitrary number. In the Cell View window, find your interior and double-click it to see it in the World Window.
6. Now go to the Statics rollout in the Object Window and locate the static you added. Drag-and-drop it into your cell, then double-click it and set the three Position values to 0, 0, 0. All the rotation values should stay at the default 0, 0, 0. Now you're pretty much ready to go, but you'll need a few more components first.
7. Create new Static entries thusly:
#1 "StXXredoranguardtowerSLAB1" -> st_rw_redoran_building_storyblock01
#2 "StXXredoranguardtowerSLAB2" -> st_rw_redoran_building_storyblock02
#3 "StXXredoranguardtowerDOOR1" -> st_rw_door_GuardtowerMain
#4 "StXXredoranguardtowerDOOR2" -> st_rw_door_GuardtowerHatch
Starting to see why I used the word 'pioneering', huh? Hehe. Number one and two are the blocks with which you can create floors inbetween the bottom floor and top roof. Number three and four are fake door objects. They're used as statics because the models lack collision, and if we had added them as Door objects that could have caused mistakes in the teleportation between since we need to use special door activator objects to create the illusion that the doors are working.
8. Create a new Door entry called "StXXredoranguardtowerDOORact". For the NIF, locate and doubleclick "Oblivion\Data\Meshes\dungeons\misc\collisionbox01.nif". If you don't see it, it's probably because you haven't unpacked your bsa archives yet. For information on how to do that, please see my quick, step-by-step guide. As you can see, you've now made an invisible collisionbox that thinks it's a door. That's a perfect accessory to "StXXredoranguardtowerDOOR1" and "StXXredoranguardtowerDOOR2", which are visible doors that doesn't act like doors. So what you need to do is to place the object that *looks* like a door, then place the object that *acts* like a door, on top of each other. Just make sure the collision box door sticks out in front of the non-collision door.
NOW, finally, we're set to go!
The first thing you might want to do is to drop the two slab statics in the World Window and set up as many stories as you want. Create an NPC and drop in there to use for measurement if you like. If you use a snap-to-grid of 64, they'll fit together seamlessly. You can make holes in the slab grid wherever you want, to for instance make room for a ladder. As you create the higher stories you'll probably want to use the hatch door instead, just because it's getting cramped. You can pretty much use any solution you want, but the important thing is that there's a hatch door in the ceiling and that the player can reach up to it. That hatch door will lead to an observation level in the exterior.
You can't set up teleportation on the entrance door, or the hatch door leading to the observation level. I'll do that after it's merged, no worries. But please do add the static doors in their correct places, and please set up teleportation on the hatch doors you might use inside your interior.
Colliding matters
Custom models like these don't have collision, so unless there are collision box statics on the floors and walls the player will fall right through them. There's a couple of venues we can take on this matter though, in case you are reluctant to meticulously encase the whole interior in collision boxes.
The first is to simply not add them at all -- at some point in the future we *will* be able to add collision to our models, and then the interior model and other components will all be re-exported. We can be content in knowing that the interior will start to work eventually, on it's own, as the models are replaced with collision-enabled ones - because the models will keep their geometry and keep their placement data in the mod even if the NIFs are overwritten, so the effect really is that all the interiors will start working immediately across the whole mod.
The second venue is that you make your plugin dependant on the main Reich Parkeep esp and then copy the collision boxes I've set up on the example Guardtower (seen in the screenshots), paste them into your cell, and carefully move the whole selection over your interior model, and tweak them as necessary depending on how you configured your interior. There is one drawback to this; it will require that you know how to clean the dependancies out of your plugin afterwards, as well as remove any other 'contamination' from the temporary dependancy. If you only copy-pasted the collision box selection from the "ReichParkeep50redoranGTower01" interior cell the only contamination should be that your plugin keeps an interior cell entry with the same ID. (if so, delete that interior cell from your esp). The advantage is that it's less work than setting up the boxes from scratch yourself and that your interior will be playable as soon as it's added.
Finally, if you have any questions don't hesitate to contact me.
mini-FAQ
"- What do you need me to supply?"
All that's needed is the .esp plugin you created. You don't have to supply the NIF files of the CS entries you added.
"- I'm a modeller / voice artist / writer / etc, do you have any job openings?"
We always do, and there is plenty that needs doing. Personally I'm mostly involved in the modelling department (aside from actual modding), and would be happy to take questions on those matters. Voice workers and writers are more than welcome to post their questions or comments on our forum and someone who's more involved in those departments will surely be able to respond. As for modelling, I could write pages upon pages, but this isn't really the thead for me to do that in. So I'll have to contend with humbly asking that interested modellers check out
1) first the ST-Razorwing folder in Data\Meshes (after extracting Alpha 04.8)
2) the showcase linked from the front page of silgrad.com
3) then the Visual Development board on our forum.
If you don't find any evidence of the model already having been made, it is almost certain that it hasn't. Then, if the model you want to make would be appropriate for a Morrowind Province setting (regardless of House), it is something which would be very important to us.
"- Can I add my own models, NPCs, dialogue, voice work, etc?"
Generally, yes, but it's a good idea to run it by your fellow modders on our forum to get feedback on your ideas. You're especially welcome to bring in models that look Dunmer. (if you use someone else's models always make sure you have permission to, whether explicitly written or specified in their TOS)
"- Can I create more CS entries so I can use other NIFs from the Alpha?"
Of course, go right ahead. Just keep a note in the back of your mind that you're modding a Dunmer Redoran location so you don't use inappropriate items. For instance, the banner with the dragon is only used in the Imperial part of town. The one with the Redoran symbol only in the Redoran part. Containers in this interior should preferrably be of the "st_rw_cont_dunmer_..." type, lights of the "st_rw_light_paper_lantern_##" type. You're free to use normal furniture if you want.
"- My doors won't work. Why?"
1. Are you certain you tried to set up teleportation between the activators - the yellow, seethrough boxes - rather than the doors themselves? Because the objects that look like doors are statics, while the objects that should be teleporting look like yellow, hollow boxes. The doors themselves will not work, since they don't have collision - to simplify it a bit, the game won't recognize that the player is looking at them - which is why the yellow, hollow boxes are used instead.
2. Could it be because the normal collision boxes [Static > CollisionBox01] in your interior are covering your door activator(s) [Door > StRwDoorActivatorCIV4FIX] ?
1. To claim any of these 12 locations, please post a reply saying so. It's not granted until Razorwing ok's it, which he/I usually do.
2. To mod a claim, start a new .esp dependant only on oblivion.esm. Mod the location at your discretion and free time, within reason. You don't have to, and can't, hook it up the town exterior - that's done by Razorwing after merging. Please check the RP Discussion board for latest information. Don't forget to add a northmarker and pathgrid.
We're starting to gain momentum on the wealth of custom architecture that will be added to our mod. We've had custom models for quite some time, and the unique flora and miscellanous clutter - not to mention the massive bridge - has made the Imperial Districts of Reich Parkeep a memorable sight seen by thousands of players. And when it all boils down to it: what other mod lets you climb up on a house-sized emperor parasol mushroom which someone turned into a treehouse?
But now we're coming to the point where it's time to move beyond that. To really create an experience of being in the Morrowind Province it's not enough to have ambience plants or Dunmer urns, we need Dunmer houses - and we need to be able to mod with houses. And we have houses, plenty of them.
What we need though, is pioneering modders who are interested in modding with these buildings in our mod.I use the term "pioneering" because this kind of modding won't be very easy for the daredevils who would attempt it, even though the building blocks are already there. But let me tell you, seeing a custom model like the Redoran guardtower, being able to enter it, being able to walk up the levels inside it and climbing out onto the lookout deck... few experiences from modding on Reich Parkeep have been as satisfying as that was for me. Gazing out from the hut on the lookout deck over the massive Velothi Temple, crowned by the statue of Almalexia... icing on the cake. Here are some screenies for your perusal:
#1: Inside on the ground level.
#2: Second story of the interior.
#3: Trapdoors are used because of the narrow space. A larger model could have had a more open layout.
#4: A view upon entering the hut on the lookout level.
#5: Reverse angle of #4. The North Imperial District can be seen in the background. As you can see to the left, the city is a wip.
#6: The massive Velothi Temple seen from inside the hut.
#7: View of the Council Club, a Skar-inspired building created by Asylum.
#8: Vertigo!
The Claims
There are twelve open claims in our mod for modding Redoran Guardtowers. Once a Guardtower interior has been modded to completion and submitted, it will be merged with the main mod (courtesy of the wondrous TES4 Plugin Utility by ScripterRon). I'll then set up the exterior model in town and set up the teleportation points from the exterior town into your interior, and then your interior can be visited in-game when playing the mod. The exact locations of the Guardtowers haven't been decided just yet, because we're waiting on other Redoran house models to be modelled before the town exterior can be finalized. Until they are available it's not possible to decide the exact, final layout of Reich Parkeep's Redoran district, and the locations of the Guardtowers have to be decided in conjunction with setting up the rest of the layout. So, you don't have to worry about rotating northmarkers, as I promise I'll set them up once the locations have been decided.
To stake your claim to mod a Guardtower interior, please register or log onto our forum and post a reply in the Guardtower claims thread. You'll need to have an account there so you can submit your plugin and/or upload works-in-progresses before then. Reich Parkeep isn't the only Redoran town our team is planning to mod, by the way, and we'll need more Guardtowers in other Redoran settlements - so if there are more interiors modded than the twelve we're planning for Reich Parkeep I guarantee you that they will be featured in another town in the mod.
To mod a Guardtower plugin, here's what you need to do.
1. First please get a modder abbreviation, in case you don't already have one. A modder abbreviation is a four-letter code with which you must start the ID of any Construction Set entry you make. This is so we can keep track of the work created by a great number of modders, and keep the lists in the CS coherent by clumping together all the entries created by our mod. The abbreviation starts with 'ST' followed by two alphanumerical characters personal to you. My stuff in the alpha is listed as StRw for example, sandor's as StSr, and so on. The modder abbreviation thread is stickied on The Tavern board on our forum.
2. Download the -latest Alpha release- (currently Alpha 04.8, ~31mb). Then extract the contents of the archive to your Oblivion\Data folder.
3. Start a new .esp, which is only dependant on Oblivion.esm master file. If you make it dependant on the Alpha you'll actually cause a bunch of problems when the time comes to merge the plugin.
4. Start it off by rolling out the Statics tab in the Construction Set. Right-click anywhere in the list and select "New". Name the ID "StXXredoranguardtowerINT", where XX is the two alphanumerical characters of your modder abbreviation. Then click the "Add NIF File" button, and locate and double-click the file "Oblivion\Data\Meshes\ST-Razorwing\st_cs_redoran_house08int.nif". Don't tick the Quest Item checkbox. Then click the Ok button.
5. Create a new interior cell, by choosing the menu option "World > Cells..." and then right-clicking in the list and choosing 'New'. Kindly give the cell the ID "StXXredoranguardtower##" where XX is your modder abbreviation and ## an optional, arbitrary number. In the Cell View window, find your interior and double-click it to see it in the World Window.
6. Now go to the Statics rollout in the Object Window and locate the static you added. Drag-and-drop it into your cell, then double-click it and set the three Position values to 0, 0, 0. All the rotation values should stay at the default 0, 0, 0. Now you're pretty much ready to go, but you'll need a few more components first.
7. Create new Static entries thusly:
#1 "StXXredoranguardtowerSLAB1" -> st_rw_redoran_building_storyblock01
#2 "StXXredoranguardtowerSLAB2" -> st_rw_redoran_building_storyblock02
#3 "StXXredoranguardtowerDOOR1" -> st_rw_door_GuardtowerMain
#4 "StXXredoranguardtowerDOOR2" -> st_rw_door_GuardtowerHatch
Starting to see why I used the word 'pioneering', huh? Hehe. Number one and two are the blocks with which you can create floors inbetween the bottom floor and top roof. Number three and four are fake door objects. They're used as statics because the models lack collision, and if we had added them as Door objects that could have caused mistakes in the teleportation between since we need to use special door activator objects to create the illusion that the doors are working.
8. Create a new Door entry called "StXXredoranguardtowerDOORact". For the NIF, locate and doubleclick "Oblivion\Data\Meshes\dungeons\misc\collisionbox01.nif". If you don't see it, it's probably because you haven't unpacked your bsa archives yet. For information on how to do that, please see my quick, step-by-step guide. As you can see, you've now made an invisible collisionbox that thinks it's a door. That's a perfect accessory to "StXXredoranguardtowerDOOR1" and "StXXredoranguardtowerDOOR2", which are visible doors that doesn't act like doors. So what you need to do is to place the object that *looks* like a door, then place the object that *acts* like a door, on top of each other. Just make sure the collision box door sticks out in front of the non-collision door.
NOW, finally, we're set to go!
The first thing you might want to do is to drop the two slab statics in the World Window and set up as many stories as you want. Create an NPC and drop in there to use for measurement if you like. If you use a snap-to-grid of 64, they'll fit together seamlessly. You can make holes in the slab grid wherever you want, to for instance make room for a ladder. As you create the higher stories you'll probably want to use the hatch door instead, just because it's getting cramped. You can pretty much use any solution you want, but the important thing is that there's a hatch door in the ceiling and that the player can reach up to it. That hatch door will lead to an observation level in the exterior.
You can't set up teleportation on the entrance door, or the hatch door leading to the observation level. I'll do that after it's merged, no worries. But please do add the static doors in their correct places, and please set up teleportation on the hatch doors you might use inside your interior.
Colliding matters
Custom models like these don't have collision, so unless there are collision box statics on the floors and walls the player will fall right through them. There's a couple of venues we can take on this matter though, in case you are reluctant to meticulously encase the whole interior in collision boxes.
The first is to simply not add them at all -- at some point in the future we *will* be able to add collision to our models, and then the interior model and other components will all be re-exported. We can be content in knowing that the interior will start to work eventually, on it's own, as the models are replaced with collision-enabled ones - because the models will keep their geometry and keep their placement data in the mod even if the NIFs are overwritten, so the effect really is that all the interiors will start working immediately across the whole mod.
The second venue is that you make your plugin dependant on the main Reich Parkeep esp and then copy the collision boxes I've set up on the example Guardtower (seen in the screenshots), paste them into your cell, and carefully move the whole selection over your interior model, and tweak them as necessary depending on how you configured your interior. There is one drawback to this; it will require that you know how to clean the dependancies out of your plugin afterwards, as well as remove any other 'contamination' from the temporary dependancy. If you only copy-pasted the collision box selection from the "ReichParkeep50redoranGTower01" interior cell the only contamination should be that your plugin keeps an interior cell entry with the same ID. (if so, delete that interior cell from your esp). The advantage is that it's less work than setting up the boxes from scratch yourself and that your interior will be playable as soon as it's added.
Finally, if you have any questions don't hesitate to contact me.
mini-FAQ
"- What do you need me to supply?"
All that's needed is the .esp plugin you created. You don't have to supply the NIF files of the CS entries you added.
"- I'm a modeller / voice artist / writer / etc, do you have any job openings?"
We always do, and there is plenty that needs doing. Personally I'm mostly involved in the modelling department (aside from actual modding), and would be happy to take questions on those matters. Voice workers and writers are more than welcome to post their questions or comments on our forum and someone who's more involved in those departments will surely be able to respond. As for modelling, I could write pages upon pages, but this isn't really the thead for me to do that in. So I'll have to contend with humbly asking that interested modellers check out
1) first the ST-Razorwing folder in Data\Meshes (after extracting Alpha 04.8)
2) the showcase linked from the front page of silgrad.com
3) then the Visual Development board on our forum.
If you don't find any evidence of the model already having been made, it is almost certain that it hasn't. Then, if the model you want to make would be appropriate for a Morrowind Province setting (regardless of House), it is something which would be very important to us.
"- Can I add my own models, NPCs, dialogue, voice work, etc?"
Generally, yes, but it's a good idea to run it by your fellow modders on our forum to get feedback on your ideas. You're especially welcome to bring in models that look Dunmer. (if you use someone else's models always make sure you have permission to, whether explicitly written or specified in their TOS)
"- Can I create more CS entries so I can use other NIFs from the Alpha?"
Of course, go right ahead. Just keep a note in the back of your mind that you're modding a Dunmer Redoran location so you don't use inappropriate items. For instance, the banner with the dragon is only used in the Imperial part of town. The one with the Redoran symbol only in the Redoran part. Containers in this interior should preferrably be of the "st_rw_cont_dunmer_..." type, lights of the "st_rw_light_paper_lantern_##" type. You're free to use normal furniture if you want.
"- My doors won't work. Why?"
1. Are you certain you tried to set up teleportation between the activators - the yellow, seethrough boxes - rather than the doors themselves? Because the objects that look like doors are statics, while the objects that should be teleporting look like yellow, hollow boxes. The doors themselves will not work, since they don't have collision - to simplify it a bit, the game won't recognize that the player is looking at them - which is why the yellow, hollow boxes are used instead.
2. Could it be because the normal collision boxes [Static > CollisionBox01] in your interior are covering your door activator(s) [Door > StRwDoorActivatorCIV4FIX] ?
1. To claim any of these 12 locations, please post a reply saying so. It's not granted until Razorwing ok's it, which he/I usually do.
2. To mod a claim, start a new .esp dependant only on oblivion.esm. Mod the location at your discretion and free time, within reason. You don't have to, and can't, hook it up the town exterior - that's done by Razorwing after merging. Please check the RP Discussion board for latest information. Don't forget to add a northmarker and pathgrid.