I'm working on a mod that has volcanic activity, and I seem to have a problem with the lava. Imagine that I have a creek or stream of lava that is fairly lengthy, but only 6 to 10 feet wide.. In game, at the head of the stream, if you walk on the lava you get fire damage. For most of the length of the stream you can stroll down the middle of it with no effect.

The meshes are identical vanilla Morrowind lava and I can detect no difference between one stretch and the next. I googled looking for a similar problem, but nothing came up. If someone could point me in the right direction, I'd sure appreciate it.

Do the lava-layer objects have the right script attached (HurtStandingActor)?

They all have the following script attached:

begin lavaif ( menumode == 1 )	returnendifif ( CellChanged == 0 )	if ( GetSoundPlaying "lava layer" == 0 )		PlayLoopSound3DVP "lava layer", 1.0, 1.0	endifendifHurtStandingActor, 20.0		;20 pts of damage a secend lava

Is your character standing deeper below the lava at points in your stream? Because I know that even regular Morrowind lava doesn't always work if the player sinks too far below the mesh.

Really... I'll bet that's it. Do you happen to know if it's better to have the lava just above a flat, level stretch of ground or if it's raised over a v-shaped trench?

If I remember correctly, the lava needs to be about thigh deep on the Player for the damage to take effect.
So flat ground would probably be easiest to work with.

If you need to, you can also used invisible collision walls just below your lava pool in certain areas. If you want the player to be able to sink deep into the lava, you can create a collision surface with the HurtStandingActor script on it, and place it somewhere below the actual lava layer.

Thigh deep turned out to be the answer. I've got most of it working as I want now, except for the edges which are only ankle deep. I'm not sure how realistic it is to stand ankle deep in lava without suffering any damage, but I may use the collision idea to patch that up as well.

In all the time I've played MW, I never, ever noticed that :blink: Can't say I've gone swimming in lava much though either.

Hm, I guess the problem is you want actors to sink in lava, which won't happen if they collide with the surface - but you need collision for HurtStandingActor to work correctly.

I found this out the hard way, because I once created an area where the actor could literally swim in the lava, by placing the lava layer over a large pool of water, and placing big red lights under the water to make it red.

Didn't exactly work as intended. :facepalm: