Hi folks,

Been browsing and searching these forums for a while now, trying to find the answers to my questions. While I've had success on finding the info on some fronts, others I've either not found the answers I need or tbh I haven't properly understood. Yes, I'm a beginner at modding and I know I'm quite likely biting off more than I can chew...but for the ideas I want to implement I'm going to have to ask these questions sooner or later. So...here goes...sorry, ended up longer than I thought it would....

1) re: regions and cells

From the tutorials I understand what I need to do in order to make a new region and so on, but tbh I'm not sure what that actually means when it comes to cells. Hoping for some clarification please. Can a single cell (for example, or 3-4 cells for that matter) be its own region? Regardless of where they are? And, using this example of one cell, can that one cell/region have its own weather totally independent from the cells directly adjacent to it? Reason for this is gotten into further below.

2) re: water level

the water that exists ingame and the CS, can this only exist at "sea-level"? For example, I understand how to build up land from the ocean floor into an island say, and then sink it back down to form a pool and so on, but say I wanted to build up a huge mountain, and at the top have some kind of plateau or crater even, and wanted to have water "up" there in the form of a pool or something. Because the land where I'm building the village/house/garden is so much higher than sea-level, would this then require the use of a water mesh? (I've read that Dongle has made some btw, so I'll check them out anyways.)

3) re: exteriors and interiors

so from everything I've read it seems that you can't raise land inside interior cells, or water for that matter (which totally svcks btw ) Apparently there are workarounds like creating it as an exterior and then creating a mesh that exactly duplicates it or something? I came across some posts regarding some "tilesets" which I'm looking at and also a program by Yacoby (Cell To Nif) which I'll have a look at also. But I assume that this is getting waaaay beyond my skills already? The reason I ask this is because of the next couple questions....

4) re: exteriors and interiors part 2

what I'm trying/wanting to do is something inspired by a japanese anime I like (not sure if anybody knows it or not) called Spirited Away. There's some scenes in that where the girl is riding on a train where the environment all around her is basically water, to the horizon in every direction. With a small island somewhere amidst this water. What I would like to do is something similar (which made me think of using an interior cell). Could this effect be gotten around in a different way using an exterior cell? Something like an "invisible wall" around the cells I choose, but not actually invisible because I would need the wall to look like sky meeting horizon (hope I described that enough to be understood) but to give the "impression" of a vast, gentle ocean of water stretching away to the horizon with only this one solitary island it......or do I simply need to place the island in a cell so damn remote from any other possible mods and so on?

Anyways, this then leads into the next question...

5) re: time and weather inside of a cell/region

Is it possible to "freeze" time inside a cell or region using a script or something else? Reason I ask is the mod I'm planning on doing is supposed to be in a "perpetual twilight", Autumn or eternal sunset for want of a better way of describing it. I'd like it to stay in a permanent state of 5pm/6pm where the sun is going down but never actually goes down. With the colors associated with this time of day. Which is another reason I was hoping the interior cell thing might have been the answer.

And from time, this leads to weather. I'm pretty sure I understand that when choosing the weather for a region, I can for example make it permanently sunny, so long as the 8? or 10? fields all add up to 100 yeah?

6) re: Morrowind Mod Grid Use Map (MMGUM)....last question....for now

I know its outdated now but it has also helped me find some applicable cells with the least number of mods affecting what I want to do. But, and I know this sounds like a stupid question, I'm not sure what the white/uncolored cells signify. Are they cells that can be modified or is that kind of a dead-zone where the map ends?


Sorry again for the length of the post but would really appreciate some help/info on these q's. Thanks in advance.

Salty

These aren't answers to all the questions, just the ones I know the answer to.


Exterior cell water can only be at sea level. Interior cell water can be at any level you want. You will probably want to use a water mesh.


As long as you know how to set up a new model with a new mesh in the TES CS you will be fine using tilesets (If you don't, it is easy to learn)

Using CellToNif is a bit more involved as you have to use a nif editing program to edit the texture paths as well as find your own texture for the landscape. MGE can be used to generate the textures and NifSkope can be used to edit the texture paths.

Nothing is that hard though, it may just take a bit of time to work out. There are plenty of helpful people around to help you figure things out though.


It can be done by using an invisible wall in an exterior, there is an issue in that if you place things far away from the origin (center of the map) you will end up with issues relating to how the objects possitions are stored. Everything will be jerky if you go a large number of cells (100+) from 0,0


Yes. You need to use a script or dialog however there are two variables you need to set gamehour and timescale.

timescale should be set to 0 and gamehour should be set to the 24 hour time you want. It is a real number but the minutes are base 10 so to represent 6:45pm you would set it to 18.75

Yeah.

Yeah cool. At least I know now what options are available to me.




To be honest this sounds a lil beyond me atm. Think I'll try making it in a cell far enough away from the mainland first and see how that goes.




Ok good to know, thanks. But if I place the island around 30-40 cells out there shouldn't be any problem should there? Regarding the invisible wall, how exactly would I go about doing this please?




Awesome, this will help greatly. I won't worry too much about the script/dialogue just yet until I have the region/houses and so on built up.


Thanks for the input so far. Still hoping to get some more info/help on some of the other questions I raised if anyone else would care to pitch in please.

Salty

Yes. The 'Regions' menu in the Construction Set is used to set regions, and it works on a grid. You can set any single cell, or area of cells, to any region you create by "painting" it.



It's possible in an exterior, but a little harder to pull off unless the area is REALLY remote. Like cell (50, 50) or something. Especially if the person is using MGE. I'd personally set this up in an interior. You can create an interior cell and set it to 'Behave like exterior.' This means the cell will have weather, sunlight, water, but will be totally vacant of landscape in all directions. Then you can just set some statics for the ground.

If you look at mods like shannon's forest interior cell sets (can't remember the name) she uses a skybox that follows the player. You might try using something like that, but in an exterior cell.

That's a great movie, btw. One of my favorites.



I've always been told not to touch the white "wilderness" cells that exist when you load the CS, like (-15, -8). The black, void cells have no data in them, and will fill in white when you add landscape to them. These can be changed freely.