Introduction:
After hours of planning and about 5 legal pads full of ideas, I've finally decided to scratch everything I'm currently working on to get this mod/utility finished. I've always thought it would be an awesome feature for any Elder Scrolls game, to be able to build your own custom houses with custom floor plans, 1, 2, 3, 940 stories, and all the features, colors, and materials that the player would desire to go along. Now, I'm actually going to make it. I've started on meshes and texturing, but I need some assistance with mesh conversion from anybody interested and capable. More details further in this post.

What it does:
This mod will give the player a new inventory item that, when activated, will enter 'build mode' which using a "Sim's" style interface, will allow the player to design custom houses from the ground up. When build mode is first entered, the camera will focus on a cursor, which will be (by default) on the ground. The player will be able to move the cursor up, down, left, right, rotate, and also have this full control over the camera. The player will begin building by raising or lowering the cursor to the height desired for the ground floor of the house or structure being built. Then, using the easy interface buttons, the player will choose which floor texture/tile to place, and begin placing floor pieces for the ground level. (It is suggested to build the floor of the home before building the foundation, in case you decide as you're going to expand the size of the home) - More details will come at a later time.

Next, the player will be able to select a number of different wall types. This ranges from traditional white walls, victorian style wall papers, concrete, jail bars, glass, wood, brick, etc. When a wall type is selected, the player will move the cursor to the "Auto-Grid-Snapped" location for the first wall piece, and begin building. Other wall types include doorways, starcase entries, with open windows, with closed windows, broken/cracked walls, curtains, dividers, etc. Once the walls and flooring is finished, the player may move on to adding other things such as stair cases, furnature, doors, windows, carpets, and many other decorative and architectural objects.

There are also custom 'rooms' which are simply empty interior cells with an infinite temporary ground plane that the player can use in the construction of his/her new home/building. Teleporting doors and markers can be placed to control warping the player between these interior cells and the outside world.

Notes:
This mod gives you the ability to build your home/building entirely within the exterior world, or as an interior cell with a custom built shell. It's all up to you. The only real limitation is that you cannot have a staircase leading to a basemant if it's A.) part of the exterior world AND B.) the staircase descends below the ground terrain. In this case, it would be wise to simply add a door that can teleport to one of the available custom interior cells, and create the staircase and basemant floor within that cell.

I'm going to try to somehow prevent rain from penetrating the ceiling of the players home (when it's part of an exterior region), but I can't promise this to be possible or within my abilities. Currently the only way I can think of doing this is to create an invisible mesh that screws with the alphas of the rain texture.

There will also be custom script items which can be placed, that will enable you to hear weather sounds, see sunlight through windows, and many other currently popular features, within the interior cells of your new home/building.

Help Needed:
It would be nice to find someone who can help me convert meshes to NIF format.
I'll need someone who can create tiling textures.
Any ideas for additional items and texture types is appreciated.

Expected Release Date:
If everything goes smoothly and I get a little help, I can have this ready to release by christmas.

Other info:
The time consuming part will be creating textures so if you're capable and willing to help out, it would greatly help this thing become a reality sooner.

That is all for now. I'll post more info and screenshots as there is more progress. As of now I'm creating the interface.

That's a real big order, I can't lend any help, but I wish you the best nonetheless and hope you have a great time with the project

I'm afraid I'm like Khal, I can't offer you any help.

But... wow! That's quite a project you're doing, I hope it goes smoothly for you and the best of luck! :thumbsup:

I am afraid this project is much bigger than you anticipate.

I spent several months to develop a similar mod just for positioning vanilla buildings, no new meshes or textures at all (http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1097627-relzqquix-construction-suit/). Feel free to use it, if you think it would help.

Believe me, if anyone is fit for this kind of mod it's me. I work in C for a living, write code daily, and I used to be a very active morrowind modder, so i'm very familiar with the scripting language, and I've messed around with oblivion scripting to know most of what I need to in order to complete this project. I've already created the code theory on pen/paper, the interface is designed so now it's a matter of translating it to a script.

That's cool what you did in that mod, I'll definetely look over your work! That should help a lot, thanks!

I will have some questions along the way reguarding scripting, is there a 'go-to' place for asking scripting questions? Or is there someone here who would be willing to help me out with the few questions I may have via PM, messenger or email?

Best place for asking scripting questions is the http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/forum/24-construction-set/.
In particular, the http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1120469-quick-questions-quick-answers-the-26th/ thread, for small problems.

Thanks!

I've finished the model and texture of the cursor, and the first script is complete for initializing 'Build Mode'. Now I'm off to calculate the grid system and make the first few house pieces.

*bump*

I need some input, ideas, anything to add to the list. I want to make sure there are plenty of different types of wall and floor textures, and decorative/ functional objects to pace.

Additions:
Marble, pine wood, clay, carpet, castle brick
Pillars, secret passage walls, pre-scripted traps, stables, fences, mirrors(?), scripted cannons

What would you add to your new home/fortress?

I think that is the easier part. I'm interested more in how will you implement the building system in game. Why don't you try with simple elements for starters and create some proof of concept to see if it works?

You should take a look at different house mods and see what's inside. Get some ideas.

The more stuff to choose from, the better.

Edit: I want a door that must be opened using an activator. Like a lot of the doors in ayleid ruins.

I've got it all mapped out and I'm working on some test programs to make sure I won't have any problems later on. So far it's all possible and very successful. I could certainly explain how it works, maybe you'll have some ideas to help make it more feature-packed?



That's exactly the kind of thing I wouldn't have thought of that could make home building that much more interesting and fun. Good suggestion!

There is a new possible restriction that recently came up, it seems that houses will have to be built within 8 directions, meaning your front door (and entire building) can either face 0, 45, 90, 135, 180, 225, 270, or 315 degrees, not including decorations or furnishing. Anything inbetween I'm still working on, I want to make sure there's not going to be any problem with those nasty seams you get when two faces don't match up together perfectly. I'll do more testing when I get a chance. There's still a lot to be done! I only get a few hours per night during the week to work on this, so I'm mostly doing this as a weekend hobby, but I have every intention to finish it. That's why any help, even scripting consoltation and item ideas, will be a huge contribution and save me a ton of work and research. One huge benefit to this mod is, anyone can make their own custom furnature, wall peices, carpets, etc, and add them easily as items which can be used in home building as an addon .esp plugin.

I probably wouldn't understand much, but a video of the process would be neat. With simple available vanilla assets.

And don't worry about the angles, I think that even 4 angles are good and 8 are excellent.

My scepticism is only because often things seemed so clear and doable in theory, but implementation was a failure or even was not possible.

I am very curious as to how you will deal with interiors of houses needing to be in interior cells and therefore requiring teleporting doors with correctly positioned teleport markers. Or if the houses are to have their interiors in exterior cells, how you will manage the weather problems, where all weather will come through roofs, wall etc...

Very challenging to pull off, good luck.

Creating interiors on the fly, in an interior cell, is possible, now that OBSE has commands to get and set door data. I already have it developed and will use it in my http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=915021 mod.

But, although not pleased with raining on vinniewryan's parade, I am also skeptic about creating interiors in exterior cells, as a lot of good modders have been trying for years to solve the weather issue and, as far as I know, there is still not a good solution available.

QQuix, what happened to that whole weather under objects thing? I recall you publishing that video on youtube where the rain effect was disabled and a sort of waterfall around the top of the object was put to give the illusion of rain without the water going through stuff. Did that ever get into any mods?

Maybe http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1136990-relzresources-vaper/page__view__findpost__p__16686525 will help?

Funny thing is, I had Sims music playing when I entered this thread.

But yes, I sure hope that this is possible, and not too difficult to pull off, It would easily be the best thing Oblivion has seen.

As several have said, this may be a larger and more difficult problem that you think. Just the same, you certainly won't succeed if you don't try.

Relative to the weather. the "whole weather under objects thing" has been addressed by Reneer with mixed success. Probably the most reliable way to keep it from raining is to use scripts. You are welcome to use the weather scripts from my http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=22846 if you wish. As OlliX suggested, looking at other house mods may be helpful. Oblivion's Real Estate has a complete section on exterior homes that you may find informative.

Again, it's a tough problem, but if you pull it off, you'll be a modding hero.

That was just an exercise to illustrate something that people were discussing in a forum at the time.

It is not really a solution and would work only for very specific situations.

It requires that you duplicate each rainy weather in the CS and remove the rain nif from the copy.
Then you need to set up your house or shelter in the CS with a trigger zone and disabled waterfalls from the roof edges.
When the PC enters the trigger zone the script switches the weather to the no-rain copy and enables the waterfalls. And vice-versa.

It wouldn't work for players with custom weather and would not work on the house next door.

There are also Vacuity's weather boxes now that would be better of waterfalls for sure. (Xtreme linked to it)