So I have this Oblivion Gate level design, and I was going to start doing the groundwork of building the level and populating it with clutter.

A fundamental aspect that I have planned for this gate, however, is the puzzle that must be solved in order to access the Sigil Keep. In the center of the level is a large volcanic crater filled with lava, submerged in which is the Sigil Keep itself. Now, while there is an easy way out to this problem (making it a traditional dungeon, and accessing the keep via a hidden underground tunnel or teleport platform) I wanted it to end with a bang and have the player (via a lever) raise the Sigil Keep above the lava before triumphantly entering it.

However, I have no experience with working with lifts in Oblivion, and I was wondering if I could be linked to a guide or given some helpful advice. Thanks.

While it is technically possible to do what you're asking, it requires animating a mesh in order for this to work. This can only be done via a modeling program such as 3D Studio Max or Blender (these are the most common, since they have exporters to bring custom models into the CS). your Sigil Keep would need to be an animated mesh that can be activated via a lever, button or any other form of activation (spell, proximity, trigger etc).

I would approach this method by animating a custom Sigil keep mesh rising out of the Lava, activated by a lever and then write a script that enables a door which you can enter. To make things more interesting you can hide the lever until a certain step of your quest is complete. Another script can usually take care of this.

So, to sum it up you'll need:
1 animated mesh for the sigil keep
1 script to enable the lever
1 script to enable the door

Hope this helps

~DE

Actually, though animation is by far the best route, you CAN do this via script, though it's somewhat fraught with peril.

Start with a quest and a quest script:

scn CitadelLiftTestQuestSCRIPTshort Liftingshort ZPositionshort MaxZfloat fQuestDelayTimebegin gamemode		if Lifting == 1		set fQuestDelayTime to #		set ZPosition to #		set MaxZ to ZPosition + #		set Lifting to 2	elseif Lifting == 2		if ZPosition <= MaxZ			set ZPosition to ZPosition + 1			CITADELREF.setpos z ZPosition		else			set Lifting to 3		endif	endif	end

CITADELREF is a named persistent reference. Maybe a citadel, maybe not.

Several values marked with a # in that script.

ZPosition is the Z coordinate of your citadel when it's at the bottom of the lake.
MaxZ is the distance between ZPosition and whatever the Z coordinate of the citadel when it's fully emerged from the lake is.
For fQuestDelayTime, set this to a very small number. 0.1 combined with incrementing ZPosition by 1 was pretty bloody slow. Play around with it until you get something you like.

You'll want a button or a lever or something with a script on it, and part of that script involves setting Lifting to 1. You only want to do that once or it will explode and die horribly.

Now for the "fraught with peril" part:

- Stock citadels don't come with doorways or actual doors. If you have the skills, consider attaching a doorway and dummy door to the citadel .nif so you can move them as one piece. Otherwise, you'll need to modify the script to move them all at the same time.

- You'll want to enable the actual real door at the end of the movement to save some pain.

- Static collision doesn't react very well to being moved like this. You'll need to disable and then enable it at least once, maybe at the end, maybe every time loop through the script. Take your pick.

Many, many different ways you can rewrite this script to make it do more stuff, but this should give you the basics.

Actually you would not need to import into a 3d modeling program (though it would probably be easier) --- there are several animated meshes already in OB that could be modified (just import the sigil keep into one of the animated meshes that move the proper way and then make some adjustment in Nifskope if needed to adjust the amount of movement -- I've done the same in the past with a couple castle towers for another modder -- If you need some help getting it done PM me and I'll see what I can do for you ( would need to know the name of the Nif you want to use and which Lever you plan to use for making it go Up (did you need it to be able to go back down also ?)

Note : I just had a HDD crash recently that wiped out my Vista 32 bit install - so while installing the new HDD decided to also upgrade to win7 64 bit and recovered most of the info from the old HDD with VISTA so still playing with some of the program setups to get them adjusted and getting the 64 bit drivers in place, so might take a little longer than normal to get it set up and tested but not that long.

PM me with the details ( Nif you want used - how much you need it to move ( I assume you want it a bit under ground level and then to extend up to ground level ) if you need the help