So here I am... trying to build myself a nice, throw-back Vault entrance cave for my side project, here... when suddenly I realize that... well [censored]... I cant' seem to get -any- of these damn pieces to fit together. When I finally managed to get the halls done, and started on the room to the side where I was going to put some critters to harass the player... BAM!

None of the middle pieces will fit with any of the damn walls I used!

It's driving me crazy!

Has anyone managed to get the damn things figured out?

I would love some help.

You can do it, its just one of the most complicated things to do in the entire geck. You just have to start with one piece, then look at a boardering piece and swap it out (it will be like CaveWallPiece0x, x being a number from 1 to like 3-6.) with other pieces. So put piece 01, and if that doesnt work replace it with piece 02 and do this slowly working your way across the room until they all fit together. I have made several large cave rooms like this and gotten it to work but it took like 4 tries and a LONG time.

ummm yes it all works... http://www.finhosting.fi/~fallout/screenshots/blackhole/

It's a system. Certain wall pieces require linkage to certain center pieces, and, you must rotate the correct center piece until its correct linky-side is facing your edge piece.

it's not exceptionally easy at first but as you get experience, it gets quicker.

I haven't used them extensively, but for the small area I did they seemed to all work fine for me so long as I didn't rotate them after dropping them in.

Bah! So it does work... it's just a pain in the ass.


Orrite, I get it... I get it. -_-;'


Maybe if I increase the 'snap to grid' size, it'll make things easier.

hell yes. Set it to the maximum size that is usable for what you are doing.

The good news! I managed to get the majority of the cave done!

The bad news... I now lack any idea of how to fit together the entry point of the Vault into the interior of the cave! >.<

Sometimes, I really wish I thought these things through better... either I'm going to have to redesign the cave using the insanely limited, intended-for-vault-use pieces... or I'm going to need to do some serious finagling to get this to work.

It is possible, in fact in the GECK tutorial they describe creating a cave leading up and into a ruined vault.

That said I find caves to be so obnoxious I typically just use ruined vaults whenever I need an underground complex.

Well, if you mean the huge vault door entrance... that in fact has a limited cave piece and it doesn't link up to the regular cave pieces to my knowledge.

If you must use that huge circular vault door, the easy way would be to do something like this. You could make a regular sort of door out of your cave area into a different area - - that area could either be be a small room-ish place, or, it could be a seperate interior cell entirely. THAT area would link to the actual cavey-vault-entery pieces (and the door which fits there).

The harder way is to use the vault entrance door even though it does not fit, and use pieces (such as boulders and tilted landscape maybe, and similar) to completely disguise the fact that the pieces do not fit. But if you're new to fitting cave pieces together in the first place, trying to do that might piss you off.

I have, but I cheated a bit. Basically I covered up any gaps I couldn't do much about with big rocks

EDIT: It's all about tricking the player, you control what they see, so if your cave looks messy as hell in the editor, it doesn't really matter if it looks good to the player, just use any trick you can. I've covered gaps with enormous rocks or mountains and it looked weird as hell in the GECK, but in the actual game I couldn't see it, all I saw was a cave.

Same thing, anywhere there were gaps I used rocks to fill them, I actually think it looks better that way because it adds a little spice to things instead of it all looking exactly the same. Also, as one of the above posters mentioned you have to switch tiles to get the gaps filled, so far the only place I actually had gaps are where I had pieces not snapped to the grid everything connected up correctly.

Just as an example is you use NVSulfurCaveRoomWall01 and you place a NVSulfurCaveRoomWall01 exactly opposite there will be gaps in the floor, but if you place NVSulfurCaveRoomWall03 exactly opposite the gaps go away.

I did something like that once to create a pitch black cave that was actually outside, technically. (Custom worldspace and climate)
http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b200/staplehead78/Oblivion/Oblivion2008-10-2218-50-27-81.jpg

Making caves can be a pain most of the time, but as said before in this thread you have to use few tricks. A lot of grid changes, but the pieces doesn't have to fit always you can put rocks models on he holes, with this method you are allowed to vary a little putting unfitting pieces togheter. Take a look at Vault 34 entrance area, some parts are done by simple rocks models.