I have a question on using The Lost Coast together with RAEVWD.

The distant LOD created by TES4LODGen with RAEVWD doesn't do a good job of rendering the rock cliffs for The Lost Coast. There are lots of pop-ins, trees that floating in the air because they are placed on rocks that have no LOD, etc. This is particularly pronounced just when you leave Anvil, round the lighthouse, and sail west. The very impressive "Beacon Rock" just has no LOD.

For a while I thought this was user-error (not an uncommon occurrence), but then I realized RAEVWD must not have the _far.nif files for the cliffs, or rather the objects they're composed of. There are a number of objects being used, of course, to construct the cliffs; however, it looks like 'RockUnderwater970' is the major component and is used all along the coast (you'd probably represent 80%+ of the cliff detail from just that one object type).

So I guess I have two questions:

1) I assume that creating a _far.nif for the 'RockUnderwater970' object would make TES4LODGen create .lod's that include that object. Is there a somewhat easy-to-use tool to create an appropriately polygon-reduced _far.nif?

2) Judging from the object name, presumably there are lots of these rocks under the water where the distantlod does no good. Is TES4LODGen smart about handling that (ignores objects entirely under the surface), or would this be a big performance drain if the object is everywhere under the sea?

The landscape texture issues can't be diagnosed properly in the CS. You need to go there in-game, do a tcl in console, and get pics of it from overhead. The CS does not display land texturing properly if there are 9 of them used in a quad.

The floating wall will be looked into though. That seems odd as it's not supposed to be one of the cells CHFalls edits.



It would be a bad idea to make a _far.nif out of RockUnderwater970. Those things are used all over Tamriel. TES4Lodgen is not going to discriminate about where they're placed either so you'll murder your performance by doing that. It's why I didn't include those rocks in the package to begin with.

I know the LOD svcks for Lost Coast. Right now there's no easy way to go about fixing that short of making a ton of mesh renamed rocks and accompanying _far.nifs to go with them.

If you're intent on doing that though, this isn't the thread to cover the gory details of how to produce a useful _far.nif.

By "mesh renamed," are you suggesting that a new object could be created that is entirely identical to RockUnderwater970 and that then all the cliff-use occurrences of RU970 in the Lost Coast could be replaced with this new object? That's an interesting solution, though as you suggest perhaps quite time consuming.

That would be the thing to do. Shouldn't take long really though, TES4Edit can transfer all references of one object to another object in just a few quick clicks.

So anyoone checked if new version works ok on english Oblivion without SI? Im gonna upload to TESNexus and PlanetES then.

Any chance of contacting Ddraiggoch06 about his Kvatch Lowlands UL? My village, Wellspring Vale, is sitting I think smack in the middle of the area he's working on. If we could put heads together now it would be nice to avoid a necessity for patching if at all possible. I'd be more than happy to toss him a copy of the village so he or someone else can have a look as all the exterior work is done.

If you look in the OP, there's a link to a cell map with our RELz and WIPz marked out on it. Kvatch Lowlands is marked out for the area it's currently expected to cover. You'd have to see if Wellspring Vale lands in any of those cells.

Yep I am, Wellspring Vale sits pretty much in the middle I think. :lmao: http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/whoguru/Oblivion%20Screenshots/Homes/Galleria/ScreenShot342-1.jpg right around http://bettercities.free.fr//UniqueLandscapes/Maps/UniqueLandscapesGridMapReleasedAndWIP.jpg I believe.
I wouldn't be averse to making some small exterior changes now if it will make them play more nicely together later on. I love the UL's so compatibility is important to me for these, even for one as far out as Kvatch Lowlands.

Edit: Although, the Ayleid well in the center of town can't be moved. It has three stepstones on it from the Ayleid steps. LOL I was very careful not to mess with it for compatibility sake.

Stendarr Valley is updated at http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=7054 and http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=OblivionMods.Detail&id=1874.

Image is not loading in the link btw. And it was updated in 2006 last time.

Here. http://bettercities.free.fr//UniqueLandscapes/Maps/UniqueLandscapesGridMapReleasedAndWIP.jpg.

Oh damn. Why this one is still there then?
http://server6.theimagehosting.com/image.php?img=OBOriginalCellGridMap.jpg&album=0&fullsize=1
Its not working anyway.

Ok after a bit of work I've narrowed the cells my village uses. In the Kvatch Lowlands section, http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f85/whoguru/Oblivion%20Screenshots/WellSpringVale/ULKvatchWellspring.jpg Hope that helps. I was considering adding in a dirt road out to the Gold Coast road but I'll hold off on that for now.

Don't let us hold you back from what your mod wants or needs. Remember, we're patch experts too. So it's easy enough to cook one up. Given that your so far inside the expected borders, it's probably inevitable you'll need one. Don't look at it as a bad thing.

That was the link to a screenshot promoting your mod, but it looks like the site hosting the image has removed it I'll replace it with links to the images on Nexus.

LOL Oh I didn't think a patch would be a problem but I'm hoping to minimize how much patching needs to be done seeing as Wellspring is in the middle of it. :lmao: Especially since every time a UL releases I grab it so I'll be needing it as well.

I mean actually link to CYRODIIL 'MODDERS RESOURCE' CELL GRID MAP. If links for Stendarr Valley pics were dead as well, then there can be even more dead links.

I like the size of the Kvatch area WIP. That will be fun to explore in all its massiveness.

Hey, I was just browsing the Tamriel Rebuilt blog, and they mentioned that they're almost done their Oblivion Map 9 mod, which consists of three passages from Cyrodiil to Hammerfell, and it looks like it might conflict with The Lost Coast and the Brena River Ravine. Do you know if they're going to make it compatible or if any patches might be planned? I'm also worried about their Map 8, which is most of the province of Hammerfell, but that looks to be a ways off yet.

Oh yes, I see there's another link to http://server6.theimagehosting.com... which is also dead. Thanks for spotting it, I've removed it now. We don't use the cell grid map resource linked there anymore anyway, we use worm82075's newer version, which is already linked higher up



The mod won't necessarily be that big, though it could be. If a WIP mod has no black border and doesn't follow the grid lines, then the actual size hasn't yet been confirmed, and we've simply designated the expected area within which the mod will be (and even the WIPs which do have black borders aren't the final expected mod size, it's just closer to being accurate).



If a patch is needed, we'll look into it when appropriate.

I discovered something strange with some UL esps, e.g. UL Cheydinhal Falls.
When I'm translating the esps, I always have to resave them in the CS. Until now I always assumed, that this wouldn't harm the esp, but now I'm not sure any more about this.

I took a closer look with Tes4Edit and all pathgrid records are different, even if I just open the original EV esp and save it without any changes.

I uploaded the two esps http://www.megaupload.com/?d=DOSQ4WOD. The one is the esp contained in the current EV archive, the *cs.esp is the saved one.

I do not know if this is worrying?

I can think of some causes, but none of them really makes sense:
1. the german oblivion.esm is different to the english one and maybe also the pathgrids (would be strange), which affects the UL cell pathgrids?
2. the esp was saved with an oblivion.esm without SI and I'm using SI (although this shouldn't make any difference for the pathgrids, or?)

(of course I'm using the most current oblivion version 1.2.406)

Can someone of you try to simply save the original esp and compare the saved one to the original one in Tes4Edit?

Best regards,
ThreeD

I think #1 is more likely. It may be strange, but it's not out of the question that foreign language versions of the ESM might have ended up with some content drift along the way.

#2 seems far less likely as when we did QA on the mod both of us have SI and both of us saved the work with that master file.

Ok, do you think, that this is something, that we have to worry about?
Or does the pathgrid simply corrects itself to the german esm?

Best regards,
ThreeD

And isn't the most recent version of Oblivion 1.2.416? Or was that just a typo?

The path grids that are actually modified by the mod will override the German master file. The problem is that when the CS does whatever it does with path grids they'll get linked to the surrounding ones in the German file and those nodes won't necessarily be in precisely the same places which causes the node connection data in the mod to change. Path grids are a strange bird. It's like trying to grock sorcery. You just end up having to accept that things happen.

Since it's unlikely a user with an English version of the game will be playing with the translated file I doubt this is anything to worry about.