Well, the title pretty much says it all, I think, but to explain a little:

I'm working on a quest mod at the minute, adding (among other things) a little bit more criminal activity to Balmora. The problem is that I'm using the in_sewer_scorr1_00 static to represent the exit from the sewers to the Balmora river, but it's not a door. I don't want to have to change the static (I had enough problems getting it in there.. oh, gridsnap, what did I ever do to you?) so I was wondering is there an invisible load door anywhere, as a resource or is there perhaps one in the CS that I'm just missing? Or is there another way to do this?

Also, only tangentially related to the above: is there any standard on how many references in one cell is too many? This particular cell I'm working on is very big, and I don't want it to lag on people's computers if it's ever released... :unsure:

Thank you =)

There probably is, but no one's ever seen it.

I've never gone above 800-1000 or so references in a cell. There's probably very little actual bad stuff that can happen from going over such a number, but I like to stay safe, and split any interiors that go over that threshold.

You can also just convert the Static into a Door (using the same mesh) and then use the Replace function of the CS, so that you can switch the objects without having to move them.


Using too many Lights in a cell seems to cause problems. I try not to use over 800 objects in general.

There are couple of invisible meshes you can use. I used the invisible collision mesh (it's even IDed something like that), and there is also the big one over the mournhold, but that's too big for your needs.

Lights in a cell cause a lot of processing. Even newer hardware only likes to support 8 at a time, so the game has to be constantly switching them on and off.

Reference count is less of a concrete problem than poly count. The GameBryo engine can handle large scene graphs, so that's not a big deal. The limits suggested are probably good, but you'll want to watch your poly count as well (800 20,000 face objects will hurt, 800 2-face objects won't at all).

As far as doors, as Pluto said, you can turn anything into a door, just make it a DOOR type record.

2000 is usually the highest it can go before exploding. Though sometimes it's different. I've had 13,000 references in a cell.
Also apparently NPCs make a difference in this. I've had cells crash on me, but then stop crashing when I've added in a creature or person.

Wow. Thank you so much guys - I wasn't expecting this many responses! :wub:

I had a try at making the doors again - using the lava black square mesh as the door works fine, although visually it's not quite what I want. When I try to use the collision wall - INVISO mesh, though, I have the opposite problem - it looks fine, but it doesn't work - the doors don't seem to turn up at all. Am I using the wrong mesh? ><

I would just turn the static into a door, as suggested, but the mesh is more than just a grate - there'd be several paces worth of sewer acting as a door as well, which would annoy me, so I'd prefer to avoid it if possible.

That's great news to hear about the cell references by the way Clutter-loving though I may be, I don't think I'll be able to add that many.

@ Peachykeen - when you say lights, do you mean the lightbulb-type ambient lights, or does that include things like torches and travel lanterns?

I think he means anything that casts lights. A static can only be illuminated by 6 or so light sources, any more get ignored due to engine limitations. This can cause problems with very large statics.

Ah, okay - so one or two lightsources in each tunnel probably won't cause any problems as long as they're not all illuminating the same object?