[Help] Adding Wildlife

[DdsLedg]

Hey, im making a new land mod and im having some issues with the wildlife. My land is all an island, and so it is fully surrounded by water.

The problem im having is that the animals keep running off into the water, regardless of if I pursue them or not. I also have a graveyard/crypt type area, and it looks a bit stupid if there are loads of deer in there, as its supposed to be evil.

Im asking if anyone knows a way in order to make a sort of invisible barrier so deers, rabbits and foxes etc cannot run into there. Is there some kind of marker, or is there no way to do it?

Im open to all help that you give me, as this can get quite annoying

Thanks

Will :)

[mrpdean]

Did you mark the navmesh under your water as 'water' so that the triangles turn blue?

 

That's the only thing I can think of.

 

 

Water Triangles (Blue) allow you to indicate an area of deep water. Some creatures will behave differently while in or around water.

Note that, in areas of deep water, the Navmesh should always be placed on the ground surface (underwater) instead of on top of the water plane.

To mark/unmark a triangle as Water, select the triangle(s) and press the "O" hotkey.

 

http://www.creationkit.com/Category:Navmesh

[DdsLedg]

Did you mark the navmesh under your water as 'water' so that the triangles turn blue?

 

That's the only thing I can think of.

 

 

Water Triangles (Blue) allow you to indicate an area of deep water. Some creatures will behave differently while in or around water.

Note that, in areas of deep water, the Navmesh should always be placed on the ground surface (underwater) instead of on top of the water plane.

To mark/unmark a triangle as Water, select the triangle(s) and press the "O" hotkey.

 

http://www.creationkit.com/Category:Navmesh

Hmmm, I havnt tried this, ill give it a go, does it stop animals going there?

[mrpdean]

It should certainly help. As the article implies, from an AI point of view this is how creature know that those areas of the map are in deep water.

 

Animals that can swim (have swim animation) may still venture into deep water sometimes, but animals which can't swim shouldn't.

 

I say shouldn't because even in vanilla cells which Bethesda built I've occasionally seen some animals walk under water when they really shouldn't have been in there.

 

This is the method that Bethesda use though. No invisible barriers etc though I guess you could use those if you were particularly concerned about it.

[DdsLedg]

Hmmm, thanks, but I havnt actually fully navmeshed the island yet, the wildlife moves even in non-nevmeshed places. Because of this im unsure of whether the water thing will actually work, but ill give it a go :)

[mrpdean]

It probably won't solve all the issues but it should help. When it comes to Skyrim and the creation kit... there will always be some bugs.

 

My limited understanding of navmeshes in Skyrim is that they assist NPC's with path finding and obstacle avoidance, but they are not really "fences" whereby NPC's will never go outside of them. They just help the NPC's make the best decision about how to get from point a to point b, but as you've discovered even without any navmesh, they will still attempt to get from one point to another, but they might bump into obstacles etc.

 

Hopefully someone with more knowledge on the subject will jump in and share their wisdom.

 

But I wouldn't worry too much about it at this stage if I were you.

[DdsLedg]

Hmmm, ok, thanks for the feedback! Ill finish my landscape editing then ill see about fully navmeshing and making navmeshed water etc. :)