SSE Infinite water in interior cells

[filloax]

How should I go about adding infinite water to an interior cell? Is it even possible? I cannot seem to change the water height setting in the cell properties, changing it makes it reset to -0 as soon as I change window

[cumbrianlad]

I don't know about adding infinite water to interiors but what's wrong with the default waters?... they're pretty massive and you can always scale them up a bit.

 

I normally add one of these and end up scaling it down to suit. After that, you just hold down 'z' and drag the water surface to the height you want it.

 

They're all under activators in the object window and you can choose things like 'Water2048ankleStill'. that'll fill any decent sized cave room no problem.

[filloax]

Problem is, it's only a technical interior. As in, it's an island actually (Moonpath to Elsweyr mod, trying to improve some things in it), and I have to have a kinda large sea but adding too much water objects made CK say the cell was outside the specified bounds, and since Solstheim has infinite water I figured it was possible.

[Rasikko]

Then you need to examine Solstheim. Rest assured anything that Bethesda has done that is entirely contained in the CK(no hardcoded non-sense) can be replicated. I can tell you this though that some of the "interiors"(example being Bloated Man's Gotto) are actually worldspaces that function as such, but come with all the goodies provided by a worldspace that an interior wont offer.

[filloax]

Is there a way to turn an interior into a worldspace?

[Rasikko]

No.

 

Bethesda simply builds some 'interiors' in a worldspace using the kits. I typed it as 'Interiors' because they aren't interiors.

 

I already gave an example of such a dungeon.

[filloax]

I mean, since the cell is already built as an interior, is there a fast way to turn it into a worldspace? Or would I need to rebuild it from scratch as a ws? I'm not too familiar with CK rn, sorry for the trouble

[cumbrianlad]

I've not made a worldspace before so I didn't think of this option... cheers, Rasikko, I've learned something very useful! I usually get away with giving my interiors sky when I need to. I assume making 'interiors' this way is more data intensive or else they'd have done everything like this.

 

filloax, you can't convert an interior into a worlspace, as far as I know. What you can do is make a new worldspace and try copying the objects in your cell and pasting them into the worldspace.

 

I've just tried it with a new worldspace and pasted AbandonedPrison01 into it, tweaked the height so that the lower levels of the prison were underwater. I'm surprised it worked, copying all that data.

CK took an age to do each step but that's no shock. Just leave CK to plod along until it's finished without clicking anywhere to inspect anything. Have a coffee or a beer or something while it works away.

 

What I noticed was that after pasting everything in, half a dozen wilderness cells were flagged as being edited by my mod.

 

That's likely because I copied a vanilla cell and references got carried over. I did a second test and copied one of my internal cells but made sure to remove the teleport data from the cell load door. This worked perfectly with only one wilderness cell in my world showing as being edited.

 

Be sure to make a backup of your .esp before attempting this. To be on the safe side, I'd also edit your cell and remove any locations, encounter zones etcetera that you've applied to it. I'd definitely remove teleport data from any loadcell doors you've hooked up to Tamriel. It's probably better to load your .esp but not have it active. make your new worldspace and open your cell, copy, open the worldspace and paste. Either way back up your original .esp first.

 

It should work so long as CK and your machine specs are up to handling the volume of data you're attempting to copy.

 

After that, test it like mad. CK often doesn't like copying masses of data at once.

 

Take a careful look around for any seams between walls, floors etcetera in case you can see the void through gaps. If you can, you may have to spend some time with snaps on, right clicking the offending bits to get them to snap back onto the grid. The cell I copied was small, so I didn't have a problem. The prison looked fine but I didn't spend hours in CK checking it!

 

If you've made quests pointing to your original cell these may not work because the quest markers and any forced reference aliases, aliases created in references in the cell etcetera could be pointing to your old interior... bam! Skyrim says 'no' and the quest won't start.

 

When you make your world space, don't share any data other than map data. This will leave you free to specify your water type, weather etcetera. Give it a parent worldspace of Tamriel or Solstheim, or whatever is most applicable for you. From what you say you don't need landscape types (HD LOD diffuse and normal). If you just select water type and climate you'll end up with a flat plane of land and a flat plane of water. The water height above the land you can set when you make your worldspace.

 

Oh, and if your CK is anything like mine, the copy action will freeze and CK will crash if you have any player bookshelves in the cell. For some reason CK64 won't copy bookshelves at all well: ask it to copy a thousand other objects at the same time and it gives up. The old CK32 did this no problem... that's progress for you! I'd just delete player bookshelves before you attempt the big copy/paste manoeuvre.

 

If it does all copy properly (look very carefully around places like caves for any signs of spider webbing where you can see the void along the lines where the cave parts join), you'll need to test it in game thoroughly to make sure it hasn't screwed up anything else.

 

At least you're dealing with your own cell and not a vanilla cell. Copying one of those could screw up quests, AI behaviour and all sorts.

 

Let us know how you get on because it would be really good to know how well this works! I'm fairly confident after what I've seen in testing!

[filloax]

Problem is it's not really my own cell, and I'm not even familiar with the mod's quests, on the technical side I mean (I'm trying to make a weather patch for Moonpath, didn't make the original mod)

For instance it has two copies of the same cell, one with bandits and one with npcs, and I don't really know why instead of disabling the bandits or something

 

I'll try to do something with it, this might be p tricky

[cumbrianlad]

just a thought...

 

... you're absolutely certain that it's an interior?... as in you load the cell from the interiors section and not from worldspaces?

 

Sorry for asking, it's only that I've just remembered what you said about editing 'Moonpath'. I played that mod and from what I recall, every single part of it had several quests and that brings us back to copying and pasting without screwing up quest markers and the like.

 

I'm struggling to recall an island that looked like it was made in an interior cell but that could be just my memory (it's a while since I played it).

 

Maybe if you tell me the name of the cell I can take a look at it in CK and see what I can work out? I've done some pretty big interiors and never run out of room in the cell.

 

Edit: okay, I see what you mean. Heaps of interiors that I assumed were worldspaces when I played the mod. Let me know which it is and I'll take a look... can't promise anything, though!