Need Help with New Worldspace

[GeneralVarusII]

Hello, all; I'm in need of some assistance with a new worldspace.

 

The worldspace I'm creating is supposed to be a region in the mid-Atlantic, so most of the cells are nothing but water; the two islands I have designed and put things on are apart, but with a high enough render distance, it's possible that someone might see large things on the other island. I will be using collision boundaries/"invisible walls" to keep players from going into the water around the islands for various, plot-related reasons.

 

So far, I have both islands made in the worldspace, surrounded by water, land texture has been put down, and buildings have been placed. My issue is that the water surrounding these cells, and any other cell which I've modified, is completely invisible. I can see other cells in the distance which I haven't touched, and they have water; the LOD water stops at my modified cells, although the water around those cells is still there, I still swim in it, the only problem (and a large problem in my book) is that the water can't be seen. Additionally, I will sometimes see what looks to be snow floating in the air on my islands. Since I'm running Project Reality, I'm not sure if this is snow related to that (in which case, I'd need to fix that as well), or an entirely different thing related to my water being invisible.

 

I have checked the water noise textures for the worldspace and they are there; I have also found that some of my unmodified cells have, for some reason, land textures and what appears to be plateaus on them. Quite honestly, I feel like I've royally borked something building this worldspace with no prior experience with doing so; if there's a way to fix this without having to make a new, fresh exterior and move all of my buildings, items, and so on into that one, I'd really, really appreciate any help with that.

 

Edit: Due to shoddy internet connection right now, I'm having to edit this post and add that I have taken screenshots of the water being invisible (as well as the sky showing through the ground between the unmodified, water-containing cells, and my modified cells? Not sure what that's all about), the "snow" I captured, and one screenshot taken with TLB to give a clearer view of those problems and the plateau. Due to file size constraints, I'm only uploading the clear screenshot taken with litebrite. I will gladly upload the other screenshots if they would help, in subsequent posts. For now, I think this one would suffice to show what's going on, with the added benefit of being visible, thanks to my taking these at night in the game.

Edited June 28, 2013 by General Varus II

[Nimboss]

Oki here we go...

 

Just a history for world space creation when FO3 was released and the GECK also some time later there was interest in new worldspace creation say 1000 modders dwelled into this black magic knowledge of these say 100 actually got something working regardless of all ctd, lost land, crazy LOD issues and all other odd missing things, say 10 of those actually got a close to 100% mod release with all bells and whistles. FO3 has it's own issues and FONV had some solved and some new introduced.

 

So is your's for FO3 or FONV? Have you tested to make your .ESP to .ESM? With all the info you can get from Bethesda GECK Wiki for FO3 and FONV you can say you got all the basics right, right? Just some answers from you would make it easier for the grumpy old wizards around here to nail your problem. :cool:

 

Since there are so many parameters you can do wrong when creating a new worldspace the most easiest way to get you on the road again is if you can share the .esp The few guys really involved in worldspace creation are so busy to complete their own big projects so they have very little time for 21 questions, but slice up a shared wip mod and look at the details is not that costly and you can get invaluable advices.

 

For FO3 GECK there are some really picky settings you must bove to, in FONV GECK some can be broken without problems but some others for sure is introduced instead (I have made a complete new [isle] land breaking almost all rules thinking of, still it works with some itching LOD water issues but I realize to make it proper I will not have the time and will probalbly release it as a resource instead) . I really love when some dive into the mystery of world space creation but there is few of us that really released a fully mod closing into an official DLC add on level of quality.

 

[GeneralVarusII]

Apologies for not replying sooner; the day after I posted my topic, my computer died and I've only just gotten it back up and running with all my data recovered.

 

The mod is for Fallout 3 and I haven't made my .esp file into an .esm, but I know how to use MasterUpdate to do so. As far as reading the GECK wiki, I know how to do a fair amount when it comes to making interiors, scripting, less so with quests and NPCs but I can figure some stuff out. Worldspaces, however, are a new subject for me and I made the one which is having problems almost entirely without a tutorial, so I guess I should be thankful that more isn't wrong with it. :rolleyes:

 

As for sharing the .esp, at the present time, I can't actually share it on the Nexus Forums; it far exceeds the 250kb file size limit as I've been working on this one for quite a while and this worldspace is but a small part of it. Thank you for the advice, and hopefully, I can get this sorted out; I wasn't aware of the problems in the worldspace creation process, and I'm very thankful that I've stuck to interiors up 'til now. :P

 

Edit: This is the link the .esp file; it requires the latest version of FOSE and all 5 DLCs to run, and while the description in the mod menu/FOMM will say it requires "Additional resources", those aren't needed to look at the worldspace. The worldspace itself is called "ArborWorld" and the two cells needing work/help are named "Wrecked Freighter" and "Lighthouse"

 

http://www.filedropper.com/arbor

Edited July 5, 2013 by General Varus II

[Nimboss]

No probs, I'm old-time I know how to wait...

A died PC? Not fun!

Had that to one of my comps around Xmas, lost some stuff in the process. Win7 is not always straight in what it decides to save from previous installation and to discard. No funny deal for me in that case.

 

I spent LOT of time with FO3 and got the G.O.T.Y (actually got two copies, one not even opened, together with the other DLC addons and FO3 start release discs just as they was released [note to self, I must be crazy ;-) ]) But I have mostly spent my interest lately with FONV... but FO3 got me started so I will take a bitter sweet love tour again to refresh my knowledge what you can and can't with GECK for FO3.

But since you responded and showed interest to find out why? You past the intial test and I think others will also give you a helping hand maybe even faster than I can fire up your mod to look what you actually done :thumbsup:

[Nimboss]

Hi,

Checked the sea bottom mesh around the Lighthouse and it has gaps between lot of cells, this will not work in game. You know about W-key to turn on wireframe? If you do that around the Lighthouse you notice the cell chunks is not aligned together but instead have big gaps.

 

I presume you made the land height map with GECK heightmap editing tool? Did you know it not only often but also sooner introduce errors after small fixes?

 

There is a metod to go away right in render view to change land height with ground type paint tool for quick flatten/soften/raise and lower not as powerfull but seems to be safer. This might be a solution to fix the problem, but I could not test in game so I don't know it the heightmap will generate errors again after save.

 

I tried to COC Lighthouse in game after a smooth at some cell edges, but the game instantly hanged at arrival so I could not make much out of it. Now when you know what to look for it might be easier to do something to it.

[GeneralVarusII]

Hello, Nimboss.

 

I wasn't aware of using wireframe to look at the cells, or that there were gaps. I saw gaps in-game, but I figured it was one more graphical problem. If the heightmap editing tool is accessed by pressing "H" and it has both texture sprays and land raise/lower increments, then yes, that's what I used. I'm not quite sure what you mean by "Did you know it not only often but also sooner introduce errors after small fixes?" but I did "fix" the freighter area by using the heightmap editor to remove the textures that had been put there already and raise/lower the land from what it was before. Unfortunately, it seems like any cell I use the heightmap tool in somehow has invisible water; the cells I haven't touched with the editing tool have visible water, but the land isn't aligned with my edited cells (probably the source of the gaps between cell landscapes) and it's got a lot of landscapes raised up already with textures.

 

I suspect that there may be a reason for this; when I was making this worldspace, I basically looked at the Point Lookout worldspace, encompassing all of the DLC area, and I used some of the same settings for my worldspace. I did not, however, check the option for "Parent Worldspace". This gave me a water-filled land without any extra textures, just the default dirt texture for the land, and no extraneous landmasses/gaps between cells. It was a clean worldspace, just cells and cells of water with flat land underneath. I went ahead and built my buildings, used the heightmap editing tool to raise the land up, then textured that land. Even at that point, my water was invisible and I was seeing the "snow" in my edited cells.

 

I may have checked the option for "Parent Worldspace" and chose Point Lookout's worldspace, which was probably a really, really bad mistake. Considering that I see Point Lookout landscape textures on my extraneous landmasses and can make out certain parts of the coast around Calvert Mansion, vaguely, in some of my cells, I believe I probably ended up filling those unused cells from before with Point Lookout's heightmap. The water was still invisible after I checked the option, so at this point, I'm willing to make a new worldspace to avoid the extraneous landmasses/textures and gaps between cells. What I don't understand is why my water is invisible, or why I'm seeing this "snow" in my edited cells.

[Nimboss]

 

Hi again,

Yes, the H key tool is what I meant and recommend to use. The other that you did not use, the fragile one is to "paint" with color to represent height.

If you created a complete new world space and at some point checked parent for some other world that sounds to be a really bad idea like you seems to conclude also. I think that is what messed up.

 

In general even small error in land height mesh creates waves of strange visual errors in game, water is very hard to get fully working it almost demands a 100% correct made world space. If you later try to create LOD, land errors will stop the process and can be very tricky to find the spot that causes it.

Regarding snow I think the reason is that world spot either lacks correct weather type zone or have a wrong one so the climate system defaults to one with snow in this case.

 

I'm not sure you can reverse what happened, start new might be faster. And a big advice save often! After bigger changes, check everything in game so it look alright and save a copy of this version.

It can not be mentioned enough to save many versions when creating new world space, I heard of and seen my self when you happily after some changes jump into game to check out a little change that loads of world space has vanished from existence.