Help: Making A Village / Settlement / Town Mod

[bradleybrand]

Hello guys.

 

I am no expert with the Construction Set and I have only played around with it. I have not got any additional tools or made any CS setting modifications.

 

My goal is to construct some brand new settlements for Tamriel, using vanilla assets and models. I want them to have reason and purpose, having some sort of realism. I want them to blend into the world of Tamriel, not look out of place.

 

My previous attempt was near Fort Sutch. I know that the settlement of Sutch was never implemented in the game and that some old IDs still exist, so I thought this maybe a suitable location. My issues were that there are 2 Oblivion Gates in this area and that the hills were too big to flatten nicely.

 

How to modders find suitable locations to start building a settlement? Is there any search features? Is there any guides for settlement building?

 

My settlement plan:

• Manor (Weynon Priory asset)
• Chapel with grave yard
• Tavern
• Blacksmith
• Farm Houses & Farms
• Shops
• Voiced NPCs with routines
• Purchasable player home

What advice would you give for me to start? Any tools or guides you suggest? Anything I should do before I begin?

[Pellape]

There where a tool or database for this, but I do think it is very outdated. I do not think you should worry about your settlement will share location with other mods really. I use the hill North of Anvil for my Settlement and I picked that spot as it was already picked in the Resource I am using and that I like that spot a lot.

 

Best way to find a perfect spot is to hike around in game really. Do not forget to edit the pathways, as otherwise NPC's, Creatures or Companions will try to walk through your objects. They do not see any objects at all, well static objects as they only follow the paths, nothing else and pick up loose objects if they have need for them, specially food, books and weapons.

 

A couple of quests would be nice too.... ;)

Edited March 29, 2022 by Pellape

[Oblivionaddicted]

Nice idea but there are already mods that add settlements in the Sutch area.

 

Why don't you add your settlement in its own worldspace to avoid any conflict?

Edited April 1, 2022 by Oblivionaddicted

[IcelandicPsychotic]

UESP has a map that can be very useful for location scouting. It shows all in-game locations so you can search around and find an area to place your mod. I wouldn't worry much about conflicts with other mods, they can't all be winners. There are so many mods out there that something's bound to conflict at one point or another.

A house the player can purchase will require some scripting, maybe not the best place to start. One thing you should definitely get the hang of is pathgridding. That tutorial is for Morrowind but it's pretty much exactly the same in Oblivion. It's very simple once you get the hang of it.

[bradleybrand]

There where a tool or database for this, but I do think it is very outdated. I do not think you should worry about your settlement will share location with other mods really. I use the hill North of Anvil for my Settlement and I picked that spot as it was already picked in the Resource I am using and that I like that spot a lot.

 

Best way to find a perfect spot is to hike around in game really. Do not forget to edit the pathways, as otherwise NPC's, Creatures or Companions will try to walk through your objects. They do not see any objects at all, well static objects as they only follow the paths, nothing else and pick up loose objects if they have need for them, specially food, books and weapons.

 

A couple of quests would be nice too.... :wink:

I am new to mod making and using the Construction Set. The guides seem so basic and miss a lot of information. The video guides aren't great either, much more focus on the Skyrim Creation Kit. I wish someone would make a decent, in-depth, video guide for Oblivion Construction Set. I never was able to get the Construction Set Extender to work correctly either.

 

Nice idea but there are already mods that add settlements in the Sutch area.

 

Why don't you add your settlement in its own worldspace to avoid any conflict?

I agree. I was just playing around with the Construction Set and since the IDs already exist, I quickly found the location. If I was to search around the wilderness, would this automatically create new cells and ruin automatic world generation? Like I said, I am new to the Construction Set and have no idea how modders do everything.

 

UESP has a map that can be very useful for location scouting. It shows all in-game locations so you can search around and find an area to place your mod. I wouldn't worry much about conflicts with other mods, they can't all be winners. There are so many mods out there that something's bound to conflict at one point or another.

A house the player can purchase will require some scripting, maybe not the best place to start. One thing you should definitely get the hang of is pathgridding. That tutorial is for Morrowind but it's pretty much exactly the same in Oblivion. It's very simple once you get the hang of it.

The UESP map is very interesting! I doubt any creation of mine would be of the standard of the professional modders, but you improve through practice I guess. I wish someone would make a decent, up-to-date video guide of the Oblivion Construction Set, rather than the Skyrim Creation Kit.

[Oblivionaddicted]

I don't know anything about the world generation.

[Pellape]

The UESP map is very interesting! I doubt any creation of mine would be of the standard of the professional modders, but you improve through practice I guess. I wish someone would make a decent, up-to-date video guide of the Oblivion Construction Set, rather than the Skyrim Creation Kit.[/size]

 

Do not say that. You do not know what you will be able to make as you will involve in the process, adjusting stuff until perfection. I could write a guide but I will not but I can do bits and I guess I am easy to follow when i describe stuff.

 

Why does not CSE works for you? Do you use ENB? I have a fix for that published here at this forum. 2 Bat files that turns on and off some dll's that CSE needs that screw up the game. So I start CSE and the game with those 2 bat files.

 

Lets make a tiny Island to start with as a complete world space will be TOOO MUCH!!! A single small isle will keep you occypied for a long time anyway. Start small, and grow later. If you need another Isle later on, just add one more cell and use boats and NPC on boats between them. How big Settlement do you wanna make? A village, smaller city or one at the size of IC? Or do as kat sayd, make your settlement anywhere and I think the space between Chorrol Skingrad or Chorrol IC is damn good choice. Do not delete trees as they will remain most likely, well you can try delete them and go in game to see if they are gone or not. Moving trees can work, but if you visited the area earlier, its position might be saved in your savegame. But there is a solution, to making the Referenced Persistent, giving them name and have a questscript adjusting them.

 

Use Questscripts as much as possible for stuff that do not need to be run every frame. A questscript runs every 3s default. A objectscript runs every frame, between 8-60 times a second and should be used as limited as possible. I love Questscripts as they do not make performance issues at all, well as long as you do not add twisted loops inside them that is... :wink:

 

Well lets build a small Isle:

 

Click the Menu [World] and choose [World Spaces...]

Rightclick on the cells and choose [New]

 

Enter your data and make sure [x] Small World is checked, which is is default in CSE

 

Click [Apply] and [Close]

Change to your Region

 

DoubleClick on Wilderness or 2 single clicks and rename it.

Start with Wilderness 0,0, go to the menu World and choose Landscape Editing. HeightMap is cool but I do not use it as it is messy I guess.

 

Choose a suitable Radius at the Landscape editing window

Click in the preview Window and press your left mouse button and drag up and keep doing that until you built an Isle

To change the texture, choose a texture in the Landscape tool and make a smaller radius and right click at your Isle.