Is it possible?

[slypanzer]

I was thinking about putting in a request for an Oblivion version of Laputa, the castle in the sky, based on the animated film.

But first I wanted to check on a few things, and get the general opinion of others.

 

So, is it possible, to set it on a recurring path where it hovers over one city for a short time, and then slowly makes it's way to another, to hover again?

 

Is it also possible to cover it in a constant fog around the outer perimeter of the island itself?

 

And lastly, is it possible to give a destination, in the general worldspace, no point of origin on the map? (that I'm curious about mainly because I think if it IS possible for it to wander, the map would give conflicting information and it might cause problems.)

[Vagrant0]

Some aspects are possible in a limited context, but would require a rather insane amount of scripting, and likely need the city to consist of as few objects as possible. The biggest problem however is that doors and pathing cannot be setup to work around a dynamic location, so in order to have any NPCs wandering outside, the city would need to be in it's own worldspace with a static location, and the gate to the city linked to the outside world using a scripted gateway. Even if you just wanted the city to stop at 2 locations, without any transition between them, you would have to setup the city as its own worldspace with a static location.

[stars2heaven]

Im curious about what sort of scipting it would take. The doors and the inside are easy to deal with, imo. As Vagrant said, another world takes care of the inside, and there dont need to be any doors directly connected to the outside of the building. So the issue is how to get the building itself to move.

 

How could you get all those peices to move together at the same time? Combining some meshes might make the task a little easier. You would have fewer things you would have to move. But as far as the animatiion goes, Im afraid I havent ever dealt with moving objects. Not yet anyways. But I think this is possible with some work put into it.

 

First thought that comes to mind is something similar to those moving pillars or gates. But with a very long path way for it to move along. Then just place it in the sky and let it do its thing.

[Vagrant0]

Im curious about what sort of scipting it would take. The doors and the inside are easy to deal with, imo. As Vagrant said, another world takes care of the inside, and there dont need to be any doors directly connected to the outside of the building. So the issue is how to get the building itself to move.

 

How could you get all those peices to move together at the same time? Combining some meshes might make the task a little easier. You would have fewer things you would have to move. But as far as the animatiion goes, Im afraid I havent ever dealt with moving objects. Not yet anyways. But I think this is possible with some work put into it.

 

First thought that comes to mind is something similar to those moving pillars or gates. But with a very long path way for it to move along. Then just place it in the sky and let it do its thing.

Essentially, what you'd have to do is make use of the whole disable, positionworld, enable cycle several thousand times per move, use some trigonometry to figure out coordinates between the two endpoints, and use offsets for all items you want to be moved at the same time. Simply put, nothing short of insanity.

[slypanzer]

Some aspects are possible in a limited context, but would require a rather insane amount of scripting, and likely need the city to consist of as few objects as possible. The biggest problem however is that doors and pathing cannot be setup to work around a dynamic location, so in order to have any NPCs wandering outside, the city would need to be in it's own worldspace with a static location, and the gate to the city linked to the outside world using a scripted gateway. Even if you just wanted the city to stop at 2 locations, without any transition between them, you would have to setup the city as its own worldspace with a static location.

 

 

What if it were put in it's own world space then, would it be easier for it to have a "moving background" that "looks" like cyrodiil under it? (or possible? xD I ask a lot of "is this possible?" questions, as far as modding is concerned, I'm barely capable of adding plates to pre-made tables lol)

[QQuix]

The moving is kind of crazy, but, with OBSE arrays, it is quite possible. I've done it with ships (

). Each ship is composed of about 30 objects that are moved and positioned every frame. I would guess that 100 objects could be moved without FPS drop. Maybe 200.

 

But, as Vagrant already said, there are very serious problems to solve:

1) MOVEMENT: When you move statics, their collision stays behind, so you have to enable+move+disable them in different frames. But, then, it would flicker. I have tried alternating between 2 sets of identical objects, but it still flickers. There is a solution, tweaking with the mesh, that makes the collision go along, but I am no modeler and don't know how to do it.

 

2) DOORS: Major problem is that interior doors lead to an exterior door marker and this door marker would have to move along with the city. OBSE has functions to do this, and that would allow the player to go in and out correctly, but NPCs can't deal with this moving destination, so every time you need an NPC to change cells, you have to do it by script, forcing the NPC to activate the proper door (Door.Activate NPC 1)

 

2) PATH: Path nodes cannot be moved. One theoretical solution would be to create a network of XMarkers and script the NPCs to go to one after another until he reaches his destination.

 

Agreed!! All in all, insane amount of work.

 

 

I guess the moving background (underground?) would be much easier. But, with screenshots, it would look flat. I wonder if it would be possible to create a miniature 3D mesh corresponding to Tamriel landscape.

[Vagrant0]

I guess the moving background (underground?) would be much easier. But, with screenshots, it would look flat. I wonder if it would be possible to create a miniature 3D mesh corresponding to Tamriel landscape.

The lod meshes pieced together in a 3d program, and using pieced together local maps for a texture might work. But the hard part is simply in piecing it all together and getting the animation to look right.

 

On the plus side, if the city is less than 5 cells wide, you would only need to create a single, very, very large mesh placed in the middle of the center cell which moves. As long as the insertion point for that object remains in the center cell, the animation for the object should be visible even if you move closer to the edges.

 

http://209.85.48.8/252/133/upload/p2025398.jpg

Was a very large model I made for a test, notice the buildings at the bottom. There was no indication as to a maximum size for a single mesh as far as I was able to find, but this one also only spanned about 10 cells from end to end (insert point in the center of the town), so some limit might exist.

 

The hard part however is making a city which cannot make use of any terrain. Although this option is a bit easier, it requires quite alot of skill and time working with 3d models.

[QQuix]

Yes . . . I remember you mentioning some time ago that if the anchor point of a large mesh is not in a loaded cell, the whole thing disappears (which makes sense).

 

So a single, large mini landscape mesh would not work because it would have to be moved far away, in all directions, to fake the city movement.

AFAIK, animation can only move the mesh back and forth in one direction, so won't work either.

A lot of small pieces would also not work because the farther ones would be in unloaded cells and would not show up.

 

Hmmm . . . what about a single, large mini landscape mesh in an interior cell that behaves like exterior?

[Vagrant0]

Hmmm . . . what about a single, large mini landscape mesh in an interior cell that behaves like exterior?

Same issue.

 

What I meant was to put the animation on the actual mesh, and not try to script it. If the animation is on the mesh, the actual location of that mesh doesn't change, just the animations related with it. It'd be alot of work to setup, but it's really the only way to do it unless you want to use a few dozen large meshes with displaced pivot points, or just make the town float above a city without any smooth transition (maybe weather change to distant fog) between the two.

[Hididety]

No expert on this but you could make a large flat plane that has screen shots pieced together then use some creative bump mapping to make it look 3D. Then instead of moving the city you could move the plane and it would have the same effect. OR idk if the CS is capable of this but make the plane have a UV pan so that the texture moves and that's it. But like I said I'm not an expert so I'm not sure.