Please help! How do I place a starting point

[Megatarius]

I followed the basic My First Dungeon tutorial. Nowhere does it mention anything about a player starting point.

 

I did what it said about entering starting cell and all that into the .ini file.

 

 

How do I specify what coordinates I start at, and what direction I face?

 

I did it in the .ini file, but I have confirmed that I do not actually start at those coordinates. I don't start at 0, 0, 0, either.

 

I start at the same place each time, but it's an arbitrary location. It also seems to be below the floor no matter how much I move my whole scene downwards.

 

In fact, I start in the same place even if there are no coordinates specified in the .ini file.

 

 

What do I have to do to specify an exact location to start at? How did they do it for the real game? I looked at the tutorial dungeon and there's no object in the place where you start.

[theuseless]

What exactly is it that you are trying to do? I'm not sure that you can start the game at any location you see fit. I believe the way this is achieved is by ending the first quest (the tutorial quest which ends when you leave the dungeon). You can then teleport the main charachter to an x marker you have placed. You might want a more knowledgeable modder's advice, but that's the method I would start at. Just edit the stuff you want into the tutorial quest script, teleport and end it. Seems to me the easiest work around. Maybe not.

 

Hope this gets your brain working,

theuseless

[Megatarius]

Thanks for replying.

 

What I'm trying to do is have my character start from where I want inside my new cell.

 

 

The tutorial I followed says to enter two parameters into the .ini file (the one in My Documents, not the install folder), and then launch the game.

 

When I follow the instructions to the letter, I start off below the floor of my cell (no matter how many times I move the whole kaboodle down in the Render Window). I can tcl back up to it, but I still want to know how I can just place a start point into the game world.

 

There isn't one in the vanilla dungeon start location either, so obviously some other parameter tells it where to make the character start. That's what I want to know.

 

 

 

The closest I can come is by just putting a door from the outside into the cell where I want to start from. That's fine because I only really wanted the start point for test purposes.

 

However, I would still like to know what's going on sooner or later. Obviously you can specify this, hence the multitude of alternate start mods out there. Arrive by Ship has the player start out in a ship cabin cell. Why shouldn't I be able to have the player start out in my cell?

[theuseless]

It would be useful if you listed the specific tutorial. You can also rip apart the scripting from those mods such as the Skip Intro to see what is going on, or contact the makers of the mods for instructions. I've found that modders are generally willing to share information and help with small steps when they can.

 

This unfortunately isn't my area of expertise, but thought I'd help with an alternative.

 

-edit-

 

When I stated

 

Just edit the stuff you want into the tutorial quest script, teleport and end it

 

I meant the oblivion tutorial. Not the one that you followed.

[Megatarius]

http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index...y_First_Dungeon is the tutorial.

 

I'll admit I skipped the part about pathing so I could just get to seeing it in game. I'm having another problem where the skeleton I put in is always dead when I get to it, but I'm not worried about it right now. I'm sure I missed something about that.

[David Brasher]

I am not sure I really understand what you are doing, but there is a definite start location for the Player in the vanilla game. It is an XMarkerHeading named CGPlayerStartMarker in Interior Cell ImperialDungeon01. In your mod, why don't you try deleting this X-marker heading and putting one with an identical name in your dungeon? You should probably reverse the order of that process. It may not be as simple as all that, but I think that is probably kind of like what an alternative start mod would do.

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------

EDIT: I ran some tests, but weird stuff happens. I moved the start marker outside the door of my cell then renamed it. I put an XMarker Heading in the Marker District and named it appropriately. But when I started the game, I ended up outside my cell and not in the Market District.

 

So I deleted the marker outside my cell (which no longer had the right name, but names don't seem to matter.) When I tried the game again, it glitched and I got stuck looking at the main menu screen with the scrolling map of Cyrodiil, but had a Heads-Up display of health and such. I could not play.

 

So I guess I would have to study tutorials or reverse-engineer a quickstart mod to figure this out.

 

One easy solution would be to delete almost everything but the x-marker heading in the chargen cell and make it into whatever you want for your alternate start mod.

 

EDIT: Wow. That tutorial has some interesting (but weird) information. Maybe I should read more tutorials. The standard procedure for testing a new dungeon is not to change the Oblivion.ini and start a new character there. The standard procedure is to have one of your characters walk there and go in the front door. (Or magic portal or whatever.) I haven't tested it, but you may have to have something like gridpathing or an xMarkerHeading in order to start above the floor if you use the tutorial's advice.

 

---------------------------------------------------------------------

You mentioned gridpathing. If you don't have gridpathing, the NPCs and monsters can go bonkers. Your companion, if you have one, will probably not follow you or will appear in the void at the bottom of the cell. The monsters will run into walls and clutter and do a poor job of chasing you down to kill you. In some cases, if the gridpathing is bad, they could look at you and shoot at you, but never get close to you.

 

There are various types of skeletons. I bet you used one with 0 health points like DeadSkeleton. You could just use one of the other skeletons. (But not one of the conjured skeletons for summoning.) Another possibility is that you have a trap that kills it before you get there or another monster in your dungeon in a faction that hates the undead and which kills it before you get there.

[Megatarius]

I remember that x marker now. I guess I was still to n00bish at the time I saw it. I thought it had to do with lighting or something because it was not on the exact spot where you start. I should have just double clicked on it and seen the name. :pinch:

 

That may even answer my question, but it's good to know I'm not the only one who thought that tutorial had some weird ideas in it. I've had no problems testing it out by just putting a temporary door from the outside. It does seem like a much more practical way of going about it.

 

 

As for the skeleton being dead, it is a regular "live" one, I don't have any other monsters there, nor do I have traps. (I skipped the trap part too.) Actually, it was grid pathing. As soon as I did that, I haven't had any problems at all, so that's that.

 

 

Thanks for your help everyone. I appreciate it, even if it seems like I make these threads too hastily.