Strange bug in my mod

[WarKirby3333]

I'm making a big castle mod and after 2hours of extensive sculpting and positioning i managed to make the exterior. The problem is, when I load up oblivion to playtest the castle a large hill appears in the courtyard. It does not show up in the CS, only in oblivion.

 

The textures on the hill are really low-res, it looks like the sort of land you see when looking from a long distance away. It's not solid either, you can walk right through it, and from inside it is invisible. Nevertheless, it severely spoils the view of my front garden.

 

I made the outer walls and gate of the castle visible at long range, in case that's relevant. It is also pretty clost to the western border of cyrodiil.

 

I don't have the mod with me just now but I will upload it tomorrow, along with some screenshots of the problem so that anyone who might be able to help can download it and have a look.

 

If you think you might be able to help on this info alone please post here.

 

Thank you for your time, and check back tomorrow.

 

WarKirby

[CJD]

is it where the oblivion gate was? :huh:

[WarKirby3333]

No. It doesn't even touch the former site of the oblivion gate. It's also way too big. The courtyard is about half the size of the IC Market District and the hill takes up half of that.

 

Something I forgot. It's not a standalone hill, but rather it slopes down from the rock wall behind the keep.

 

Thanx

 

WarKirby

[Vagrant0]

Sounds like something funky with the LOD landscape. Where is your castle located? When you put it in, did you go lowering the terrain?

[WarKirby3333]

I have uploaded the castle at http://www.tessource.net/files/cache/5657.html

Could someone please try it and tell me what is wrong/ how to fix it.

 

I did a lot of raising/lowering terrain.

 

WarKirby

 

PS when i run the castle in the CS It fails to make an autosave and tells me about it repeatedly. If this happens to you just click yes to all and it will stop.

[Vagrant0]

I think this is because of all the terrain altering. You may have to edit the LOD for that cell. I'm not sure how this is done though.

[WarKirby3333]

Does anyone know? There must be someone who does.

 

Also what does LOD actually mean and how would it cause this

 

Thanks

 

WarKirby

[Vagrant0]

My understanding is that LOD or Level of Detail landscapes are low rez meshes and textures used to show distant areas. These are controlled by many, many, many .nif files located in your meshes.esp, I would assume that you would be able to find the one for your cell by searching for the coordinates. But, this could take a few hours, or a considerable amount of hard drive space since there isn't any esp utility with a search feature, so you need to either manually look at the list, and only extract the one you need, or extract them all, and find what you need that way.

 

According to your description, this sounds like a LOD issue, the fact that you also changed alot of the landscape also supports this possibility. For whatever reason the LOD mesh isn't being disabled when the player gets close, since this isn't any sort of scripted process, there is no way to check why. It is also possible that LOD stuff never gets disabled, but is slightly lower than the actual terrain, so you never see it unless you were to remove the top of a hill.

 

If this is the case, you would need to open the mesh in some program like milkshape, or 3ds, and adjust the mesh to look something like the landscape after your changes. Doing this would also have the benefit of making the land look the same from the distance as it would close up. However, since meshing isn't too far along yet, and people with the programs aren't common, getting someone to fix the hill could be a problem. On the otherhand, if I get bored, and want to try meshing something, I might want to try something like this to get a feel for how to use the .nif exporter stuffs. I just don't know what time I'll have, so if you can find someone else, they're welcome to the job.

[WarKirby3333]

That explains a lot, and makes a lot of sense, especially as I have just noticed that the hill is the exact shape and position as the original lanscape. I know just about nothing about 3D modeling programs or meshing.

 

I've thought of a solution though. I'm gonna raise the entire exterior of the castle up to above the original hill. I will have to make the relatively flat road from Chorrol into a considerable incline.

 

Thanks for the advice though.

 

The moral of the story? Don't lower terrain below its original level.

 

WarKirby

[Vagrant0]

I'm hoping you read this before you get too far...

 

Make sure you have a backup with the origional landscape on it, I may just want to have a crack at this if only so that I can know that it can be fixed. It would be better to get this fixed without altering additional cells just to smooth out the landscape. This will prevent conflicts with other mods, and keep other problems to a minimum.

 

Since it looks like I might have to check out your mod for cell conflicts with one of mine, I'll have to do something one way or another. Better to fix your problem, then to find another location for mine.

 

*edit* it looks like there is an easier way to do this. within the CS, world > testing >update LOD. Export all the LOD for tamriel (this may take some time and a bit of hard drive space). Then deleting the LOD files for the cells that you didn't edit. By my count it ended up being 33 cells. Testing now, will edit with results.

 

*edit2* First try didn't work. Trying again with the landscape loaded in the render window, will also try without removing the other files. On the plus side, when playing, your exterior walls were visable from the distance, but your gate was a bit buggy.

 

*edit3* Second try didn't see any change. You might just end up having to make the courtyard smaller, and raise the castle up higher. I wouldn't touch anything any further back than where your groundblades start.