Ayleid Ruin TC set guide

[Pineapplerum]

Hi,

I'm trying to build an Ayleid Ruin mod. They're a little different than just adding an interior to the exterior. Could anyone give me a link that gives instructions on how best it is to construct them, please?

Thanks in advance. :teehee:

[DavidBudreck]

Did you follow the tutorial on the Wiki?

 

Construction Set Wiki: http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Main_Page

 

1st Mod Tutorial: http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Main_Page

 

 

The best thing to do is poke aroud in existing ruins till you find one that strikes your fancey, then Duplicate the cell, rename it, and then start modifying.

 

Moving pieces of walls and floors around is a real pain. Oblivion is very touch about placement. If you don't place the walls, floors, and ceiling properly you either get gaps, or overlapping seams. Best to start with a ruin that has already been created. Then you can worry about other stuff rather than making sure all the walls line up.

[ub3rman123]

To avoid the overlapping meshes thing, you can actually just use snap-to-grid. I haven't seen a vanilla tileset yet that doesn't work with it. Lets you easily perfectly place objects.

[DavidBudreck]

From my expeirnce, that only works when doing a room Completely from scratch, and only if you never grab everything and move it. Otherwise, the things that were already existing do not line up with the grid, so snapping things next to them either leaves gaps or overlaps. Maybe I've just had terrible luck with it.

 

But, it did sound like that's what she was talking about at first anyway, doing everything from scratch.

[ub3rman123]

Well, for the copy from other rooms, you do this.

 

1. Grab the entire room, and move it as close to the position you can.

2. Deselect everything but the snap-to-grid pieces (The room bits)

3. Move those in with snap-to-grid on. If you put the things close enough in step 1, you might not have to even rematch the clutter to he room.

[Vagrant0]

From my expeirnce, that only works when doing a room Completely from scratch, and only if you never grab everything and move it. Otherwise, the things that were already existing do not line up with the grid, so snapping things next to them either leaves gaps or overlaps. Maybe I've just had terrible luck with it.

 

But, it did sound like that's what she was talking about at first anyway, doing everything from scratch.

Actually, if the main pieces of a room were constructed with a grid and lined up properly, you can take the whole room and align it with other rooms in a different grid, even if that room has non-aligned objects. When you have multiple objects selected, it works off the base point of whatever was the first object selected and tries to align that object up with the grid. The problem however is that using a normal crossing window often ends up selecting clutter first, so everything else gets thrown off when you try to align that section with another. What you can do to remedy this is first select a part of the room which would be aligned to the same grid as what you want, then hold shift and select the rest of the room with a crossing window. Since that room piece will act as the basepoint for the group, and that room piece is something that will work with the grid you want, you can line up whole sections rather quickly.

 

 

Back to the topic... As far as exterior pieces go, many of them are setup to a radial grid. Meaning that they share the same central point, but are just rotated around that point to fit with eachother. For these, you're best using a large grid setting (like 512) initially to make sure all the pieces have their basepoint (that little yellow crossed bit) in the same place. Working in the sky above where you want to place these things is also an idea which might help out if the surrounding area isn't too cluttered. This reduces the chance of dropping things in below the world and lets you sort out their positions relative to eachother a bit easier. You can then use the method described above to move the whole section into place. Just be aware that the crossing window selects everything within the active area that is inside it, even if it is faded out, so you might want to select the objects when looking at them from below so that there is only empty sky behind.

[Pineapplerum]

Thanks for the links David, I have read through that before but it may help for me to reread it.

Thanks Ub34 and Vagranto for the tips. That will help me. I have done some exterior work and it wasn't too bad but it was a little difficult to get the pieces to fit together.

 

What I meant was I need help figuring out what pieces go with what other pieces. I guess I'll just have to experiment.

I could copy another Ayleid Ruin and rename it. But I was hoping to create a unique one.

I'll see how difficult it is. I may have to stick with the simple stuff first until I understand modding better.

I'll read the links David sent me and try the cell grid thingy. I think I tried that before but nothing happened, at least nothing that I noticed. I probably did it wrong, I'll try it again.

[DavidBudreck]

Thank you both. I've probably been doing it wrong all this time. Fortunately I haven't done that much with dungeon pieces or I might just have to go kill myself.

 

 

Here are links to a couple of other guides. I have not looked at them so do not know if they will help or not.

 

Logam's Guide to Modding: http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=10369

 

Oblivion Mod Maker Manual: http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=13948

 

 

As far as what would look good where... only experience will guide you here. That can be very intimidating, I know it was for me.

 

There are a couple of things you can do. First, edit the CS INI file in your saved games folder to allow more that one instance of the CS open at a time. Then make a mod that acts as a sort of reference. Add a cell, in this case, for Ayleid Ruin pieces, then basically drag all the pieces in the cell so you can see them all at once. Open the second instance of the CS to actually do the modding. This way you could flip back and forth between them. This is not my idea, BTW, but something suggested in the basic tutorial.

 

There is also a mod of JPG renderings of many items in the CS that might prove useful: http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=2440

[Pineapplerum]

Thank you David. If I could give you more kudos, I would. :D