Laynton Posted January 25, 2011 Author Share Posted January 25, 2011 I like having all my ducks in a row before i start something but i guess im getting a little ahead of myself. thanks for the advise everyone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chaospearl Posted January 25, 2011 Share Posted January 25, 2011 Aha, okay. I get what you're doing. Still. Unless you have a very, very specific and very, very weird idea of how your dungeon layout needs to look, I can almost guarantee that you'll be able to find the pieces you need within the construction set. I assume the "circular maze" was just an example to explain your point -- there are lots of circular walls to work with if that's actually what you wanted to do. My advice: Figure out what you want to do. See if the pieces are available. If they're not, post here and it's almost a sure bet somebody will point you to exactly what you're looking for. If you still can't find the right pieces and it's imperative that you use exactly what you're envisioning and not "the almost right" piece, THEN start worrying about Blender. I'm not trying to discourage you from making your own things from scratch; gods know we can use every single modeler we can get around here. It's just that when you're talking dungeon layout, it's nearly impossible to imagine a layout that can't be created using what's already out there -- have you SEEN some of the things people make out of regular Legos? -- and it'd be a waste of your time to reinvent the wheel. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Laynton Posted January 26, 2011 Author Share Posted January 26, 2011 @chaospearl - Ya i definitely dont want to reinvent the wheel lol guess I was really getting ahead of myself. I guess i'm jumping to conclusions about me having to build everything from scratch and not searching the deep depths of the libraries in the CS. Thanks again for the advise I will dive into all the info you all have given me and see where I'm at in while. Oh and I am very interested in learning how to start modding but I should probably start here first. Thanks again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chaospearl Posted January 26, 2011 Share Posted January 26, 2011 Good luck with whatever mods you end up making! Modding, the CS variety, really isn't as complicated as people who've never tried it tend to think. You don't need to write a speck of code or so much as open a paint program in order to create a seriously cool in-depth original quest mod that adds brand new NPCs with original dialogue and their own daily routines, complex houses and shops that sell anything you can imagine, completely new areas of awe-inspiring landscaping, maze-like dungeons full of traps and puzzles... all comprising a dozen extra hours of content. Let me say that again: You don't need to write a speck of code, or open a paint program, to do the things I described above. Every single bit of that can be done using the CS and the pieces available. (For voiced dialogue you do need some audio equipment and know-how, but voice isn't necessary for a great mod and everything else is purely CS). You should also know, in case you weren't aware of it, that in addition to what's provided by Bethsoft the Nexus also has an entire section of modder's resources that are totally free to download and use (with proper credit given) in your own mods. By "resources" I mean already-created items and textures that you can use for whatever you'd like. You can find detailed Elven sailing ships, a complete chess set, beautiful wood-framed paintings, tons of new weaponry and armor, sets of porcelain or silver and gold dishware, heaps of sparkling gems, whole museums worth of furniture... and that's just off the top of my head. That stuff isn't part of any existing mod; it's basically made available as a collection of models and textures (in some cases scripts) and it's your job to decide where and how to place them into the world via your own mod. There are plenty of people in this community who are fantastic at modeling and texturing and love to make things, but don't really care for the time-consuming work of adding each item to specific shops or hand-placing each object into the game. Often those people will create beautiful original pieces and then zip up the graphic files into an archive and upload it as a resource for anybody who wants to use in their mods. You can find inspiration for half a dozen mods to create just by looking at what's available in the resources category. Some of it's truly breathtaking. (Some of it, of course, is crap; but that's true of any large collection of contributions by users.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lanceor Posted January 27, 2011 Share Posted January 27, 2011 @ Laynton Anyone who does this much research is clearly very serious about making a mod that's good. I can't wait to see what you come up with! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Laynton Posted February 6, 2011 Author Share Posted February 6, 2011 (edited) Got a new question: How would I go about making an enormously large room in a cave? Both in floor area and in height. I tried just blowing up some already made caves in the CS by just quadrupling the size but then the textures start looking really fuzzy and just odd looking. Any suggestions? Oh one other question: Where are all the different cave parts located? I've found a couple by looking at existing caves and seeing which parts work well with what I'm trying to do but some just don't fit quit right. Is there a folder that they are all located at or a specific tag or word that I can just search for? Because going through every single cave in the game to try and find a piece that will work is just not going to work out. I dont have that much free time on my hands. Edited February 6, 2011 by Laynton Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ub3rman123 Posted February 6, 2011 Share Posted February 6, 2011 Got a new question: How would I go about making an enormously large room in a cave? Both in floor area and in height. I tried just blowing up some already made caves in the CS by just quadrupling the size but then the textures start looking really fuzzy and just odd looking. Any suggestions? Oh one other question: Where are all the different cave parts located? I've found a couple by looking at existing caves and seeing which parts work well with what I'm trying to do but some just don't fit quit right. Is there a folder that they are all located at or a specific tag or word that I can just search for? Because going through every single cave in the game to try and find a piece that will work is just not going to work out. I dont have that much free time on my hands. First off: Caves won't inflate their UV mapping when you increase them in size. The best method for that is to download a modder's resource with more modular cave pieces (I.e. separated ceilings and floors). Second: The meshes for basic cave architecture can be found under World Objects>Statics>Dungeons>Caves. After that, it's subdivided by prefix on what kind of shape room it goes into, such as chasms, large rooms, small tunnels, small rooms, large tunnels, and pits. The large room meshes often fit onto the sides of the other rooms, such as as a wall on the side of a chasm mesh. There are usuallt four meshes for each part of the architecture: One for each 90 degree rotation, so it allows for clean seams when you place them together. I've found that the easiest method for rapidly making caves without having to sort through ABCD for the right UV direction is to never rotate the pieces and instead just place them as they are when drawn from the objects window. That way you can simply tell which direction to place by the shape you need. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Laynton Posted February 11, 2011 Author Share Posted February 11, 2011 @ub3rman123 - Thanks for the tips. Can't believe I passed right over those...must have been one of the later nights. anyways thanks Is there anyway to get a room that you have all decked out in one house and import it into another house besides cut and paste? I tried that and it's really hard to get everything lined back up in the new house especially since you cant edit the XYZ coordinance of multiple objects at once. (At least I havent found a way too) For example make the room into a block and import it in and position it then explode the block so I can then continue editing like you can in AutoCAD. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ub3rman123 Posted February 11, 2011 Share Posted February 11, 2011 You can move objects by dragging them with the left mouse button, which works for large group of objects as well as for single objects. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Laynton Posted February 12, 2011 Author Share Posted February 12, 2011 Ya thats what I've been doing. What I was trying to figure out was if there was a way to change the coordinances of a group of items all at once. Like how you can go to the properties of a single item and change the X,Y, or Z coordance to place it in an exact location but with a whole group of items. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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