Editing exterior cells just to add entrances..

[Lisselli]

I'm trying to move on from Skyrim, and bring my dungeon making skills to Fallout 4.

One thing that has discouraged me though was the precombined meshes issue, which I still don't have full understanding of.

1. It seems if you edit ANYTHING in the cell, the meshes are hosed.

So does that mean, editing landscape to fit in entrances or small buildings with load doors?

[Lisselli]

I guess not.

[BlahBlahDEEBlahBlah]

I don't *think* editing the terrain itself will break precombine. I'm pretty sure on that.

 

And if your just adding objects (not moving or disabling vanilla objects), that should be fine too.

 

Take a look at this thread for more info: https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/5522717-fallout-4-optimization-and-performance-systems-explained/

[montky]

Hello Lisselli

Having seen some of your work elsewhen,

I'm keen to hear you're interested in making stuff happen in FO4.

Procedural iterative dungeons and bounty-board quests huh? awesome stuff!

apologies for not replying sooner - real-world has been intermittent.

 

I am sure an FO4 Mod-fu-master will be along at some point to give you more pointers,

though in the meantime, I hope you find the following to be of some use for you.

Is there a particular hypothetical or locale you have in mind?

 

 

 

yes, if you use things like spring cleaning, or do not understand how Cell pre-vis and precombine and pre-batching operates,

then, deleting stuff or attempting to alter topography can lead to... complications.

things that alter the same cell in a hyperdefining way,

those can also cause mod-conflicts in futures, where multiple mods might make alterations to the same area...

 

it's definitely stuff to keep at back of mind while making stuff.

 

no doubt, you will find this thread by Damanding et al,

to be incredibly useful

https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/5522717-fallout-4-optimization-and-performance-systems-explained/

 

as, it succinctly provides ideas on how to make FO4 do cool stuff.

when you combine this with some old tricks from 2D-3D duke nukem, DOOM etc,

you can do some pretty awesome stuff.

this is sorta how chucksteel is able to make beantown interiors as seamless as it is from inside to outside transitions.

 

----

as to how you can do things,

I recommend looking into

greekrage, chucksteel, jetsteele, ddproductions, snap-n-build, petard, tyrannicon-builds and others,

as they have great ideas on how to alter topography or

to make areas link up.

 

if you want a Cell's topography to be different,

you can make that cell be overriden to a 'newlands' cell ref instead, which you can match around the edges,

and override or alter the topography for it to be 'lower' than it's existing topography.

if you want to build it up, that's a lot easier, it's just a case of placing stuff over it.

 

I think when you get the hang of

how new-lands works, and how to use "any-door-to-anywhere" etc,

you'll be able to make complex areas.

You can connect areas to other areas, do the old A* = A trick, all kinds of cool stuff.

 

this is how stuff like the "Underboston" functions,

and how you can link to the institute egresses or Enclave offshore poseidon facility etc.

door in persistent topside links to underboston,

folks measured the distance between points and can make the distance traveled in underboston

correspond to the same stade between points...

 

if you like that,

you are definitely going to like holographic concealed entrances,

random 'rad-punji pits',

and procedural iterative "Underboston" sections -

cave-ins and subsidences are always happening right?

 

 

 

[Zzyxzz]

Hello and welcome to Fallout 4 modding!

 

Fallout is "very" different from Skyrim. Yes, there are pre-combined meshes and they are pain. Real pain. It's easy to break them and may create a huge FPS loss.

 

But don't worry, it's not that hard. You can also check with FO4Edit if you broke the pre-combined meshes and restore them. When you get started, you really shouldn't touch the Boston city. It's very easy to break this town, as there are a lot of pre combined meshes.

 

What are pre-combined meshes?

As the name says, it combines meshes. Example: You have a tree, a barrel and a concrete block. 3 objects. Now they have been turned into a pre-combined mesh, which means, they are one. If you now create a new tree mesh and add it to the game. The tree will still have the same old tree mesh, as the old mesh is precombined with the other two items. You can break that, behavior by moving one of the 3 objects. If you move the barrel a little bit(or any other object of the 3 objects that are combined), precombined meshes are disabled and the tree will show the new model, BUT precombined meshes are now disabled, for the whole cell! Not only for the 3 objects. This happens, when you move an object that is precombined. When you move a tree that is not precombined, then pre-combined meshes will not be disabled. But you can't see what is pre-combined in the creation kit, its not marked.

 

As a rule of thumb:

1. Touching Boston city is always bad. You really should avoid that.

2. Moving and deleting existing objects have a risk to disable precombined-meshes. Ask yourself: Do i really need to move/delete a specific object?

3. "Trash" items are nearly always precombined, as Bethesda placed a ton of them, specially in Boston and will cause major FPS drop, when precombined is disabled.

4. Modifying places, outside of cities are most of the time fine, even when you disable precombined meshes, you won't have any drops in FPS. As they don't have many objects.

5. Adding / placing objects is fine and won't cause issues.

6. After wrapping up your mod, check with FO4Edit, if the precombined meshes were hurt and when you did so, restore them with FO4Edit, by simply dragging them into your ESP.

[Lisselli]

Thanks for the replies. I have not released anything for Skyrim, but did finish my first dungeon a week ago. However, the navmesh restrictions for exteriors rendered me unable to find a place to put an entrance without worrying about destroying the entire navmesh(s) - you can't freely delete triangles, and working with what's there is not always user-friendly. May just create a scripted portal and release it so all that time wasn't wasted developing it.

Actually, this precombined/pre-vis thing sounds almost similar in restrictions, but at least navmeshing is more forgiving.

No worries about Boston. Just like Skyrim, Fallout has a huge world that is mostly empty and full of a lot of remote areas, plenty places for me to survey.

Reading that thread from the link, it looks like an area with just vanilla trees and rocks, I can safely work with.

Edited April 18, 2017 by Lisselli

[VIitS]

Yeah, a vanilla wilderness area is fine, breaking precombineds/previs will have negligible impact.

As a rule of thumb:
1. Touching Boston city is always bad. You really should avoid that.
2. Moving and deleting existing objects have a risk to disable precombined-meshes. Ask yourself: Do i really need to move/delete a specific object?
3. "Trash" items are nearly always precombined, as Bethesda placed a ton of them, specially in Boston and will cause major FPS drop, when precombined is disabled.
4. Modifying places, outside of cities are most of the time fine, even when you disable precombined meshes, you won't have any drops in FPS. As they don't have many objects.
5. Adding / placing objects is fine and won't cause issues.
6. After wrapping up your mod, check with FO4Edit, if the precombined meshes were hurt and when you did so, restore them with FO4Edit, by simply dragging them into your ESP.

1) Very true, I would recommend only adding things (no moving anything) unless you are willing to put in a lot of work
3) Yep, and on top of that, they often use trash piles to hide sharp intersections. So just removing trash will make it look kinda bad
5) Agreed, with a caveat. If another mod touches that cell and either requires precombineds/previs to be disabled, or remade previs/precombineds for that cell, that other mod should load first, or the things that mod removed/moved will come back. Shouldn't get preculling issues, assuming the user doesn't use one of the ini edits*, and there should be no problems caused by having the add-only mod load first, unless something the other mod added/moved intersects/blocks the stuff your mod adds
6) This won't actually do anything, if your mod has the vanilla previs/precombineds in the cell info and touches a reference that is part of a precombined (even if it is identical to vanilla), it will disable previs/precombineds for that cell. It might work if you tell the CK to update the previs date** , I'm not sure on that.

Also, an easy way to tell if a reference is part of a precombined mesh:

if you look at a cell in FO4Edit, any reference that is part of a precombined mesh (i.e. will disable previs/precombineds for that cell if your mod includes them) will show up as

[Placed Object]

while references that aren't part of a precombined mesh will just show as

Placed Object

*you should never use the previs/precombined ini edits, there are better ways to accomplish what they do (even if you need it to apply to the entire wasteland)

**Right click the cell name in the Cell View window -> Update Precombine/Previs timestamp

[Zzyxzz]

Yeah, a vanilla wilderness area is fine, breaking precombineds/previs will have negligible impact.

 

 

As a rule of thumb:

1. Touching Boston city is always bad. You really should avoid that.

2. Moving and deleting existing objects have a risk to disable precombined-meshes. Ask yourself: Do i really need to move/delete a specific object?

3. "Trash" items are nearly always precombined, as Bethesda placed a ton of them, specially in Boston and will cause major FPS drop, when precombined is disabled.

4. Modifying places, outside of cities are most of the time fine, even when you disable precombined meshes, you won't have any drops in FPS. As they don't have many objects.

5. Adding / placing objects is fine and won't cause issues.

6. After wrapping up your mod, check with FO4Edit, if the precombined meshes were hurt and when you did so, restore them with FO4Edit, by simply dragging them into your ESP.

1) Very true, I would recommend only adding things (no moving anything) unless you are willing to put in a lot of work

3) Yep, and on top of that, they often use trash piles to hide sharp intersections. So just removing trash will make it look kinda bad

5) Agreed, with a caveat. If another mod touches that cell and either requires precombineds/previs to be disabled, or remade previs/precombineds for that cell, that other mod should load first, or the things that mod removed/moved will come back. Shouldn't get preculling issues, assuming the user doesn't use one of the ini edits*, and there should be no problems caused by having the add-only mod load first, unless something the other mod added/moved intersects/blocks the stuff your mod adds

6) This won't actually do anything, if your mod has the vanilla previs/precombineds in the cell info and touches a reference that is part of a precombined (even if it is identical to vanilla), it will disable previs/precombineds for that cell. It might work if you tell the CK to update the previs date** , I'm not sure on that.

 

Also, an easy way to tell if a reference is part of a precombined mesh:

if you look at a cell in FO4Edit, any reference that is part of a precombined mesh (i.e. will disable previs/precombineds for that cell if your mod includes them) will show up as

 

[Placed Object]

 

while references that aren't part of a precombined mesh will just show as

 

Placed Object

 

 

*you should never use the previs/precombined ini edits, there are better ways to accomplish what they do (even if you need it to apply to the entire wasteland)

**Right click the cell name in the Cell View window -> Update Precombine/Previs timestamp

 

 

Ok, lets say, i placed 5 new NPC markers and while doing that, i accidently clicked on a rock/rotated it/moved it, that is part of a precombined mesh. As far as i'm aware off, its not possible to undo that in the creation kit. Now i know it happened and i want to undo that. I go into FO4Edit and look at the CELL-Tree. there will be a modified object, which should have a yellow background and says its modified. When i know replace that reference with the original from the esm, it should be fine and repaired i guess? Or is there something else i need to take care of? And what happens, when i now let the creation kit recreate the precombined meshes? All issues should be gone? And as long as my mod is winning all conflicts, everything should be fine anyway?

 

I also took a look at SpringCleaning.esm and it has only green background edits and it still does disable pre-combined meshes. I think, till today, nobobdy knows why it still does disable it?

 

How can i view, if precombined are disabled? Is this also possible to do ingame?

[Lisselli]

Made a quick house mod. Stuck a bunker near concord(a nearby wilderness) and no problems from that :D.

Just gotta get used to straining my eyes in navmesh mode for this CK.

[VIitS]

 

Ok, lets say, i placed 5 new NPC markers and while doing that, i accidently clicked on a rock/rotated it/moved it, that is part of a precombined mesh. As far as i'm aware off, its not possible to undo that in the creation kit. Now i know it happened and i want to undo that. I go into FO4Edit and look at the CELL-Tree. there will be a modified object, which should have a yellow background and says its modified. When i know replace that reference with the original from the esm, it should be fine and repaired i guess? Or is there something else i need to take care of? And what happens, when i now let the creation kit recreate the precombined meshes? All issues should be gone? And as long as my mod is winning all conflicts, everything should be fine anyway?

 

I also took a look at SpringCleaning.esm and it has only green background edits and it still does disable pre-combined meshes. I think, till today, nobobdy knows why it still does disable it?

 

How can i view, if precombined are disabled? Is this also possible to do ingame?

 

 

Nope, you have to remove the accidentally modified object from your plugin completely. As you said, not possible in the CK, but in FO4Edit just right click the record -> Remove. Which is precisely why SpringCleaning.esm works. It's funny you mention it, as I actually spent the time about a year ago figuring out exactly that question (I was certain it didn't need as many copied references as it had, and wanted to figure out how to make it work without them). After a lot of trial and error I figured a single copied reference that is part of a precombined object will disable precombineds/previs, but a reference that is not part of a precombined mesh won't.

 

If you remake precombined meshes for that cell, it should be fine even if you have the copied reference, as the mod will have a new "Timestamp" for the cell. Not sure if it automatically updates the timestamp when you generate precombineds, or if you have to tell the CK to update the timestamps yourself*, but as long as the timestamps are changed in your mod, it shouldn't disable the precombineds/previs. In FO4Edit, the timestmaps are the VISI and PCMB fields of the Cell record.

 

*In the CK, right click the cell name in the Cell View window -> Update Precombined/Previs Timestamps (not certain on the exact wording, but it should be the only "timestamps" option)

 

To check in-game if they are active:

1) Open the console

2) Try to select something you know is part of a precombined mesh

3) modpos z 50 (to make sure you have the right thing selected, sometimes you'll instead end up selecting a dust/light/etc... record in front of the thing)

 

If precombineds are active, it should say something about you trying to select a "Non Ref Object" or something along those lines, and the reference id you see on the screen will be something directly behind it (another reason to use modpos to make sure you have the right thing selected).

 

If you know the reference id of a precombined object, you can also use prid xxxxxx, where xxxxxx is the ref id of the object. If it is currently part of a precombined mesh, it will tell you (as it'll tell you the name of the precombined mesh too).

 

Alternatively, if you are making sure you didn't accidentally disable them, you can use the tpc command in the console. Entering it once will disable the previs system (the occlusion system Fallout 4 uses, which is responsible for the distant-object flickering people have reported with various mods). Entering it a second time till turn it back on, but if it is disabled for the cell you are currently in, it will give a message telling you so (something along the lines of "Preculling Enabled, but disabled for the current cell". This is useful for testing if precombineds are active because the workaround Bethesda implemented that disables precombineds when you touch a reference that is part of one disables previs as well. Using the bUseCombinedObjects-0 ini edit will stop this from working (as it disables the workaround), but it would need to be disabled if you want to test if precombineds are active anyway

 

 

If your mod doesn't need to disable/update precombineds/previs to work (i.e. just adding things), you should be fine regardless of conflicts (assuming nothing placed by other mods overlaps your objects). If you want to learn more about Previs/Precombineds, I'd check out this thread on the subject. It's collection of the scattered info people have been able to discover on the subject (a suprising amount of which came from me :laugh: ), detailing when you need to worry about it, when you should be fine just disabling it (and how to do so), and when and how you should recreate it.

 

I just added a post to the 3rd page that will help you trim your mod size if you want to make new precombineds for a mod (especially import for cells with lots of stuff, which are the ones that benefit the most from precombineds). In short, you only need to include the precombined meshes that were changed with your mod. It might be a bit of work figuring out which ones those are if you changed a lot of stuff/there are a lot of precombined meshes in the cell, but it makes things a lot cleaner. For the things you added, the placed Reference should have list the precombined mesh it is a part of in the long string of info in the FormID field in the header, but the CK sometimes seems to like to move things around between precombined meshes so you'll have to check the XCRI data in the Cell record if you want to be sure.