SSE Implimenting Dungeons

[cronodevir]

So, with SE out and things going smoothly I have decided its time to make and release something. I have always liked making dungeons in morrowind, oblivion, and skyrim, though I have never released anything. I am considering doing it for SE. But, my main concern is how to implement them. I like what Forgotten Dungeons has done; but that takes up a lot of real-estate in skyrim. I have thought of doing the same but just having smaller doors around. I have thought of modifying existing dungeons and adding doors to sub dungeons. I have thought of making all of the dungeons enterable via reading books you collect (thus using up no worldspace and making dungeons random in how you find them). And I have thought of adding dungeon entrances outside of the skyrim worldspace, that is, you walk the roads outside of skyrim and just past the gates would be a new bit of landmass (very small) with dungeons entrances. I have thought of making one entrance to a hub and the hub would have more dungeon doors as I add them, but thats kind of boring, however I could work with that and make a story out of it. ANother way to do it would be to do a system how the (forgot the name of the mod, I think a world of pain?) dungeon in New Vegas was with the various redoubts connecting to new dungeons and old ones. So you would have a hub with like 6 new dungeons that you could enter, but each dungeon would also have a second exit/entrance located within an already existing dungeon. So a big system connecting a few vanilla dungeons together via new intermediate dungeons I make.

Some things I want to keep in mind are:

-We are talking 4 maybe 5 dungeons (big ones, 4-5 big cells each), depending on how much I get done.

-I want them all radiant enabled. Which is why the book dungeon idea may not work very good.. "Hey, can you go find my lost iron ingot? its located in the book "Joe's Booktrap Vol. II" .... which is sitting on a shelf in Muzlft." Though, another reason I like the book idea is because I fancy myself a poet and I would have a poem sort of describing the dungeon.

There are pros and cons for all of the ideas I gave, but what would you guys suggest?

By the way I am not the best at the CK, I can snap peices together with the best of them and I used to do level designs in the Unreal Engine so making dungeons is my thing. This means there won't be elaborate quests in them, just pure dungeon crawling.

[TheDungeonDweller]

Skyrim is bigger than you think. There are a LOT of unused areas. Forgotten Dungeons doesn't take up the whole map. The only problem with making exterior entrances is working with the outside navmeshes. Don't limit yourself because of another mod. I also think mod users do not care about the steps taken to get to point B, as long as they can get to point B and get out of it. They will understand you having to use intricate ways of implementing entrances, especially when it comes to avoiding conflicts or wanting not to touch exterior navmeshes. I'm saying, if reading a book is a way to teleport to a dungeon, go with that.

Making a dungeon radiant enabled, I believe consists of making its Location(the form) have the keyword "LocTypeDungeon" and you need to have a boss with the LocRefType "Boss". Same thing with making it clearable(LocTypeClearable). Though in the case of radiant quests, there may be a little more involved.

Well you have experience with level design, so you know it takes time.

Practically ANY kind of dungeon can be made with Skyrim's Cave/Fort/Dwemer/Nordic kits. If you need to make ice caves, or work with any object that uses ice shaders, you need to turn on collision by pressing F4 otherwise, you wont be able to select them. Also ice objects like rocks, their shaders do not match the rotation with the object - this is normal. So if you turn a rock downwards, the shader will move upwards.

You might have trouble with the lighting.

[cronodevir]

Yeah, I am thinking of doing a mega dungeon hub type deal. So there will be one entrance into the hub on the surface which may have like an npc or maybe a whole tavern type deal, and then from there would be various ways into new dungeons. Possibly connected to vanilla dungeons. ie. spider web dungeons. That way I only have to alter the world space once, and then add doors to a few vanilla dungeons.