[LE] Interior cells and exterior orientation

[greyday01]

How fussy are you about correlating interior cells to their exterior door? I have 4 cells I'm planning to tunnel under some mountains. The first exterior door is NW of the second exterior door. The First door is at height -3700 and the second door is at height -155. If I generally have stairs going up from one to the other in the four cells I might cut the height difference but I don't think I could cut the entire 3000 height difference. Also I'm not sure if I copied the interior cells to the exterior and lined them up they would reach. Does it matter?

 

Also I couldn't really understand how to make your cell show in the correct location when you open the map from inside. The explanation just didn't make sense to me. Could someone explain how for me?

[JonathanOstrus]

This could cause a lot of controversy. Ultimately it's up to you how OCD you want to be. You don't have to make it perfectly scale and line up like that. Though a lot of the vanilla content appears to. I haven't actually gone and measured it or anything, just eyeballed it from CK. I imagine Bethesda has some nifty way of pulling that off. I doubt someone is taking CK measurements to make sure things lineup "just right". You can fib a bit too since you have loading spaces. Actual doors might be out of place to have a door at -3200 suddenly exit at +8900 or something drastically different like that. Though using an auto load door like a cave entrance/exit you're obviously going to have some "travel" between points that could be justified by some discrepancy in offset. But having some sort of dungeon that goes nowhere but down with an exit that then ends up higher in the exterior world than the entrance is a bit weird. I'd try to avoid obvious things like that.

 

FAQ:

Q: Would I try to make it perfectly scale?

A: Yea!

 

Q: Would it be a total waste of time?

A: Maybe.

 

Q: Will most players notice?

A: Probably not.

 

Q: Would I feel awesome having actually pulled it off to scale?

A: Yup.

 

I'm not sure I completely understand the latter part of your post. If you show the world map (not local) while inside it's static showing your last worldspace location. It doesn't move the map marker while you travel inside, even if you travel great distances. Upon exit it then updates the world map. If you wanted a marker that follows you as you move through your cave system I think you need to make it a worldspace. You would then need to build it enclosed to pull off the interior look. This would however require you to lineup your entrance/exit and such perfectly with the real Tamriel worldspace or things will look wonky.

[agerweb]

Although i like the inside of my buildings to match outside I am a little more relaxed with caves. As long as they make reasonable sense. Eg if you go up in a cave there should be something in the exterior world to go up into. P

 

If a cave/dungeon has more than one entrance I do take more care that these are in sensible places in the exterior as I think the player is more likely to notice inconsistences here than in the rise and fall within a cave system.

[greyday01]

I've just thought of a way to see where a cell will exit. Copy the entrance door and exit door of the interior cell. paste it in the exterior cell and overlap the entrance doors to see where the exit will fall. Continue with the next interior cell. I'll probably not be that fussy though. I'll try finding the Z axis difference between the entrances and exits and adding or subtracting that from the exterior door height. I won't sweat a 1000 difference or so but I'll try to get close and as long as the interior cells travel in approximately the right direction that will be ok.

 

The map thing though. If I enter a cave near riften and open the world map the you are here pointer shows you your approximate location in the world. I don't need to track from room to room but I don't want the map to say that I'm in Whiterun either. How to you tell the ck where your cell is in the world?