Some question about creating an interior Cell

[HalfLazy]

Hi everyone,

 

I'm creating some new interiors, because *reasons here*, but, considering that I'm new about this specific aspect of modding Fallout 4, I'd like to know if there are some good practices that I should be aware of;

 

Datas on the structure:

It's a large structure, let's say 1,5 times the Combat Zone, with a wide central area and some rooms.

My base idea is about creating a little town like the "Underworld" in Fallout 3, with some vendors and "citizen" with their daily schedule, etc.

 

So: here some question that I hope someone could answer.

 

1. The use of "Static collection", increase somehow the performances of the game when loading big amount of static part? or creating a custom Mesh (exporting the Nif from a static collection and sanitizing it with nifskope) for the basic Static structure is better? [or both irrelevant?]
2. When I should consider to cut an interior into two or more different cells?
3. How many npcs should be used in one single large interior, to avoid creating an heavy loading block? There are some guidelines about populating an interior with Npc that I should be aware of?
4. There's an easy/vanilla/basic way to avoid people with power armors to get inside? (I have no problem on adding a script, I'm just curious if there's a better way)
5. Any other general advice?

 

Tnx.

[JonathanOstrus]

1) The typical way one would use a static collection is to build the collection, then export to a nif. Then make a new static pointing to that nif. You may sanitize it as desired/required.

 

2) Can't say personally as I don't really do world dev.

 

3) FO4 engine is a lot saner and more forgiving than Skyrim's was. That said use judgement not to overpopulate. I'm trying to think of a prime example of "good" population but I can't. I would probably say no more than 1 npc per 4x4 (floor piece size) area. Otherwise it becomes a gauntlet to get through them all. Even that may be a bit heavy for things. The engine shouldn't have a problem. However the mod users would need a fairly beefy system to handle all that AI going on. So keep that in mind. For a reference I have 45 settlers in Covenant. Yeah... a little crowded. Can move pretty well unless they all decide to gather in the center.

 

4) The simplest way I can think of is to block/lock the door and block activation. Place a script on the door to trigger OnActivate and check if the user has Power armor. If so tell them to

get out. If not, unlock door, activate via script, then after loading in cell relock door so they must get permission again. Maybe not the best way but the fastest I can think of right now.

 

5) Keep at it! LOL.

[HalfLazy]

Tnx for the info :)

[payl0ad]

When I should consider to cut an interior into two or more different cells?

 

Depends on how much these cells hold and what you did to conserve performance.

 

Dynamic lights (red light markers) eat FPS like crazy. Dynamic shadows are very inefficient in FO4. You also have to make sure the engine doesn't choke on too many visible objects to draw. For better fine control you can try using roombounds and portals - the alternative (and they can't be used together) is using the precombine/visibility system that the vanilla game uses. It's easier to use (you essentially just precompute stuff the engine would have to do individually) but might yield inferior results to roombounds. And it blows up your mod size like crazy.

 

Your best bet is to just try it out yourself. There's several huge interiors that run mostly fine vanilla.

Edited February 23, 2018 by payl0ad

[JonathanOstrus]

 

Your best bet is to just try it out yourself. There's several huge interiors that run mostly fine vanilla.

 

 

Heh Corvega comes to mind. It's pretty large. And I think Pickman's Gallery.

[HalfLazy]

Converga and the Brewery near Oberland Station.

 

Pickman's Gallery is big, but not much "crowed" (speaking of object), my goal is to do something big and detalied, but this require a lot of attention about performance loss...

 

I didn't know about Dynamic Light showed in red, tnx for the info, fortunately I left the light at the end of the building stage.

I'll take a look into RoomBounds to see if I could learn something extra about tnx.

[payl0ad]

The Mechanist's Lair is a good example. The cell is huge and will run like total ass when you break precombines. I think Fort Hagen was split in two cells for performance reasons. The first one is much worse than the Command Center cell.