[LE] Preferred method of swapping old/new cell clutter

[Omegacron]

I've been poking around in other people's mods to see how they handle the concept of an old, dusty junk-filled cell becoming clean & livable after a quest stage or dialogue option. The various city homes do this as well with the "home decoration" purchases from the local steward. Looking at the cells in the Creation Kit, it looks like everything is in the room at once, with old/new items tied to a parent reference that controls whether the other items are visible or not. Unfortunately, it also looks like a jumbled mess in the render window.

 

Rather than do it this way, I was thinking I could have duplicate cells called "MyRoomNEW" and "MyRoomOLD", with each cell looking the way I want. Then instead of enabling/disabling a parent reference, I could just switch the door leading to the cell. For example, when you enter Cell01, there is a door leading to "MyRoomOLD". That door is in the same position as a second door that is currently disabled, with the second door going to "MyRoomNew" instead. In the script for the quest or dialogue, I could then just swap out which door is visible - and therefore which version of "MyRoom" is accessible.

 

Would this method work, and what are the pro/cons of each method? My biggest grief at the moment is that the combined versions in a single cell are difficult to work with in the render window.

[agerweb]

Both methods work it really depends how much stuff your adding or taking away. If you replacing a lot of stuff swapping whole rooms is probably the best way, otherwise you get a very cluttered looking room in the CK and it can be difficult to see what is what.

 

I generally have the two doors attached to Xmarkers as parents and then enable or disable in a quest stage as appropriate.

[Omegacron]

Both methods work it really depends how much stuff your adding or taking away. If you replacing a lot of stuff swapping whole rooms is probably the best way, otherwise you get a very cluttered looking room in the CK and it can be difficult to see what is what.

 

I generally have the two doors attached to Xmarkers as parents and then enable or disable in a quest stage as appropriate.

That's great! If the door method will work, I think I'll go that route. Seems like it would be a lot easier working with separate cells. Thanks a lot!

[greyday01]

The only problem is if you drop something in the old room and the door switches to the new room it will be lost. Containers could be managed like cloud containers I suppose. Anything put in one available in both. Warn people that they need to pick up dropped items before buying the upgrade.

[agerweb]

True, but my logic was always that if a dusty abandoned room is cleaned and filled up whatever is in there will get chucked or stolen. Lesson for player dont drop stuff in any old room.

[TheMastersSon]

It's a bad assumption if the 'cleaned' room contains quest items, skill books, essential NPCs etc. Check carefully before cleaning. :)

[agerweb]

This is about creating two custom rooms so the only thing in them is what the modder puts there or what the player leaves there.

[Omegacron]

This is about creating two custom rooms so the only thing in them is what the modder puts there or what the player leaves there.

Exactly - initially the room is dusty, dirty, & cluttered with rubble. I doubt anyone would drop anything in there, and I won't place any usable containers in it. Once the "cleanup" package is purchased from the steward, the next time you enter the room it would be the cleaned, furnished version. The end experience should be just like the vanilla homes, except when I work with it in the CK I won't have to deal with what is essentially two cells of clutter layered on top of each other.

 

At least... that's the end goal here.

[DavidJCobb]

Enable/disable parents are by far the best option for this situation. The difficulty in editing everything is very easily solved. If you select an enable-state parent and press Ctrl + 1, you can toggle the visibility of its enable-state children. Shift + 1 toggles the visibility of opposite-state children.

 

I doubt anyone would drop anything in there

This is exactly the kind of assumption that leads to bugs, though.

 

A player could drop items in there if they're running low on inventory space but don't really want to get rid of something (e.g. dropping alchemy supplies on the floor for later).

 

A player could drop items in there if they want to decorate the space. If they're role-playing, then maybe they think a dilapidated living space is fitting for their character, and they'll get it cleaned up later (and expect not to lose their things).

 

Another mod could cause the player to drop items in the room, or could spawn markers at the player's feet while they're in the room. Depending on what that mod does, this could go very badly; picture a "Farore's Wind"-style teleport system, which could port the player into the "wrong" room if they set a warp point and then upgrade the house in the meantime.

 

If you ship the mod and run into any of these problems, you're going to have a very hard time fixing it in a backward-compatible way. I cannot overstate how much better enable-state parents are for this sort of thing.

[Omegacron]

Enable/disable parents are by far the best option for this situation. The difficulty in editing everything is very easily solved. If you select an enable-state parent and press Ctrl + 1, you can toggle the visibility of its enable-state children. Shift + 1 toggles the visibility of opposite-state children.

Wow - I had no idea you could do that. You're right, though, that would solve the cluttered render window issue. I'll give that a shot and see how it goes. Thanks for the advice!