A Question About Border Regions

[meatbag58]

I was working on a mod for Tale of Two Wastelands, when a thought occurred to me.

 

I was trying to make a new town to add to the Capital Wasteland. I planned to put it relatively close to the Yao Gui Caverns, but beyond the border region so that the town's inclusion would not be so intrusive. In my attempts to edit the border region to allow the player passage to the town, I discovered that simply moving the border places one of those "edited" asterisk next to every area in the Cell View. I couldn't find a way to reshape the border region to my liking; so far simply dragging the entire west border of the Capital Wasteland has been my only option, and it's caused the above issues with the Cell View.

 

My question is threefold. Firstly, would doing the above increase the file size of my mod since it every area had seemingly been edited or changed in some way? What other effects would the above method have? Finally, is there a better way to edit the shape of the border region than just dragging one side of the border; because doing that just couldn't get the shape I wanted.

[M48A5]

There is a mod available that has an area outside the world map. It is Ghoul Mansion https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout3/mods/2618

 

You might want to take a look at it and see how the author achieved what you are trying to do. The problem the author had was that companions could not follow you. However, I remember that in the version I originally used, I was able to have my companions. I don't remember if they actually followed me there or if I used console commands.

[Mktavish]

How are you dragging the border in geck ? Are you sure you are actually moving the western border ? Have you tried a test in game to see if you can go beyond the vanilla imposed border along X coordinate -30 ?

 

Which I think is only imposed at run time , and only on the player. Because the player position is what controls what cells are loaded by the UgridsToLoad=5 , Fallout.ini setting .

 

In geck I don't think there is a limit , it seems the cells can just go on forever. Which means you can edit those all you want. But the player will not be able to go past the border unless you turn it off with the

Fallout.ini setting ... "bBorderRegionsEnabled=1" just change that to =0

 

The asterisk showing up in the Cell View window next to the cell ID is just showing you have changed that cells state from it's vanilla one. So no you won't be adding the entire western line of all the -31 X coordinate cells data they have , into your mod. Their information is already in the vanilla .esm file.

 

Or are you saying on the "WorldSpace : Wasteland" window , you changed the NW CellX to -32 or something ? Which that doesn't change the border region imposed on the player. It just adjusts the world map .dds relation shown in the pipboy.

 

If you don't want to have the border disabled all the time , could have a trigger box to run a script with this function I think ?

 

https://geckwiki.com/index.php/Con_SetINISetting

 

Add edit : Oh wait ... you are saying that every Cell in the WorldSpace: Wasteland , is now showing an asterisk ... ergo they have all been edited , not just the line of cells beyond -30 X coordinate ?

 

Wow ! how did you do that ? But it kinda sounds like you didn't add a line of cells to the western border , but just expanded the dimensions of the cells between -30 X & 20 X

Therefore all kinds of objects will now be in different cells since they didn't move , but the cell borders did. Not to mention how that would effect the navmesh. Which doesn't sound like a good thing at all to happen.

 

But IDK ... that is just a guess ... curious to know how, what, where you changed that though .

[meatbag58]

There is a mod available that has an area outside the world map. It is Ghoul Mansion https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout3/mods/2618

 

You might want to take a look at it and see how the author achieved what you are trying to do. The problem the author had was that companions could not follow you. However, I remember that in the version I originally used, I was able to have my companions. I don't remember if they actually followed me there or if I used console commands.

I looked into it. It looks like in version 2 of Ghoul Mansion, the creator asked people to deactivate the wasteland border entirely in order to reach the mansion. In version three, he remedied this by making the mansion a new world space entirely.

 

It now seems that I'll have to either delete the border region, then redraw it to my specifications (I have no idea what effect that will have on the rest of the wasteland) or just make my town a new worldspace. Neither of those are desirable options.

 

Still, thank you for the help all the same.

[madmongo]

Personally, I'd just make a new worldspace, but then I have a lot of experience at doing that. If you don't have much experience, it can be about as pleasant as repeatedly smashing your head against a solid brick wall.

 

If I remember correctly, the game's current navmesh only extends as far as the border, so moving the border will result in terrain that isn't navmeshed being accessible by the player. Companions won't be able to go into these cells unless your mod navmeshes them. You will also need to regenerate the LOD for your modified region, or you new town isn't going to look right from a distance.

 

By the way, you can make cells that are outside of -32 to +32 x and y, but the game engine has problems if you go outside of those boundaries. You'll want a few cells outside of your area just so that it looks like the world keeps going and doesn't just end (from the player's point of view), so it's probably best to keep all of your stuff at somewhere around +/-29 to +/-30. That will give you at least 2 or 3 cells for a "border" beyond the playable area.

 

Whatever bug is in FNV was fixed in Skyrim, because it's cell numbers are greater than +/-32.

[Mktavish]

Since you didn't want to tell me how you did it ? I'm guessing it was done in the region editor , which I have only opened a few times and just looked at it.

 

But I wonder if this thread will help https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/623684-editing-border-regions/

 

Although the last post there is saying you probably don't want to do it.

 

And according to what madmongo was saying with outside of +/- 32 ... would probably have the physics engine problem like discussed in that thread for skyrim beyond 64 ...

 

Hence if you do want to go outside the border region in the capital wasteland. Gota say the East border would probably be a lot better , seeing how it presently stops at 20 in vanilla.

 

I noticed the vanilla file already has a bunch of navmesh beyond the -30 X border starting at 1 Y going north. I think it was 3-4 cells beyond -30 X. With guessing you are trying for comfortably west of the "YaoGuaiDenExterior" cell at -28 ,-4 . So not to far from where that extra navmesh starts ... albeit it looks like it needs some fixing.

[meatbag58]

Since you didn't want to tell me how you did it ? I'm guessing it was done in the region editor , which I have only opened a few times and just looked at it.

 

But I wonder if this thread will help https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/623684-editing-border-regions/

 

Although the last post there is saying you probably don't want to do it.

 

And according to what madmongo was saying with outside of +/- 32 ... would probably have the physics engine problem like discussed in that thread for skyrim beyond 64 ...

 

Hence if you do want to go outside the border region in the capital wasteland. Gota say the East border would probably be a lot better , seeing how it presently stops at 20 in vanilla.

 

I noticed the vanilla file already has a bunch of navmesh beyond the -30 X border starting at 1 Y going north. I think it was 3-4 cells beyond -30 X. With guessing you are trying for comfortably west of the "YaoGuaiDenExterior" cell at -28 ,-4 . So not to far from where that extra navmesh starts ... albeit it looks like it needs some fixing.

Sorry about that, I meant to get back to you, I just got busy. But, yeah, I was working through the regions menu. But, I will give these threads a look. Thank you.