|
|
 |
Preview of the TES Construction Set
Part I: The Basics
Let's go over the basics of using the editor. Take a look at the basic editor screen. This is what you see after you load up the editor and select a cell. As you can see, the interface is made up of several windows, which can be moved around, resized, minimized, and maximized to your heart's content. The Object Window is where all the objects in the game are listed, conveniently organized into tabs. We'll go over each tab shortly. The Render Window is where you actually see the world you're interacting with. It is basically the game engine for Morrowind running on pause. To put items in the world, you simply click and drag them from the object window lists into the Render Window. To interact with stuff already in the Render Window, just left click on it, and a box will appear denoting what object you have selected. Rotating around that object is as simple as holding the shift key and moving the mouse around. To actually rotate the object, just hold the right mouse button down and move the mouse. You can restrict the axis of rotation by holding the x, y, or z key along with the right mouse button to only rotate in that direction. Zooming is done with the mousewheel, or by holding down the V key and moving the mouse. You can also shift the camera's position by holding the space bar and sliding the mouse around. Easy enough, right?
In the bottom right of the screenshot we see the Cell View Window. The left side of this window is devoted to a complete list of cells in Morrowind. You can simply double-click on whatever cell you want to load in the Render Window to load it. Note that all data in the editor can be organized ascending or descending based on any column. The right side is a complete list of objects in the selected cell. You don't even have to load the cell to see what objects are there. A single left click on a cell name in the left column will bring up that cell's objects in the right column.
Across the top you'll see a row of small square icons. Starting on the left, the first is "Open" which will bring up the plug-in selection menu. Next is save, followed by preferences. Then, grouped together are undo and redo (very very helpful). After that, there is the extremely useful grid lock and angle lock buttons. Grid lock allows you to move objects in the render window around on a grid instead of freely. Why would you want to do that? Well when you are moving an object around freely, the program allows an accuracy down to the thousandth of a unit. Thus, connecting two house pieces together perfectly is nearly impossible without using the grid. Since all the pieces that need to be snapped together in Morrowind are built on a base 2 system, setting the grid to a power of two in the preferences menu will allow all pieces to snap together very easily. The angle lock does much the same thing for rotations, and I usually set that to either 90 or 45 degrees. Next, there is a button to go into landscape editing, then a button to edit AI path grids. The next button is a light bulb, which turns all ambient lights up to 100%. Pretty useful when building where you want to be sure you don't miss even the slightest detail. After that is the Fog button, which turns on and off any fog you might have in your area. The last three buttons go straight into dialog mode, script editing, and sound file management respectively.
Let's take a quick look at the menu options before diving into actually building something. Under "File" there's just what you'd expect, open plug-ins, save, and preferences. Next is Edit, and it contains some very useful functions. Things like undo and redo are here, as well as copy, paste, and duplicate. There are even search and search and replace functions. View contains things like options for which windows to have open in the editor, as well as view modes, like wireframe view, and view invisible markers (teleporting door markers, ambient lights, etc). World contains some useful testing functions. You can test for dialog conflicts, non-teleporting doors in the exterior world, and test for interiors that don't have exits. It also includes places to manage cells, create new cells, and places to edit weather. Character is a useful menu. You can edit just about everything for the races, from descriptions, to base attributes, to skill bonuses, to height and weight. You can also edit classes here, play with birthsigns, assign animations, and mess around with factions. Gameplay is where you get into the actual game formulas. It's where you can edit things such as spell effects, formulas, and level advancement values. Then finally there is the useful help files. A must read for any Construction Set newbies.
|
|
|
|
|
