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Preview of the TES Construction Set
Part III: Building Cool Sh*t
All right, now that we're done with the boring technical crap, let's actually make something shall we? As many of you probably know, there is a simple tutorial available on elderscrolls.com for creating interiors. I hope to go a little deeper than that, detailing what processes I go through in deciding what goes where and exactly how I pick out pieces and decide what goes where and things like that. Let me reiterate what I said at the beginning of this preview. The editor is one of the easiest game editors to use in existence. The drag and drop architecture means you don't have to worry about too many complexities before jumping in and getting to work. However, it doesn't mean that the editor doesn't take learning and practice. You won't be able to create majestic works of staggering beauty on your first try. Your first attempts will probably be really bad hodgepodges of pieces from different cultures, inefficient design, and just poor planning, much like my own were. I'm still working on the staggering beauty thing, actually. The editor is a powerful tool, and like any powerful tool, there's a period of trial and error that you simply can't get around before you get Really Good(tm). Hopefully, this preview will help shorten that process for most of you reading it. That's my goal at least. Anyway, let's get down to business.
Building Part I: Planning and Creating Cells
The first thing you need to decide before you start is what it is exactly that you're going to build. Don't go in headfirst without a plan. For this tutorial, I've decided on building something most people will be interested in: a basic Redoran tavern. Taverns generally consist of three or four parts: boarding rooms, a bar, seating areas, and sometimes a kitchen area. Since I'm writing this after I've already finished the tavern and taken all the shots, I can tell you that I block out all the areas, but only go into detail on the bar and seating areas. Maybe we can finish it out in a future tutorial.
Once you have a plan, load up the editor, and drop down the "World" menu, selecting interior cells. A dialog box will pop up like the one in this screenshot. Hit "New" to create a new interior cell, and a box will pop up asking for the cell name. Here I've simply titled the cell "Gavin's House of Mirth." Next you can select the basic lighting. I generally like to go with a little mood lighting in my pieces, so for fun this time I went with a gaudy purple color for ambient light. Eventually I had to tone it down, but like I said, this is just for fun. Everything being equal, realistic lighting is best, so you'll probably want to pick an orangey or yellowish color when making your own stuff. Sunlight I left on the default pinkish color, and I don't want fog, so I left that alone too. You can also select whether the interior cell has water, and whether it's illegal to sleep here. Click on "Ok" to create the cell, then find it in the cell list and double click to load it up.
Next we know we're going to be snapping together pieces to make a whole room, so let's check the grid lock and angle lock settings in the preferences menu, as seen in the second screenshot.. We want to make sure the grid lock is set to a power of two, so I change the value to 64, generally a good choice for building. Now instead of moving around the render window at a pace accurate to the thousandth unit, the pieces will just snap 64 units in whatever direction I move them in, assuring that I can link them up easily. Angle snap should be either 45 or 90, so I change that to 45. That's all we need to worry about in preferences.
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