Tips for noobs

[Exanimis]

I'm new to the project and know little about it and that has prevented me from being able to start work on this mod. There are aspects that I don't know about or understand. I'd like to start work on this mod but I am. at the moment, stuck. Before I start work building and adding to the mod I would like to get an idea of the area I will be working on. The problem is that I have no idea how to get to the worldspace. I receive a stone when the game starts with a message that it only works in Tamriel (that's inside the IC) outside of the IC I receive the message that I need to find a power source. Reading on the forum I have learned that I need to take the stone to a birthstone. I'm not getting any quest notices so I'm having to figure this out on my own. Am I missing something?

I think a step by step thread is needed for those of us who are coming to the mod at a later date. If not a thread at least put together something that can be added to the read me.

I've been checking through the files that I downloaded and have thought of some ideas for what I have been assigned but the CS perspective throws me off. I often feel like a block is knee high to my character only to find that it is taller than she is ingame. I need to get a feel for the area before I start adding things.

My apologies if this has been posted somewhere else, I may have missed it.

[Vagrant]

No problem.
To start, the stone you get is part of an unfinished gate system which may be put into place later. I have left this as a .esp so that you can decide if you want to use it or not. The download thread talks about this.
http://z2.invisionfree.com/DarkGenesis/ind...p?showtopic=843

The stone you get is related to one you would get at the end of the prologue quest, which is still not working right. As you would be recieving a note of some sort explaining the stone at the end of the quest, I didn't go through much trouble explaining it inside the test mod. I thought I had made mention of this in the readme, but it seems I didn't, sorry. You can always just disable this .esp, and just recieve the portal spell directly.

The first area of the realm is the garden. This is a sort of connection point between all of the rooms. At the moment only 2 of the gateways, orange and indigo, lead anywhere else. Both can be found on the eastern part of the area. The garden will likely be seperated by load doors in a futire version, but the general layout should remain the same. You may want to become familiar with where some of the other gateways are for later.

As far as getting yourself situated for working. I have created a few overview threads with a labeled image of the space.
Rhym Town
http://z2.invisionfree.com/DarkGenesis/ind...p?showtopic=811
Rhym Mines
http://z2.invisionfree.com/DarkGenesis/ind...p?showtopic=845
The Golden Plains worldspace
http://z2.invisionfree.com/DarkGenesis/ind...p?showtopic=857
Other threads will be posted as more work gets done within each area. Most of the stickied threads in each section of the forums are important, and should probably be looked at and read if you havn't yet.

As far as navigating the Golden Plains goes, the easiest way would probably to use either the named cells (right now only useful for finding the entry town) and the region editor. The regions for this worldspace have already been defined, and the colors for regions should help you figure out where things are related to the overview map. You can right click and select "view world here" to move to any undefined cell. However, as work continues on this mod, and more cells are named, it'll probably become easier to just select a named cell near where you want to be.

As for scale, the most reliable method I have found is to just drop a xmarkerheading or a mapmarker into the cell you are planning to work with. These have the approximate size of a character, and can be moved around rather easily. Once you place a few buildings, you can, of course, just use those for getting a sense of scale.

[Vagrant]

Some other stuff, useful for building.

Grids-
Almost all things in the game are set to a base of 8 units or a factor of 8. Meaning that any grid size you use above 8 should be a multiple of 8, and anything less than 8 should be a factor of 8. Common sizes would be 8, 24, 32, 64, 128 (roughly 6 feet), 192 (9 feet), 256 (12 feet), 512, 1024. Additionally, 1 may be needed for finer adjustments, and 12 (the only exception) for figuring the maximum distance for steps. Most static pieces are based around 64 or 128 units, but can be worked with easily when using a grid of 32.

Interiors-
One common mistake people do when defining interiors is that they rotate the interior meshes to match the rotation of the exterior meshes. While this isn't an issue if you're working on an angle of 90, 180, 270, it can cause some difficulties when working with other angles, and if a grid is needed to position other statics. This is where northmarkers come in. What a north marker does is it allows you to define north within that cell. Meaning that you can build the cell at that normal angle, and just rotate the north marker to get the compass working right.

When working with cave pieces, it is important not to rotate any of the pieces with a designation A, B, C, or D at the end. These pieces are all variations of the same shape, just with the textures oriented differently. By matching them up in the orientation they are when placed in the cell, the textures from one piece should match up well with the other pieces. Essentially, all Piece A's have a wall on the same side, all piece B's have a wall which is 90 degrees clockwise to A, piece C is 90 degrees clockwise to piece B, and same with D to C, and A to D. Corner pieces change the direction of the wall.

Rotated group statics (fences, walls, other multi-piece objects) -
In keeping with the whole issue of the grid and rotated interiors, exterior pieces like walls don't have the same benefit, so need to be planned differently. Even using a grid of 1 can often lead to gaps between statics when those statics are rotated to a non-90 angle. The solution to this is to first, do a rough fit of all the pieces of the fence or wall in place, rotating to match the area you need to work with. The idea is to get a fairly acurate count of how many pieces are needed for the area you are working on. Don't worry too much about minor gaps, you will be moving all these pieces later so that you can make use of the grid. Once you have all the pieces placed, take a quick note of where all the turns are in relation to the area then select all the pieces of a straight section including the corner pieces. Move these pieces away from the area, and even change height if land or statics are in the way. You will want to rotate all these pieces individually to a 90 angle and turn on the grid. Now, with the pieces at a 90 angle, the grid will allow you to match up all pieces of the wall without any gaps. just move one piece of that section onto another, and continue until that section is done. Next, while keeping that section where it is, go back to that area, and select the next section of walls. You will want to rotate these as well to match both the grid and the orientation of the first section. Then, using the grid once more, fit the pieces of the second section onto the first. Continue this process until you are done with all the pieces. Once done, select all of the wall pieces (why it helps to assemble them in the air), and move them back to the area you wanted to place them in. Now that all the pieces are fitted together without gaps, you can rotate the whole group to match the rotation you had previously. Make sure that if you ever need to change any of the heights of this wall, that you do so only when the grid is turned off.

Alyied Ruin Exteriors-
The ruin pieces can be rather tough to work with as most of them have a pivot point a long distance from where any part of the mesh is. The reason for this is because most of these statics are radial (or circular) in nature. The trick to getting all these radial pieces to line up is to use a method similar to what was done with the fences. First, set your grid snap to something large, like 512. This will make it easier to have all the pivot points in the same place. Next, drop several pieces at the same spot, and move them into the sky. You are working in the sky in order to position these pieces without landscape or other statics getting in the way. With the grid and angle snap on, move all the pieces so that they have the same pivot point. tower and inner ring pieces are the inner most circle, and fit around both the tower floor, and the spiral stair pieces. Outter ring pieces fit around the inner ring and column pieces, and are needed if you plan to use any of the stairs. Stair walls and centers blend with these outter ring pieces. Rng walls, and wall dividers act as the outter circle. all of these have a common pivot point. For working with the variations (A, B, C, D) start off only using A, since this tends to be the most complete. Rotate and duplicate this piece as needed to fill whatever circle is being worked with. Once you have all the pieces in place, use the search and replace feature to change the A pieces to other pieces (some additional rotation is needed). When you have most of the portion arranged, turn off, or change the grid snap, select all the pieces, and move them back to where you want it on the ground. You can also rotate all of the pieces as a set while they are still selected. If you have multiple circles you want to have, just do the same process with each. Connect them together once all the circular portions are done, and make whatever changes are needed to the landscape.