[WIP] Floating Island of Legends

[Altbert]

And another step forward! Annaig and Fhena started wandering around the island and went to the Dwemer tower to work in the mages lab. Also using furniture and idles now. The small farmhouse I made for them is still a bit of an issue. The farmhouse is navmeshed properly, but for some reason they just can't get there.

[Altbert]

And another step forward. Navmeshing is completed although it will need additional testing. I had to make some changes to the well door on the surface, as the Golden Dragon most of the time seems to prefer resting on the well preventing me to enter the island. Annaig and Fhena need additional AI packages as they don't seem to be doing much in the present sandbox package. I will have to design a package template to get them all around the island feeding the chickens, chopping wood and carrying it into the farmhouses and the outdoor kitchen, maybe do some leather tanning and use (special) furniture and idles. Despite being ghosts, I have added breakfast, lunch and dinner packeges to their package stack.

I am still wondering if I should add a second wave of Saxhleel warriors closer to the islands.

[Altbert]

My work on "Floating Island of Legends" is nearly completed. All scripts are working as intended and Annaig and Fhena (ghosts), former companions of Prince Attrebus Mede, have their behavior as intended in the AI packages, using the furniture, crafting stations and idle markers. The "questless" quests may be hard to complete without quest markers, objectives or log entries, espcially for players who are new to the game. Clues are given in journals, notes and letters, but may be hard to discover if you haven't played the game at least once.

One last job for now: creating a 7z archive file and check if every needed asset is in the archive.

Another job I have to do it to create LOD specifically for the mod, but creating mod specific LOD is something I will have to learn first. DynDOLOD has a pretty good documented site, but I don't quite understand every described detail. I'm getting old I think!

[Altbert]

Still some small things that need adjustments! I have to spend more time on the island to find all those small issues, like canis root foating slightly above ground as well as some statics, furniture or activators. It takes more time than expected. So, forget about the mod being nearly finished.

[Altbert]

To my regret I'm still finding various small issues on the islands and on the surface. Today, returning to the island, t.i. the well on the surface, I found my character being attacked by a giant and a mammoth. The Golden Dragon resting on a rock nearby, didn't help my character one bit! No big deal, but that has to be changed, as it is quite near a World Interactions respawn point. Every time you fast travel to the well, all kinds of NPCs will show up when you arrive. No problem if those NPCs attack the dragon, but if they don't, the player may sometimes have a problem and a little help would be conventient when you are attacked from all sides.

No big deal as most of these issues (today I found 8 minor issues) can be easily corrected, but it has to be done before publishing the mod.

[Altbert]

After posting the last part of the story, I started working on all those small issues. After solving an issue I sometimes found a few other small issues, making it a total of 11. Most of those are really very small issues, and you have to trip over those to see it, but it just disturbs me. At least the "questless" quests run flawlessly, everything is properly navmeshed and solving the issues doesn't have any influence on navmesh. Soon I will thouroughly check all placed assets to look for other issues, hopefully for the last time. Only problem left is LOD! But I will see if Mephitic's guide on DynDOLOD on Steam has a solution for me.

[Altbert]

After a very tasty cheese fondue with my son and a very good concert of Norwegian singer Aurora on the background, it was time to try out Mephitic's guide on LOD generation. Although it was written with MO2 in mind I could follow the guide to the letter without using MO2 as a mod managers (I am using Wrye Bash as mod manager instead), creating batch files with command line execution for xLodGen, TexGen and DynDOLOD.
xLodGen and TexGen gave no problem, but DynDOLOD gave numerous warnings, mainly about three mods I use: Dense Nordic Forests, Happy Little Trees and Scandinavian Forests. Just warnings, but at the end I was confronted with a fatal error. Forgot to save the error message! Now I have to run the DynDOLOD generation again, now wondering if I should remove those three tree mods from the load order (temporarily) to prevent the warning messages. Tomorrow is another day. Also wondering why those tools are generating LOD data for interior assets. Could that be because some interiors don't have room markers and portals? You can still learn every day, both in game and in the Creation Kit, but tomorrow a new day to figure it all out!

[Selene310187]

I used DynDOLOD some months ago and I also got error messages in the LOD generation process. After I disabled the plugins that caused the error messages I was able to create the LOD data successfully.

[Altbert]

I used DynDOLOD some months ago and I also got error messages in the LOD generation process. After I disabled the plugins that caused the error messages I was able to create the LOD data successfully.

Thanks, I will try that. But you are also supposed to get rid of all warnings, meaning you have to clean DLCs according to DynDOLOD, which you should not do.

[Selene310187]

You could make backups of the DLCs, clean them, generate the LOD and overwrite the edited DLCs with your backups.