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Here is a brief look at how
to create your own dungeon using the Construction Set.
- Load up Morrowind Master file.
When starting any new plugin, you should always load the
"Morrowind.esm" first, since that is the file your plugin
will rely on for objects, creatures, landscape and any other
data. All changes you do while working will be tracked as
well as their relationship to the data in "Morrowind.esm"
- Create a new interior cell.
Once Morrowind.esm has loaded (this is a big file and may
take up to a minute), create a new interior cell for your
dungeon. All areas of the world are referred to as cells.
Select World\Interior Cel and press New. Give your map a
name ("My Cave of Death and Adventure"). Keep in mind that
the player will see this name when entering the cell. You
can also select other options here such as the ambient,
fog, and sunlight color in your map, if it has water, and
if the player can sleep in this area legally. Last, select
your new cell from the cell view window by double clicking
it. The render window will now switch to your cell, viewed
from the top.
- Layout the basic geometry.
The first thing to do in building your dungeon is to layout
the pieces. Select the "Static" tab in the Object Window
and select the objects you want to use. To place these,
simply drag and drop pieces into the render window. Static
pieces are used for basic building blocks such as walls,
houses, furniture and other objects whose only purpose is
to collide with.
After you have the pieces in the cell, move them around
and "snap" them together by dragging them around the render
window. In this example we've used 4 of the pyrite cave
pieces to snap together. This is a small sized cave, but
should provide a nice quick diversion for the player.
- Add creatures.
Next select the "Creature" tab in the object window and
drag in some creatures. We're going to fill this dungeon
with undead creatures, so we'll use some skeletons and bonewalkers.
In the back room, we'll put some "Leveled Creatures". These
are creatures that will be generated from a list that, like
everything else in the editor, can be modified. In this
example we'll fill the "leveled creature" list with undead
creatures to keep the theme of the dungeon consistent, but
any creature can be placed in the "Leveled Creature" list.
Leveled Creatures are selected from the list based on the
player's level, so our cave will be filled with harder creatures
for higher level characters, and easier creatures for low
level characters. These creatures will also respawn if the
player kills them and comes back later on, so there will
always be a few creatures in our dungeon for fun later in
the game. Notice that the Leveled Creatures look like "Ninja
Monkeys" in the Construction Set, but these will become
real creatures when the player enters the area in the game.
We've placed in two leveled undead creatures we created
to keep things consistent.
- Add treasure, clutter, and doors.
All dungeons need treasure and other stuff to make it interesting.
So we'll drop in some chests from the "Containers"
tab that have some gold and other Leveled items. The Leveled
Items work much the same way as leveled creatures. The designer
can fill the Leveled Items list with objects that will be
interesting and leveled to the player. You may want to drop
in some furniture and such from the "Static" section
to keep it interesting. We'll also drag in a doorway (each
architecture style has a doorway or door-jam piece) and
a door into the hall to keep this back room separated. The
doorway can be found under "Static" and the door
under the "Door" tab.
- Add Lights.
Next you'll want to add some lights, under the "Light" tab.
There are two basic kinds of light, one is just raw light
and has no associated art, such as the deep blue glow we've
placed in the following shot. These lights will be represented
as big light bulbs for placing purposes. The other kind
is lights that have art, such as the torch we placed by
the Leveled Creature (ninja monkeys) in the back room.
- Link to the outside.
The final step here is to link this dungeon to the outside
world, or tell the dungeon exit where to go when the player
uses it. Place a door at the entrance, double click it and
set it to teleport the player to another location (choose
an exterior cell, but you can also have that door lead to
another cave or dungeon). You'll need to add a dungeon entrance
to the outside world as well, so see the landscape sample
for how to do that.
- Save and test.
Last, press save and give your plugin a name (MyPlugin.esp).
Everything you've changed has been tracked by the editor
and will be saved into this file. Run Morrowind with your
plugin and test out your dungeon. Make sure all the doors
work and it's fun. You'll probably want to tweak the creature
placement and lighting after you play through it. They make
a huge difference on how fun something is and how nice it
looks. You may even want to add a few more rooms after you
get the hang of things.
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