Destruction of Tamriel comes to a grinding halt

[Lanceor]

As some of you have heard, I'm recreating an empty version of Tamriel. I've made a copy of the entire Tamriel Worldsapce, and I've edited about 15% of the cells so far. However, I've encountered two stumbling blocks that makes me hesitant to continue until I can rectify it.

Problem 1: No Landscape LOD.

The new worldspace looks great, but the player can't see past the immediate cells. What I've tried:

• Set Tamriel as the parent - no in-game effect, still no distant land.
  
• Use Heightmap Editor to Generate LOD - no luck. Crashes the CS after about 5 seconds. It works with smaller worldspaces to it may be a RAM issue. The CS uses about 1.8 GB of RAM when the Tamriel copy is loaded (and I have 2GB of RAM).
  

2. Converting to ESM problems

• Saving as ESM using CS Extender strips all references from the worldspace... not good.
  
• Using TES4Gecko to convert it does the opposite: it strips the landscape itself, leaving trees and rocks floating in the air.
  

Any and all suggestions are welcome!

[Meo]

Im far from being a land making expert, but did you try TES4LODGen.

[Lanceor]

TES4LODGen generated the LOD data for the trees and statics flawlessly, but not the landscape unfortunately. :'(

[_echo]

"Use Heightmap Editor to Generate LOD - no luck. Crashes the CS after about 5 seconds. It works with smaller worldspaces to it may be a RAM issue. The CS uses about 1.8 GB of RAM when the Tamriel copy is loaded (and I have 2GB of RAM)."

Yeah, that is a ram issue. You are maxing out your ram and the OS requires a specific amount (+-600MB) so when the OS wants to stretch out and do what it needs to do, only to find that its been forced into a box, it starts kicking. And the OS always wins in cases like that.

[Lanceor]

I figured that the CS was killing my computer and I don't want to upgrade it now since I'm going to get a new rig just before Skyrim is released.

There's gotta be a way to duplicate Tamriel successfully. All the landscape LOD nifs exist for Tamriel - is there any way they can be copied and reused? And shouldn't setting the Parent to Tamriel accomplish this?

A third problem has appeared - the Tamriel copy is very crash prone. This could be due to the fact that it's an esp and not an esm.

[Hanaisse]

2G of RAM is definitely an issue. It's also a known fact Oblivion will crash once it reaches 1.8G of memory usage. Nothing can be done about this other than upgrading your memory over 4G and using the LAA patch.

Other (hopefully) helpful hints from the CS Wiki on Creating Large Worldspaces;

When working on large world spaces you should convert your .esp to an .esm regardless of how you intend to release your mod. There are two reasons for this:

* Due to limitations in the CS, and potentially your system, working on too many cells can lead to instability and frequent crashing. The more cells a world space has, the more the CS has to load into memory while you're working. ESP files larger than 40mb (8 quads) usually cannot be loaded in the CS without some sort of error popping up.

Keep in mind that if your new world space project will make changes to a world space located within another .esm - like for example the vanilla Oblivion world spaces located in Oblivion.esm - those changes must be kept in an .esp file rather than an esm. So, if your world space will be saved in an .esm file, and your mod will makes changes in a world space in another .esm, your mod will require a separate and additional .esp for any changes you intend to make to any .esm-based world spaces.

So, should you make an .esm? Yes, to store the world, plus an .esp to make/store the changes.

When first testing your new world space.esm you should always have it loaded in the 01 Mod Index - in other words directly after oblivion.esm.

Try testing without any other mods active.

If your distant LOD land does not show up, it is recommended that you use TES4Gecko to add your world space to the Master Index, which will make it appear in the game regardless of other moderations and regardless of load order.

Once you start TES4Gecko, go to the "Move world spaces" function.

Then select the .esp that contains your world space.

This will edit your .esp so that the game sees your landscapes as part of the original game rather than as a moderation. It also changes the names of the files in \meshes\landscape\lod and \textures\landscapelod\generated to match the changes made to the .esp.

This sounds to me that if you create your .esp as dependent on both your .esm and oblivion.esm it should solve the issue.

Good luck!

[Lanceor]

From what you're saying, it sounds like problems 1 (LOD) and 3 (crashes) are due to problem 2.... not being able to create an esm.

Which makes problem 2 the top priority to fix.

Actually. you've just given me an idea so crazy that it might just work. What if I made a copy of Oblivion.esm and delete everything I don't want in TES4Edit? Gonna give that a try...

[Hanaisse]

Or, you could convert your .esp to an .esm in Gecko, which yes, will lose the landscape as you point out, but that should return when you make it dependent on oblivion.esm, no?

[Arthmoor]

There's gotta be a way to duplicate Tamriel successfully. All the landscape LOD nifs exist for Tamriel - is there any way they can be copied and reused? And shouldn't setting the Parent to Tamriel accomplish this?

Assuming your new worldspace is an exact duplicate with no major changes, yes. You could copy the existing files, then rename them to match the ID of the new worldspace. Use Gecko's "move worldspaces" function on the file first though, that way you'll have your landscape LOD in the right configuration when it comes time to rename the files.

Actually. you've just given me an idea so crazy that it might just work. What if I made a copy of Oblivion.esm and delete everything I don't want in TES4Edit? Gonna give that a try...

Don't do that. You will lead yourself down a nasty rabbit hole that has no end.

You need a way to get your worldspace into an ESM. If using Gecko to do this isn't appealing, look into making use of CSE - the construction set extender that ShadeMe released. It allows direct editing of ESM files, among other very useful things. It does require OBSE 0020 though, so be prepared to deal with that if you want to go that way.

[Lanceor]

Glad to report that I'm back in business!

Arthmoor, good to see you here! I took a look in the rabbit hole before I read you post and the rabbit hole is indeed very deep... after a couple of hours if tinkering with it, I gave up on the idea.

I eventually created the ESM using Wrye bash of all things. After doing a lot of reading, I think the load order was messing up the landscape. TamrielCopy.esm has to be immediately after Oblivion.esm otherwise the heightmap vanishes. Every edit with Wrye Bash/TES4Gecko/TES4Edit seems to rearrange the load order so it took me a while to figure it out.

I copied all the landscape meshes and textures, renamed them as Arthmoor suggested and now LOD Landscape works like a charm.