Topic: TESV: Creation Kit

So, Creation Kit came out this week for the more creatively-minded PC players of Skyrim. I thought it'd be interesting to share projects and ideas, if there's anyone here getting to grips with this decidedly powerful authoring tool. Whether it's your mission to make an already sprawling and epic world even more sprawling and epic, or just to make a series of dungeons in crude shapes (Phallite's Tomb, anyone?), share it here. Hell, even if you're just getting started with the kit and building massive Jenga cubes out of ore, and then blowing it the hell up, then it'll still be fun to see and share.

If you're just getting started with Creation Kit (like me), Bethesda has an invaluable resource wiki with tutorials and accompanying videos right here: http://www.creationkit.com/

So, I'm still just getting started with the tool, building the tutorial dungeon Lokirs' Tomb. I'm up to placing clutter in it - shelves, furniture, pick-up items etc - which is great fun but pretty slow going. Next step will be filling it in with enemies and then navmeshing the map so they have somewhere to walk.

The initial room (the one with the blue marker) is more-or-less completely cluttered now - there's a collapsed shaft in the middle (might have to drop some corpses in there), and a couple of caved-in corridors with smashed portcullises to really make it look like the place is falling apart. I've got some bookshelves and smashed tables around too, and plenty of things to pick up (majoritively vendor trash, but I want to give the impression that it's been recently re-inhabited, so there's a few potions and un-ruined books too). It's really time-consuming but satisfying when it all starts to take shape.

BONUS PICTURE! Whiterun in wireframe at night looks amazing

I bought Skyrim because they did a deal that coincided with the release of the Creation kit on Steam, and I've been very much looking forward to it. Unfortunately, I'm still in the process of downloading the game.

But when it's finished, I wouldn't mind trying some creations out.

I was planning on checking out the Creation Kit when I had more time. It looks rather interesting.

It's too bad that these level editors are only for the PC. Why can't these developers make level editors for console games too? Not everyone has an up-to-date PC capable of running these games. These companies are just fragmenting the market with these PC-only releases.

A number of developers have tried I believe. I don't think the Microsoft or Sony want that though.

It's not a level editor in the sense you're thinking - it's the full level authoring tool, largely (if not entirely) the same tool as what Bethesda themselves used to build Skyrim in the first place. Ergo, it's made for usage on PC and converting it for use on a games console would be an enormous and largely flawed task - it has a PC interface, it's not going to be navigable with a 360/PS3 controller without hugely diminishing either the feature set or the ease of use (and these tools aren't exactly easy to get to grips with in the first place), or being fiddly as hell. It's already pretty damn fiddly with a keyboard and mouse, I don't even want to think about trying to use it with a thumbstick and on-screen keyboard.

Building a custom level editor from scratch for consoles would mean dumbing down a huge amount of what is possible - whilst the grid-based kits (dwemner ruins, ancient nordic ruins, imperial holds etc) would probably survive a transition to pure drag-and-drop, placing the organic gridless kits (caves etc, and the entire Skyrim overworld) would be nigh-impossible, as would placing all the clutter (that covers your static furniture, all your physics-enabled objects, and every item you can pick up into your inventory).

Look at it this way - a traditional level editor for the user is built after the game was constructed, and adheres to all the game's rules and regulations, with a large number of constraints to stop you messing up the game itself. Authoring tools such as Creation Kit were made for the purpose of building the very game you're playing, and as such offer a more complete and dangerous freedom ("oops, I accidentally deleted half of Whiterun" - and no, there'd be no way to get it back). Which requires fiddling around with those core files that on PC are saved to your hard drive (editable), but on consoles are locked away on the disk (read-only).

tl;dr because it's a mammoth task and the pay-off would be a heavily-stifled alternative at best.

One day, much later in my life, when I have a computer able to run it and have completely bled the console version dry, I'm buying a PC copy just to play around with this stuff. o__o

I'll be keeping an eye on this thread to see if anything interesting pops up...

Make a zelda world...

in about 3 1/2 hours, I'll finally be playing this game (unless it needs to download something else after finishing - the update for the Creation Tool for example). Has anyone made anything yet? I'd love to try it out.

Of course, once it fisnishes, I'll then start downloading Saints Row the Third - a game at least 2GB bigger than Skyrim.

The pimp who talks with an autotune artificial voicebox was enough to sell it to me!

THREAD REVIVE!
Been a while since I got to use Creation Kit, courtesy of my old PC exploding (quite literally; orange sparks and everything). Now I'm back set up with a new PC, so I've decided to get back into Creation Kit too. Got a little project on the go, screenshot below.

Too big, clicky instead

Been learning how to do sexy lighting and visual effects, really makes a huge difference to the feel of a dungeon.

Also; this dungeon has a special theme. Won't say what theme just yet though