[Creation Kit] Is there an entity limit?

[Vortex Lord]

I'm making a really big dungeon and I'm afraid I might hit some engine limit. So I'm just wondering is there a limit to how many things I can place in my map? I've noticed some vanilla dungeons are split into two and sometimes even three parts. Or is the only limit player's available RAM?

[Kuroyami]

There are a few ways to manage creating a large interior, no matter it's intention.

 

One of these is splitting it up into different cells, as you mention. Sometimes this can also be done because you might want different lighting in each cell, such as if you have a section of one cell that is majorly a cave, rather than an Imperial Fort, Nordic Ruin, etc. In the same vein, maybe you want one cell to be open to the Sky somewhat, where others are not.

 

Another would be if you don't want certain events to have an effect on others in the cell, such as if you intend on combat to occur in one area of a cell, but don't want any NPCs intended to stay passive to be involved.

Dawnguard Spoiler:

Spoiler

This is the method Bethesda uses for the Harkon fight - normally, the Cathedral/Chapel area of Volkihar Castle is part of the Main Hall cell. But for the fight, the door is changed to a load version, and moves the player into an interior cell copy, likely both so, as mentioned, NPCs in the Hall can't get involved, and the game doesn't have to keep the rest of the Castle rendered.

 

But if what you want is say, a large dungeon that is all one cell with lots of details, one method to do this is Roombounds - these are blue boxes that don't appear in-game, but can section off parts of a cell to not render others while the player is inside it. This can have an effect on the base design of your cell, since said boxes can only be cube or rectangle shaped. Between them, are Portals that connect two Roombounds(though you can have one or more Roombounds that connect to more than one Portal), and these allow the player to see into another Roombound, while inside of one - such as through a door, etc.

 

Though this video explains it in more detail.

 

Edited January 12, 2023 by Kuroyami

[Vortex Lord]

That hasn't really answered my question. I know about rooms and portals. I'm wondering if there is a limit on how many objects static or not I can place. I didn't say anything about lighting too, for which I know there is a limit for both dynamic and static lights per cell. I bet that everything is still in memory despite not being rendered due to portals.

Edited January 12, 2023 by Vortex Lord

[Kuroyami]

Ah, right. I don't think there is a limit, at least not beyond either a user's specs, be it RAM or VRAM. Though it may be based on the game's own limitations too, perhaps even with the common extensions through ENB, SKSE, etc. This probably differs between LE and SE, since SE can use more of a users memory.

 

Spoiler

I've placed a lot of objects in this cell, and while a lot more is likely, this cell isn't that big. May not even end up using Roombounds for it.

Edited January 12, 2023 by Kuroyami

[Reginald_001]

1 hour ago, Vortex Lord said:

That hasn't really answered my question. I know about rooms and portals. I'm wondering if there is a limit on how many objects static or not I can place. I didn't say anything about lighting too, for which I know there is a limit for both dynamic and static lights per cell. I bet that everything is still in memory despite not being rendered due to portals.

It's best to think practically about organizing your assets. Asking yourself whether you can reach the entity limit means the principle of your thinking is wrong. Anything that is static should be part of the world, e.g. parts of larger models. Anything that is a moveable can in principle not be. So unless you will have thousands upon thousands of individual moveables in your scene, this should not ever be a concern.

 

The most important thing to do is to precombine the map. That is the way that the CK organizes assets. It will stick multiple static models together, as long as they don't have the moveable object property (or as long as no script is attached to them).

 

If you do precombine then adding thousands of statics won't be the issue -that's a win-win for you and the players: It will only be an issue for you as modder as it will become increasingly hard to use the CK, the higher the count of statics and objects/entities is in your map. Grouping them is the best way of making the sure there are not a kazillion render passes for the engine to make AND to make sure your CK will keep responding even with gigantic maps. So if you want to say put down a stack of ammo, don't put down 200 boxes of ammo models, but bunch them together into 1 model. (You can make static models directly in the CK by grouping them, and then exporting the group as a single model). Then re-import that one single model of the stack and thus you optimized that stack of ammo.

 

 

Edited January 12, 2023 by Reginald_001

[Vortex Lord]

Ok, so no limit on map geometry. It gets compiled on load time probably. But there is a limit on moveable objects.

[Varithina]

There is a limit to the number of records a esp can hold, same with an esm, the esm has a much bigger number, no idea off hand what those values are, all I remember reading is that they exist, only problem is I can no longer find that post, the values for esp was huge though in the 20-30 million or something like that which means you should not really have problems, there again from what I remember if you put too many records in a esp ck will complain when you try to load it, the error messages with say something about truncated records.

[Vortex Lord]

I want to make a Daggerfall style dungeon, making it a giant maze for you to get lost in at your own leisure. But with all the flare and bling of Skyrim's dungeons.

[belegost]

On 1/13/2023 at 1:02 AM, Vortex Lord said:

I want to make a Daggerfall style dungeon, making it a giant maze for you to get lost in at your own leisure. But with all the flare and bling of Skyrim's dungeons.

 

I'd fu... play that.

[traison]

On 1/13/2023 at 2:02 AM, Vortex Lord said:

I want to make a Daggerfall style dungeon, making it a giant maze for you to get lost in at your own leisure. But with all the flare and bling of Skyrim's dungeons.

 

Forgive my ignorance here, I do not actually know what Daggerfall was like, never played it. I do seem to recall though that one of the earlier Elder Scrolls games had at least partially random generated dungeons. So I'm going to throw this idea at your face to see if it sticks: Look into moving static objects around with papyrus scripts. If walls and such can be dynamically moved that could extend the life of your maze quite a bit. I realize getting "flare and bling of Skyrim's dungeons" in there may not be viable, but still.

[Vortex Lord]

14 hours ago, traison said:

 

Forgive my ignorance here, I do not actually know what Daggerfall was like, never played it. I do seem to recall though that one of the earlier Elder Scrolls games had at least partially random generated dungeons. So I'm going to throw this idea at your face to see if it sticks: Look into moving static objects around with papyrus scripts. If walls and such can be dynamically moved that could extend the life of your maze quite a bit. I realize getting "flare and bling of Skyrim's dungeons" in there may not be viable, but still.

 

They were all premade with 3D tiles much like Skyrim's dungeons are. Except these tiles were even bigger, whole rooms, and less detailed. The placement of monsters and items was randomized.

İ'm nowhere near qualified to try something like that in Papyrus. And as you said it would come at the cost of detail.

 

  

18 hours ago, belegost said:

 

I'd fu... play that.

 

Yeah, me too.  Skyrim's dungeon design always bugged me. They were always either following the horseshoe desgin where they would conveniently loop back to the entrance or have a convenient exit at the end. Backtracking was never encouraged.

Edited January 15, 2023 by Vortex Lord

[belegost]

4 hours ago, Vortex Lord said:

Backtracking was never encouraged.

Backtracking is fine if its done right and there's a reason for it. Skyrim's "exit at the end" design is actually very good.

I would hate to have to backtrack through the whole Volkihar castle in order to get out of the portal room and into the jetty. Instead, I can just jump out the balcony and swim to the shore. Since I don't use fast travel at all (have it turned off permanently both in Frostfall and SLS) I  still need to go through the castle in order to get there, but that's fine, that makes sense.

One of my most hated quest dungeons is LOTD's Excavation of Wincaller Passage. Its lengthy and it respawns every single time a new section is uncovered. So I need to go fight through the same trash mobs and just walk through the same corridors for 15 minutes in order to do something that takes 3 minutes, and then walk back for another 15 minutes doing absolutely nothing in order to get out. And it needs to be done at least 5 times. I fucking hate that.

 

I'd like to remind you that Daggerfall had Recall and this was the first spell you wanted to have ASAP. Functionally it fills the same role as the new dungeon design, except you had to visit Mages Guild just to get one QOL feature as the first thing after emerging from the starting dungeon. If you ever wanted to play totally non-magic character in Daggerfall... well, good luck losing your mind and time going back ALL THE WAY in some of the more complicated dungeons. So you were forced into using at least some magic, whether you liked it or not.

 

You want to look at excellent dungeon design, that's both lengthy, makes sense, has an amazing attention to detail, tells a fascinating story though books, scattered texts and environmental design, and ecourages backtracking and exploring already visited areas again in a way that doesn't make you question your life choices, look at The Midden Expanded.

Edited January 15, 2023 by belegost

[Vortex Lord]

13 hours ago, belegost said:

I'd like to remind you that Daggerfall had Recall and this was the first spell you wanted to have ASAP. Functionally it fills the same role as the new dungeon design, except you had to visit Mages Guild just to get one QOL feature as the first thing after emerging from the starting dungeon. If you ever wanted to play totally non-magic character in Daggerfall... well, good luck losing your mind and time going back ALL THE WAY in some of the more complicated dungeons. So you were forced into using at least some magic, whether you liked it or not.

 

Yeah I forgot about Recall. You also have Alt+F11 I believe but that's a cheat. There are mods for Skyrim that add back this spell but it's nearly useless.

 

  

13 hours ago, belegost said:

You want to look at excellent dungeon design, that's both lengthy, makes sense, has an amazing attention to detail, tells a fascinating story though books, scattered texts and environmental design, and ecourages backtracking and exploring already visited areas again in a way that doesn't make you question your life choices, look at The Midden Expanded.

 

Those are some big shoes to fill. Honestly I prefer environmental storytelling over books. Daggerfall's dungeons were mazes for a maze's sake. One that I still remember to this day vividly is the one where you have to find Mannimarco. And the quest log goes on about something along the lines of "you'll know when you're there when you see the light" or something. Which sent me into an adventure through the dungeon. In which I gained XP, became a vampire, and questioned my life choices. When in fact he was just a couple of feet to the left from the starting area. I also remember going down the wrong coffin and being mauled to death by zombies.

Also getting hopelessly lost in Castle Wayrest looking for paintings if I remember right.

Edited January 15, 2023 by Vortex Lord