LOD Map Positioning

[prancer]

Hi Everyone,

 

I just figured something out which I was unable to find a clear description of online after LOTS of searching, so I thought I would post something here about it in case anyone else needs this info.

 

*This applies to those who have generated a custom worldspace with its own map - not a worldspace that has a vanilla parent.

 

When you have your worldspace working and have generated LOD, you may find that the in-game map allows you to scroll way past the boundaries of your land, and shows you an 'edge of the world' plane. This is not good obviously, so you need to restrict how far a player can view the map, while still keeping all the land in view.

 

Which Worldspace settings that control this view area is not clearly explained ANYWHERE that I have found online, on the CK wiki or anywhere else for that matter, so I am going to explain it in laymans terms here.

 

In the Worldspace panel (CK Menu: World->Worldspaces) there is a section called 'Use Map Data'. This is where you will have selected your custom cloud layer .nif (if you made one). You don't need to specify Usable Dimensions, and you probably won't need to change any of the Camera Data unless your land mass is very unusually high. What controls the boundaries of the scrolling Map view in-game is the Cell Coordinates data.

 

The sides of the map these values indicate are as follows:

NW Cell Y = Top edge of map view

SE Cell X = East edge of map view

SE Cell Y = South edge of map view

NW Cell X = West edge of map view

 

See my attached diagram below where these are labeled.

 

You will need to offset these values based on the fact that the camera angle makes more Northern territory visible, and less Southern territory visible. So your SE Cell Y number (number of cells) will likely be the highest negative value, and your NW Cell Y number will be the lowest.

 

These numbers will not be exact to the actual cell count of your map, nor will they affect positioning of landmarks or navigation, so don't be afraid to violate the 8, 16, 32, etc rule. My landmass is 16x16 cells, and as you can see in the diagram, my Cell Coordinates had to be very different to enable correct visual map boundaries. With the ones in the screenshot, I can view my complete landmass, and not see the edge of the world in any direction.

 

Notes:

*If the screenshot disappears for any reason, here is my reference data:

Map size 1024x1024

Cell Coordinates NW X -8, NW Y -10, SE X 6, SE Y -26

 

**I don't think that having rotated your map during creation affects these coordinates, by if for some reason your values aren't aligning to what I've described here, do a test by setting SE Y to something huge, go in-game, and see which direction allows too much scrolling in the map view. Then you will know which direction that is, and can adjust accordingly.