Level Design Guide
Introduction
Hello and welcome to Skywind’s Level Design team! This quick guide should help you get comfortable with the various systems and workflows the team uses. Reach out to the department leads and the rest of the team if you ever have questions, and get to know everyone! This department requires a lot of coordination and communication so put yourself out there!
Installing Skywind
The instructions for installing Skywind are covered in our other guide here: Installation Guide
Clickup
We use Clickup.com to organize and track the various assignments and claims in Skywind. If you don’t have an account already, go ahead and make one. Your department lead will be able to add you as a member to the necessary boards.
Claiming Tasks
When starting out, your department lead will assign you tasks that best fits your skill level and strengths. Once you’re comfortable doing so, you can pick and choose your own assignments from the lists of available tasks. Don’t claim more interiors than you can finish in a few months time.
Once you can select your own tasks feel free to grab anything that interests you in the "Open" column at the far left of the board. Assign yourself to the card and move it over to the "Claimed" column.
As you make progress on your claim, you can check off the different passes on the card. This will make it much easier for you to track your tasks and their various stages of completion, more information can be found here: Pass 1, 2, 3
When your claim is 100% finished and detailed, the dungeon is ready for navmesh. Please move it to the "Incoming Nav/Opt" column where a navmesher will take over for the next task. For more information on the workflow please visit the relevant guide here: Interior Claim Workflow
Using The Creation Kit
If you are reading this, you should already be familiar with the ins and outs of the Creation Kit. If you need a quick refresher, please refer to some tutorials on YouTube or the Creation Kit Wiki.
If you haven’t already, follow our installation guide to install the correct version of the Creation Kit and all the tools related to it.
Loading Your Plugin
Only load Skyrim.esm and Skywind.esm (Don’t load update.esm or any DLCs with it!)
When continuing work on a plugin, make sure it is set as the “active file” or your work won’t be saved properly.
Save your esp as “YourName - Name of Interior(s)” You can also include the date you started it.
Starting Your Claim
Every interior should already have a cell, so you don’t need to make a new one. Simply locate it in the Cell View window.
In many cases, you’ll find the old Morrowind layout of the interior. Use this as a reference as you work. You’ll want to recreate the location in the same cell using the new assets, so familiarize yourself with the tileset you are working with by looking through all the pieces.
In most situations, you are permitted to expand and change locations within reason. Run your ideas past the lead and the rest of the team before making any drastic changes.
Be sure to check the Wiki page for any additional lore, NPC, and quest information regarding the dungeon or interior. Additionally, you can hop in vanilla Morrowind to get a feel of what the original creator intended, as well as checking other completed cells that use the same assets to get an idea of what other members have done with them.
Passes 1, 2, & 3
All Interior Level Design cards have a set of checklists to help track what has been done for a given interior. Check these off as you complete them, or at least before pushing a card on to Navmeshing so we can be confident in how much work has been accomplished.
Layout - Pass 1 is for the general layout of your interior, make sure it is a reasonable size for the area and the number and palcement of all the entrances/exists matches up with the exterior or other connected cells.
Clutter, furniture, traps, doors, NPCs - Next comes the decoration and interactables that makes the interior unique, interesting, and make sense in the world. Check the relevant sections here on asset and NPC usage to learn what we're looking for.
Finalization - Finally, make sure that your interior fulfills all the steps laid out in the Finalisation Guide. This will include steps on making sure the cell has the proper metadata, sound markers, etc.
Asset Usage
Skywind uses all original assets created by the talented 3D department. All Skywind assets use a prefix starting with “0”. Be sure you are only using assets with this naming convention.
Example: Caves use the follow naming format: _ENV_Cave_Shale_IN_LRCornerBase02
_ - Skywind model
ENV - Environmental mesh
Cave - Cave tileset
Shale - Type of cave set
IN - Interior
LRCornerBase02 - specific mesh
More detailed information about asset usage can be found in the individual tileset guides.
NPC and Loot Placement
For the most part, loot and NPCs should remain the same as they were in Morrowind. Again, check the Morrowind Wiki to ensure you didn’t miss anything.
Most of the original loot and NPC placements still exist in the old layout. Please do not make duplicates or place a second instance of NPCs, as it can interfere with scripts and quests. Simply move these objects and characters over from the old layout to your new one. Additionally, never place the Testing Hall NPC labeled as “00TEST” in your dungeon or interior.
If the dungeon or interior has been expanded significantly compared to Morrowind, additional loot and/or enemies might be required. Keep new treasures and encounters balanced and simple.
Finalization Process
Every interior has a criteria for completion that they must meet. You can find a checklist of things that your dungeon must have here: Finalisation Guide
Once your interior has met all these requirements, it’s ready for Navmeshing and QA testing.
Quality Assurance Process
A full overview on the QA process and how to use Github can be found here: Bug Reporting
This abridged version will cover only the things you as a level designer will need to worry about.
Once your claim is finalized, reviewed, and Navmesh has been completed, it will undergo Quality Assurance. Navmesh will send in finished claims to be peer reviewed by leads and other experienced members. If there are issues found, the person reviewing your claim may contact you and send it back for fixes. If not, they will hand it off to the QA department.
After QA has gone through your claim, if there were issues it will be returned to the Review Returned” column. Review this column periodically for your claims so you can make the necessary fixes. (If you like, you can also receive notifications about changes to your claim’s Trello card by selecting the “Watch” box on the right side of the card.) A list of Github links or an attachment with each issue found will be attached to the card.
When you fix one of the linked issues, add the “Claim Fix” label to it in Github, as well as the “In Pending Build” label. Labels can be found on the right side of the issue.
In addition to this, leave a comment specifying the build version that will include your fix. Ex. “In Pending Build: 9.9.23” if the issue was addressed and fixed in 9.9.22, but won’t be available for re-testing until the following update to the build when your fix is merged. Check the merge sheet for the next build number if you are unsure (More info in the next section).
Once all issues have been addressed and updated in Github, move the card back to the 'Incoming QA For Next Build' column of the Clickup board. A tester will test your recent fixes and changes and return the card again if the fix fails. Repeat this process until all issues are resolved. After that, your claim is done!
Uploading and Merging Your Work
Every month or so, you are required to upload your work to be merged with the master file. It is extremely important that you are up to date with merging and always submit your plugin for merge, regardless of your progress. Otherwise you might run into conflicts and errors, and can cause loss of work. You can usually find the merge date attached to the dev-chat on the discord channel. We’ll also make several announcements about it beforehand.
Simply upload your esp(s) to the newest tab on the merge document (see pinned posts on the dev-chat Discord build channel) on or before the merge date.
Once that’s done, it’s just a matter of waiting for the new build to be released. This usually takes a day or two. After you have the new build installed, you must start a new plugin if your work was merged. Don’t work on a previous plugin that was merged or it can cause conflicts.
Conclusion
Communicating with the team and being involved is the best way to do this. Take an extensive look around at what has already been done to get a feel for the world and what our project is aiming for. This is a massive collaboration with people with different skills and styles, and we hope you stick around to contribute yours!