Using the Hist Shrine tileset

[Ibsen's Ghost]

A few people have expressed an interest in developing a Hist Shrine (I think I can give Asashpan to PWN seeing as he specifically requested it). This is great because they are very unique and attractive models but they are also extremely tricky to get right and there is long overdue some kind of guide here so that modders who are new to the tileset can begin to get acquainted.

Bear in mind that Hist Shrines are associated with the Hist and are also associated with Bhuru magic and, as a result, tend to be inhabited by zombie Argonians as well as rootmould creatures such as the flying and walking rootmould, all of which are tainted with Bhuru magic.

I guess the best place to start if you're interested in a Hist Shrine is to take a look at my first effort with it. It's called Ixtuthapan and begins in the mountains of the Naga-Cradle Jungle at co-ordinates -4,27.

The interior itself for Ixtuthapan is called BMShrIxtuth01 so go take a look. The CS will show you how it's been put together and if you try it out in-game, you'll see how it works.

The main problem is with the way that dungeon tilesets are put together. Any dungeon tileset is best assembled with 'snap-to-grid' and 'snap-to-angle' selected. This ensures that there is less chance of having gaps in the walls. The main problem with having gaps in the walls for Hist Shrines is that you tend to use the bright yellow Hist sap as water which fills in the channels provided by the tileset itself. If there are gaps in the walls then the bright yellow makes this very obvious and the effect does not work.

Couple this with the fact that the tileset is very sensitive and very difficult to position correctly. Sometimes it seems that items placed in the interior during the second phase of modding it i.e. after quitting and then coming back to it, tend not to fit because the 'snap-to-grid' goes out-of-synch. I'm not sure about why and so on but Koniption, the designer, knows how to correct this and can also advise, if needs be. However, the best method appears to involve going to File-Preferences-(choose the movement window) and then set snap-to-grid to 4 and snap-to-angle to 45.

You can try playing about with the tileset if you wish but my advice is not to get started for real until you're familiar as you tend to make errors that you can't undo (or which takes longer to undo than just starting again).

There are workarounds to some extent such as using root models to fill in the gaps but it takes a little skill to position them correctly to both do the job and also look natural. Nevertheless, it's nice to have some roots in there seeing as it's a Hist Shrine after all. Just check what I did with Ixtuthapan to get an idea of what can be done where.

I hope that helps. Any other guidance can be edited in here later should the need arise. Anyway, there are two Hist Shrines within the beta regions that you could try. One is Asashpan and the other is Ossasoit. Details are given here: New Beta Locations and the map locations are (approx.) -6,8 (Ossasoit) and -10,-24 and -11,-24 (Asashpan).