Putting together a mod that emerges from a cave system into a grotto sort of place, kinda like Bloated Man's Grotto. Issue is, I don't know whether to include the cave and outdoor space in the same worldspace.

At first glance it looks very doable, just build the cave on top of the terrain and then merge into the outdoor area. I'm running into some problems now though trying to use room portals, which require a "fixed dimension" worldspace and then that "fixed dimension" space cutting off some of my outdoor section. Before I pass the point of no return and finish cluttering and laying the assets in my space, should I be doing this? Or should I break down and link them with a loading screen. Its not what I prefer as less loading screens is always better and I like them being linked up for cleanliness's sake.

What do you guys think? Is there a workaround?

Thanks so much!

Firstly, you can't use use roombounds and portals in exterior worldspace. Don't even try it, you'll end up with most of your statics deleted.

Another problem, rain and snow does not get blocked by static meshes, so it would rain and snow inside your cave, if you had it in exterior worldspace.

Just make a entrance to the cave in the exterior and place your cave and grotto in an interior cell.

Welp...so far the rooms and portals have been flawless. Guess its good I've been backing up.

Also, the exterior is, and always will be, rain and snow free. Not to mention part of the reason I included the cave in the exterior worldspace is because I wanted to have the same sky visible through the (plentiful and large) skylights in the cavern.

Given that the snow and rain isn't an issue, should I be looking at removing the roombounds and leaving it? Will that cause a ridiculous performance hit?

You can get the same effect in an interior cell by ticking 'Is Sky Cell' in its properties.

Awesome thanks. Last question. Is there any way to get a custom climate in an interior cell? My mod calls for it to be eternally night, which I've achieved with a custom climate. Can that be applied to the interior so that it can be seen through the skylights?

It is possible, but I've never done it.
I'm sure AD will pop in and give you advice on how to achieve it.

If your interior cavespace is big enough and complex enough, you could make it an exterior worldspace. Many of the huge vanilla caverns do this. However it would still need to be a seperate cell, as you would need to give it weather so it cannot rain or snow (As Tamb0 said). You could then also adjust it so that it's always bright or always dark in the weather lighting settings.

the charactreistics of day/night cycles will be determined by a custom weather object, which you can assign to your climate as well as any interior cell.

just make sure you make your sky visible in your cell edit window. as for "use sky cell" this only applies if you want flying creatures to enter and follow you in when you transition from outdoor to interior (as far as i know, i ve never used it)

AJV, this brings up again what Tamb0 said, that room portals are a no-no in exterior spaces. I almost need the portals to adjust the lighting templates from one room to another. Is there a workaround there? Again, weather doesn't matter to me at all. There is none.

Amethyst, I mentioned this before but the issue with just adjusting the "characteristics" of the day/night cycle is that stars only appear when the game believes its nighttime. As far as I can tell, adjusting "when its nighttime" is only doable via climate. Is this true?

oh yeah. thats true.

you can control this by creating a region, and setting your interior to use that region (the region can have a specific climate, and then you can set your eternal night climate there)

Didn't think of that at all. Gonna give that a shot in a bit.

Lemme say it again....worldspaces be wacky.

Tried to implement this.

Am I crazy or is there no way to apply a climate to a region? I only see the option for weather.

I'm fairly positive now that Regions only allow application of weather to worldspace and not, in fact, climates. This means I'm once again unsure of how one would cause an interior cell to display stars 24/7. I'd appreciate any advice.

i just checked again. youre right.

what a mess. on my region i have it set to my worldspace. my worldspace points to the climate which contains the weather. my interiors point to the region for sky data

my worldspace and all my interiors share the same Location data, so maybe that's how it works (or maybe since it uses region, the worldspace climate is inherited). I'm not really sure, i just know it works, and that i nearly pulled all my hair out after trying to weave all these pieces together (it was a while ago)

The weather can be inherited but it appears climate cannot. This means that, while it looks ok, I can't get the stars to show up at all times. Amethyst, I'm thinking your climate is less relevant than mine and as long as your "weather colors" are all set the same it doesn't affect anything if the climate is picked up. Let me know if I'm wrong there.

Now I'm wondering if there's not a way to overlay the stars as an "aurora" like in the sovengard weather selections. That seems to be skyrim's solution to the problem as the Aurora never fades out like stars do.

Edit: So far, placing both sections, the cave and the outdoor space, inside the same worldspace has worked great. Whats the real danger here if just eschew the traditional wisdom and leave them in the same worldspace? Room portals and all.