So as I'm getting closer to finishing the interior of my house, I started to think about my quest design more. One area I wanted to get some info on was water.
http://i.imgur.com/5EyMI.jpg (drawn a while ago to remind me of the concept) shows what I want to be able to do for this dungeon in my quest. I have a feeling that the water mechanics will not be able to get those air pockets in there so the player doesn't drown. If this is true then another idea I had was to replenish air using some type of object activated by the player or replenish air as they traveled through some type of trigger.

Thoughts on how to go about this?

I'm sure you can add water as objects, some small some large. So you could just put those in. Pretty sure you can overlap them to.

They're big cubes of water.

Water is pretty tricky. You would have to line up one plane to be on the edge of the air pocket, then place another below, so as you approach the first pocket (as drawn in your picture) you would be under the upper water plane, then you go under the pocket and are under the lower, which you could surface above. Then if you kept going you would go under a 3rd, also raised, water plane.

However above this tunnel would have to be solid ground. You couldn't have it be ocean above or everything would just be underwater.

If you set it up right and did some tricky stuff you could potentially get this working.

Good point about the ocean Alex.

Yes it is doable, but if your sea level is level with the exit of the tunnel, it won't work.

Have a look at World Objects -> Activator -> Water in CK's Object Window. The items in there are planes that describe a volume of water. You can set the size of the plane, but anything below that plane is considered to be water. Just place a few planes in the http://imgbox.com/aam8BUIK (but make the planes overlap each other a bit). But as Alexander pointed out, the ocean might cause some trouble. You can circumvent that by making the dungeon an interior cell.

it is entirely feasible to do but you may have to adjust your level design to accomodate the water


imagine the water planes as a "column" (square shaped column). anything a certain distance underneath the surface of the waterwill be treated as if it were submerged. so in your design you would have to carefully size and overlap the surface planes so that your air pockets are not eclipsed by the higher altitude water surfaces, and you will just need to make sure that all seams do overlap at least in part so that the player doesnt stop swimming mid-stroke (if that makes sense).

in your side view drawing, it illustrates the altitude of the varying water surfaces well, but also imagine what it would look like from a top view (just in terms of water coverage). you want the entire swimmable area of your dungeon to be "covered" by a water surface, but none totally overlapping each other (just at the seams). you will probably need to place several water planes and resize them accordingly

I'm pretty sure I read on here somewhere that the player takes a breath of air when moving from one water plane to the other, which would negate the whole effect that you're trying to achieve.

Can anyone confirm this ?

You could make an activator that casts a short water breathing effect on the player.

Thanks for all the info everyone, I'm going to do a simple mock up of the design (just one air pocket) and see what happens.

Yup, I have a similar water section to the one described and crossing between water planes causes the player to catch breath and also drop like a rock, nothing can be done as overlapping water causes Z fighting issues...

The z fighting wouldn't matter because the top of the water planes are at different heights anyway and will be hidden. The only surface of the water that would be showing are the planes of water that make the air pocket.

Oh yes in this situation it may not be an issue, my issue really is with the standard water used in interiors, seems like there should be a way to link them or something to stop the gasp/fall bug

Though be careful with overlapping as you may end up surfacing only to find you are still underwater...

Well the initial tests are showing that gasp/falling effect mentioned. Just so you guys know I'm using the water1024_Blackreach object, and I tried a bunch of weird combinations for positioning those planes (horizontal and vertical overlap, diagonal overlap, and perfectly snapped next to each other at the same Z value)

So I guess the 2nd idea to use an activator of some kind is my best bet. I'll keep the water level for the beginning and end of the tunnel the same.

Making the water objects overlap won't help with the "gasp problem". I have a similar area in my dungeon and I had to end up using one huge water object for the most part. I raised the ground level for the "border" parts so that the player is never underwater when entering another water block.

Not to stomp on your idea, becuase it is a good idea. But if you are having a lot of trouble with it, one thing that is severely lacking in the Skyrim world is underwater exploration. There is almost zero need ever for waterbreathing spells or abilities. So having that entire tunnel underwater, and requiring that the player have a waterbreathing potion, might not be a bad idea.

Yea I made a decent sized underwater tunnel already. There is one air pocket but if you don't have a way to water breathe then you will probably die before you get to it. It's not a very complex tunnel (only one path), if you could see how this thing is put together you'd know why lol. But it is a good start for some underwater levels and I just wanted an excuse to use the ice cave kit.

I did this sort of thing ... It helped convince me that I needed a rest from modding

Best way I found is to have a single - if possible - massive water sheet (just scale the object with the correct flow/colour you want, in the CK). Place the water object at the height you want water to be ... using something like a fully underwater tunnel as a guide ... then raise the ceiling piece where you want the breathe-holes (turn off grid snapping, raise a ceiling piece, fill the gaps created with boulders etc).

Works OK. (painful to do, though ...)

"Joining" water-pieces is not a good idea, as mentioned above ... even if you overlap you always encounter the "gasp" issue

This may sound utterly ridiculous, but I think I may have heard somewhere that flipping a water plane would bound the water (from another plane) above it. Never tried it and have absolutely no idea if it works or not: heck I don't even remember where I heard that. That might be something to investigate.