Location research

Choose a location by inspecting its world resources and visiting it in game. Build a small mod-owned test project rather than copying a vanilla sector.

Retained comparison paths

These depot paths form a focused research route. Extract them from your own game with WolvenKit. Do not commit or distribute the extracted CR2W files.

Each row is a retained Observed in vanilla research target, not a complete template or a guarantee that the same relationship applies to another location.

Start from the player-facing site

Before extracting resources, write down the intended behavior:

• safe and legal player access at the quest’s intended time;
• on-foot and, if relevant, vehicle approach;
• approximate player/world coordinates and vertical level;
• nearby doors, elevators, interiors, restricted areas, traffic, and combat;
• a sensible marker and navigation endpoint;
• enough space for the trigger outline and its test approaches;
• expected behavior after fast travel and active-state reload, plus whether a completed-save reload stays inactive.

Take your own reference screenshots for private research if useful, but explain the published model with coordinates, conceptual diagrams, property tables, and mod-owned resources. Do not use WolvenKit graph screenshots as the chapter’s graph explanation.

Boundary Check worked location record

Lab 3 centers its mod-owned marker and two trigger outlines on the outdoor recycling-station cabinet row in Watson/Kabuki at (-1000.02, 1497.2208, 8.3).

Observed in vanilla: extracting base\worlds\03_night_city\_compiled\default\exterior_-17_22_0_0.streamingsector from your own game shows the fast-travel terminal entity at node index 1766:

Its point record resolves through the installed r6\cache\tweakdb.bin to displayName: LocKey#79217; the English onscreens.json maps key 79217 to Allen Street. The linked destination is Observed in vanilla at node index 5757 in always_loaded_1.streamingsector:

The entity is about 88.6 m and the linked marker about 89.95 m horizontally southwest of the lab center. A calculation against the 20-sided 110 m leave outline leaves about 18.8 m of directional margin at the marker; both Z values lie within the outline’s base 0.3 and height 16. The next cataloged terminal is about 131 m from the center and outside that outline. These are structural observations and geometry calculations, not player-access evidence. Do not redistribute either extracted sector or the extracted localization.

Experimental: check that Allen Street is accessible, the northeast route reaches the cabinet row, the row is recognizable without the quest pin, and the 110 m cleanup trigger covers the intended route.

Trace owners outward, then inward

Use two passes.

Pass 1: world registration

streamingworld.blockRefs
  -> streamingblock.descriptors
     -> descriptor.data
        -> streamingsector
           -> nodeData + nodes + nodeRefs

Record the descriptor index or distinguishing fields, sector depot path, category, level, streaming box, and quest-prefab root. In the sector, locate the placement by coordinate or full NodeRef, then record NodeIndex, node type, transform, bounds, and QuestPrefabRefHash. Do not assume the three sector arrays are parallel merely because one compact sample is.

Pass 2: referenced behavior

Follow only the references needed for the behavior:

trigger -> AreaShapeOutline buffer + notifier -> quest trigger condition
marker  -> journal mappin reference -> quest mappin manager
device  -> entity template + instanceData -> optional registry/persistence

For a quest-owned NodeRef, locate the phase prefab dependency and the exact quest node or condition that consumes the local form. For a journal pin, retain the narrow containing journal subtree and gameJournalPath, not the entire cooked journal. For a device, separate the entity template, node-local RedPackage, inplace resource, .devices, and .psrep questions.

Record the location

A useful location record contains:

Turn observation into a mod-owned fixture

Do not copy the extracted sector and delete most of it. Create the smallest mod-owned arrangement that expresses the researched relationship:

1. Choose a unique namespace, prefab root, and child NodeRefs.
2. Author a mod-owned sector with only the explained nodes.
3. Author a mod-owned block and register it through ArchiveXL.
4. Reference vanilla entity templates by depot path only when redistribution is unnecessary and the dependency is intentional.
5. Preserve opaque cooked values from a known-good mod-owned seed or editor output; do not invent meanings for Uk* properties.
6. Round-trip, validate, pack, and inventory the archive.
7. Test from a save made before any version of the fixture was installed.

Every supplied node and resource in a downloadable project must be explained. The project is executable reference material, not a magic template.

Separate the save from the archive

Facts, journal states, active objectives, tracker history, scenes, communities, and device persistent state can survive an archive rebuild. A location edit can appear to fix a static marker while the quest still follows an old checkpoint; the two observations diagnose different owners.

Retain at least:

• one pre-install clean save;
• one save before the area or device first streams;
• one save before the initial reach crossing;
• one mid-objective save after reach while still inside the outer leave trigger;
• one completed-state save;
• a written reset procedure that names every save-backed variable it changes.

Never describe “set the completion fact back to zero” as a clean-save reset. It does not clear journal, tracker, scene, community, or device state.

Location acceptance matrix

Capture visible player-facing evidence and logs. A successful coordinate search, sector extraction, or static CR2W validation cannot prove navigation, interaction, or reload behavior.

Common failures

Previous: Advanced devices, interactions, and persistent state. Next: Lab 3: Boundary Check.