MODDING: Adding a NEW weapon

[Moraelin]

Most likely, you couldn't, because the bog-standard game doesn't have the Oblivion.esm in the first place. Plus, the format would still have to be compatible with Fallout 3 anyway, so you're back to square one. Sorry.

 

I suppose you could make it an .esm itself, like Throttlekitty did with the rapier, if you really don't want to inherit anything from Fallout3.esm, but then you'd have to supply everything yourself. That is, meshes, animation, ammo, etc. Which I think was your problem in the first place anyway, so it's not really an improvement.

 

To be honest, I'm a little miffed myself. I was already looking forward to playing with your guns.

[vash1985]

it was a long shot. ive been tooling around in the latest test build of nifskope with very little success. i really think we are on the verge of something big though.

 

reason i asked is ive been able to export my test model as a oblivion .nif just fine, but when trying to go from that to using the 10mm pistol as a base, it gets really screwed up =(

[vash1985]

To be honest, I'm a little miffed myself. I was already looking forward to playing with your guns.

nvm i found it all

[vash1985]

can we get a sticky on this topic? valuable information here that should not be lost =)

[maskim]

Is there any tutorials or articles about modeling for gamebyro engine? I mean i can use 3dmax and i want to make some guns for the game, but i dont know, how to break up the mesh, or convert it to nif.

[vashts1985]

http://thenexusforums.com/index.php?showtopic=82738

[jaysus]

i dont think thats what he needs (yet)...

 

try that one instead for the start

http://thenexusforums.com/index.php?showtopic=53173

 

there you should find all that you need to create *.nif files out of max...

 

basicly you need somin called "niftools" and eventually if you also do animations and particles the "civ4" tool to export from max

 

then the tut vash mentioned will help you to make fallout compatible models using "nifskope"

[Moraelin]

As a quick update, after the experience with packing Alexscorpion's silenced G3A3. Again, I beg for apologies if it was common knowledge or something. Also, I still use an ancient version of FOMM, so I'm still doing it all in hex like a Real Man ;) Easier ways may or may not exist in the meantime.

 

1. Turns out you can add new parts too, like the silencer which, as far as I can tell, was copied from the silenced pistol. Which should be easier than editing the mesh just for it. The same should apply to, say, adding a scope to a wazer wifle, as someone else wanted to do.

 

2. You do however need to make sure you add a new string entry for it in the .nif header. NIFskope did this just fine.

 

First change the NumStrings entry in the header. E.g., for the original g3assaultrifle.nif that was 15, I changed it to 16.

 

Update the Strings array. Now you'll have a new string like "..." at the end.

 

Edit that to what you want your new part to be called. Btw, it helps later with the hex editing if you pick a name the same length as an existing entry. E.g., in my case the "##G3Clip:0" entry had 10 characters, so I named the new entry "G3Silencer".

 

Update the name of the copied NiTriStrips entry, or it _will_ crash the game or act funny. It used to be String 18, but our string table doesn't have as much. I'll change it to my new string, which is string 15 (it counts from 0, so the 16 entries are 0 to 15.)

 

3. If you want to add a new first person mesh to it, here it gets funny. You can skip this step, though, if you can live with the third-person lower-res texture it had.

 

As I said in the tutorial the first person meshes are defined in TXST entries, you obviously need one for the copied part. Make one. I copied the silenced 10mm pistol one, replaced the 2 texture paths relevant to the silencer, I left alone the one for the pistol itself since I don't have a pistol in that mod. I gave it an EDID of "1stPersonG3SilencerTexture" and a FormId of "00ffef66".

 

This was the easy part.

 

Now let's look at that STAT record for the gun, that we've been replacing texture ids in before. The one for the rifle, with the new textures, had a MODS sub-record that looked like: "04 00 00 00 09 00 00 00 47 33 52 69 66 6C 65 3A 30 16 19 FF 00 03 00 00 00 0D 00 00 00 23 23 47 33 54 72 69 67 67 65 72 3A 30 16 19 FF 00 02 00 00 00 0B 00 00 00 23 23 47 33 4C 65 76 65 72 3A 30 16 19 FF 00 01 00 00 00 0A 00 00 00 23 23 47 33 43 6C 69 70 3A 30 17 19 FF 00 00 00 00 00"

 

As far as I can tell, it's like this:

 

The first 4 pairs of digits, "04 00 00 00" is the number of parts we're changing textures for. I'll bump it to "05 00 00 00", i.e., now we have _5_ parts. (4 for the original gun, 1 for the new silencer.)

 

There are four records after that that look like this (I'll take the last one as an example): "0A 00 00 00 23 23 47 33 43 6C 69 70 3A 30 17 19 FF 00 00 00 00 00"

 

The "23 23 47 33 43 6C 69 70 3A 30" in it, is actually hex for "##G3Clip:0".

 

The "0A 00 00 00" is 10 in decimal, and means the length of that string.

 

The "17 19 FF 00" is the first-person texture that will be used for it.

 

EDIT: The last four digits seem to be the number of the part we're retexturing, as per the .nif. Originally I had let it 0, like the magazine, and the silencer texture was actually applied to the magazine, badly. (The last entry in MODS seems to win.) Our silencer is the 5'th part of the weapon, but again the're counted: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4. So our part is part number 4. So we'll want "04 00 00 00" there.

 

So I'll first copy this record to the end of the hex mess, to make 5 records. Now it looks like this: "05 00 00 00 09 00 00 00 47 33 52 69 66 6C 65 3A 30 16 19 FF 00 03 00 00 00 0D 00 00 00 23 23 47 33 54 72 69 67 67 65 72 3A 30 16 19 FF 00 02 00 00 00 0B 00 00 00 23 23 47 33 4C 65 76 65 72 3A 30 16 19 FF 00 01 00 00 00 0A 00 00 00 23 23 47 33 43 6C 69 70 3A 30 17 19 FF 00 00 00 00 00 0A 00 00 00 23 23 47 33 43 6C 69 70 3A 30 17 19 FF 00 04 00 00 00"

 

Of course, now it has 2 "##G3Clip:0" entries, which is no good.

 

Being a lazy kind of guy, at this point I saved the ESP, loaded it in a hex editor, replaced the second ""##G3Clip:0" to "G3Silencer", saved, loaded it back into FOMM. That's why I chose a new name of the exact same length for the new part. Otherwise you destroy the ESP.

 

(Of course, if you want to convert it all by hand to hex and edit it in FOMM, you can pick any other lenght of string instead. E.g., I could have called it "##G3Silencer:0" which is "23 23 47 33 53 69 6C 65 6E 63 65 72 3A 30", and changed the length from "0A 00 00 00" to "0E 00 00 00" too. (I.e., from 10 to 14.) But, as I was saying, I'm lazy. Overwriting with a hex editor is enough for me.)

 

Replace the texture too from "17 19 FF 00" (the texture of the G3 magazine) to "66 EF FF 00" (the newly created texture of the silencer.)

 

The new record looks like this: "05 00 00 00 09 00 00 00 47 33 52 69 66 6C 65 3A 30 16 19 FF 00 03 00 00 00 0D 00 00 00 23 23 47 33 54 72 69 67 67 65 72 3A 30 16 19 FF 00 02 00 00 00 0B 00 00 00 23 23 47 33 4C 65 76 65 72 3A 30 16 19 FF 00 01 00 00 00 0A 00 00 00 23 23 47 33 43 6C 69 70 3A 30 17 19 FF 00 00 00 00 00 0A 00 00 00 47 33 53 69 6C 65 6E 63 65 72 66 EF FF 00 04 00 00 00"

 

Save, and we're done. Now that gun has a 5th part.

 

As I was saying, it _should_ work for most other quick-and-dirty mesh additions, like putting a silencer on a sniper rifle or on a Berretta, or a sniper scope on a G3 or wazer. (Of course, making the silencer actually prevent the NPCs from hearing you, or making the scope actually work, that's a whole other issue ;) )

[jaysus]

hex like a Real Man

more like a real scientist :P

[Moraelin]

Well, it looks like TESsnip didn't have a nice form for the MODS entry yet, so hex was the only way to do it anyway :P