[What changes does this avi include]

The hair and bikini you can get, but not the face. The NPC was created by an individual who allowed it to be used in that picture, but does not wish it to be released for download.

[Is this really this simple or am I missing something?]

It should be that easy.

[Program Files Folder Issue]

Well, thanks for the information, though not for the attitude. Now I know.

"Are people just too simple to tell Vista to run the program as administrator?"

 

Got to be careful about the tone that you set concerning perceived attitude, or the chickens come home to roost.

[A quick question about scripting]

Would the NPC still perform the pistol attack animation?

Most likely.

 

There might be a way to script the NPC to look in your direction as long as the player is in LOS (Line of Sight). I don't think that LOS has the range limitations of other methods.

 

Another possibility might be to give him a force greet dialogue AI package that triggers at a certain distance while preventing the NPC from moving toward the player somehow. That might get him to focus on the player at a greater range without appearing to take aim with a weapon. He would initiate dialogue when you get within speaking range.

 

It would probably help to avoid having any other NPC nearby to distract your target NPC. They seem to like to stare at each other.

[Clever Srcipting or God Item?]

You could make a chem that boosts repair skill for a short period.

 

I made a quest that requires at least 50 science skill to hack into a terminal that has clues. On the off chance that a player without 50 science skill got to that point, I made it possible to buy some liquor that I call "Old School" that gets you tipsy but gives you +30 science skill for 4 minutes. Didn't reckon that it was too big a cheat for only a 4 minute boost to complete the quest stage.

 

Then again I put an NPC in town that can repair equipment to nearly 100%. Guess that is a bit of a cheat. He does charge though.

 

I feel that the repair system in Fallout 3 is overdone though. A normal rifle should be able to fire hundreds of rounds without a problem as long as you keep it clean. Instead I can't fire my sniper rifle more than a few times before I have to swipe parts from another rifle to repair it. You should be able to pack a cleaning rod, some rags, solvent and gun oil to keep your weapons in working order without needing to scrounge for parts all the time.

 

There is also nothing that cannot be repaired, and that just doesn't happen. Sometimes you just got to get new stuff. I think that there should be a chance of destroying the item that you are trying to repair, with the chance of failure greater the lower the repair skill of the player or NPC vendor.

[Program Files Folder Issue]

So what's the big deal? Why's it so taboo to run it in there? Are people just too simple to tell Vista to run the program as administrator? Not meaning to be insulting, I'm just genuinely curious as to the problem.

Simple?

 

Is that like posting a mildly inflammatory question on a forum instead of Googling an answer to a question that has been thoroughly documented and discussed in order to satisfy your curiousity?

 

Fallout 3 uses Windows Live, right? Many people stay connected to the internet at all times with their broadband connections, even if they are not logged into a browser and don't think about the open door. Seems like there was some risk involved with being logged into the net while running as an administrator instead of a non-administrator account. Was it the potential risk of giving hackbots searching for open nodes complete administrative access to your computer? I don't remember. Probably not important anyway.

[Transparent Geck]

If you press the "A" button you can illuminate everything in the Render Window brightly so you don't see shadows. If you minimize the GECK to your toolbar after that, or open another program window over the top of it, then you will see that transparent look that you describe when you maximize the GECK again. Pressing "A" at that point will return the view to light and shadow view without transparencies. Pressing "A" after that will illuminate the view as before without transparancies.

[Optimizing?]

Double Click on the pieces that make up your building and check the "Visible when distant" flag and the "High priority LOD" flag.

If this doesn't work for you then that means that you will need to generate new object LOD for the Wasteland worldspace. That works much the same way that you generate terrain and tree LOD, except that the object LOD process calls to TGA files that often are inaccessible to the GECK. That stops the object LOD generation and leaves you with a message concerning the "missing" file. You can work around this problem by recreating the TGA files that are missing , but it is an involved and tedious process, because once you recreate the TGA file that is missing and restart the LOD generation process it leads you to the next missing TGA, and the next, and the next...

 

I wish that I had uploaded the TGAs that I created as a modder's resource, but didn't think of it at the time and they got dumped after I finished the generation. Maybe someone else had done so by now.

[My Cool Screenshots Thread]

Nexus has Image Share for people to post screenshots of all the cool mods they are using.

[ARE YOU KIDDING ME?]

"I don't think we're in Tamriel anymore, Toto." :ohmy:

 

Change is good. Adapt and overcome.

[Notes in the Wastes]

I haven't played the mod myself, but I think that you outline a concept similar to the premise of A Note Easily Missed. That one has proven to be popular, so you should have a good bit of interest in your project.

[WHO GOES THERE?]

Food for thought. Anyway, the problems associated with towns that sit in the wasteland (Big Town, Arefu, Dave's Rep., Canterbury) aren't just limited to spawn points. You also have NPCs that wander off for no apparent reason, the tendency for the town to "pop-up" on some systems, crashing, and NPCs that simply vanish or go flying through the air if they happen to die earlier on.

I'm not familiar with the "pop-op" phenom but I've witnessed the others. I had to put leash scripts on NPCs that are active in the exterior to teleport them back to town if they go walkabout. I suspect that some of the scripts and trigger boxes that I've used to compensate for the problems that you point out may well have contributed to FPS drop and stutter in some places. The computer that I built the mod on was stout enough to hide that from me, but I've heard of frame rate drop in and around town in feedback.

 

My thoughts for a follow-up mod involve spaces that are almost entirely indoors and underground. I think that will be much simpler.

[WHO GOES THERE?]

Have you thought about using a simpler approach, like placing a sniper somewhere in the town with a very powerful weapon (perhaps scripted to kill any creature in one hit) that can deal with any nasty critters that pop up? You could script the actor to replace their weapon with a weaker version when "opened" if you want them to be lootable, and remove the powerful weapon in an OnStartCombat block in order to prevent them from using it on the player.

 

Cipscis

Simple is good. Simple appeals to my simple mind.

 

I already have snipers, so it would just be a matter of changing their weapons in the manner that you describe. It doesn't solve the resulting bodycount in the city square, but I understand that one of Arwen's mods will dispose of bodies and gore.

 

Now that I think of it, I already have one NPC that toggles essential status. I suppose that I could make town residents essential to all but the player for added security against NPC foes.

 

Thanks for the suggestion.

[WHO GOES THERE?]

Have you given any thought to putting your town in its own worldspace (like Megaton)? I don't recall anyone having that spawn problem with Megaton.

In hindsight, I wish that I had.

[In-game skin color problem]

This two tone body issue for modded NPCs started with the release of the official 1.6 patch for FO3, and was not resolved with 1.7.

 

The most commonly used way of correcting the odd appearance of the NPCs is to convert the finished mod into a master. FOMM and FO3Edit can both change a mod from an .esp into an .esm. I prefer FO3Edit for the process.

[WHO GOES THERE?]

Maybe what you need is to differentiate what you want from say using a super-powerful version of Dogmeat as a companion. That may help narrow the scope of what you want to do a bit.

I don't follow the Dogmeat reference. I am not trying to create a companion.

 

Exactly what I am looking for is this:

 

I placed a town in the Wasteland in a spot that is clear of hostile spawn points. I have already dealt with vanilla creature spawns within aggro range to prevent them from killing the residents of the town. I want the town to be peaceful inside the town walls.

 

I have gotten reports from users who have downloaded the town that creatures spawn inside that kill the residents. Albino radscorpions are the culprits in many cases. One user created a merged patch for the town to make it work with MMM, which many people said was the likely source of the increased spawns. I am aware of other mods besides MMM that add additional spawn points to the Wasteland, and realize how easy it is to add spawn points in a mod, and that I can't keep creating patches for my mod to deal with that sort of conflict. Neither do I want to try.

 

Some people have suggested that I make all of the residents essential to deal with unknown hostiles from other mods, but that would deny the player using my town the choice of killing the residents without preventing the town from becoming a chaotic battle scene between residents and beasties.

 

To be honest, I feel that it is the responsibility of each person who downloads mods if they experience consequences unintended by modders due to the number and type of mods in their load list. But if I can reduce possible conflicts with other mods then it is worth some effort.

 

If I was able to include a script in my mod that would defeat and remove any creatures that spawn inside the town limits if they attack any of the residents, then that might make my mod work as intended for people who use it, even though they may be using other mods that alter the Wasteland map with additional enemies.

 

This type of autodefense script would likely never be activated if a user was not running other mods with increased spawns though, so I don't really need it for the basic functions of my mod and don't want to require a user to have FOSE installed to run my mod for nothing more than this.

 

Many users are very savvy about FOSE and handling load lists, but a great many are so new to the game that they falter at reading basic install instructions. I don't want to make my mod less accessible to inexperienced mod users.

[WHO GOES THERE?]

If FOSE is the only answer to making the script work, then perhaps it could be part of an optional add-on file to the mod's .esp.

 

One of my goals was to make a mod that could work even when a user had nothing more than the Fallout 3 game disk and a basic installation and no other mods. Users who would benefit from the script that I want are ones who are more likely to use FOSE anyway, and would not be baffled by an additional file containing a script intended to increase mod interoperatability.

 

Thanks for the replies. I will study on it.

[WHO GOES THERE?]

I'm entirely ignorant of FOSE, outside of its name and purpose, which is probably the main reason that I hope that FOSE is not the only answer to the problem. The rest of my mod doesn't require it to operate, so Is FOSE really an absolute requirement?

[WHO GOES THERE?]

I’m seeking help on a script that would allow NPCs to automatically kill any nonplayer hostile opponent with which the NPC is in combat.

 

I would like this to work against hostiles without knowing their ID in advance, so that NPCs that are in my Wasteland town can defend themselves against NPCs that originate from spawn points placed in the Wasteland by any other unknown mod that happens to be in the same load list.

 

I don’t want to just account for other currently available mods, but rather have a script that is able to recognize any variable reference ID that attacks my NPC and kill it.

 

Ideally, if another mod that adds additional spawn points to the Wasteland coincidentally places a point within my town, the script would kill any actor that spawned from that point, heal my NPC of any combat damage, and remove the carcass of the dead enemy. I’d like to avoid unsightly piles of bodies. It would be great if the spawn point could be suppressed somehow, so that re-spawns stop, or are disposed of so quickly that they cause little or no disturbance in town.

 

It would also be necessary to make this script benign and compatible with other mods, so that it doesn’t cause conflicts and crashes. I wonder if attempting to retrieve the ID of that spawn point and disable it would cause CTDs.

 

I have considered this sort of script for some time and think that it should be doable, but I am unsatisfied with anything that I’ve conceived, so I would appreciate any script ideas that accomplish the goal.

[help a noob out?]

If the BSA files that you downloaded with the mods are not in your data directory (i.e C:\Fallout3\data) then the game will not be able to find them and will place those excited red diamonds in place of any non-default meshes that the mod expects to have available.

[Simple question about rotating.]

Hold the X or Z keys while rotating to respectively rotate them on the X and Z axes. Took me ages to figure that out too, and I felt dumb when I realized how simple it was :D .

You can also rotate on the Y axis by selecting the object and holding down the Y key while moving the mouse. Holding down the S key will change the scale of the object, btw.

 

When I want to change the orientation of an object with more precision I open the edit window of the object and change the numerical values of the rotation of X. Y and Z though. Use the first method for rough placement and the precise method for tweaking the final placement.

[Installing nude mod in failout 3]

Body replacer mods are generally not .esp files that appear in FOMM. What you have is probably a .rar file which needs to be expanded in your data directory. There should be mesh and texture folders that will hold all of the files. As long as they are in the data folder and ArchiveInvalidation Invalidated is active, then FO3 will use those body replacer files instead of the ones that are in the vanilla BSA files.

[modding a mod]

i bet it will be. can anyone give me some hints as how i might best achieve this

Use force greet dialogue AI packages. You can set the trigger distance and make them walk or run to you and start a conversation.

 

Check out Lucas Simms' force greet protocol. If you remember, he comes to greet you at the gate when you first enter Megaton. There are other examples in vanilla FO3 also. You should be able to adapt one of them to your needs with a little experimentation.

[Help me understand a script condition]

If GameDay does not equal RentDay

[I could use some help pls]

You don't need a car to go places either, it just makes it a lot easier.

 

I recommend getting and using FOMM for installing mods, regardless of how many mods you are running. Many modders, including me, upload mods that are designed to be installed and enabled, and disabled and uninstalled, with FOMM. That doesn't mean that you can't still install manually, we just do it to make your life easier.

 

Some mods are not released as FOMODs for FOMM, so they are not intended to be installed with FOMM. As for myself, if I was to use a mod like that, then I would use FOMM to make it into a FOMOD before installation, just because it makes uninstalling so much easier. That is especially true when a mod has many custom data files included.

 

ArchiveInvalidation Invalidated! is also incorporated into FOMM as well. You can also manually do what AII does, but again it is simpler no to do so.