BadPenney
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Posts posted by BadPenney
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http://www.fallout3nexus.com/imageshare/images/1103832-1248579749.jpg
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/imageshare/images/1103832-1248579655.jpg
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I'm not able to paint inside the bloddy cell (active) I want to! Instead the painting only works in other (random?) cells near by - but almost never in the one I want to work in.
A Wasteland cell is divided into 4 quadrants. Each quadrant can only accept 8 landscape textures at one time. If you can't paint in it, that means it is maxed already. If you right click on the cell you want to paint in (as if you were applying texture) and press the " i " key, a window will pop up that will show you the 4 quads adjacent to the point that you selected with a list of the textures in them. You can select and remove textures so that you can place new textures in that quad.
I've altered some cells in the wasteland to me needs. Everything's great, but ingame some bitmap trees are floating above the ground - editor looks fine, no sign of em. How do I get rid of em?I have been wrestling with that recently and have come up with a workaround. Do not delete vanilla trees. If you see floating trees it is likely that you have moved trees around. I see that even if you reconnect the distantLOD trees with their mates, the LOD will still be visible at close range. I have been able to clear them by dropping new trees into the spots that I want them, dropping any trees that are in my way down 10000 units (overkill), then in the World pull down menu, select World LOD - Wasteland - Generate trees. When you get the successful message, Select World testing and reports - Update Distant LOD. New trees don;t seem to get the TreeLOD problem, but any relocated vanilla trees do.
As I said, I changed some original wasteland cells. Is there anything I need to take care of, except updating the navmesh?If you don't see any problems then maybe nothing more is necessary. Some world objects have LOD remnants also, and they are more difficult to fix than the trees. I was able to successfully update world object LODs today, so if that becomes a problem for you let me know.
I've just read that the 1.5 patch screws things up (haven't noticed any problems so far), but what's the version I should targed for me quest-release?1.6 is the most recent patch. It resolves some of the problems with 1.5 but created a new one. All NPCs that you create will have white hands and bodies, no matter what race they are. Vanilla NPCs and player chars don't seem to be affected. Turning your plug-in into a masterfile with FO3Edit will remedy that situation, but you can't edit a masterfile with the GECk, so don't do it unless you want to upload right now. If your mod is not close to being released yet then it maybe that a future official patch will fix the problem. One would hope it is not long in coming.
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I thought that I had moved past the treeLOD issue, but I started a new character as a test and they were back. I am using an old version of the GECK, so I should try patching it too. I am planning to turn my .esp into a masterfile with FO3Edit, because of the NPC skin issue, hopefully I can get both issues resolved that way. I still see occasions where NPCs forget their AI packages or do completely unexpected things, but I can't detect a pattern in that behavior. I think that it may be more of an FO3 issue than a mod issue. I used to find one of the guys from Flak and Shrapnel's in Rivet City wandering far away in the wasteland. I used to think that maybe it was planned to happen, now I'm not so sure.
The only mods I am running currently are my own and Fake Patch 1.5. The Fake Patch is a recent addition.
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Go to the Character pull down menu at the top of the GECK window. Click on Update Facegen model availability. That will straighten out your helmet.
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Planning everything out in advance is not entirely necessary, in my opinion. That is an analytical approach, and it is only one possible successful method. Of course, an analytical personality believes that an analytical approach is "the best way", otherwise they wouldn't do it. Analytical types have their virtues. Improvising on the fly is maybe not one of them. Adapt and overcome is my motto.
There has never been a novel written that was thoroughly thought out in advance. Just an outline of your intent is really enough. That has been my approach and I am putting the finishing touches on my own town. I have improvised a great deal, discarded some ideas while adopting new plans along the way. I have found this forum to be an invaluable help. I don't really think that you CAN plan everything out in advance because you really have no idea just what you are getting yourself into if you have never worked with the GECK, even if you have modded before in other games.
The advice to search threads for information is sound. You are not the first person to ask those questions. The best advice that I have gotten has often been a direction where I can search.
To really pull off what you are proposing will likely take months of your time, especially if you are working independently. That IS something that you will need to plan on.
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If the meshes and textures are not in the meshes and textures folders then they are invisible to the game, so yes, renaming the folders was the problem. They are default directories.
If you already have folders named meshes and textures, expanding new folders with the same name should not erase what is already in the old folders, unless new files have exactly the same file names as existing files. Even then, Windows should warn you of that situation and ask if you want to overwrite before doing it.
A properly zipped folder should expand files into all the right subdirectories without the need of renaming or relocating anything. If you are nervous about the process, then backup your existing folders somewhere; in another directory, on a flash drive or disk. Then expand the new files as described in the accompanying readme file ( assuming that there is one, it's common practice ). If something goes wrong, then you can always undo it with your backed up files.
Chances are, it will all work properly and your warning <!> symbols will go away and be replaced by the right stuff.
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The <!> blocks mean that the meshes aren't in the directory locations on your computer that the plug-in expects them to be. Recheck any readme files that came with the mods to make sure that you expanded them in the correct location.
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Also, I think that it might be simpler to keep an .esp version of my plug-in handy to work on in GECK, rather than converting one to .esm and back again each time I want to make a change.
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I ran into that problem when making graffiti. Even though the edges of the .dds appear transparent and show the object behind them, they would not allow another partially transparent .dds to show through.
I either had to prevent their edges from overlapping, or combine two images that would have overlapped into one image.
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One minor thing to consider - you will have to de-masterize it every time you want to update it. You can't modify an .esm in GECK.
Yes, that is true, which is one of the reasons I have been hoping to avoid turning it into an .esm. After spending some time today trying to turn my NPCs into custom races to avoid the 2 tone look, I've decided that it is too much trouble. My one NPC that is unaffected by the glitch is a custom race that uses the Type V body mesh and 2 outifts that Luchaire modified to work with it. I thought that I might just be able to copy the vanilla meshes and textures into renamed directories and have custom races point to those. Not only did that not work, but the NPCs looked 2 toned in the GECK as well as the game. If I changed all of my NPCs to custom body meshes and textures with compatible outfits then it might work, but I think that would swell the size of my mod, make more work for me that I had not intended and push out my release date.
So I'm thinking that masterizing my plug in is the way to go at this point. When Bethesda patches away these problems then maybe it will be unnecessary to do this sort of thing.
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I didn't pick up on the fact that you were doing this for cinematography effects. Anything goes then. I've taken a number of liberties with actual gameplay for my videos, as well. :thumbsup:
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Thank you for your responses. I hadn't looked outside of Nexus threads for info, so pointing me elsewhere to look was very helpful.
I'm still mulling over how to approach this. It seems that many people are reporting good luck with 1.6 even without using MasterUpdate. The pasty white flesh glitch is such an obvious flaw that I can't help believing it will be remedied in the next patch, and that is all that is bugging me about the current 1.6 patch, now that I know the treeLOD is a non-issue. I may experiment more with making my affected NPCs into custom races, since my one custom race NPC still looks normal. If that seems to be ineffective then I may just .esm-ify, in the end.
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It is a clever bit of scenery. Your assertion that you have a solution to "a serious problem" is really just an expression of your viewpoint. It obviously seriously annoys you, but I had not even really noticed the lack of cast shadows by static objects. It is just one of many characteristics of Fallout that need to be overlooked in order to suspend disbelief. I have noticed shadows cast by NPCs, and I would definitely notice a shadow that wouldn't disappear when a flashlight is shined upon it.
The fact that I have to select preset typed phrases to NPCs rather than just talk aloud is far more immersion breaking to me. But then, I won't really be satisfied until there is a matrix-like immersion into RPGs. Anything less than a totally real appearing environment is just a matter of degree, IMO. I am still pleased by the advances of game realism that I have seen since I began playing them.
I do admire your attempt to create more realism. Cast shadows that track with the position of the sun and the moon would be nice.
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It has been recommended to me that I might convert my .esp to an .esm with FO3Edit before uploading, in order to avoid problems with recent official patches. I have some questions about this before taking the plunge. I regret if they have been answered in earlier threads, but my searches haven't revealed them.
Can Fallout 3 access more than one masterfile without modification? If not, what needs to be done?
Are there drawbacks to creating an .esm for a mod? If so, what might they be and are there ways to soften their effects?
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can you post again in point for the steps you took to fix the problem then, for people who might later refer to this thread to find out?
-you just installed patch 1.6 and rebooted fallout 3 a few times? o.O
It's a bit mysterious, actually, but I'll give it a go.
I back up my .esp file at least once a day, sometimes more. I copy the file ShadySands.esp, paste it and then it rename something that gives it a date and order stamp, like ShadySandsBackup23July01.esp. If I make more that one backup in a day then I advance the last two digits ... 01.02,03... so that I know where the backup fits in line. I keep backups for at least a week. This has saved my chops more than once, so I recommend it to anyone who doesn't want to see all their work go into the bitbucket. I periodically backup to removable disks as well.
Anyway, before swapping out the trees as I described in an earlier part of this thread, I made a backup. Then continued to playtest and tweak my mod after changing the trees, and made many savegames without the LOD tree problem in them.
After retrieving a backup for 21 July that I had made during the LOD issue and renaming it to ShadySands.esp, I loaded a savegame and the trees were just back to normal. I can only guess that I cleared my savegames from the LOD glitch by swapping the trees out with trees that had no LOD sets, because rebooting didn't do it before. I even tried deselecting my mod from the datafiles and saving a clean game without success.
I just shake my head at FO3 sometimes.
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I think that you can disregard everything that I have posted about the Tree LOD.
After Skree's post I decided to check if newly placed trees had an LOD problem and dropped one to check out. It looked fine, and since I was getting error messages on loading the GECK about references to trees that I had changed, I recovered a backup .esp from just before I changed all those trees, thinking that I would just place new trees at their location and drop the affected trees down -1000.
But I started up Fallout to check out the double placed LODs again and all of the trees were back to normal. :wallbash:
I can only guess that there was some sort of transient effect that was caused by applying patch 1.6 that affected my savegames but has now resolved itself somehow. Hopefully it is gone for good. Sorry for the red herring post.
The pasty fleshed NPCs remain however, unfortunately.
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the double placement of the lod is working as intended.
This is my guess.
MaxLOD tree remains at -100 z height until MinLOD tree is unloaded from memory (ie. hits the preset lod distance for the next Lod to appear).
Since MinLOD tree is removed, MaxLOD tree appears and stays, because its waiting for the MinLOD tree to come back and replace it.
I am not sure that I understand your point. If the double placement of the LOD was working as intended, then they would not both be visible at close range, would they? Here is my guess: the mechanism that recognizes the preset LOD distance that toggles the MinLOD and MaxLOD trees is no longer functioning for trees that have been relocated in a mod, as of the installation of patch 1.6.
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I am seeing the same effect with male NPC characters that I have created, as well. It has been suggested that making my mod an .esm would cure this problem. I have not tried that yet, but that would be a mod by mod solution if it does work, I think.
My female NPC character Summer was spared this effect. I am assuming that it is because she is a member of a custom race. I am not seeing this effect with my NPCs that are from vanilla raider races either.
I think that I would rather attempt to avoid this problem by creating custom races for my NPCs rather than making it into a master file. Would turning every mod with unique NPCs into master files be workable?
I often see warnings that the GECK cannot locate human textures for NPCs while loading my .esp to work on it. This may be the current consequence of that.
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Here is an example of the tree glitch:
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/imageshare/images/1103832-1248316743.jpg
It seems that it only affects trees that I have moved. Trees that are still in the same position that they were in vanilla FO3 remain unchanged.
Somehow the Tree LOD has lost the data that tells it that it should disappear when you get within a certain range, so you get the double placement that you can see in the top picture.
I'm impatient for Bethesda to fix this issue, if ever, so I've gone looking for solutions. I first tried unchecking the [_] Has Tree LOD box on the affected trees. That worked, but it turned off LOD data on ALL trees. So looking out over the landscape showed a really barren scene.
My next try has been finding the double exposed trees in the game, then renaming each one and saving them as unique trees with the "Has Tree LOD" box unchecked.
Then go into World LOD under the World pull down menu, select Wasteland and Generate Trees. After getting the successful message, click World Testing And Reports and then Update Distant LOD Data. Then save the .esp. (FYI, in case anyone else is looking for a quick fix for this). The only other solution that I can think of is dropping the tree out of sight before updating. Deleting the trees altogether still seems to leave the LOD tree.
The unique tree solution seems to work, after a fashion. The tree in the picture is one that I have treated that way. Fortunately, there aren't more than a score or two of trees that I have moved, and most wouldn't be so visible from a distance anyway, so I am running about replacing the trees. That will be my work around unless someone knows a more elegant solution that will reconnect the Tree LOD with its disappearing act data.
As for turning my .esp into an .esm, thanks for the suggestion. I thought that I was going to need to do that for patch 1.5 anyway for its issues. I understand that FO3Edit can do that. Is it a self explanatory function or do I need some advice on how to proceed with that?
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In order to use FOSE with GECK 1.5, you have to use the latest FOSE.
Oh, gotcha.
I googled Update Distant LOD Data and got hits from Oblivion but not Fallout 3. When I select that function in the GECK,, nothing seems to happen. I'm curious if anyone has been able to successfully use this function in the GECK? It's difficult to search for topics on this because LOD is too short for the search function to accept.
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The newest version of the GECK needs FOSE? I thought that FOSE was not related to Bethesda Softworks.
I don't use FOSE. Not that I have heard anything bad about it, but I haven't wanted to create a mod that couldn't be used by anyone without it.
What I don't understand is why I can't seem to update LOD for objects in my mod. I noticed that even before this tree thing. I once got an error message about mismatched TGA files related to LODs. I can't find any TGA files listed in the FO3 .bsa files. Am I missing something?
Why is it that some objects in the world have checkboxes for LOD and high priority LOD, while other objects have those boxes greyed out and unusable?
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BadPenny, I think you should know that there are some people doing a total fallout conversion mod, and the sheer fact that you already did junktown, the HUB and shady sands, I mean you would be invaluable to their project.
I appreciate the sentiment, but I think that I have approached the use of the Fallout 1 stories from a different angle than they are doing. My approach has been much more loose I expect. I have taken elements and used them in a way that will probably get me flamed by Fallout canon purists.
My Shady Sands looks nothing similar to the original. There is a brahma pen and a garden and a girl named Tandi, and that is about where the similarity ends. There are no adobe houses or walls. Seth the gate guard is now Seth the sentry bot. The name of Tandi's father is not Aramesh it is Lars, and he guards the gate and allows or denies entry to visitors. Killian has a store in Shady Sands, not Junktown, and he is the town leader, not Aramesh. I have combined the characters of Razslo and Doc Morbid into one. Gizmo is not an obese and physically helpless casino owner, he is a renegade super mutant who leads the Khan raider gang by being the most physically powerful member, something like Lord Humongous from Mad Max 2. BTW, Max Rockatansky is now a Shady Sands resident, and his little blue heeler dog wears a red kerchief around his neck. The Fargo Traders from the Hub is in Shady Sands and Butch and his "second" Rutger sleep in the same bed (hmm, maybe that's why Butch doesn't like to talk about his personal life). There is a ghoul in town, but his name is Beck not Harold, since Harold already exists as a tree in FO3. I've also placed some important characters (important to me, at least) that don't exist in Fallout 1. The discrepencies go on...
I wish the fallout conversion crew good luck. It is a massive untertaking. I suspect that if I tried to work with them, though. they would want me to get in line according to canon, and that is just too restrictive for me.
Although modding Fallout has been a lot of fun, I've found it to be extremely frustrating as well. I'm not sure that I want to deal with it much longer. Even now, when I thought that RTSS (Return to Shady Sands) was done, I find that patching to 1.6 reveals LOD tree textures all over town. Until I find out how to get rid of them, I won't be uploading.
I'd also like to give Blender a serious go. That, and updating versions of RTSS, should keep me busy for a while.
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Bytheway, did you patch your GECK to 1.5?
No. I was afraid to. Would it help or hurt?
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Perhaps removing the fake patch might help.
I did try that, and then loaded a savegame from before I had either it or my mod running. No difference.
I found out how to tell what version of FO3 you have running. It's in the properties description of the file. Must have been a bit longer since I patched Fallout than I thought. The only other patchfile I had in my data directory was Fallout3_v1.1.0.35. I'm thinking about re-installing and removing 1.6. I thought it was supposed to be better than 1.5. Apparently that just means that it has a different set of problems.
Infinite count?
in Discussion
Posted
How about an object script that includes:
I think that would replenish the supply the next time it is opened, making it inexhaustible if not literally infinite.
Infinity is not a number with a digitally computational representation to the best of my knowledge.