madmongo

Creating world spaces is one of the things that makes me think the GECK is really a Vault-Tec experiment designed to subject modders to the maximum amount of frustration possible. If you just go into the GECK and do what seems intuitive, not only will it not work but it will crash the GECK. There are a few tutorials online, where you learn that your worldspace has to be at a certain minimum height to avoid crashing the GECK and other tips for dealing with the GECK's numerous bugs. I never found a single good tutorial though. There's a reason that very few mods have world spaces in them, and the few that do have flat, featureless landscape. The GECK just makes creating a decent world space miserable. As for the layer that is over your ground, that's probably the water level. You can set that in your world space properties. Another GECK bug is that if you change to your world space and there's no objects in the cell you are in, the GECK will often render the water level above the landscape regardless of where you actually have the water level. Moving around with the arrow keys until you switch cells will sometimes fix it. Placing an object in the cell then switching to another world space and back again to your new world space (with the object now) also works. Trying to do large scale landscaping on the main screen is going to be extremely slow and painful. You need to use the height map editor first to get a rough cut of your landscape, then use the main screen to just tweak it when you add your objects. The height map editor is very difficult to use because very large differences in height show up as very small differences in color. Once you play around with it for a bit you'll learn how to set the various tools so that one click doesn't make a spike the size of Mt. Everest in your landscape. Which, by the way, brings on another bug in the GECK. If there's too dramatic of a change in your landscape height, you'll end up with tears in your landscape. The GECK will automatically try to repair some of these but it's repairs usually don't work. One more thing. Save often. These parts of the GECK tend to crash often.

There's a T-800 model in the monster mod. It's a port from a Fallout 3 mod. If you can get permission from the author you could use that.

In certain dialog options Manny seems to be jealous of Carla, which does kinda hint that Manny has an attraction to Boone. Then again, it could be just a tight bro relationship. But then, if you send Chris back to Novac during Come Fly With Me, he does move in with Manny. Hmmm....

I assume you've got a quest to do the normal conversation. In the GECK, with that quest open, click on the "Combat" tab. All of the options like attack, flee, hit, health half, health quarter, etc. are on that tab. As with the conversation tab, you click on the left and select which options you want to add to the form then put in your own NPC responses. You can look at some other NPC quests/conversations in the GECK for examples.

There are different ways that you can attach it to the player, but however you do it you need to import the player skeleton into blender. What I usually do is import one of the base body meshes, because then it's just the body and you don't have multiple parts like you do with some of the clothing meshes. Then i delete the body mesh and parent my own custom mesh to the skeleton (armature). Blender never seems to get the bone weights right so then I have to go through each one and adjust them so that they work properly. If you don't have experience with it, you might want to leave the original body mesh mixed in with your custom mesh just so that you can examine how the bone weights are set up when you do your own. Then once you've got your own mesh weighted you can delete the body mesh. If you are making clothing that doesn't completely cover the body, but it's still going to fit in the upperbody slot in the geck, then you'll want to leave at least part of the body mesh in there.

Since this is an outfit it will need to be parented to the body skeleton in blender if you haven't done that already. I'm still a bit of a blender noob but the default parenting of blender doesn't work very well. I always need to go in and redo the bone weighting. If the textures aren't uv mapped in the model you got this from, you'll need to do the uv mapping in blender (not trivial). Then export it to nif. The blender scripts I use (probably the same as yours) don't seem to have options for a lot of things. I end up going under the texture properties in nifscope (BSShaderPPLightingProperty then scroll down to shader flags) and checking SF_skinned and SF_shadow_map (SF_Specular, SF_Remappable_Textures, and SF_Zbuffer_Test are already checked by blender). Without those extra entries checked the textures won't show up in game. Then under BSShaderTextureSet under that there are six entries for textures. The first two will be your texture and the normal map, so the first entry will be something like textures\myfolder\mytexturename.dds and the second entry will be something like textures\myfolder\mytexturename_n.dds. You can use a program like GIMP to make the normal map if you don't have one with the dds.

I think I'll try splitting out all of the trees and rocks into a separate mod and see if that helps. If not then I'm basically stuck. Right now I can't seem to add landscape items to more than about 10 percent of the map which is kinda useless.

I am working on a new worldspace. When I try to place objects on the landscape, everything seems to work fine, but then it's as if there's a problem when the mod gets to be too big. The next time I try to load the mod in the GECK it doesn't load. It locks up at something like 96 or 98 percent of the load and that's it. Is there a size limits to mods? Seriously, this tool set is just one problem after another. I've spent far more time figuring out workarounds for things that don't work as they should than I have actually working on the mod.

Here are some pictures if you want to see where I am at. http://tinypic.com/a/380t4/1

I have no idea if CourierandWander is still working on his mod, but I am working on mine. It's a mod of the entire Big Circle area (New Reno, Broken Hills, Vault City, Gecko, Modoc, the Den, and Redding). I have the landscape and water laid out, roads mapped out, about 3/4 of the buildings and streets of New Reno laid out, and the Stables exterior pretty well done. I had a lot of Gecko done but the friggen GECK decided to mangle my mod today and I think I just lost about 2 days work on it. I hate the GECK. I really do. I hate hate hate hate hate hate hate the GECK. Whoever created that damned thing should be shot. I still have a long way to go to create a released mod. I don't have any interiors done. I don't have any dialog or quests done.

I think you can make an argument for Vault City either way. The NCR would certainly want it for all of the reasons that you state, plus it gives them more leverage for annexing New Reno, which they also want. On the other hand, the people of Vault City don't like outsiders and would be very reluctant to fall under the rule of anyone who wasn't a "Citizen". Outsiders are only good for servants (barely one step above slaves in Vault City). Plus, the families of New Reno would probably do their best to harass the NCR if they tried to expand northward past New Reno. And while New Reno was on a path towards greater stability at the end of Fallout 2, by the time of FNV you've got the Van Graffs destabilizing the entire region. Ghost in the NCR Mojave Outpost mentions that there's a lot of tension in the Big Circle, though she doesn't give specifics. There's also the 80s, which are mentioned in Honest Hearts. This gang of raiders is causing trouble all up and down I-80, which would be one of the NCR's major traveling routes up through northern Nevada. While the NCR would want Vault City and even had a plan to force it into the NCR, they might have had to abandon that plan due to all of the unrest in the area combined with the threat of the Legion focusing their attention elsewhere. Plus, if I leave Vault City as undecided on the issue I can use that as a quest for my mod. :)

I am currently working on a mod for the Big Circle (New Reno, Broken Hills, Vault City, Gecko, Modoc, the Den, and Redding) and some assets would be VERY helpful if anyone wants to make them. I need: The Reno sign. There's a mesh for one on the nexus, but I need it completed, textured, and converted to nif, with collision. Google "reno sign" and click on images and you'll see what I mean. It's the big sign that says RENO on top of an arch that reads "The Biggest Little City In The World". A building (with a sign) for The Shark Club. It's supposed to be the biggest casino in New Reno. I don't want it too oversized, though, not like the casinos in New Vegas. Maybe a bit bigger than the Vikki and Vance. http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Shark_Club A building for the Desperado. I may just end up re-using the Vikki and Vance with new signs. It should be smaller than the Desperado and a bit more run-down. http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Desperado A building for the Temple of Trials in Arroyo. It should be crude stone construction and have a big face on the front of it above the door. http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Temple_of_Trials An intact church building, to function as the Drunk Cupid Chapel in New Reno. Lots of thanks to anyone willing to help!

I wouldn't say it's surrounded. The NCR has Shady Sands and Vault 13 and 15 to the south. There's not much in the lore about anything between them and New Reno. It's like Carson City doesn't exist. Who knows, maybe it got nuked and there's nothing left there. If you look at a real map though, there are airports south and east of Lake Tahoe that would make good NCR military bases, so my guess is that the NCR's border would either be at those bases or maybe in Carson City if there's any place inhabitable there. There's not much between Carson City and New Reno, so it's safe to say that the NCR is a bit uncomfortably close to New Reno on the south side. To the west, though, there's a huge honkin set of mountains in between Redding and New Reno. I doubt that New Reno feels threatened from the west. To the east, there's nothing. Lots and lots of nothing. There used to be Broken Hills, but that's pretty much gone by the time of FNV. You've got the Sierra Army Depot to the north of New Reno, and after that, more nothing. If you go far enough north you'll end up in the area around Modoc, which isn't under NCR control, and Vault City is east of that. But aside from those, north and east of New Reno is mostly just empty Nevada desert. Given the nature of New Reno (the Wrights and the Van Graffs, all of the drugs, prostitution, etc. that you mentioned), it's easy to see that while the NCR does want to expand its territory northward, it probably is a bit reluctant to go after New Reno. It made a lot of sense to me that they would go after Vault City first. It's going to be easier to control, and doesn't have powerful crime families and drug problems and all of that. If the NCR controlled Vault City, they would then control all of the lands around New Reno. Since a covert plan to put Vault City under NCR control is already in the lore, it makes more sense to me to have that come before any attempt to annex New Reno.

FYI - I'm working on a New Reno mod. Actually I'm trying to do the entire "Big Circle" (New Reno, Broken Hills, Vault City, Gecko, Modoc, Den, and Redding). I've come to the conclusion that the GECK is a Vault-Tec experiment designed to sucker mod makers into thinking that they can do something useful and then frustrating them at every turn just to watch their reaction. Accordnig to the Fallout Wiki, New Reno is one of the few cities that isn't under NCR control by the time of FNV, and with the NCR distracted by the Legion I don't think that it's practical for them to shift their focus northward towards New Reno. However, Vault City is left with an undetermined fate in the lore, with the NCR known to have approved a covert plan to force Vault City into the NCR. My plan is to have a traveling merchant outside of the Freeside north gate. Speak to him and he'll transport you to New Reno (or close to it). Then a copy of him will be on the New Reno side that you can speak to so that you can get back to New Vegas. The mod is still in its early stages and I have been plagued with landscape bugs and almost useless navmeshing (the GECK is happy to navmesh right through fences and over boulders but won't navmesh along roads, and navmeshing an entire worldspace by hand is a bit too painful). If I can get past these issues without deciding that the GECK is just more trouble than it's worth, then expect a New Reno mod sometime in the next few months.

One of the companion control mods (don't remember the name, but the one with the command headset) I think has an option to resurrect a dead companion. Not sure how well it works, though.