jimmygitto

Raff, hey man. Funny finding this, I've ben searching for help with triggers. How's it goin? The backpack mod seems to be doing ok, getting some nice comments from people that are enjoying it. Thanks again. So did you learn a good bit about triggers? I'm just trying to make a trigger that displays a message, and maybe hopefully at some point a message animation, when you first walk through the box. Any idea how to do this? I can't seem to find how to make the DefaultActivateSelfTrigger point to anything, can't figure out how to make it... activate something. I've even looked at instances used in the game and for the life of me I can't see what it is they trigger. I thought about just recompiling the code with a debug.notification, but I'm not even sure that will work. Annoying, it seems like I'd be able to reverse-engineer this. It seems like I'd be able to do it without using quest stages. And this is important for me too because I need to do a ton of these (like 40-50) and I don't want to do a quest for each one, or do a repeating stage that would have to be reset and then ones you've already triggered would trigger again. Did you end up making custom triggers? Any idea how I can get one to display a message? Also, these don't add/change the navmesh data do they? Thanks again for your help.

Ok, thanks Ethreon. I've tried to use vanilla assets as much as possible with my mod, is there any way to do this without having a custom nif as part of my mod? I suppose they aren't all that space-consuming, but just for the sake of simplicity/cleanliness. Are the wet textures their own set, or just an effect applied to the "main" textures in an object's bgsm? i.e. could you do this with a mswp? Doesn't seem like it to me, but I still have a lot to learn obviously.

Wow, this is exciting stuff, very anxious to give it a shot. Working on it is a great reason to tinker more with nifskope too, will definitely help me get a little more handy with it. Do you all know if there is a way to disable the wet textures for objects? So if you are making an object for your mod that will always be indoors, you can make it so it does not use the wet texture effects when the ambient weather goes rainy/foggy.

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/19191 There it is. Called, sneakily enough, Sneaky Kills... (Sorry, couldn't help myself.) It's a great mod, really immersive and ads a great new tactical element to the game.

That mod is one of the all-time greats, I also highly recommend it.

Someday if/when I learn about animations I might like to take a stab at this, but would someone want to make a magazine reloading animation? It would be super cool if you had to have loaded magazines in inventory, so when you emptied them all you had to stop and reload them, or change weapons. But even if there was just a reload animation you could play, or that played every third or fourth reload etc, it would be really cool. Also could be something sandboxing companions/npcs did every now and then too. Any thoughts?

BAF, thanks again for all this. Hugely helpful. I will PM you sometime, hopefully this weekend, I appreciate it. I would like to clarify a couple things, in the meantime. Apologies if I end up sounding a bit defensive, I am really not. I very much appreciate every bit of feedback and help. But I have tried hard to get this right and I don't want to be misunderstood. I definitely wasn't just hoping my mod doesn't cause issues. I consider myself newbish, but not THAT newbish :smile:. I feel it's my responsibility to make sure I have minimized that possibility, and to be thorough and transparent about any concerns. I tested this a lot and talked to a couple mod authors to try to confirm my understanding/observation/suspicion, as best I could. And I still described it on the mod page and readme just in case. To "warn" users that while I did not see issues, I admit I dont fully understand all the nuances of the CK so they should be aware and check for conflicts if they can. I also asked that anyone seeing any let me know, so I can try to address it. (One has, which they said was easily resolved. I think I will try to tweak that one in my first update to avoid it.) I would like to talk more via PM about the ITM's you find alarming. I am guessing you mean the cell/worldspace entries? The CK creates these when I place the decals, even if I make no other edits. I tested this with mods that edit the same cells, and found it did not overwrite them. I even tested it with another graffiti mod that has similar entries for its decals. They look to be necessary to locate the decals, though. Although they dont seem to be disruptive, I still kind of wish I could just delete them... Only because they just look like a lot in xEdit. But I figured they couldn't be superfluous, if the CK adds them to accompany the decal they likely serve a purpose. I checked around and tested, and they are indeed needed just to locate the decals. So I tested potential overwrite conflicts by placing one of my decals immediately adjacent to some stuff added by other mods in the same worldspaces - this produced no flags in xEdit, and both worked fine in game, appearing and working in sufficient harmony... :) This is why I say I am confident they don't cause conflicts, it wasn't just a hopeful guess. But I still wanted to mention it to users just to be thorough. The other minor edits are intentional. I had to move a piece of debris or delete another decal (like rust) for aesthetic purposes on a few. I also added a very small handful of things for context for a couple. (The standpipe for the sledgehammer, for example.) And I added objects as part of my "surprise." I did clean the esp in that regard, so I think I got the dirty edits. And I also tried to place the graffiti in locations not likely to be affected by other mods as much as possible, and I mention this on the page and in the readme. Would you recommend I maybe suggest users place my mod high in the load order, so if there happened to be a conflict it would "lose"? That way people would just potentially lose a piece of graffiti, and not whatever their other mod does. Could be one more layer of confidence about minimizing conflicts. I will ask you about the LL naming thing in PM too. I had tried that, but it adds the mod descriptions, e.g. "Hardened Automatic Custom-Name" vs. just "Custom-Name" like I was going for. (The idea was for it to be a unique weapon.) Again, I hope this didn't sound defensive or anything, it's just all this is important to me. I don't want it to seem like I was careless. I tried hard to get this right. Mods have been so enjoyable for me, and so many of you mod authors are so helpful and so creative. I really want my mod(s) to be respectable and well-crafted and enjoyable additions to the community. That's why I am here asking for help and advice! This weekend I will follow your cleaning protocol and do some retesting. While reading and typing I thought of a couple ways to -try- to cause issues, to make sure it doesn't. Thanks again, this has already been a massive help.

Thanks, BigAndFlabby, really appreciate you taking the time to help me out. If you dont mind a PM sometime, I would love to ask you some more specifics. Also love to get your feedback on the mod in general. I TRIED to clean the esp in fo4edit, in my newbie modder way I guess. I deleted some records I marked for delete in CK, and some dirty edits. (What is with faraway clouds and other such nonsense being so easy to select?? ;) ) I thought I had gotten them all, but I will do it again, thanks. About the ITMs- are these the cell lines? To be honest I dont know why these are needed, other than to “set the stage” for the decals I have added. Since they dont change anything, I didnt know why the CK puts them in there. Unless it was to allow the new decals to be located. And when I was testing early on, I experimented with removing them, and it didnt seem to be stable without them. I felt confident that if a user had another mod in the same cell as one of these decals, that the decal would just be added, and this one addition would not “turn off” the edits made by any other mods. And most are on walls not likely to be specifically modded, Id say. I packed the ba2s manually with the archiver that comes with the CK. When I do the update I will pack them from with the CK. So it packs up everything you need automatically, huh? Thats great. Thanks again for pointing that out. I will also go through and try to find any other quest fragments that might be in there. Its confusing to me how the “source code” psc wouldnt be needed, but I take your word for it! ;) I actually tried for a while to make the added items without using a quest, for simplicitys sake, but the quest was the only way I found to properly apply a unique name to the item. Again, thank you so much. T(his modding community really is fantastic.) Hope we can talk more as I work through this and learn more for my much-needed first update.

Holy cow, 0000074210, I think you may be right. I did not even think about the scripts aspect. Nice name, by the way. Now I'm all fired up, because it's possible I just learned another new thing?! I did not even think about how if I was tinkering with the scripts to get them to work, there may now be a script in my Scripts folder that my mod needs. Wow, that's dumb if that's really what it is, and I just didn't know I needed to include those. But also awesome, because that's fixable. I would just add a /Scripts folder to my Main ba2 with them included, correct? I thought I used "vanilla" scripts for my stuff. I just looked in my scripts folder and I see recently-edited pex files for the activators that look likely to be relevant. Oddly, though, one of them is for something that IS working for the users. And now I do see a script for the quest that adds the items- it's in this folder: Fallout 4\Data\scripts\source\User\Fragments\Quests. It's a psc file. Would I need to recreate this folder structure in my ba2 file, do you think? Or could I just put the pex and the quest psc file in a folder calls /scripts in my ba2? Man, I hope this works. Thanks a ton.

Sorry, should have said that. FO4. I don't think it's a conflict with another mod. The area is not likely to be modded, and anyways one of the testers tried it anew with only my mod active. Is it possible that 7z could snag it up, compressing/decompressing? It's very confusing and frustrating. It's the Pipsy - Commonwealth Street Artist mod, if anyone would like to get it and try to help me out. Would be extremely grateful. https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/34304 On the off chance you were going to try this mod anyway, sorry for ruining my big surprise and all... ;)

I think so, yes. One was helping me test while I was working on it, and tried it with a new game, they said. Went straight through just to check if they were working, thinking maybe it was some holdover from an earlier version they had been testing for me. But it still didn't work. The second person with the issue was a new person who had only downloaded the mod from my page. They were the first to message me about finding the "prize" location, and had the same issues. The same exact esp and ba2 files that work great for me. Also, I use the tcl command quite regularly and it doesn't seem to affect anything. Why do you ask, can using those commands interfere with quests? What about the activator? It really is a mystery to me, everything is in the esp and the quest and activator work fine for me. Very frustrating.

Can anyone help me with this? I have a couple of things that are very important to my mod that work like a charm for me, but a couple early users have told me via PM that they weren't working for them. I am certain that I uploaded the latest saved version of my esp and archives. One is a quest that spawns several unique items. The quest has five stages, each stage spawns an item and then triggers the next stage. It works great for me in testing and even now that I have loaded up my regular save, but looks like it may be sticking on the first stage for users. The first item is appearing, but not the other four. I seem to remember the DKS sniper rifle mod had inconsistent triggering and the setstage command was needed to spawn the weapons. Is the same thing happening to me, and does anyone know why??? The other is an activator which is tied to an enable marker which controls a decal projected onto a wall. It works great for me, and I think it's a really cool effect that I was very excited for users to discover in my mod. I was really going for an "oh cool!" effect, and I'm really bummed it may not be working. It's not a missing texture, they have that. Does anyone know why this might happen, and/or be willing to help me troubleshoot?? Part of my problem is that the things in question are supposed to be a surprise in my mod. I don't mention them on the mod page, because I want people using the mod to be pleasantly surprised when there is this hidden "prize" for enjoying the mod. Therefore, I don't want to post about it on my mod page because I don't even want users to know they're there, until they discover them themselves. I've been tinkering with mods for a while, for myself, but this is my first upload and I've had to learn a lot to make it. As you can imagine I spent a looong time learning these elements, and then troubleshooting my first attempts to get them to work. It stinks they may not be working right, and for the life of me I can't see why they wouldn't! I asked the users to try a clean install, to load an old save, to wait until the cell reset, and I even just sent them the esp again to be sure I didn't screw up. Same result, they said. Can anyone help, please!?

It may not be exactly what you're looking for, but if you haven't seen it try the Sneaky Kills mod. Pretty awesome. Also in case you haven't tried it, the perk that increases melee vats distance should help.

Hm, that's what I thought. Thanks for the reply. I was thinking I would explain in the mod desription about the pictures, and in fact from what's on there already it would be pretty self explanatory what they were. Thanks again.

Does anyone know if you can put a picture on a mod page's images tab but have it hidden under a spoiler? As the manager of the mod, I mean. And similarly, I have a couple of user-submitted pictures that I wouldn't mind showing, but I'd prefer to show them under spoiler tags, too, so other people looking at the page could choose to see them or not.

Thanks for the reply. Frustratingly, I already did that. The material file in the world model (the GO.nif) is the same, so I put the material swap I made on it, too. I even put the same reference in the Female world model box, which was originally empty (like the vanilla one I copied it from). I can't figure out what it could be. ??

Anyone know why a material swap for an armor would show up fine on the inventory object (when viewed on the pipboy and in the workbench), show up fine on the object when equipped, show up on the world object when placed in the creation kit... but not on the object in the world in the game?? I have applied the material swap to the armor "World Model" and to the biped models in the armor addon. I even made a new mod attachment with the mswp applied to the empty model field, just in case. I renamed the texture files, put them in another folder. For the life of me I can't find what is keeping it from showing on the world model in the game. There is only one bgsm on this armor (it's a helmet). Can anyone help? Thanks.

Thats great, thanks to both of you for the replies. So my hope is that I can avoid using the level list, quest and script. I found that those are not necessary for the legendary effect, which can just be added directly to the object mod list on the weapon item. But then the name gets edited by the mods, amended. Maybe I should take the angle of trying to figure out how to disable the name-amendment function of the weapon mods? I will check the ones with vendors and see if they are done with quests, too. Thats a good idea. I suspect they are, but maybe I will get lucky.

I have seen a lot of posts and videos about how you have to use a quest to spawn a legendary item, but I just tested a weapon I have put together in the creation kit with some specified mod attachments AND a legendary effect attachment and placed it in the world, and it worked fine. My only issue is that I wanted to rename the weapon, which I did on the weapon item in the "Name" box, but it didn't stick. In the game it is just called "instigating calibrated etc etc." So I'm bummed, I thought I was all set with my customized legendary without a quest, but I can't figure out how to get my custom name to apply. When I do it with the quest, with the "Name Override" box, the name works. But it would be a lot better to be able to add named, custom-modded weapons without all this quest business. Any ideas?

I am trying to put some images on notes, but they are either showing up blank or causing CTD. I have watched several videos, including skyrim tutorials, and can't figure out what the issue is. I have quintuple checked the file name/path, and have tried png, jpg, and dds files. Tried dds files with no alpha channel. Tried various sizes. Tried with and without specifying the size in the img line. Tried cut and pasting the <img src=…> line, and typing it from scratch. Can anyone help me with this?

That's great, I appreciate the help. I will definitely have to look into some of those so I can figure out what they are, and then if they apply! So by decal I mean what the CK calls a decal, a projection onto a surface. Using the blue arrows. It's not a decal on an object like an armor or part of a mesh. Do these have pre-vis and maps? Would this possibility of incomplete or missing pre-vis cause it load fine sometimes, but not others, then load fine again after exiting the area and returning? I am not only having these issues with decals placed in settlements, but out in the Commonwealth. I have been suspicious that it might have something to do with whether or not an object is coded as persistent. Think this is possible?

Does anyone know why a custom decal would load sometimes and not others? They are showing just fine in the CK, but in game sometimes they just don't show up. I can leave the cell and come back, and then it will be there. Can't determine any pattern to it. Any ideas? Why would the game decide to arbitrarily not show them, and/or how could it find the file sometimes but not others...

Very glad to see this article. I'm happy to say thanks again, ousnius. And even beyond what it's done for the enjoyment of the game, your amazing work opened the door to modding for me. Which kind of just generally made me proud of myself... *sniff* Thanks. I really did mean my graffiti as a tribute! - https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/images/114154 I thought people would get the Clapton reference, and you are obviously generous and humble so the irony he liked about it fits... Little did I know this was considerably before your time! :)

OK, thanks a ton man. I'm actually not sure if it's a load order problem. If it was, it seems like it would happen all the time at a certain action, no? I have this feeling it's a missing texture or something, that only hits me when whatever it is spawns. But I really have no idea, that's why I was hoping for some methodology to try and track it down. When I can build up the nerve I'm going to go through and redo my load order based on relatively recent community guides to load orders. I know mine is arbitrary as can be. The main problem I think with my load order is that my settlement menus are stupid mess... Definitely need to fix that. I also didn't have much luck with LOOT, I'll definitely try that import/export thing. I've actually chosen not to use F4SE, just because of the issue of the entire game quitting working after an update... But there are some great mods that use it, one day I may cross that bridge too. Thanks again, definitely appreciate the reply.

You might need to give a little more detail to get good help. If you've watched youtube vids and such, one could assume you've done the necessary .ini file edits to enable mods? What do you mean by you downloaded and installed "everything"? What all have you tried after watching the tutorial vids? I had some very frustrating issues when I started tinkering with mods too, but with some research I managed to sort them out. It's scary when the game suddenly just doesn't work at all, but it's usually something simple and relatively easy to fix. But boy is it worth it, there are a ton of mods that the game is now unplayable without.