Ranx31

Is there any advantage or disadvantage to adding to or ignoring the 'GunsList' form list when adding new weapons to the game? I came across this form list when going through all form lists and noticed it seemed to contain the names of all default gun-type weapons. So I'm wondering, does a new weapon need to be added to this list? Will not doing so have an effect like vendors having trouble selling it or NPCs being able to equip it? Checking a few weapon mods I use showed none of them used the form list and they all seem to work fine...

Just to update and for anyone looking for a solution to the same sort of problem, I did as Drithius suggested and it seems to have done the trick! :thumbsup: Learned more about scope .NIFs in the process too... So thanks again guy!

OK, now I'm a bit confused! You say that you were able to fix it by reducing scale and RoyBatterian was saying I should widen the view... Unless they mean the same thing - that I can achieve a widened view by reducing scale? At any rate, Drithius, I will give your solution a shot as I've already tried to make a larger view plane in both directions, one at a time, and all that did was to turn the grey bars black and, after making the view plane taller, it seemed the scope circle was chopped off even more. So that wasn't working. Thanks for the tip and I'll try it out right away!

Thanks for the insight. Don't suppose you have an easy way to widen the view plane? My available choices are to either try fiddling with it in Nifskope or import/export with 3ds-Max. Could I simply try scaling it in Nifskope? And, as far as I know, my FOV should still be at 75 as I've never messed with it. I'll double check in the .ini files to see if it's been altered somehow though.

Hello all, As a newcomer to the mod author area I have what might seem to be a noobish type of problem but I'm hoping the experience of the people here can help out... I'm working on a mod that adds a number of weapons and one of them uses a scope. I used a scope reticle mesh from a modder's resource to give the weapon a unique one. The problem is awhile after using and testing the weapon that I noticed a graphical error with the display through the scope. What's happening is grey bars are appearing on the sides of the view through the scope. The trouble is that I didn't notice this right away but I immediately suspected the new reticle mesh once I did see a problem. I've checked out this mesh and another one I've been using for ages as a replacer for the default (which had no problems) using Nifskope and everything looks fine there. I looked at all the textures the scopes use and nothing seems amiss there either. More puzzling is that the replacer I was using for the sniper rifle and other default scoped weapons now shows the same grey bars. However, when I use the gauss rifle (from EVE) it's scope view looks fine. So can anyone tell me what the problem is and how to fix it? Is there some setting or parameter of the weapon or game or whatever that's the cause? In the same vein, is there a way to get the scope view to move forward so the top and bottom of the scope circle aren't being chopped off? I'm guessing there might be as the gauss rifle's scope view doesn't seem to have the same trouble...

Have you got your texture in the right format? All textures must adhere to a few rules to be game-compatible... It must be in .dds format and saved in one of its variations (DXT1-5). It must be of a size that follows the 'Power of 2' rule ie. 64 x 64 (26), 256 x 256 (28), etc.. If it's going to be an in-game item, it must have mip maps saved within the .dds file. Fail to follow the above rules and you're going to have problems like the one you state. To learn more, search the Net for detailed info... Good luck!

Perhaps you'd have better luck with your requests in the forum 'Mod Requests', which is dedicated to questions like yours?

Seeing as how no one else has jumped in and, because it's fresh on my mind, I'll tell you what I know. First, let me warn you by saying that I don't have the full-blown DC Interiors so I don't have any personal experience with your dilemma but I think I've recently come across the info you're searching for. I think it was while I was going through the mod's comments where there was some mention of a pawn shop alarm and somebody wondering how to turn it off. The reply said that you have to go to the building next door where you'll find a button under a desk that will turn it off. Now I don't know if there's more than one pawn shop in the mod so take what I'm saying with a grain of salt... Just trying to help :). Hope it works for ya!

If I could jump in here and add my two cents to clarify a bit... I think textures and meshes are only loaded (and unloaded) only when they replace the game's defaults of the same name or a plugin (.esm or .esp) calls for them by name. It's not like the game does a blanket load-everything style of loading or people would run out of system and/or video RAM in a hurry! So I would say Billy1969 that your extra folders are harmless and would simply be ignored by the game.

Had a similar problem with Paladin Hoss and that quest of his. In my case though, I had a strange experience with him from start to finish. First of all, I had to resurrect the guy twice to even talk to him cuz the muties killed him before I had a chance to intervene. Then when I went in to save the initiate, he was seemingly dead no matter what I did. Ended up having to resurrect him too - just to see what reward there was. The payoff was 3 more guys following me around! Yay - NOT! Then my game was acting weird after that, even after leaving that zone. Followers weren't following, a couple crashes ,etc.. Hoss then popped up out of nowhere when I was exiting the Underground Hideout and proceeded to gun down all my guards. So I had to reload from the autosave when I exited the hideout and quickly pause the game with the console key before he had a chance to act again. To make a long story short (sorry for detailing but thought others might like to hear), all I did to get rid of him was to click on him while in the console and then enter 'Disable'. Figured at least that way I wasn't killing him and making enemies of the Brotherhood or anything like that. My game seemed to settle down after that too so it didn't seem to have any negative consequences or lingering effects. I did make a note of his ID so I could revive him later should the need arise though... Hopefully, this is an acceptable way to deal with the situation right?

You're not going to get very far on your own without being able to use the .nif plugin as you'll need it to import a head and export your hair model. So, as I see it, you have a few options: 1) Find a version of the plugin that will work with your version of 3ds-Max and get the low-down on how to properly install it. 2) Revert to an older version of Max that will work with the plugin and use it to do the import/export. 3) Find someone willing to do the work for you. If it's just the one mesh and you don't mind not doing it yourself, that is.

That thought has occurred to me as well and there are a few ways to rationalize it and console yourself about it... Keep in mind it's a fictional parallel universe where anything is possible is one way to think of it. Another is that in that universe maybe industry didn't build things to just last for the short term or designed products with built-in obsolescence eg. I've heard that when first built, fluorescent lights were supposed to last virtually forever (no moving parts, sealed gas tube, etc.) but millions were spent to come up with a way for them to fail so that companies could keep selling more. On the flip side, materials and metals being what they are, you'd think things would eventually break down no matter what. Metals corrode and oxidize after all. Electronic parts tend to also break down from heat, stress, etc.. Even if the grid were down, keep in mind that some areas seem to be lit using portable generators that don't seem to require fuel or maintenance. It is a parallel universe after all... I tend to think the game's designers may have considered some of these things but made concessions to have a workable game. After all, who would want to play a game where you stumble around in inky-black interiors and no machines work because nothing has power? Add to that the atmosphere it creates when you have various lighting effects to ramp up the excitement. In the end, it's worthwhile to ponder these sorts of things but it is just a game and one doesn't want to look too deeply down the rabbit hole over details or you might just end up on the evening news some day :) .

The easiest way I've found, and use, is to have the mod 'Ling's Finer Things'. With it, you have access to a large variety of Type 3 clothing and accessories for male and female. Once the mod is installed, purchase an item called Ling's Magic Ring. Once you equip it on your character, you can walk up to any NPC and get the dialogue option,"Would you try something on for me?". You then have access to that NPC's inventory and can add/remove whatever you like. As for altering the Type 3 appearance, look for mods that change the makeup, hair, etc.. Project Beauty is a popular one that changes many of the NPCs of the Wasteland for you. I prefer to make my own changes though... Hope this helped!

When making new textures, you must always check whether they're using the alpha channel portion of the graphic and then either preserve the info or make a new one. If you aren't aware, the alpha channel is what gives textures transparency - Google it to learn more. When you save the graphic (ie. texture), use a DXT format that saves the alpha channel along with the bitmap. This usually DXT 3 or 5 for most FO3 game textures but, for the posters, you can get away with using DXT 1. Also be sure to generate new mip maps as part of the save procedure.

Maybe that 'mess' is what's causing the trouble? Perhaps the game's crashing trying to sort what piece of junk is higher on the pile of all the other junk? It's too bad though cuz it was one of the raider camps I used to enjoy attacking... Until the problem started! :laugh: One other thing I thought might have been a problem though was one of the raiders the game's trying to spawn being bugged in some way - possibly one of the ones on the pedestrian overpass? Good luck nailing much of anything as the cause though, I'm hardly an expert at this sort of thing!

If you mean the Raider camp south of the Flooded Metro there, had the same problem myself... Never did figure out what was causing it so I would just avoid the area. After doing the Nuka Cola plant and Red Racer factory, there wasn't much reason to go there. Would just sell my books to the scribe in the Library there and leave the way I came. Thought it might have had something to do with either a bugged trigger or a Brotherhood patrol that goes through the area. There was always one of them standing around under the freeway just east of the camp and whenever I got near him, the game would crash. Tried moving him and a couple other things but no luck. On my current second playthrough, I was pretty leery of the area but I was able to enter and leave without incident. So, I'm thinking something gets set later in the game that causes the problem. Whether it's quest-related or what I have no idea but a solution would be nice so it doesn't happen again if I try to get to that metro later on.

Simple... Stick your new texture into the textures folder and it'll override the default. In your case, place it into a 'Data\textures\clutter\health\' folder and use the name of whatever texture it is that you're replacing (stimpack.dds or whatever).

There could be several reasons why your texture isn't appearing... But you can figure out what's going on (or NOT going on) by loading your .nif file into Nifskope and examining it. Once you have your .nif loaded into Nifskope do the following: To find out what texture's being applied look for a block called NiTriStrips or NiTriShape - this is your mesh. Click the little arrow left of the name and there should be a block within called BSShaderPPLightingProperty. Click it's arrow also. Now click on the block labelled BSShaderTextureSet. You should notice the info at the bottom left corner of the Nifskope window, under Block Details, change. It is now showing the list of 6 possible textures applied to the mesh block you initially clicked on. The first texture is the one showing the actual path to your texture's diffuse map. The second one is the normal map texture. Depending on your settings and applied maps within 3ds Max, the other textures listed here may have info in them. So anyway, seeing the listed paths, you can then begin to figure out how to fix it. If you're sure you have your textures set up properly in Fallout 3's data folders, all you might have to do is to edit the path using Nifskope and resave it. I'm thinking this might be the most likely scenario... In the case of the Stimpack, you should see something like 'textures\clutter\health\stimpack.dds'. If it doesn't, then make it so. If you're not already aware, you can ensure the path gets placed properly into the .nif at export time by filling in the 'texture path prefix' in the Niftools exporter window. In your case, you would use 'textures\clutter\health' as the prefix. And make sure to use the backslash and not the forward slash. I'll wait for your reply before I go into detail on any other scenario or how things went. PS: You might want to load the default stimpack or other meshes into Nifskope to see how things are supposed to look in .nif files to help you.

Basically, what's happening is that the Niftools importer doesn't set up any materials on the meshes being imported... It's up to you to create them! The importer does help some though as the paths to the textures are imported but only internally (ie. you can't see them). The paths are only set for the default texture paths as well so you have to mimic them in Fallout 3's Data folder if you want to see them. There's another way to go about it and it's how I do it: What you need to do first before even importing the mesh is to also extract it's related textures. You can find out which textures a mesh needs by using the tool Nifskope to view the model and all it's related data. Once you get the hang of using Nifskope, you can locate and extract the textures from the proper BSA file. I won't go into details on using Nifskope as it'd take a MUCH LARGER message to explain and you can already get tutorials on using it from the Net. I will say though that you should learn how to use Nifskope anyway because if you're going to export meshes it'll be needed to tweak your .nif file to get it into working shape for the game - the Niftools exporter does NOT generate perfect working .nif files. Getting back to the textures... Extract them to a path that suits your purpose. If you're going to replace a default object in the game then imitate the default path. If you're going custom, create your own path. Now, within 3ds Max, once you have your mesh imported open the Materials window. The first material should already be highlighted but you can select another if you want. Then click on the Eyedropper tool and move it over the mesh and click again. The program will grab all the existing parameters it can from the mesh and apply them to the current material. If you then check on the diffuse map's parameters, you'll be able to see the actual path to the texture. You can now either leave it alone or change it to whatever you want. To actually see the texture on the mesh, click on the 'Show Active Map' button (I think?! A bit rusty... It's been awhile :) ) So there ya go... I hope I helped point you in the right direction and good luck with your project!

I think there is a 'placeatme' type of command that might do the trick. Try searching for something along these lines. You'll probably need the Sarge's ID as well... Good luck!

It sounds like because you're using the original gauss gun's scope.nif that it's going to use its texture as well. Have you considered trying to clone the scope.nif then putting it in a new folder, modifying that new .nif's texture path (along with your new texture) and then updating the GECK entry for your weapon to point to the new scope path? Maybe that will work? Just a suggestion...

First off... Very cool what you've done there! With the GNR plaza one, it could make sense within the context of the game as that location is populated and running a radio station 24-7 so there must be someone there tech-savvy to keep stuff going/repaired. As for a suggestion, seeing the GNR statue immediately reminded me of the Nuka Cola statue outside of the factory. Maybe you could either animate the bottle itself or add atoms orbiting the bottle?

Also having the same problem with followers not appearing on other sides of gates/doors - including the Citadel. I'm running a fraction of the mods ManicZ lists and using the GOTY edition of the game. The companions used to follow through no problem, then, at some point, they just stopped doing it. The only way I 've found to get them to show is to also wait for them to eventually make it on their own. It's annoying so I too wouldn't mind a solution or at least a culprit so a solution could be worked out! It seems to have something to do with areas that are part of the Wasteland worldspace but cordoned off - unlike places where you go inside to a new cell or a new worldspace like one of the DLCs or similar mods. It's got to be something that's related to this and companions that's at the source of this...

I have no personal experience with Photoshop but I do with .dds textures and your problem is likely related to how your dealing with the alpha channel portion of the graphics. Make sure that you are loading in the alpha channel by choosing DXT3 or higher format and that, once loaded, you are displaying it within Photoshop. For sure, you should be able to see the icon displayed properly then. If you are unfamiliar with the term 'alpha channel' then Google it and how to deal with it within Photoshop. Good luck!

Good to hear that you were able to get your hands on it. Lucky as well that it was ported to NV, if you were needing one there too. Despite texture quality, it does what you want and you have to keep in mind it's an older mod already. I guess you take what you can get!