Xenogeist

You're more tenacious than I am Teabone3. I hope you figure it out.

Updated original post with some info on heightmap importing and asking for advice on importing a pipboy map.

I like your story so far and I'd be interested in playing it. I think the plains commonwealth area as it was known pre-war is a great setting for a fallout game and I'd be glad to see it come alive. The story I have isn't much and shouldn't conflict with anything I'm hearing. My antagonist is new and doesn't belong to any pre-existing factions. I wanted an antagonist like the Master in the original Fallout and that is who I based him on. My backstory so far: An army general is abducted by aliens and is experimented on and tortured. They return him to earth and he is a changed man. He has visions of the world being destroyed in nuclear fire. He forms a hatred for aliens. He tries to get the army to help deal with this malevolent alien threat but they do not believe him. Vault Tec does. Vault Tec has a captured alien and they wish to conduct a vault experiment with the general as the overseer. The experiment is that the alien is exposed to a strain of FEV that is designed to combine human and alien DNA to create a hybrid. The results are to be monitored and if hybridization is successful the alien will be mentally broken and conditioned to be loyal to Vault Tec by mental manipulation experts in the vault. The bombs fall and the experiment is conducted and hybridization is successful. The Hybrid is conditioned to think it is human and his brain is wiped of all memories that he ever was an alien. The general, in his hatred, mistreats the hybrid. The general, after a long time in the vault with no word from the outside world, grows sick of the experiment and shows the hybrid the FEV that changed him from an alien and explains what they did to him. The general, wearing power armor, attempts to kill the hybrid but the hybrid resists and shoves the general into the vat of FEV. The Hybrid escapes the vault. The general, after a long time in the vat emerges a hybrid himself. The General leaves the vault and begins hunting for the hybrid. The Hybrid, seeking to understand himself attempts to contact the aliens but they are hostile to him. Finding acceptance neither in humankind nor alienkind the Hybrid returns to the vault and begins making more Hybrids, starting with the mental manipulation experts that were staffed there. The General returns to the vault and is captured by the Hybrid's growing army of super mutant hybrids. He is imprisoned. The Hybrid begins to run out of the modified FEV and his army stops growing. They Hybrid begins researching how to recreate the modified FEV to create more hybrids with his end goal being to convert all humans (and aliens if he can find them) into hybrid super mutants. His research continues...

Thank you, I might take you up on that. I haven't fleshed out a story yet but I plan on the Brotherhood of Steel having at least a small presence in the area. I haven't played Fallout Tactics where a lot of the lore for that area comes from but from reading the wiki I've learned a little bit. The Midwest brotherhood of Steel seems to have been the major power in the area after defeating (and maybe assimilating?) an army of super mutants and then gaining control of some advanced super computer army. I'm not sure how much of that is canon but I'll try to work with the lore whenever possible. Fallout Tactics ends in 2198 AD and my mod will be set in the same time frame as Fallout 4, 2287 AD, so that gives me 89 years between the two games for me to rewrite the balance of power in the area. Reading the wiki also gave me ideas for some other factions in the area: Reaver remnants and the Ghouls of Gravestone. Here is the old elevation map that I'm using as inspiration for my world space. http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/topo/kansas/txu-pclmaps-topo-ks-kansas_city-1887.jpg This area will allow me to include notable locations such as: Leavenworth Prison Fort Leavenworth Multiple industrial cave systems which were used as fallout shelters that were owned and operated by a competing company of Vault-Tec Gravestone, ghoul town which I'll probably put a little east of the ruins of downtown KC World War 1 memorial (maybe, depends how difficult it will be to replicate the architecture) Crossroads, a town south of the ruins of downtown KC Stockyards and Union Station KCI airport Qualtiy Hill, settlement on the west edge of downtown KC The northeast and southwest areas will be small settlements, raider camps and wilderness. Brotherhood of Steel could have a presence in the northeast and another faction, maybe Legion remnants, Reavers or a completely new faction could have a presence in the southwest area. I'm open to ideas for quests and other story elements by the way. I have a rough idea of where I'm going with this but I'm still a loooong way from implementing anything. :)

I've begun working on a mod that recreates the Kansas City area post apocalypse. I've finished turning an old elevation map I found of the area into a height map with photoshop that after many trials and errors I managed to implement into a suitable terrain in the creation kit. My worldspace goes from -40,-40 to 40, 40 so it has 6561 total cells and the playable space is from cell -34, -35 to 25, 27 with a total of 3780 playable cells. I just thought I'd ask before I waded any further into this process if any veteran modders have any tips or tricks to speed up their workflow process or are aware of any hurdles I might be facing down the road. Some big things I am aware of: Heightmap: I thought I would share a bit on this stage for others who might find this because it gave me some trouble. After a lot of head scratching I was able to import my heightmap to create a world space. The major hangups I had for this process were saving my image file in the proper dds format for which I used https://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-texture-tools-adobe-photoshop and realizing that when setting the world boundary in the heightmap import window you need to have it start in the southwest corner (like -32, -32) and go to the northeast corner (example 32, 32). I was trying to get it to go from the northwest to southeast for the longest time and couldn't grasp why this was an invalid cell range. I didn't find this written anywhere else and it seemed counter intuitive so I thought I'd share it here. The creation kit currently has a bug where you cannot sprint in a custom worldspace unless you generate precombined geometry and then precombined visibility and this must be done before adding any objects to the worldspace for some reason: https://community.bethesda.net/thread/8561 I've tried pecombining geometry and visual data (is there an option to precombine visual data for an entire worldspace? All I could find was the option to precombine for loaded cells) and the sprint bug still persists so this is for bethesda to fix. I've learned a little about the importance of precombining thanks to this bug: http://www.creationkit.com/fallout4/index.php?title=Precombined_References I'm not sure what this is, if they are referring to precomputing occlusion in the World LOD tab then the creation kit estimates it will take me 3.8 days which isn't something I'm in a hurry to do if it isn't necessary. I'm also not sure what this exactly does other than remove the bug that prevents characters from sprinting. If anyone has any advice regarding this I'm all ears. I can create OPALs (object pallets) to speed up the landscaping process which I learned in this topic: https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/4162450-ck-tips-for-landscaping-faster/?hl=%2Btips&do=findComment&comment=38112455 I will need to generate LOD for my world but it sounds like I should wait until I have all objects and landscaping placed and the worldspace mostly finished first: I can use regions to generate clutter like trees, rocks and terrain textures in my world space. I'm going to try to learn this next and I'm counting on it to greatly reduce my workload. If anyone has any tips for this process or give me an example of some of the settings they used that gave them good results I would find it very helpful. I will need to create a usable pipboy map image for my world. I'm having a lot of trouble with this. Some people don't seem to have any problems with this process but myself and others over at the bethesda.net forums have been having a hell of a time getting it to work. I wonder if someone who has been successful with creating a pipboy map for a worldspace could share a little of their knowledge. What dds file type did you use and what settings? (image type, mip map, etc). Did you use the Nvidia or Intel photoshop plugin to save it? What are your world dimensions? I've been scratching my head over what I'm doing wrong and can't figure it out. I imported my heightmap using the creation kit. Because the cell dimensions are always odd ( 32 pixels per cell +1) I can't make a dds file of the same dimensions as my map if I use one the DXT1-5 dds file types because they must be divisible by 4. But I haven't even had luck replacing the default commonwealth map with one of the DXT dds files though so I'm not sure that is the problem. I've been able to get a few of the dds file types that don't have dimension restrictions to appear in the creation kit, just not in game. So, any words of advice for someone whose ambitions are greater than their abilities?

I personally am not interested in a voice over replacement of all the existing dialogue but what I would LOVE to see are low intelligence dialogue optuons like the older fallout games provided.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Create your object and check 'initially disabled' on it. Find the quest that gives the player that faction rank. Go to the quest alias tab and create a quest alias for your object. Make sure the 'allow disabled' box is checked. Type this line in the same quest stage that raises that factions rank: Alias_nameofalias.GetReference().Enable() At least that is how I do it. There is probably an easier way. Edit: Actually I just tried doing something like this myself and it didn't seem to work. I haven't played with the creation kit in a long time though, I may have forgotten a step. The papyrus fragment is the same structure as all the others I have made and those work and I think I created the alias for the object correctly.

Necro bump. If anyone knows how to make a papyrus fragment that can do this I would be grateful.

Anybody?

Bump.

I found SetCrimeGold - Faction but if this is the right thing then I just don't know how to apply it correctly. I have tried putting this line in my papyrus fragments for one of my quest stages to no effect: CrimeFactionXenosJailHostile.SetCrimeGold(1000) If someone could tell me how I can do this I would appreciate it.

I have some jailors in this player home I am working on. I want them to try to arrest the player on sight, the player can refuse and fight or be arrested and thrown in jail. I have played with the guards' crime faction and tried setting them to guard and sandbox in their AI package but I can't seem to make them do this. It would be great if, instead of warning and attacking the player for trespassing they would try to arrest the player instead. Perhaps there is a way to add a really high bounty to the player without them committing a crime? If so I'm not savvy enough to figure out how to do that.

I had a similar problem with one of my custom made lights but my light which pulsed would pulse from their regular shade to black. I think the problem was some of my settings for it like intensity amplitude were set too high. Look at the settings for other lights to get a feel for what your settings should be. I think it is either that or you have it set to detect the number of lights hitting a surface. Does it look like this picture? http://www.creationkit.com/images/9/9e/OptimizationFig3.jpg If so then all you need to do is disable that. Take a look at this tutorial to learn how: http://www.creationkit.com/Bethesda_Tutorial_Optimization

Look under Architecture - Solitude - Interiors. I see many arched frames that I think would fit that secret door.

You're very welcome. I'm glad I could help. :biggrin:

Saving and reloading your mod doesn't help? It happens to me sometimes, especially in outdoor areas. The Creation Kit tutorial has this to say: You "may" need to press F5 to load the render window if it looks like everything didn't load in correctly. This can sometimes happen in both Interior and Exterior cells. You will also need to press F5 to load cells in the exterior if you want to explore around in the editor.

Optimizing your area with roombounds may allow you to put in more lights since they will block lights from other rooms from rendering. Also you can add more lights that don't cast shadows. As Thynar mentions you could experiment with various special effects. I'm fond FXs that diffuse light in an area and create a nice atmosphere like FXmistlow01.

I think the majority of player home mods are created east and west of Riverwood, a nice central location on the map so players don't have to go out of their way. As long as you steer clear of those areas and keep away from any cities your mod probably won't bump into any others. Creating a teleport that takes the player to a new area is a good method too. I put mine near the edge of the map, near the road south-east of Riften. It is way off the beaten track but I like the look of the Rift and most players will just fast travel there anyway. The only downside is the map sometimes has trouble scrolling to the edge and showing the map marker.

Try saving the game with the mod loaded and then load from that save. I had the same problem when testing my mod and that fixes it.

Well after being lazy and procrastinating I decided to check the forums to see if someone else found a solution. Thanks to DreamKingMods in this topic I learned that I could save the game while the mod was loaded and then load from that save in order to talk to my npc's just fine. Score one for simple solutions, procrastinating, DreamKingMods and talking to myself.

After looking at the patch notes I think this fix: 'Fixed rare issue with dialogue subtitles not displaying properly' Might be causing my problem. I never had any issues with subtitles but I never recorded any audio to go with them. I suspect the new patch doesn't like dialogue without audio and is refusing to play. At least I hope that is the problem, now all I have to do is find my old microphone and test that theory.

I think it may have messed up the quest dialogue in some way in my house mod. I can't initiate dialogue with the two quest NPCs that I have. I'll take a closer look at it tomorrow. I am hoping I don't have to recreate that quest like I had to recreate my custom races in the last patch. :psyduck:

I am getting the same error when trying to add files or images.

Yay, a question that I think I can answer! A first for me. In the quest edit screen, add the object to the quest aliases, make sure the 'allow disabled' box is checked. On the quest stage tab make sure the proper stage has the papyrus fragment: Alias_aliasname.GetReference().Enable() and I think that should do it.