MarkusTay

Thank You for your response! I'll be watching these now. :D

I've been fiddling with outfits for awhile now, hoping to eventually get to the point where I can make full mods myself. I've run into an odd problem, but its one I've seen before - the skin beneath an outfit gets 'smeared' at a weird angle when I put the clothes on. Its not that big a deal with outfits that cover most of the body, but for the skimpy ones, it gets really weird (I use a never-nude variant, and the underwear goes off at a crazy angle). The legs also look especially heinous (dark splotches, etc.). I saw this problem when I tried to use the underwear that came with AWKCR, but after I downloaded a CBBE patch it was fixed. So when I saw that I had assumed it was a texture file problem - perhaps different resolutions or some-such. Textures I can handle fairly well, so I thought I'd be able to resolve this (trying to adapt some non-CBBE stuff to a CBBE body), but I am having no success, so now I think its a mismatched NIF problem. Meshes are NOT my forte', and I am only guessing that that is indeed the problem. The outfit itself works/fits just fine - its just the skin that shows through certain parts that looks awful. I am sure this is a fairly common problem, since there was a fix for the AWKCR stuff, and if anyone can explain it to me, or point me in the right direction of a tutorial I would be much obliged. Thanks - Mark

I had this problem once before, with the undies that came with AWKCR got weirdly smeared across the bodies, and then I installed some patch or other and it fixed it. Now I am playing with making custom outfits and I am getting the same problem - when I put the outfits on the NPCs they look great, but the body and clothes (Underwear) gets smeared diagonally across the body. I thought it might be a resolution problem (because I thought that's what it was with the AWKCR stuff), but the resolutions of both the body and the Outfit are the same. I could do a trial-and-error thing and eventually figure it out on my own, but since I am sure plenty of you here know exactly what I am talking about, I'd save myself some time. Thanks in advance for any advice you can give me. P.S. - I even just tried to go with a 'nude' under body, but that's just as bad, if not worse (nipples in the wrong place is kinda horrifying, and the skin splotches are pretty bad as well).

Okay, I can't open a Nif file in Blender, and i can't do a UV map in Nifskope, so I have decided that modding is actually impossible and none of you really exist. Frustration level: 1000

This can't be done from Nifskope? Trying to help someone fix an old mod, and one of the UV maps is just a blank sheet of black, so I have nothing to go by on that one. EDIT: Nvmd - I just found elsewhere that I can't. That's incredibly inconvenient. if you have to use Blender regardless, whats the point of even having Nifskope?

There is also several ini's - make sure its in the custom ini (which is normally nowhere near your FO install). Yesterday while reading instructions I missed a single word and spent about two hours wasting my time trying to get something to work. It happens.

Well, being that my first contact with the post-apocalyptic genre (aside from the PotA movies) was in the form of Thundarr the Barbarian (and I WILL do that moon mod!!!), I have NO PROBLEM with 'some' magic in FO. Like what they did with the Cabot family, the Dunwich Borers, and the little ghost girl in Nuka-World (there was also that 'magician' there, but that's debatable). Anything heavier than that magic-wise would seem out-of-place, IMO. On the other hand, my first literary encounter with a post-apocalypse was Fred Saberhagen's amazing Empire of the East, wherein a major nuclear war ('major' is probably redundant in that scenario) caused a rift in the fabric of reality, and 'magic' became a thing (someone needs to make a game based off that someday). Furthermore, I come from a background in Tabletop gaming, and the magic system in D&D is referred to as 'Vancian Magic', because its based upon the works of Jack Vance and his Dying Earth novels. In that series, magic was actually super-tech that no-one understood anymore, thus, 'magic' (so technically ALL magic in D&D is really super-science). And to take that a step further - since the MCU is currently all over the news - the whole 'Infinity War' plot is steeped in magic, but Marvel plays-off magic as something supernatural or 'alien' - it is just methods of doing things that we on Earth don't understand or don't have the functionality to use. So if traditional 'magic' bothers you in a atom-punk game, just think of it as 'stuff beyond our understanding' - either alien or extra-dimensional. both 'Gods' and 'Demons' are extra-dimensional beings... and in the RW the existence of other dimensions is the cornerstone of Quantum physics, ie., 'science'. What is magic? To the aborigines in the South Pacific, it was airplanes. To the native Americans it was 'boom-sticks' (guns) that the Europeans brought. When the first mounted warriors poured out of Southern Asia, people started stories about 'Centaurs'. if you were to travel back a hundred and fifty or more years ago and showed someone your cellphone, you'd be burned as a witch. I'm sure if aliens are ever stupid enough to land here, we'd think the stuff they had was 'magic'. Magic is NOT 'a thing', magic is a perspective.

Very cool - thank you. I recall watching a LOT of Blender how-to videos back in the day, but there aren't nearly as many for Nifskope, which is what I am using now. I suppose I may as well get Blender too, since I am already familiar with it. Yup - the UV map - that's the term I forgot. My bad. thanks again. Cheers

I'm still waiting for Piper to finally give-in and say yes to her. :D

You on a computer? Hit the tilde key {~} and open the console, click on her (make sure it is her and not some random nearby object - you need to be very close), then type openactorcontainer 1 So long as you clicked on her correctly and got her ID# displayed, that should open her inventory, and you can do whatever you want in there (just hit tilde {~} again to close the console first). I usually re-equip ALL the NPCs as I move through the game. I'm tired of people like Lucas and Cricket (and their guards) only having pipe-pistols. By mid-game all the baddies are leveling along with you, but those poor NPCs are stuck being crappy forever.

There was another update. I was playing yesterday (or maybe the day before... not positive) and suddenly my controller stopped working properly (I couldn't even draw my gun). So I thought my controller broke, woke my son and borrowed his (thank god I raised gamers LOL), and it was still wonky. Turns out that Steam decided to update WHILE I was playing the damn game. And I have automatic updates disabled, so go figure. But except for that weirdness with the controller (which went away after I restarted everything, including the computer), I haven't had any problems.

Interesting - you just made me aware of a couple of things. Not only did Nick Valentine and DiMa escape the institute just one year after that scene with child-Kellogg, but Kellogg could theoretically be the son of the original protagonist of the original Fallout game (being the perfect age of around 10-12 or so). Could this be the 'secret hidden in plain sight' that Todd Howard and others have alluded to that no-one has uncovered yet? The timeline says the Vault Dweller had a daughter in 2188, but he could have easily had a son long before that (a mere year or two after the ending of the 1st game). Of course, I still think Dogmeat is a synth with Nora's brain, so what do I know? :tongue:

The Project Valkyrie mod supposedly lets you complete the game with EVERYONE at peace (even the Institute, I think), but I haven't been able to get that far (hell, I just hit lev. 100 again and I haven't even been to pay Kellogg a visit). :P The best way to keep everyone at peace and everyone alive is to simply never leave Sanctuary at the very beginning of the game. Just hangout there forever with Codsworth and no-one will ever die. Even your son Shaun gets to live forever, despite the cancer. Of course, that will get kind of boring, but it will save everyone. :D Because if you haven't figured it out yet, you're the reason everyone dies... always. ;)

Its the converting back I'm not getting right. I open the file in Paint.net, then I convert it to something recognizable by GIMP (which I am used to using - Paint.net is brand new to me), I make sure everything is sized correctly, etc, and the when I save it (in GIMP) to the normal dds format that FO4 recognizes, the texture just looks brown (and I have to say, it looks extremely dark in Paint and GIMP as well - is there some sort of shading layer that gets lost in the conversion?) Does it have to do with the accompanying nif file? Natively, the item looks fine applying the texture (file type) that came with it to the nif that came with it, but when I try to change that texture in any way, that's when it all turns brown. Is the nif requiring the original file type? (and if so, that's a REAL PitA - because it defeats the whole purpose of what I am doing if I can't modify the textures with GIMP). Plus, if I can't convert it to a normal dds file to manipulate it, Nifskope also doesn't recognize it and doesn't apply it.

A long time ago I looked into this when I tried modding in Cityskylines, and it seemed fairly complex at that time. My 'skills' (for lack of a better word LOL) have improved (or rather, at least my knowledge-base), to the point I think I would better understand how textures are applied to a model. So here's the (noob) deal - I look at the a texture file for any mesh, and I sit here and wonder how the hell it knows what to put where? How is the 'base' texture file generated? I'm good with GIMP (and PS, but I don't have that anymore), so actually doing the 'art' is no problem for me - I just need to know how one goes about it generating that 'roadmap' (I believe I was using Blender back then, and although I had some success with the modeling, I gave up by the time I was ready to apply the textures). If you just want to point me to some good tutorials (video or otherwise) that would be fine. Thanks in advance - I'd really like to be able to contribute to this community at some point, but the learning-curve is pretty steep.

I'd love to see a F04 character back-ported in for some little side quest, even if its a generic one (like some institute personnel trying recruit, etc). Almost any Ghoul would work (they don't age), but one of the Cabot's would be PERFECT. The sister. maybe? What was her name? Emogene? She has a VERY interesting back-story, if you read the comp. terminals... perhaps moreso than her idiot brother. Plus using her wouldn't mess-up the F04 storyline at all (so long as she can't be killed). Then again, speaking of ghoul's, Hancock in a casino would be pretty brilliant (maybe even a human version of him!) There was one empty pod near the Sole survivor's - that's another option. Someone released years earlier. Hell, they could even use Shaun or Kellogg, Now that I think of it - that stuff all happened like 50 years BEFORE the NV timeline. And then there's Codsworth... but using him would be a HUGE stretch (do robots take vacations?) Anyhow, I am really only talking a cameo or two, nothing major... unless they can come up with a REALLY GOOD story for it (whoever they would use - I think a 'light touch' would work best here, IMO).

In response to post #67804141. #67822741, #68070506, #68108726 are all replies on the same post. EVERYTHING I've read on this project says they ARE staying 'true to the original', so why on Earth do you think they WON'T, when they specifically say they will? Wishful thinking? It will be the SAME GAME, just updated to the FO4 engine. That means that the original voices CAN be used (and this was done before, when they merged F03 and NV in another mod) - it will just require you to OWN both games. The only new voices they need to record would be for any new material they wish to add (and they did say there will be some of that), or for the main protagonist, since the that wasn't voiced in the original, and the F04 game engine has that aspect. I suppose they could chop-apart the existing F04 dialogue... TWICE (M&F)... or even use some sort of sophisticated voice-emulation software , but the simplest solution would be to simply have someone (or two someone's) voice the main protagonist's lines. Which now makes me wonder if they'll use any of the sounds/voices from F04 (the Supermutants in F04 sure sound a LOT dumber), and if they decide to implement any of the settlement building (because the engine is already setup for that, so why not?), they could use some of the generic NPC voices (although a LOT of that is them pointing you to other locales, which won't work... so once again, ALL new works best). I doubt they'll put settlement(base?)-building in, since the original didn't have it, and my whole point just now was that they wanted to stay as true to the original as possible, but I can see them (or someone else) adding it in as an option at some point (as I said, the code is already there, so why not?)

I used to only plant mutfruit, because it gives the most, but its also the most vulnerable (actually, I think corn might be worse). Every damn time I got attacked - especially at Finch's (the mutfruit) or Somerville place (that damn corn!) - I'd lose most of my crop. So I modded my game so all the crops produce the same amount, and now I only plant carrots. Carrots are nigh-invulnerable (even better than melons and gourds). Small target, low to the ground. Its the best way to go. Also, never plant between your spawn points and your turrets, but I assume you know that already. :wink: I've mostly solved my problem at Finch's, by installing a mod that makes all my settlements a little bigger (that way, I can put up turrets BEHIND the damn spawn-points, or at least, in such a way so the settlement itself isn't directly in the line-of-fire). Somerville place, though... they spawn INSIDE the fenced-in crop area. i gave up - let the raiders, mutants, gunners, and robots have their fun in the corn... I planted the REAL crops BEHIND the house. (Bwa ha ha ha!) EDIT: You do know that the turrets can turn all the way around during an attack, right? It could be the ones on the other side of your settlement trying to fire through at the enemies in the distance (like how you said you killed those guys down the tracks). I found that my own turrets were doing far more damage at Somervlle than the attackers were.

Oh, and if you want to know the 'why' of it - because it would actually be easier for the game NOT to do things this way - It all goers back to Skyrim... or the Elder scrolls (whichever came first - I don't play other Beth games). Maybe even an older game than those (Everquest?) People kept pickpocketing the clothes people were wearing right off of them, so to keep that silly situation from happening, they made the equipped clothing item invisible in the inventory (its still there, you just can't interact with it... or steal it). Then people got annoyed that they couldn't loot the outfits, so the work-around was this - a dead body became a different thing to the game code, so the once-worn clothes would then appear in the inventory. If people never stole the clothes right off of NPC's backs, they would have never had to implement that - it would have been easier to just have the same inventory list for both dead and alive status.

Its a game-engine problem. Now, I am no modder (I FINALLY got something working last night!), but I know a little bit about programs, and how some of this stuff in FO4 must work in code. The live body is a person, and has one set of code attached to it. a DEAD BODY is a container, nothing more, As far as the game knows, it is JUST THAT, and it can't tell it was EVER a 'person'. You cannot put clothes on a container (I've tried redressing bodies I've looted). If they die WITH the clothes on, however the game is coded, we can still see them on them, but once they enter 'container status', NOTHING can get the clothes back on them. The game starts those NPCs dead (with their generic outfits). In fact, I am fairly certain in order for this game engine to do that, those people start off ALIVE - they die just before you arive (and I can attest to this, because I accidentally got to one place where three dead people were supposed to be - and I not only watched them fall down dead, but I also HEARD THEM die. The same happened once when I rushed to the Automaton camp (that starts that whole DLC) - the humans were STILL ALIVE. Then they just died, for no apparent reason (so did all the robots but Ada). Thus, in order for you to see clothes on someone, they have to have been alive first - thats just how the game does things. Whatever scripts you are using to redress folks is doing so AFTER those NPCs are dead, so the clothes just won't go onto them. I have the same issue with unique NPCs - a lot of the bodies I find (the named NPCs like you are talking about) I find nakey. Its just how it is. Anything that generates clothes after the fact will do this (for example, when I hit 'recycleactor' because I get so many damn ghoul-settlers, the new settler appears naked... but the original did not). If you want to test this, just walk out of Goodneighbor... you'll hear the folks dying under the nearby overpass. Happens to me EVERY time. I go around the corner and they are already dead (and there's usually a spawn or three also there to attack). If they were dead before the game generated them, they wouldn't be able to have clothes on. Your scripts are kicking-in too late to dress them.

Okay, so I gave up on trying to modify the outfit I wanted to modify (something, somewhere is forcing it to stay the way it is - probably one of the uber-quest mods I have), so I decided to try it out on an article of clothing I never use, and I know there is only one of - the underwear that comes with AWKCR (AFAIK, no mod messes with those). I figure, even if I mess it up, I don't really ever use them anyway. In this way, I can at least test my skills before moving onto something that matters. I was going through all the texture files, and that one seemed like the perfect candidate (I chose the white ones - the lamest of the bunch). I'm very happy with the result... so much so, i think I may start using them as my new (female) minutemen uniform. LOL

Thank you for helping me. I am putting them in what I 'believe' to be the right path. However, the original files were packed in a ba2 (in a texture sub-folfer), and AFAIK, I am using the same path structure within the texture folder (its just not packed in the .ba2 like the original file was). I am going to try it on something simpler, since several mods are affecting those files (its a vanilla clothing file, which gets modified by CBBE, and then by at least one other clothing mod). I've actually found several copies of the dds file in different spots (which I assume is the different mods putting their own version in their own sub-folders). Its hard to figure-out which of those is getting 'final overwrite', as it were. That way, if I can modify something else (like a box of abraxo), and it works, I will known my methodology was sound, but I haven't got the pathing correct. Thanks again.

So I wanted to modify a texture in a mod, and files are packed in a .ba2, and I extracted and modified the files okay (I assume), using lots and LOTS of tutorials online, but when I simply drop the modified file into the Data folder nothing happens. I thought that 'loose files' would always overwrite packed files, but I guess that's not how it works at all. So what I guess I need to do is repack the ENTIRE .bs2 archive - along with all the stuff I DIDN'T change - into a new archive (with the old name, so the mod can find it). Is this correct? And is there a fairly simple way to do this? If you can point me to any good tutorials that covers this area I'd really appreciate it (TONS of tutorials cover how to unpack and create your own textures, but most of them just gloss-over how to get them BACK INTO THE GAME).

Preaching to the choir - I have NEVER made it to the end of a single play-through. At least not on PC (I did a couple times on Xbox). I am testing a BUNCH of settlement mods together right now - I am also have some issues with Ragoda's (I think there is still some old collision going on blocking NPCs from doing stuff). There are quite a few more I really want to try but I just KNOW they'll conflict (mods like Tales form the Commonwealth change stuff EVERYWHERE, so it becomes a crap-shoot). I've also been down the road of "didn't notice there was a problem until many hrs later" routine. And one time it involved Nuka-World as well. I only very recently finally found out what was screwing with Elianora's Marlboro house (some random mod put a unique weapon inside there). I enjoyed using that mod a lot when I was on Xbox, but it never worked on PC... now I know why. Modding is like playing Russian Roulette, and the rules change with every spin of the chamber. I am playing two separate game at the same time right now (using one to troubleshoot the other), and the order of the stuff in my WS menus is different - even though I am using the exact same mods, and started the games right around the same time. The only thing that is different is that in one I'm male, the other, female. Now, knowing how computers work, that should be impossible - given the exact same set of variables I should get the exact same set of results every time. But NOPE... not on a Bethesda game. I even started a third game to try something risky (using CAMP to prep an area for Conquest), and that game became completely ruined almost immediately - once again, with the exact same mods running (Garvey & Co. wouldn't leave the museum, no matter what I did). Fortunately, I didn't need to be in the Minutemen to to do the test I wanted (and NO, you CAN'T do that thing - you can't 'undo' a CAMP settlement once you create it, so now I know). So yeah, we're all in the same boat.

I used to program a LOT back in the 70's (back before there were monitors), and have an excellent knowledge of BASIC, and now when I look at Papyrus (or anything in C/C+/etc.), it all looks very familiar to me... some 40 years later. Bolean logic is Bolean logic -- it never changes (much like war LOL). If you understand binary, and 'opened' and 'closed' (and string variables), you can program... even when you're a dinosaur like me. So YEAH, I agree 100%.