inawe

Unfortunately, what I am hoping for is what you call pretty much impossible. I haven't been able to find a good substitute texture amongst the ones included with Fallout 4, as I have for a few other ugly textures. I am hesitant to try a replacement texture from an outside source since it is very difficult to make decent normal and specular textures to go with it, at least in my limited experience. So, I'm left with hoping that someone else has the talent to modify the existing texture. I've tried myself, but lack the artistic talent to do a decent job.

I'm not actually trying to remove the 3D trash piles themselves. The textures for those piles have parts like crushed cans and scraps of wood that are supposed to look 3Dish due to their normal (_n.dds) textures though, but they don't. They just look like pictures that have been painted on to the piles. It's those fake 3D parts that I want to get rid of. No mesh removal needed.

Fellow modders, My mod, Remove Ugly Flat Trash, does a decent job of removing the worst of the fake looking flat trash (crushed cans, sheets of paper, etc.) from the game. There are a few textures that I have been unable to find good replacements for though. The worst example is Landscape\Ground\DebrisGroundTile_d.DDS, because it is slathered liberally all over the Commonwealth. Unfortunately, my texturing skills are almost non-existant. If I can't hide it or swap it with another existing texture then I am pretty much out of luck. I am looking for a texture artist to partner with me on this. The work would involve painting over sections of the original textures to cover up the fake looking stuff. It's not a large number of textures, maybe five or so, plus the accompanying normals and speculars, so hopefully not a huge undertaking. I would, of course, credit you for your work. And, since the textures in question are used so frequently throughout the game, your work will be prominently featured. Is there anyone out there with the necessary skills who is willing to help rid the Commonwealth of some of it's ugliness? Thank you in advance for any replies or suggestions. - inawe

In response to post #47378955. #47379635, #47380245, #47380310, #47380615, #47380650, #47380665, #47380780, #47381010, #47381020, #47381085, #47381190, #47381380 are all replies on the same post. +1 My thought exactly. *edit* Didn't see Dark0ne's answer before posting. Nexus Mod Organizer made the most sense to me. Oh well... as long as it is able to use a virtual file system like MO, I'll use it, regardless of the name.

steve40, You can ignore my question about putting the GoToState at the beginning of the Event. The CK wiki answered that. I understand now that GoToState is not the same as the old programming GoTo that I am thinking of. Setting a state simply filters which part of a script sees/pays attention to further events that the script receives. My only remaining question on states is whether or not they are stored in the save game so that they are maintained across reloads.

Whoops, didn't see that you had already answered a couple of the things that I asked steve40. When is an actor reset? Is that the same as respawning? For the behavior I was seeing, I was spawning multiple instances of an NPC at the same time to test out the randomization (player.placeatme <NPC's form ID> 15). The first instance got a random hair and eyes. The following instances all got those same hair and eyes. With OnLoad, the hair and eyes was random for each instance. I'm going to retest this by spawning the NPC through a leveled list to see if the behavior changes. It would be nice for the hair and eyes to be set before 3D loads so that they don't do the weird transitioning for a few seconds.

When I thought about it some more, I think my testing on this may have been invalid. I was spawning multiple instances of an NPC directly rather than through a leveled list. I'll try through a leveled list and see if that changes the behavior. OnInit runs when a script first initializes. Does that happen each time the game is loaded, or does it only happen once ever, with the fact that it has been initialized being stored in the save game? I'm also not sure how instancing works for scripts. If I have an NPC with a script attached and then spawn the NPC multiple times, is it a new instance of the script each time? Does the behavior of this change if part of the NPC's data comes through a leveled list? Because I'm a scripting newbie and don't know how states work? ;-) I'll have to read through the information on them on the CK wiki. By inefficient, do you mean that it takes the game longer add a keyword and check for it periodically than to set a state and check it periodically? I see that you put the GoToState at the beginning of the Event script. Wouldn't that cause it to jump there without processing the rest of the script? Once a script is in a state, does it stay there until something tells it to leave? Is the state stored in the save game so that when the game is reloaded, the script is still in that state? Thanks.

I tried OnInit, but the randomizing version of the script only randomized things once and then applied that to every following spawn. I'm guessing that the script only gets initialized once, not once per instance. OnLoad works. The hairstyles fade in and out a couple of times and sometime stretch out in a long line in front of the character, but they settle down in a few seconds. The hairlines seem to get added correctly too, but I need to test that further. Randomizing the eyes also works. Here is the current version of the script: ScriptName ChangeMyHeadParts extends Actor Hidden FormList Property EyeList Auto Const Mandatory FormList Property HairList Auto Const Mandatory int RandomEyeIndex int RandomHairIndex Event OnLoad() RandomEyeIndex = Utility.RandomInt(0, 21) Self.ChangeHeadPart((EyeList.GetAt(RandomEyeIndex)) as HeadPart) RandomHairIndex = Utility.RandomInt(0, 33) Self.ChangeHeadPart((HairList.GetAt(RandomHairIndex)) as HeadPart) endEvent Instead of using a variable to keep the script from running more than once on an actor, I'm planning to add a keyword to the actor at the end of the script and check for the presence of the keyword at the beginning. Thanks again everyone for your answers. This post from a while back helped a lot too - https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/4468365-npc-grows-his-own-beard-but-wont-trimshave.

Do you mean that if you call a function without a reference before it, Self is assumed? So, "Self.ChangeHeadPart(HairMale13)" and "ChangeHeadPart(HairMale13)" are the same? Thanks.

OK, strike that last bit. It looks like Self does refer to the actor or item the script is attached to. Confusing since Google found me one reference that says it points to the script and now another couple that say it points to the object. I guess I'll find out for sure when I try out the script.

After some more digging, it looks like "Self" is a reference to the script itself, not the actor it is attached to. So how do I refer to the actor that the script is attached to if I don't know that in advance due to it being a spawned instance? For the specific thing I am trying to do I will be working with spawned NPCs, so I need to be able to refer to the particular instance of a base actor, not the base actor itself. For example, lets say I attach a script to a leveled raider. If I'm understanding how things work correctly, when the cell that the raider is placed in is loaded for the first time, a new instance of that base raider is created. Events like OnLoad and OnInit don't pass in a property, so I won't receive a pointer to the actor instance from them. All the functions require that you already know what you want them to act on as far as I can tell, so I can't get the pointer from one of them. Hopefully I am just misunderstanding or missing something obvious here. Thanks again for any help.

I would like to make a mod that randomizes the hair that spawned NPCs have. I have a few questions on how to make it work. The script will be attached to the NPC in the CK. Here is the basic version that I have so far, minus the randomization: ScriptName ChangeMyHeadParts extends Actor Hidden bool CMHPAlreadyRan = false Event OnLoad() if CMHPAlreadyRan = false Self.ChangeHeadPart(HairMale13) CMHPAlreadyRan = true endif endEvent My first question is, does the variable I am declaring get reset every time the script runs, or is the value retained? I only want the hair to be changed when the NPC is first spawned, not every time the game or their cell is loaded. There doesn't seem to be a "RunOnceAfterSpawning" event, or something like that. Is OnLoad the very first event that will trigger on an actor, or is there another event that triggers before the actor's 3D is loaded? Is "Self." the correct way to refer to the actor that the script is attached to? Thanks in advance for any guidance.

You are talking about creating a copy of the armor in the CK using the new texture, correct? I've done that before, but it has limitations, such as not easily being able to remove the paint job to get back to the standard color. What I would actually like to do is have the different paint jobs be mods that you can add and remove from the armor, like the paint jobs for power armors.

Could anyone point me to information on how the paint mod system for power armor works? Not from an in-game perspective, but from the perspective of how it works internally and how to make changes to it. Are the paint jobs just overlays on top of the existing textures, or do they replace the textures? Also, could the paint mods be randomly spawned on armors like mods for other armors are (braced, studded, shadowed, etc.)? I would like to extend the paint mods to other armors. I see that something like this has been done already for combat armor, so I'm assuming it is possible for other armors too. I've tried tracing everything through in the CK and in FO4Edit (the keywords, armor addons, mod objects, etc.), but it's not clicking for me, so I must be missing something. If anyone out there has knowledge on this, I would really appreciate discussing it with you so that I can get my head wrapped around it. Thanks, - inawe

Interestingly, I just noticed that some of the feral ghouls have a height range of 0.95 - 1.05. I wonder if that is considered a safe range.