Help I'm new to making mods

[Machsc]

I have never made a mod before and every single tutorial on moding is "making a house" or a cave or some type of cell.

 

I have both Xedit installed for both F03 and FONV, I want to make a identical mod for both games. I was starting on FO3 but no one in the Fallout 3 threads is answering my questions or responding at all. And I am certain I will make the same mod for New vegas

 

How do I edit creature stats in the level list without altering the Fallout3.esm or FalloutNV.esm

 

I don't see an option in either the GECK or Xedit to "create a new .esp file, the way say a word processor would "create a new file". So when I go to edit it feels like I'm editing my original game file and not creating a mod but actually messing around with the original game, I am completely gun shy to do that for obvious reasons. But I don't see in either modding app how to create a new esp so my stat edits for the creatures are isolated from the main game and I can Uninstall by just deleting the esp file.

 

I have looked for 2 days and can't find an option to create a new .esp in either the GECK or xEdit

[JimboUK]

You don't create a new file, if there's no file set as active then the GECK will prompt you for a name the first time you save your mod, that's when the esp is created.

[madmongo]

The first thing you need to learn as a newbie is that the GECK is basically a Vault-Tec experiment to test modder's frustration levels. It's buggy as all heck and a lot of it is completely un-intuitive.

 

Almost every Windows program since Windows 3 or so has used File -> New or File -> Open. But not the GECK.

 

Click on File -> Data and select the masters that you want to load. You can load ESP files but that's not something that you would normally want to do since your mod can't link back to the resources in an ESP. It can only link back to resources in an ESM. Being an evil Vault-Tec experiment, the GECK will not warn you in any way if you try to use a resource from an ESP in your mod. Instead the GECK will happily let you save your mod and you won't know that anything is wrong until your mod crashes the game. (Note - there is a way to link to an ESP but you have to be tricky about it - it's not a newbie type of thing)

 

Once you have your masters selected, click on OK and the GECK will load the masters without any active file selected. As Jim said, the GECK will prompt you for a file name when you save your mod for the first time. Does it make sense to do it that way? No. But that's the GECK for you.

 

Note that any master with a .NAM file will automatically be selected as a master when you open the GECK. I personally removed all of the .NAM files from my system so that I could choose to only link in the master files that I wanted.

[Machsc]

Ok.... thanks I tried this set master trick in both Geck and Xedit and it worked. Xedit seems to be easier to make the changes I want... thanks for the tip.

[JimboUK]

XEdit is a great tool but if you want to get into modding learning the GECK is a must, there are things XEdit just can't do, for example you can't build a home or design a character with it.

[laclongquan]

GECK in my hand for a decade and I learn sheeeesh all about it~

 

Xedit in for about some months and I learn to meddle with all of it.

 

Moral of story: ignore Geck, learn to use xEdit.

 

EVEN IF some people or some procedure require you to use GECK, ignore that until you can no more~ Like, you literally can not proceed unless with Geck. Because Geck just raise your blood pressure and kill your interest.

[Machsc]

So I made 2 mods with xEdit one is working well, and the other I'm still testing, but if the second mods doesn't work it's because I chose the wrong settings not because it's crashing or the code is not working.

 

The third is a compatibility patch for other people's mods (which have soft incompatibility), I "overide" the food and consumable items into the new esp and tweaked them and I Override the new effects into the new ESP file but can't apply the new effects from one mod to the food items from the other mod.

 

Do I need GECK to apply effects to items? I have been right clicking all over xedit and can't find a way to do it.