New Old Gamer

[3sloth3]

Hi! 

Wow...things have changed. I haven't had time to play anything in about 12 years and that was mostly console. Always loved the fallout games and the series got me back into gaming a bit as well as a friend of mine telling me about TTW which led me here. I'm still installing it, but while that's happening I thought I'd ask a few general questions. I have skimmed over the wiki's and some of the forum topics so I'm not looking for anything in depth here, mostly just good starting points and things to avoid. 

1. Premium Accounts and general support of creators - If I'm being honest, I wasn't going to pay here. I signed up because I got tired of clicking while installing the Begin Again modlist. Now that I've seen how much work goes into everything here I will definitely keep my subscription so long as I have time to game. I did notice there is donation options as well. Since there are so many mods involved here, I'm wondering what's the best way to make use of any money I can part with to support mod creators? I'm assuming my account subscription is mostly to support the site and staff. 

2. Security - I did see some info that mods get quarantined and everything appears to be open source. I'm just curious what I need to watch out for from my end. Call me crazy, but there aren't always good people out there. 

3. Managers and other tools - I see guides for Vortex, MO2, and Wabbajack mostly with mentions of some other utilities. The answer to this is probably "it depends", but should I favor one over the other or just keep doing what I do and reading docs/guides? I think more than anything this is a history question as it seems some older solid tools are being replaced by newer tools to fit newer games, but I could be wrong here.

4. General Modding - I am a crappy developer during the day, but definitely not talented on the artwork side. I'm more curious about how to create missions, characters, behaviors, stories, functional items (cars, drones, other gadgets) and what that entails. I'm assuming it's highly game/engine specific here and each has their own tooling. 

I'm mostly going to be playing fallout 3, NV, and 4 for the foreseeable future. It's amazing what the people here have created around these games to the point that they are entirely new experiences. Hate it when work gets in the way of fun.

Anyways...Thanks for reading if you did - Looks like my installs are almost done and I should see how well I followed instructions.

[7531Leonidas]

Welcome 3sloth3!

Vortex vs MO2 - generally, Vortex is much more automated than MO2, while MO2 is more customizable.  Vortex does NOT have to be running while playing a managed game (generally, there might be exceptions), but MO2 has to be running and the managed game opened through it.  The learning curve for the mechanics/conventions of both can be pretty steep, you will just have to look at each one to see if your experience as a developer makes one easier for you than the other.  I believe that collections only have any d/l and installation automation with Vortex, and not MO2.

[AaronOfMpls]

Welcome @3sloth3! 

If you haven't found them yet, the specific game forums are under Game Communities at the top of any page (on desktop 🖥) or in the ≡ menu > Browse > Game Communities (on mobile ).  Hit Join Community next to any you want to post in.  You might want to sort the list of game forums alphabetically too (little menu in one of the top bars in there) for this, to group all the Fallouts together.

1. Regarding payment, yes, premium membership mostly supports the site itself -- though the Nexus does pay out some to modders who've opted their mods into the donation points thing.

2. For security, probably just the usual "be careful of anything executable".  There have also been spam mods on occasion, directing people to paywalled stuff offsite or to questionable websites, instead of providing an actual mod in their downloads on site.  I've never seen one myself though; they're not very common to begin with, and the moderators are good at removing them when reported.

3. For mod managers, I prefer MO2 myself, but then I've been using Mod Organizer in some form for over a decade; Vortex hasn't been around as long.  I'd probably try out both were I starting fresh with my Bethesda games, and didn't have a decade-plus of mod profiles and game saves I want to keep.  I don't know anything about Wabbajack.

As for differences between MO2 and Vortex:

MO2 still uses its own virtual file system to make the game "think" all your mods' files are in the game's Data folder (when they're really in MO's mod folders).  Because of this, it has to stay running in the background, as @7531Leonidas mentioned. 

While Vortex uses either symlinks or hardlinks (I forget which) to put your mods' files in the Data folder.  Because of this, Vortex has to redeploy your mods' files if you reorder their override priority or switch mod profiles, in addition to when you add or update mods.

4. There are differences when creating things -- especially models and textures -- but it depends on what you're doing.  Fallout 3/NV and Fallout 4 do use similar engines and have similar GECKs/Creation Kits for modding, so there's a fair amount of similarity too.  Though people in the individual game forums will know the details better, especially since I haven't really played or modded the Fallout games in some years.  (Part of why, I explain in a thread about my Skyrim setup on Linux.)

And yah, welcome back to modding!

Edited Saturday at 03:07 PM by AaronOfMpls
minor edits for clarity

[3sloth3]

Thanks for the info everyone. Much appreciated.

[AndalayBay]

Wrye Bash is also still an option and it just got updated.

[AaronOfMpls]

17 hours ago, AndalayBay said:

Wrye Bash is also still an option and it just got updated.

Oh yah, that's still useful for making bashed patches when two or more mods edit some of the same things, especially in the older games, no matter what mod manager you're using.

[AndalayBay]

It's the only mod manager I use, even for Fallout 4. It also supports the newer games.

The OP said he's an old gamer returning to the scene, so I figured he was familiar with WB already and I was just letting him know that it's still a thing.