New Vegas race menu overhaul (request? inquiry?)

[ustus]

Okay, so this is my first post - I've been lurking the past few days to make sure I'm not doing anything highly inappropriate here - and I'd appreciate feedback toward posting style and content if I have any bad habits.

 

First things first - I'm not an experienced modder. I've not made anything myself for any bethesda games, and have barely managed to make anything for the couple of Paradox games I've played around with the code of (plaintext languages are beautiful for those of us who don't know any actual code). Therefore, I'm only so capable of pulling any of this off. That said, I'd be happy to learn if that's what's required to get this off the ground.

 

So, without further ado, here's my question for this modding community, in the long-winded form I'm appartently incapable of avoiding:

 

I played FO3 and NV on consoles, and finally migrated over the PC when Skyrim came out. I spend WAY too long working on character appearance and building at the very beginning of a new file, and got used to Skyrim's significantly greater options. Worse, I got used to the RaceMenu mod here on this very nexus.

 

I've come back to NV, and I'm loving being able to extend and modernize the game, but character generation feels extremely limited.

 

Could the huge stack of mods on the Skyrim nexus be used to extend the NV racemenu options and increase the models and textures of characters (PC and NPC both) in New Vegas (and, by extension, FO3)?

 

I've tried to just port some textures (don't get used because they don't match up) and models (same problem) to no avail. I know the skeleton would need replaced (found a skyrim modders' resource skeleton to use). but I don't know enough to make NV reference any of this, and that all still doesn't help me fix that little limited porthole of a face editor compare to all the options Skyrim has.

 

I know that grabbing any of the Skyrim vanilla code to springboard this would be porting; that's not what I'm asking. Can the NV system be made flexible enough to IMITATE it?

 

Thanks all. Your thoughts are greatly appreciated on this, and (as I said) I'm going to be trying to learn how this all works to see if I can do it (but that will be very slow). I'd also be happy to work with anyone else who's interested in trying to get this off the ground.

[pintocat]

I haven't modded skyrim, but I think Skyrim has some stuff in chargen unavailable in the Fallout engines. Like, the tattoo/facepaint thing. To do that you'd need to make another race for each facepaint, for example.

[ustus]

that's the kind of option I was trying to extend without having to go through and add every hair pack I've added to every new race. Mostly, I was hoping there would be a way to drop Skyrim mods into NV and make NV reference them. Enough of the steps are modded to make me think that, with a little assistance and direction on the how, I'd be able to get NV to reference ththe mods instead of its own vanilla system. Upon a bit more reflection, that would cause problems for all the existing NPCs, wouldn't it?

 

I know I'm looking at something pretty ambitious. If no one else is interestted, I'll probably end up starting smaller. I just know there are a lot of REALLY competent people on this site, so I'd see what some of them had to say.

 

thanks!

[Gribbleshnibit8]

The Skyrim interface uses the flash based Scaleform UI. Fallout uses a XML based system that is so far different that it's not even funny (really, Fallout UI sucks, it's not funny). There is literally no way they would be compatible with each other.

 

Besides that, Skyrim uses a totally different scripting system that interfaces with the game and engine differently, again, not really compatible back to Fallout. Yes, you could rewrite them, but there is likely not the same functionality in Fallout as in Skyrim. I know for a fact that all the things you're thinking of with the Race Menu mod won't ever make their way back into FNV. You're better off just waiting for Fo4 and hoping it gets ported up.

[ustus]

alright. Not the answer I wanted to hear, but it's a clear concise answer that keeps me from wasting my time on this. Thanks for taking the time to read my ramblings!