Hi im new to modding

[RICH BOY SEAN]

thanks for that it is a big help does anyone know if there is a limit to how many mods you can have i now have a list of about 40

[JimboUK]

255 I think, that obviously wouldn't include those replacers that don't require a ESP. If your new to mods and are worried about breaking the game, make a back up of your data folder, that way if you get yourself in a mess you can delete your current data folder and put the back up back in the game folder rather than reinstalling.

[mongrelarchitect]

Also, don't just try to dump all 40 of those mods into the game at once.

 

Get them working one-by-one so if/when problems occur, you'll know where the issue is. It may take a bit more time, but it's good practice and could save you from headaches down the road.

 

Just a bit of advice that I had to learn the hard way :whistling:

[RICH BOY SEAN]

thanks thats a great help my game has been posted today hopfully be here in few days XD

[RICH BOY SEAN]

hey i got the game today and downloaded some mods but in package manager some are red what does that meen and how do i turn it white like normal

[fap6000]

Yah! they right, but yeh might have foorgoot a important step. Most of us stayed inside a vanilla fallout 3 game for at least a couple of months before we found out or jumped into mods. Which to a total fallout 3 noob would be a good idea just to start out learning by enjoing the game play. Not saying yer a total noob to fallout or anything but if yeh were it would be fun to just stick with vanilla for a while. For one thing how would you know which mods you wanted to use if you had no wasteland experience to base your decisions off? Also you can't really make a good mod unless you got a recent good feel of the vanilla game, which often serves as the muse for our wild ideas. Even in the case of being a wasteland master, say on another non-moddable version of the game. Fallout 3 on PC is a different beast, It's a great product, but there is so many ways a computer system can differ from user to user in the form of hardware, software, and even different peoples install/builds of windows O/S even using the same hardware. So to speak If N yer just getting into fallout 3 PC, there should at least be a vanilla testing phase to allow time for Tweeking, Adjusting settings, And plenty of testing.

 

Over the last year I've done a bunch of wild an crazy stuff. The way I learned was to totally mess it up over an over again. Which is un-avoidable given the vast amount of data one would need to read/learn here on Nexus Forums. The only way to get any good at it is to put in the down an dirty hard work, both in learning an doing stuff. Over a period of time a lot of the doors will open up which allow you to do whatever you can think up. Stuff like 3-4 hour games without crashing, OverRides that allow the use of content from 6 mods into one in-game item, Editing someone elses work, creating your own modz. The work part seariously never ends.

 

There isn't really a max number of mods you can use. Yah you can only load up 255 or so .esm & .esp but FO3 plug-in utility has become so well working an clean that taking two or 60 mods an merging the data into one .esm or .esp is kiddie stuff. Then in cases where content can't be merged for one reason or the other there is usually a way to do it while keeping it clean with FO3 edit. Then also with the progression of figuring out overrides, any mod can be used with any other mod, and in any order, even in cases where they directly conflict. Throwing terms like can not be used with mods that change such an such, out the window.

 

There's basicly two schools. One school is the old ways of following the old load order rules, tier 1 tier 2 tier 3 tier 4, blah blah blah, FOIP (fallout inter operability patch) takes up the slack in the form of generic created patches for end users custom made load orders. Think of it this way, I'm going to sit down here in Tennessee an make you a patch for your load order taking a dead reckoning guess at which of the 1,000,000 mods you will end up installing, as well as which load order that brain of yours is going to come up with having just fumbled thru 160 pages of read me's. So at best a FOIP is only going to be about 75% accurate, however the actual load order is only about 50% of the system stability while in game (avoiding crashes/problems)

 

The other school downloads mods, and then installs them with some kind of plan they come up with. Then after it's installed they fix it with FO3edit, among other tools. After it's fixed then testing. Like mentioned before in this post, don't dump 80 mods in there an then try to fix it, or even 40, I know 80 is about two or three days work, and that's fixing it as fast as possible with very little if any testing. FOOK2 takes just as long as the 80 small mods, a couple of days, 10-20 hours stuck behind a screen working with spread sheets. Hence why they said don't start with a bunch. For one thing the small amount of mods is less work to fix, then also you get better chances to find the root cause of any problem that might come up in testing. Then when it's fixed you move on to another project, maybe more difficult than the last.

 

I myself have tried building 255 load orders, even got pretty close, but because all the work was done at the same time, over a two week period, the end result was "IT'S A BUST" because there were only a few problems, but hidden in 200 mods. So even though I can stand the aweful pain of using my computer for nothing but boring work for two weeks, in the hope to get a 1000 mods to fit inside 255 slots. Just because I get better quality control and diagnosis from only installing a small amount at a time or in most cases one mod at a time seperated by long hours testing. I tend to stick to that long term plan over a dump install. Not to mention me being quite lazy, and getting to rather enjoy the many boners I getz from super fun Gameplay. So yah, any work I do is seperated by testing gameplay.

 

Bear in mind it's not the case that the mods you downloaded are of poor quality. There are a few mods which are just junk, an also some junk content, but those are rare cases. In most cases the mod you downloaded is of very good quality, but when it's used with other mods the creator had no way of knowing that the end user would ever use. So yah it doesn't work that well then. This is where the two schools come in, either some FOIP patches or down an dirty FO3edit work. The down an dirty FO3edit work is the same kind of stuff you use to create new mods though. So if you wanted to get into that then it's a no-brainer.

[RICH BOY SEAN]

there is 1 mod im having a problem with (FOSE) i downloaded it put it into my fallout 3 directery but it dont work could someone give me a step by step guide on what to click coz i looked at the read me and it hasnt helped

[fap6000]

Well FOSE goes in Bethesda Softworks/fallout 3 Unlike mods which go in Bethesda Softworks/fallout 3/ data. Which you should have got from the read me, if by chance you didn't pick up on that, then you might want to read the FOSE read me again. Just because you'll have to get good at figuring out read me's to get anything done. I'm not saying that's an easy task, heck you might have to spend 20 min reading it over an over just to pull out a grain of info on what you need to do to install. Just keep trying.

 

FOMM, FOSE, FO3edit, GECK all go in the same spot if that helps, Bethesda Softworks/fallout 3, Then if you installed it right, FOMM will auto detect FOSE, if installed, then in FOMM it will say "launch FOSE" rather than "launch fallout"

 

 

[RICH BOY SEAN]

my problem is that it is not recognizing that fose is in my fallout folder and i have uninstalled and reinstalled about 20 times

[RICH BOY SEAN]

Can someone tell me if there is something i can download so that i can change the color of differnet armors by myself i would like to make the outcast a different color so i can have a custom black one