A few questions about GECK-related stuff

[HiddenLurker]

Hi, i have a few questions about modding and i hope you guys can answer it.

 

First, how do i make a gun that knocks people back with every bullet? for example, like the victory rifle, but instead of only the knockback effect happening only on critical hits, it happens on every hit.

 

Second, how should i start making my own weapons models? i feel like trying to make one.

 

Third, how do i make custom grenades? for example, a grenade that explode out caps? =P (cool idea eh?)

 

Fourth, is it possible to make a junk object a projectile? for example, a gun that shoots out teddy bears!? if so, please tell me :)

 

Thanks in advance and kudos to anyone who can answer these! Any help is greatly appreciated.

[fap6000]

Yah like you didn't have enough problems already. :D who doesn't?

 

1.That's a object effect I reckon, this being added in the spot for effects in the edit page for the victory rifle, meaning that it could be added to any weapon. Effects are kind of a funny area, there's base effects, actor effects, effects you might need all 3 or a script even in order to create a new effect. For example you might need a base effect which refrences a script created to play the knockdown animation, then in order to add that to a weapon you need a object effect that refrences the base effect referencing the script, so like I said it's kind of funny. Actually I think that the easy way to do this is to pick the victory rifle effect but don't check the upon death flag which sets it for critical activation only I think, idk...

 

1.1 There's no real reason to edit the Victory rifle effect, it's just more easy to add it to weapons which pack a lot of punch, I wasn't aware that it only works on critical attacks, for example I have charicters with a very low luck stat, an pretty much it victory rifle effects just about every hit, which it would be silly if it did it every single time, an break up combat, so you can save yourself some time just testing out a weapon which you have added this effect to it. Also it's a touchy subject for example when you shoot some very huge creatures it knocks them down or into the air even, which it totally drunktarded. I never check the upon death flag when I add it, so that might make it non-critical activation.

 

2. Everything you need to make your own stuff pretty much centers around the GECK main page, this page in particular but also you need to have the GECk main page in your favorites, because you go there pretty much anytime you see something an don't know what it is It's all there, but you might have to look forever to find what you were looking for.

 

2.1 I use GECK 1.5, FO3edit, Nifscope, Paint.net, GIMP, for the most part anyway, I have blender, but never can get it to work besides not being able to figure out how to use it which takes some time. Nifscope you can figure out yourself over a few months. Tutorials would fill the gap if you really wanted to start making things. I wasn't to into reading an learning so I just figured out how to do it from messing up 1000 times. I can only really make "hacked" meshes, meaning the original was cut an pasted, or hacked up, in order to produce something. That being said if you perfect that method there's no reason why you couldn't create "hacked meshes" which are cleaner than the original versions. Keep in mind though your performance of the weapon is directly related to how clean the mesh is, you can compare anything to a vanilla mesh, make them look the same which gives you good performance, Semi-automatic fire in particular is quite touchy, then full auto you can pretty much mess it all up an it still works.

 

3. The bottle cap mine already has a explosion set up with the debris of bottle caps, however you can't really see the bottle caps because they move so fast, somewhat acting like a claymore mine, I reckon even grenades have somewhat of debris which is ejected when they go boom, these would be the fragments of the frag grenade, who knows what mesh they are set up to use. You could create a mesh for a grenade which has bottle caps added around it, but you would need to know how to create clean "hacked meshes" You could also just set up the grenade to use the bottle cap mine explosion, or change the debris from the grenade explosion to use bottle caps as debris.

 

4. Yah sure, all you do is copy the branch for the junk an paste it into a projectile mesh. Probalby want to remove the tracer from the mesh, an shoot you might could even just open a projectile in the GECK, an change it so that it uses your junk mesh. But there are settings inside the Mesh for static, havok an such so I figured you would need to paste your junk into a projectile mesh.

 

4.1 teddy bears have ragdoll data, meaning the arms an legs move around from havok physics, so I can't say it's a good idea to use that as a projectile, it kinds of needs to be a static, so you would first have to edit that teddy bear mesh so that it's a one piece thing, which is basicly assembling the shapes one at a time into a static mesh, for example the static cinder block, git rid of the cinderblock shape, then paste in the seperate parts of the teddy bear, naming them in order, Projectile:0, Projectile:1, Projectile:2, Projectile:3 or whatever the name ends up being once you paste those branches into the projectile mesh.

[HiddenLurker]

okay thanks so much, i couldn't understand 50% of what you are saying but thanks a bunch! kudos to you!

 

EDIT: wheres the give kudos button!?

[Norinvaux]

EDIT: wheres the give kudos button!?

 

Go to his/her profile, scroll down, on the left hand side, there should be a "Give Kudos" button somewhere.

 

EDIT: Wait, damn. Looks like with the new site style, there's no kudos button on profiles... Just look for his/her tesnexus/danexus/fallout3nexus profile, I know there's a kudos button there.

[HiddenLurker]

ok thanks. fap6000, i've given kudos to you!

[fap6000]

A good weapon is going to have many seperate good parts that end up making it great. It should only take a few months before you are creating stuff you would never have thought you could. That first learning part isn't easy though.

 

1. Great sound both 2D an 3D, 3D is mono one channel thus allowing it to be placed directionaly in the game world, then 2D is stereo two channel so it's like the player charicter fired it. Pretty much 2D an 3D are the same sound, however the 3D mono version is a bit softer or more quiet than the 2D version. For this you need a .WAV editor, once you figure out that, pretty much steal sounds from other mods or other games, then change them in ways to make it work for fallout 3. It doesn't hurt to balance the volume to vanilla sounds, normalized, ect, anything too loud is going to cause distortion and get on our nerves if you upload the mod.

 

2. Great shell cases, I mean really great ones. Dark brass or light brass works, but also silver. These mostly use the Shells01 an Shells02 texture, something like that, but you can make small edits here that actually make a big difference. You don't notice the shell cases when they hit the ground so much, but when they are flying thru the air in a VATS camera slow motion, they really pop, an you're like zomg that's nice.

 

3. Projectiles, great textures, as well as meshes that were matched to the size of the actual barrel of the weapon, (you know rather than that same 7.62 rilfe projectile that gets used over an over in vanilla) Inside a projectile mesh it won't hurt nothing if you totally remove the branch which has the tracer in it. You need good projectile settings in GECK too, stuff like the muzzle flash, tracer chance, impact force.

 

4. Great mesh an textures, pretty much you need to be or become a texture & mesh god, at least one of them anyway, then work on the other.

 

5. Great settings for the weapon in the .Esp or .Esm, this can be done with GECK or with FO3edit.

 

http://i123.photobucket.com/albums/o294/eiffU/SMGBISH.jpg

 

Basicly above is the "Pimp my desert eagle" textures only applied to a SMG, basicly taking the vanilla SMG mesh, then taking the super cool "pimp my desert eagle" textures, an mixing the two together, which required a whole lot of texture editing plus UV edits in the mesh to get it to look somewhat useable... Then the fun part, pick a cool or silly name for it...

 

http://i123.photobucket.com/albums/o294/eiffU/bigbarrel.jpg

In the above picture we have your basic "pimp my desert eagle" version of the 10mm pistol, only I changed it up a bit. Took off the .50 or 10mm embosing (stamped name) on the slide, so there isn't any words on the weapon. From there I copied the shape that is the very end of the lincolns rifle, you know the part that flips open so that you can load the rifle, that end barrel part, I pasted that as a second part of the 10mmpistol, the non-animated part of the pistol is named 10mmpistol:0, to add a second part you use the same name only with a number at the end, so the part I added was 10mmpistol:1, an would follow in 2 3 4 5 depending on how many parts I added, this is to keep the semi auto fire rate working as well as the vanila. From there I moved the barrel where I wanted it, then scaled the verts on it, (changed the size) so that it was the biggest size the 10mm pistol frame would allow, then later I took a projectile an matched the barrel hole to a size based off the 9mm, it was twice the size of a 9mm so I knew this was a 18mm pistol. Then I changed the UV, so that the part I added has a compensator cut in the side, just like the vanilla 10 mm pistol, you know those 3 funny looking things at the end, those are compensators (as a way to lower the recoil) Also a round disc like shape was placed inside the barrel as to cover up the vanilla barrel via using a black texture for the disc.

 

http://i123.photobucket.com/albums/o294/eiffU/buster.jpg

 

Easton bats, zomg such a good idea, the most fun I had on a project, geez it's just so American, I just had to do it. You can have a field day with this idea, there are so many nice bats out there. This uses the vanilla baseball bat, but it's scaled up a bit maybe, plus the mesh was adjusted, moved up so that the player holds it more near the very end of the handle, which also meant I had to adjust the reach setting in the GECK, which sets how close they get when a VATS camera animation plays out. From there it was basicly stealing pictures of bats from the Easton website, then using parts of those textures, in the vanilla texture, then fill the gaps with a plug in for paintnet called "fill gaps" yah you got it. Then added some tribal like tatoos to the Rampage kind of like the real world version. On the silver one I used part of the stainless steel block vanilla texture, certianly the normal map for it, which gives it that brushed aluminum look, details on both like the grip or end caps, the hardest part is that the mesh has a line right in the middle of the bat, So I pretty much had to deal with a few really hard core seams. Never finished the mod so nobody but meh has it right now. Great work though...

 

http://i123.photobucket.com/albums/o294/eiffU/plainjane.jpg

 

Ah Nickel Jane, remember me saying funny names... This one ended up being named Plain Jane, and Nickle Jane. Plain Jane was pretty much the very basic parts of the Resident Evil pistol, you know all the fancy parts of the mesh removed, then the texture cleaned up a bit. The barrel was a seperate piece on that weapon, so I also changed it so that it was .45 rather than 9mm, this was done basicly scaling the verts on the barrel an moving it around until it was the biggest size that would fit in the frame, then edit the texture an UV so that the actual hole of the barrel is round an looks like what a .45 would. Then I put in a custom trigger from the old FOOK 1.6 Colt .45 auto pistol.

 

Nickle Jane came into play wanting to make a very basic looking version of Romeo's pistol in the movie. It was very plain with a little gold trim. First I changed the weapon to have a Nickle coating, somewhat anyway from a process I developed using Paintnet to auto-adjust (guess) on the colors, sometimes this turns things crome looking. Did that then cleaned it up a bit. Then added gold trim. I adjusted the weapon to have a more noticeable pin too, see the slide runs on a metal pin that sticks out the end, in most automatic pistols anyway. I use the barrel an the pin in many meshes to create new stuff. Also installed a different clip shape as to keep the weapon more clean looking.

 

http://i123.photobucket.com/albums/o294/eiffU/45L.jpg

 

This is the M92 or M96 beretta pistol from 20th century weapons, sort of, anyway. Scaled the verts on the clip first off, because this is a full auto weapon. It has the .45 barrel an pin from the "Plain Jane" weapon, only stretched out really long as it's a extended barrel version (as to keep the weapon spread down, you know more accuracy) Also one of the parts that makes up the extended barrel of that Resident evil pistol is put on the end, to make it look mean, plus that is kind of a brace for the extended barrel, this was based off pictures of some of those fancy guns in movies, but in this configuration it doesn't act like a compensator which would lower the fire rate from lowering some of the exploding gases inside the barrel. Basicly it's a Pinned an extended barrel full auto M-92 beretta, but only it's .45 cal Just a basic idea I never finished it. Seemed to work better as a semi auto than full auto, but that's just cause finding a full auto sound for .45 that doesn't make you go deaf is kind of hard.

 

http://i123.photobucket.com/albums/o294/eiffU/GECK2010-02-1509-50-41-85.jpg

 

Above we have the "Pace maker" ha ha funny name, it's a colt peace maker, get it? Pace maker cause it's fallout 3 we do funny stuff. This is a very hard mesh to work with, the revolver that is. Anyhow found a really nice Nickle plated colt with etched art work in the plating. This took a whole lot of UV editing just to get it to look as crappy as it does. Haven't worked on it much after that long spell of just getting it this good. The barrel an handle need work I guess.

 

Above that is "Tina Jones Desert Storm" An yah you guessed it, the black version of the weapon is just named "tina jones" you know rather than very boring "M4A2" First off it's based off the photo realistic M4A2, version, however that mod uses textures which have a overall raw data size of something like 16Mb, used my texture godlikeness to shrink that same texture down (what bethesda would do on it) so that it only uses 600k, so instead of it using 16,000k of video card memory, it would only use 600k like most bethesda created weapons. Once that was done I pretty much had the black version done. Then I took those textures, added a layer, then pasted a desert camo pattern in that later which was moved above the gun textures, from there I edited the settings for the camo layer so that it was partially see thru (transparent) this was done by changing the alpha on that layer, once it was see thru, the details of the weapon started bleeding thru, an I then merged the camo layer down on top of the gun layer. Now there was only one layer, which I then took parts that are just black from the base version, you know so the screws an little details here an there would be black, an not the whole thing camo. Which turned out nice. A nice way to Camo something, basicly just put a see thru camo texture on top of it. You can only have one layer in a .DDS which is why it got merged down.