Geck mod inquiry

[kingslime80]

I was just wondering if someone could help me. I've downloaded GECK and it's a little over my head at the moment for what I want out of it. I simply want to be able to change actors. More simply, I want to try changing various characters into children, dogs, even super mutants. Super Mutant Boon may be fun. :)
Anyways, I was wondering if anyone could let me know how to do that? It's more of an experiment at the moment before I start working on more serious ideas. Thanks in advance guys.

[madmongo]

The GECK is a miserable toolset. I've often said that I think it was created by Vault-Tec as an experiment designed to monitor modder's frustration levels. Once you get the hang of it, it's not too bad, but a lot of things aren't very intuitive in it.

 

For example, when you first start modding, you expect to do a file->open or some such, the way you would for any Windows program for, say, the last couple of decades, rigth? Wrong. In the GECK, you click on file->data. This brings up a list of esm and esp files. You can click on files to load them in your GECK session, but here's another thing that isn't at all obvious. If you click on esm files, they will be included in your mod. But, if you click on esp files, they will get loaded, but they won't be included in your mod. If you modify something that is in an esp, then a local copy of it will be saved in your mod. However, since the entire esp isn't included in your mod, if the thing that you modified relies on something else in that esp, you've just screwed yourself over. It won't work. So basically, only click on esm files.

 

And here is yet another thing that isn't at all intuitive. When you want to create a new mod, you don't create a new mod. You click on some esm files to select them, start up the GECK, then make some changes, and then save. And then it asks you for a file name and you create your mod.

 

Now that you see the GECK's weird way of doing things, now you can create your simple mod. Click on file->data and check the box for fallout.esm (any fallout mod will need that). Click ok and the GECK will load with just the basic fallout vanilla stuff included. If you want to include dlc content you have to check those boxes as well, but since Boone is in the vanilla game you don't need that (note that by default, some versions of the game that have all of the dlc installed will automatically select those dlc files when you start the GECK).

 

So now you've got your vanilla game loaded in the GECK. There's a list down the left side of stuff. Quests and NPC packages and stuff is all up towards the top, and as you scroll down you'll see NPCs. Click on that and you'll get a list of NPCs next to it. There's a little search box you can use to find Boone. Hopefully they put "boone" somewhere in his ID tag. Most NPCs will have their name in their tag, but some don't. Boone could be something like nvcompanionsniper or something like that, you never know. But search for boone first (or the name of any other NPC you want to modify).

 

Once you find Boone, you can double click on him to edit his stats. Boone is an NPC, so changing him to another type of NPC is fairly easy. Just select his race on the first tab. You can change him into a child or a ghoul easily enough.

 

Changing him into a creature gets to be a lot more difficult, as that's a creature and not an NPC, which is an entirely different category in the GECK. Briefly, you will probably need to delete the NPC version and create a creature version in his place, which will involve editing an awful lot of scripts and dialog entries.

 

Let's say that you changed Boone into a little girl. Now click ok on the NPC window to close it, and click on file->save in the GECK. Now it should ask you for a name for your mod. Enter the name and the file will save. Exit the GECK, and go into FOMM or Fallout New Vegas (whichever you use to configure your mods) and click on the check box so that your mod will load. Go into the game, and voila, Boone should be changed.

 

Welcome to the world of the GECK.

 

Some things you should know:

 

Character skins don't display properly for characters created in esp files. If you want the body and head skins to match, you need to create the character in an esm file. An easy way to create an esm file is to create it first as an esp, then go into FOMM and select tools->TesSnip and load your esp, and use that to convert it to an esm.

 

Dialog is very, very, very, very unintuitive. There isn't just one dialog option for each character. Instead, dialog is organized by topics and is mixed in with quests and all kinds of stuff. It makes a lot of sense if you remember that the game engine evolved out of Morrowind, where everything was text based and multiple NPCs could all say the same thing based on topics and what area they were in, etc. The point is, you change Boone into a little girl, and he still talks like a caucasion guy, and changing all of his dialog to match means searching through tons and tons of different quests looking for anything that Boone might say. It is much easier to create your own NPC and keep all of his or her dialog in one quest.

 

The GECK also doesn't contain the files necessary for lip file creation. You can pull the necessary files from the Oblivion version of the GECK (google for details) if you want to add voice to your NPCs. lip files are what makes the NPCs lips move while they talk.

 

There are a bunch of ini settings you may need to muck with to get your version of the GECK to work properly.

 

The GECK assumes that you need to spellcheck everything, then doesn't include the dictionary to make it work. This means that every single word you type in dialog will fail the spell check. Download the GECK powerup so that you can disable the spell check, and instead the GECK powerup will give you fourteen thousand warnings for all kinds of little things that you don't care about. If you are editing dialog, though, the powerup warnings are a lot less annoying than the constant spellcheck fails.

 

Generally speaking, making something like a new NPC or a house is relatively easy in the GECK. Adding quests and dialog is a bit harder, and making a new worldspace with a proper heightmap requires you to be a massochist who really gets a lot of enjoyment out of pain and misery.

 

Good luck!