FalloutNV.esm - explained.

[Razlo]

EDIT:

 

Because of very little information on the web how you should understand the main FalloutNV.esm whish is the whole configurable world of Fallout I decided

to create this topic to aggregate the info about it.

 

Please write here anything that might help understand the structure of this database.

 

(The info here has source only from my basic understandig which may, or may not help you, but will be corrected in time - and hopefully provoke some advanced modders to write here ; )

First of all whole database (DB) is made of nodes which consists of larger nodes - I'd say 'Master Nodes'.

Master Nodes (MN) are what you can see on the top of the structure.

NOTE: MN differs whether you edit esm DB with GECK or FNVEdit. But in overall its very similiar.

 

MN consists of:

 

Ammo, Armor ... Weapon - which are quite obvious and

Ingestible , Levelled Item and other which are less obvious.

 

Ingestible are are food and consumable objects in game, while Leveled Items are a packs of Items (like a pistol and ammo) .

Now while Ammo, Armor , Weapons, Ingestibles and others basic objects are just what they are which is Pistol, 9mm ammo or Fresh Carrot Fruit , Leveled Items

are actually - more or less - random (Pistol 45% condition or 55% condition or no pistol, 5 rounds of 9mm ammo or 2 rounds, carrot or mudfruit or smth else), which makes everything more interesting as there never 2 the same containers or NPC's Inventory (in geck these nodes have question mark in green icon). I found that almost everything besides some crucial containers or NPC Inventory are Leveled Items.

 

So Leveled Items divide upon many different combinations of items - for NPC inventory, Containers, Vendor Collection etc.

Those are nodes - which may consists of other nodes - like other packs of Items.

 

Further nodes have different fields that holds values, but some fields are common.

 

These common fields are:

Level - just a level of an item or Leveled Item - I am not sure what is it used for but most probably its for deciding process of NPC like what weapon do I get from the ground to kill my enemy faster.

Chance None: - the chance that none of the item( or items from a pack of items ) will appear in game. I.e. if set to 25 - there is 25% chance that none of the items appear. There

are others fields that can decide whether use this parameter for ALL or EVERY item in the list. VERY USEFULL THING!

Count - number of items or pack of items. But if set for Leveled Item with chance none set it makes a test number of times a count is set. This way you can increase the chance for spawning , without actually messing the Chance None parameter set a Leveled Item which can be also used in many different places in game.

 

Besides MN there are Globals which is Timescale for instance and have different structure. This and more will covered later .

 

 

Thanks,

Razlo :)

 

Ps. Please correct me if I'm wrong and write what you've learned about different MN , Nodes, Globals, how paramaters of nodes are used, how nodes are linked with each other.

Edited January 31, 2011 by Razlo

[Pronam]

.ESP and .ESM files are basically the same with a few bytes different. They are organized by usage and properties, there only useful thing about knowing their propties is the ability to change/remove one for after edits, parenting or conflict avoidance...nothing more. FNVEdit has a lot of purposes, but it's not the thing to create mods with. You need the GECK for that.

 

There's no 'ultimate' or 'single' source with the best information, the geck wiki is quite useful though. The ESM file functions as the big master file of which GECK makes ESP, plugins to make changes to the main game or add things to it. It's not replacing anything, it's like laws. The newest one takes importance (or your load order).

 

If you're going to 'increase' stuff it's best to load up geck, change a few things en learn from there. Along with the wiki it explains pretty much every part you need to know.

[davidlallen]

I agree with pronam, the key is to learn geck, not to learn the esp/esm file format. Still, for theoretical interest, you may want to learn about the internals of esp. If you google "esp file format" it is easy to find a few descriptions such as this one or this one. It does not change much from one game to the next. I have released one mod, answered many modder questions here, and have a second mod well underway, and I have not needed to know anything about the file format.

[Razlo]

Great, installing GECK right away.

 

Perhaps you can ease my pain and direct me to a "place" where I can affect the apprearance chance of Energy Weapons and Ranged Weapons and its ammo in places

like :

everywhere :P (is there a global for it ? ) or simply Vendor Inventory/Collection, NPC Inventory, Containers (every) or loose items in the world.

 

For instace I found a Proporties of a Vendor List item called "VendorWeaponsEnergyTier1" which has various energy weapons included ; further every weapon has another class of its condition . And then every node of the weapon condition has count = 1 , but different Level . What is level for , and can I set the ratio of appearance of particular weapon (is it what count is for?).

 

In terms or programming I want to do the following:

 

Make random test for every weapon and ammo in-game (containers, NPC inventory) by factor 0,2 (for instance) - if test is above 0,2 remove item from the world . Simply reduce it by 80%.

 

Do I have to do this for every container in the game and NPC inventory or is there some globals that can be adjusted ?

 

HUGE Thanks in Advance,

Raz

Edited January 28, 2011 by Razlo

[Razlo]

I've edited first post - please read. Let's make a topic on how to understand a structure of esm database better, using our common knowledge!

 

And about davidlallen answer:

I agree with pronam, the key is to learn geck, not to learn the esp/esm file format. Still, for theoretical interest, you may want to learn about the internals of esp. If you google "esp file format" it is easy to find a few descriptions such as this one or this one. It does not change much from one game to the next. I have released one mod, answered many modder questions here, and have a second mod well underway, and I have not needed to know anything about the file format.

 

 

I've checked your links - thanks. Although it's about Oblivion DB (different stats, different names) it has some info relevant.

Edited January 31, 2011 by Razlo

[qsaw123456]

thanks