New to modding and have a couple of questions

[barinelg]

Hello all!

 

I'm a programmer by trade and wanted to take a crack at modding. I have some ideas, but coming across 2 snags that I'm hoping someone can point me in the right direction.

1. If I want a script to always be running, how would I add this script to the player (or the game in general) so that it always run?
2. What are some good resources on how to make a custom UI based on existing UI assets? Should I grab a UI mod and dig into their source, or are there good tutorials to start from?

Sorry if these have been answered elsewhere. I've done a lot of digging and can't seem to find anything.

 

Thanks in advance!

[CarlCorey]

1. Create a quest, attach your script as the quest script and mark the quest Active at Game Start (I think that's the wording). You can put your "begin gamemode" block or other block in that script. You don't have to make the quest do anything but other scripts in the same mod can access its variables with questName.varName.

 

2. UI mod is mainly about editing XML files. I did a very small mod for someone a while back to hide the rad meter on the pip boy display and it took me a while to wrap my head around the meta-language used but it does start to make sense after a while. I don't know of any documentation or other resources. I just studied the menu files extracted from Fallout - Misc.bsa. There's a tool for working with bsa files here.

[barinelg]

Thanks for the information! Gives me a good place to really dig into this. Much appreciated. :)

[barinelg]

Hmm. So having a few other issues. I have made a mod and am trying to test it, but it seems like it's not being loaded. Here are the details:

• I made an .esp file
• I have the .esp checked in my launcher
• I am using FOSE, and am launching the game with fose_launcher.exe (GetFOSEVersion returns a value)
• In an attempt to force it, I added custom.ini and added STestFile2 with my file

I don't think it's loading for a few reasons:

• Nothing from my mod is appearing
• GetNumLoadedMods returns nothing
• IsModLoaded says "Mod not loaded"

Any thoughts as to why this is occurring?

[CarlCorey]

I'm assuming you're running those commands in the console? GetNumLoadedMods doesn't seem to print anything to the console for me but IsModLoaded seems to work. You shouldn't have to edit any ini files (not sure what custom.ini is). Go get FO3Edit, put it in the main fallout folder and run it. It'll come up with a list of all mods in the Data directory and indicate which ones are enabled.

 

If you're using the quest technique a runtime error can cause it to look like it's not installed. You can check if your quest is running with GetQuestRunning questID.

[barinelg]

You are correct; I was doing those in the console. GetNumLoadedMods may be deprecated then. If I read correctly, the settings in custom.ini will override any settings in Fallout_default.ini.

 

I will give those tips a try when I can. If there's a runtime error, which log would it output to?

 

Thanks again for all the help!

[CarlCorey]

That's the problem, it usually fails silently. I usually use the FOSE specific PrintToConsole (or printc) to dump debug info to the console.

[barinelg]

There we go! Seeing output now. Thanks!

[barinelg]

Made a lot of progress, but hit another snag that I can't seem to find any information on: storing the name of an object. So far i'm using GetInventoryObject and am able to get the quantity of that object in a container, but I can't seem to get the name. The most I've been able to do is print the name of the object in the console with

printc "%n" itemObject

How do I store the name of an object?