(SPOILERS) Dead Money - Elijah Was Right!

[HereticNoir]

Father Elijah may have been a bad, BAD man (I may be biased because my neck is still sore from the BOMB he had strapped to my neck), but at least he knew what were the real treasures of the Sierra Madre. Gold? Pah. Might as well be a paperweight when you're dying of thirst in the Mojave.

 

No. The true treasures of the Sierra Madre were threefold.

 

1. The Cloud. Nasty stuff, to be sure. But very potent when placed in the hands of a skilled survivalist. It can make you stronger, and it can kill you. It all depends on how you treat it.

 

2. Holograms. An army of ghosts. Invincible, untiring, relentless. And you can hold their hearts in the palm of your hand.

 

And, my personal favorite...

 

3. The Vending Machines. These are... I don't have words. They are basically the replicators from Star Trek. They can take base matter (In the form of Sierra Madre Chips or home-made slugs, if you get the right perks) and turn it into ANYTHING. Food, clothing, weapons, medicine. Anything. Elijah knew this. He found out how to program new designs into the things, and used them to build weapons. Now, I'll leave aside any criticism of the man's judgment to ask one, very simple, question.

 

...Why not me?

 

As far as I can tell, building new "recipe" programs for the Vending Machines should be fairly simple. But then, that's the point. I don't know anything about the GECK or how to design new crafting recipes.

 

What I want to do is to make recipes for the Vending Machines to craft all sorts of new items. Different ammo types, Water, etc.

 

Basically, with a high enough Science skill, you'd go to a crafting table and turn a piece of scrap electronics (And maybe a few Sierra Madre Chips) into a Holotape that let's a Vending Machine create a new object. Different objects would require differing levels of the science skill as well as other skill determined by the type of item (Most miscellaneous things would require repair, Ammo would require Guns, Food and drink would require survival, you get the idea).

 

Now, if someone wants to take on this project, that's fine. But what would really help me is telling me where to go in the GECK to get this done. Or even to get started on it. I've watched some of the how-to videos

on Bethsoft's web site, but I'm still not clear on how to create in-game objects or recipes. Or where I would go to make recipe's for the Vending Machines. Are they a new type of crafting table?

 

I have absolutely no programming background and my ignorance is really starting to bug me. I think this would be a fairly simple project to start with and I would appreciate any help the modding community here could give me.

 

Thanks in advance and, if this isn't your cup of tea, I at least hope it's been an interesting read.

[Skevitj]

The vending machines are just another workbench/reloading bench, so if you load up the GECK they're located under World Objects -> Activators -> NVDLC01 -> NVDLC01VendingArtDeco (and NVDLC01VendingArtDecoOFF)

 

If you look at the script attached, you'll see

player.showrecipemenu NVDLC01VendingMachineRecipes

NVDLC01VendingMachineRecipes is a recipe category (Miscellaneous -> Recipe Category) with the category name: Sierra Madre Vending Machine. Basically, that script line will cause it to display the crafting interface, showing all recipes tagged with "Sierra Madre Vending Machine" as the category.

 

If you want to add new recipes to the game, just go the the Miscellaneous -> Recipe tab and create your recipes. These will the be final exchanges as they will appear in the game, ie, Ingredients: 500 chips (NVDLC01SierraMadreChip) Output: 1 Hunting Rilfe. Obviously you will want to adjust the input and output values to balance it. If you want them to show up on the vending machines, just make sure the Category menu shows "Sierra Madre Vending Machine"

 

There are two main ways you level/skill restrict the recipes, the "Required Skill" field allows you to set a value below which the recipe can't be used. It will always be visible though. Alternatively, a large number of recipes can lead to the menu being cluttered: The "Requirements" field can be used to enter conditions which must be passed (Logical AND or OR on the individual conditions) before the recipe is visible and/or useable. This can be used to restrict visibility to a recipe until the PC obtains the "holodisk" with the "schematic" (Would just be a note).

 

 

Using the info above, here is a brief overview of how I would see it coming together, feel free to use if you like it:

The PC takes "Scrap electronics" and 5 of the particular item of interest to a workbench and can craft a "Recipe Disk" for the particular item, science skill restricted. (The disk just being a note). Because it is such a simple exchange (and there could be a lot of them) the workbench recipes to create the disks would have the requirements being that the PC has all the components in their inventory. Once the PC has the disk they can go to a vending machine and exchange for the item. Having the "Recipe Disk" for a particular item is a requirement for the recipe to be visible.

 

Alternatively, instead of clogging up the workbench with recipe creation, it may be better to use a workbench to create the disks from the scrap elec (Only 1 recipe) and then have a terminal menu system which can be used to program the disks. The vending machine side would work exactly the same as before.

 

 

If there is any bit in my explanation which isn't clear, or you're just after more info, ask away. Otherwise, if you want I could rig up the mod for a single item (I don't have a heap of time) and then you can play around with that mod to understand how it works, and then use it as a template to create your own.

Edited May 4, 2011 by Skevitj

[HereticNoir]

Many thanks, Skevitj!

 

I'm doing a clean install of New Vegas, Dead Money, the GECK, etc. And then I will fiddle around with things. Maybe try one more time to watch some of the tutorial videos and try and follow along with my copy of the GECK, see if I gain a better understanding of things this time.

 

That terminal idea sounds good. I could add some scripts to the terminal in Elijah's bunker. Maybe figure out how to add a script that won't let people start turning the blank holotapes into notes until after they've completed Dead Money. There's something like that in the script for that terminal already regarding

Elijah's note to Veronica

. So it shouldn't be too hard for me to mimic.

 

I'm thinking I might also expand this mod out a bit. maybe add some new recipe's for cloud residue.

 

And then I had the idea that is probably me biting off more than I can chew...

 

I had a goofy idea (That would take me learning even more about the GECK) for letting the player use the holograms as guards/soldiers. They wouldn't be companions in the strictest sense. But they could follow you and shoot at enemies. I even had an idea for taking one of the holo-emitters from dead money and mounting it on a combat helmet (So I'll need to learn how to render 3D objects). I figure if you're getting a ghost army out of the deal, you can afford to look like you're wearing an electrical dork helmet.

 

For reasons of game balance, these holograms wouldn't be invincible like the ones in the Sierra Madre, so (in game) the scavenged emitters would have a weaker output. Enough so that the holograms can be destabilized with enough direct damage (Essentially take the security holograms, give them hit points, make them summon-able, weaken the strength of their attack). You could also craft Holo-emitters that could be dropped on the ground that would then summon a hologram that would guard the place where it's dropped.

 

I hear "Pathing" thrown around a lot as a term. Is that something I have to code into my NPC's or is that coded into a cell? Nevermind. I just found it on the GECK wiki. The Holo's that follow me would be pathing. the one's that guard an area would be patrolling. Which looks like it would be impossible to set up, so I'm thinking the guard holo's will just stand still. Unless I can get them to wander around slightly.

 

 

 

TLDR version of the above: The Heretic likes to ramble and will sometimes use forum threads to make notes. Sorry 'bout that...

[Skevitj]

The terminal is key locked until the end of Dead Money anyway, so that already takes care of the restriction. It should be easy to program the "disk programming" onto the terminal, and there is a workbench nearby for creating the disks, along with a vending machine.

 

While the list of ideas might go on, just start by trying to do one thing at a time. From experience, if you tend to ramble, you'll always end up adding new ideas to a mix at the expense of finishing older ones, meaning nothing ever gets finished. Just implement the recipes first, then the disks, then once that is done and working so you can use/release it, then you can look at adding new ideas.

 

As far as a companion hologram goes, pathing is done automatically by a creature if they have a destination and the cell is navmeshed. The meshing is something that is done by the creater of a cell (and is already done for all NV spaces), ie, If a house mod says it's "companion friendly" or something similar, that means it has a navmesh setup and creatures can navigate their way around it. To get the hologram to follow you, you would just need to add an AI package (guard or follow probably) which has the PC as the target. I haven't spent a lot of time playing around with companions, but there should be plenty of tutorials out there to help create your own. At the worst, I made a sentry bot companion in 2 secs by attaching a follow PC AI package and sticking them in the Player faction.

[HereticNoir]

Thanks again, Skevitj. You've been very helpful. I have managed to do my first THING in the GECK.

 

I (Drumroll, please) Have moved a knife 2 feet to the left!

 

But wait, there's more!

 

I have also added an active hot plate to the Abandoned BOS Bunker.

 

I know these sound like pedestrian accomplishments, but they took me almost 5 hours to accomplish so I wanted to brag.

 

Now to make a few simple recipes for things to make with Cloud Residue and call it a night.

[HereticNoir]

A new issue arises.

 

I'm trying to use some of the resources from Dead Money and...Well, I'll give you an example.

 

I want to make a vending machine recipe. The exact type doesn't matter right now. I'm just trying to get the GECK to recognize a Sierra Madre Chip as an ingredient.

 

I've been able to make a few other recipes that involved me pulling things out of the Dead Money .bsa and making new objects out of them. But I can't find the Sierra Madre Chip.

 

Is there a way to copy ingredients like you can copy requirement conditions?

[majinshinsa]

if you rename it, i would think it would ask if you wanted to make a new form. click yes and its an exact copy but with a different name. now you can just edit the parts you wanna change without effecting the original

[HereticNoir]

That...that solves almost every single problem I've been having!

 

...And it works, too!

 

Thank you so much, Majin!

[majinshinsa]

no problem! helping people is the best way to learn i found out. someone asks a question and i try my hardest to figure it out. that way we both learn

[Skevitj]

The Madre chip has the editor ID NVDLC01SierraMadreChip so just type that in the filter section on the top of the object window and press the "All" tab (at the bottom) and it should show up. Alternatively, the way I first found it was to just look at one of the existing recipes for the vending machines and it was sitting there under ingredients (One of the junk food purchase recipes I think, not overly important).

 

Use the existing recipes as templates for creating new ones, there is bound to be a recipe which already exists and uses some of the ingredients/products you're after. Just remember to duplicate them first and give them a new name, never just rename something. (Renaming an editor id to create a new object is the same as duplicating -> renaming). Duplicating existing items can also save you the trouble of having to dig into the bsa files and locate the nif/texture files as their addresses are copied across in the duplication.

 

As for the slow progress, each has their own: It took me almost 2h just to figure out how to rotate a mesh in nifscope, despite it being as simple as changing a single value. Things speed up a lot as you get used to them.

 

 

 

EDIT: You shouldn't be trying to duplicate items like the Madre chips or the hot plates. If it already exists somewhere in the game, as both do: NVDLC01SierraMadreChip for the casino chips and NVDLC01CraftingOven for the Hot Plate, then you should just use the existing items instead of creating your own. I'm not sure if that's what you're doing but the posts above seem to indicate you're trying to reinvent the wheel.

 

Note: It's NVDLC01SierraMadreChip, not ...Siera... Typo from my first post just got copied down the line, fixed now.

Edited May 4, 2011 by Skevitj