Easy Custom Weapon Magazines w/ Nifskope!!!

[Kickass119]

I've searched around the forums and all over google, but have yet to find a decent tutorial on giving custom magazines to weapons.

 

Do you feel you could squeeze a few more shots out of your 10mm? Does your Service Rifle lack the "uhmmphh" of the LMG? Then have no fear, custom mags are here (in a simple, honest to goodness, plain english, no techy terms steps)!

 

Lets start with something many people have asked about, A good ol' American M16A3 (or something like it)

 

First off... download nifskope (any version is fine)

 

second, have the FNV GECK (if you dont' why are you here?)

 

third, DL BSA Unpacker (this will be used to extract those juicy weapon models and their components)

 

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ADDING AN EXTENDED MAG TO THE SERVICE RIFLE

 

1) specify a folder you want to save all of you mod materials in (the weapon models and such)

 

2) Use BSA Unpacker to locate and download the following files: Servicerifle; Assaultext (the assault carbine w/ extended mags)

 

Depending on how you installed NV, you should follow the directory like this: C/ProgramFiles/Steam/SteamApps/common/NewVegas/Data

inside that data folder will be several BSA files, we want the one labeled FalloutMeshes. Open this in BSA Unpacker. When you have it open press the Sort button down at the bottom (this sorts the files in logical order (i.e. paired with similar files)) and then scroll down to NEAR the bottom, you should start seeing files that say "meshes/weapons/whateverhandedblablabla..." scroll through there for the files mentioned above.

 

Now, for the fun part

 

3) once you have extracted those files to a folder, open them in separate Nifskope windows, you should see the weapon meshes and a jumble of information that boggles the mind at first glance, try to ingore this gargantuan amount of data and stay focussed. In the window that has the Extended Mags Assault Carbine, click on the Magazine part of the model, it should now be highlighted and that little tidbit of info in the corner of the window should now be many line of information. Go over to that mass of data and find the highlighted line (this is the data for the mesh that you clicked on). Click the little white arrow next to it, several more lines should drop down, click the white arrow next to the line that says "##Clip0". From here, three little lines should drop down, one looks like a palette, another says something useless, and the third most importan one shouldn't have an icon and should say nothing, just a number. Right click this line and go to "Block" then click on "Copy" (Make sure not to click "Copy Branch", that tool is usefull, but its not what were using right now).

 

4) Hardest part is over. Now we open the window with the service rifle, repeat the steps above to find the blank line within the Service Rifle Clip's code. Right click the line, go to "Block" and select "Paste Over". TADAH!!! you should now see the Ext mag on the service rifle. The reason we take these steps instead of Copy/Paste Branch is besauce there is a specific animation associated with the clip (most weapons if you click the play button up on the top bar it shows all the weapon animations) and if you paste the branch it does not take into account the clicp animation and just becomes a useless block. Thankfully the clip for the service rifle should not need any repositioning so we can ignore that for now. Save your model and get ready to open the GECK.

 

5) Before you open the GECK though (or if you already have it open, its no problem) create a new folder in the FNV Data folder called "Meshes", then create a folder for your M16 model... put the model in that folder if you didn't already figure that out. Now back to GECK, open the NV.esm and find the tab that says Items>Weapons>2HandedAutomatic. find the Service Rifle. Open up the service rifle to edit and click on the "Art&Sound" tab. In the middle of the page should be a section that says "Model". Click on the "Edit" button next to the space that sya "Model". you should now see a third person model for the service rifle, in all it's 20 round shortcomings. The main space taken up by this window is the texture directories (this is all of the components of you weapon and you select what texture you want to go on them). Click the other "Edit" button at the top. you should now be in the Data directory. find the "Meshes" folder, click it, then your folder, then open the model file you put in there. Wallah! it's you weapon, all new and shiny, now it just needs some textures(although it may seem like it already has textures they are Lo-Res... we don't roll that way). Click on those areas in the texture box now, start anywhere you like (you have to double click though, as with most everything). Now you should see a window with the names of many many many texture, the first few you should see say 1stPerson10mm"_______", you in the right spot, scroll through there till you find the texture labled "1stPersonServiceRifleTexture" :P . open this and a new texture has now been added to you weapon (although it may be hard to tell) repeat this for all of the texture boxes.

 

6) Lets forget the weapon box for a sec, type in 10mm into the search box at the top of the GECK and then select the "all" tab at the very bottom. you should now see a bunch of stuff pertaining to, what else, 10mm's. Find the file that has a blue house looking icon and says 1st person 10mm"____" click on this. Open the edit window and you should see, more stuff, ignore this. Find the other edit button in the window and you should see.... *drum roll*... another weapon model box! repeat the same process as above to find the model and fill in the texture boxes. Once done, press OK. Now go to the top on that window with useless stuff and find the ID, rename the weapon model 1stPersonM16somethingsomething... save that.

 

7) We've been ignoring the weapon box, it's been getting lonely. Find that area that says model again and look for the scroll down menu that say... whats this?... 1st person model? what could that possibly use? Well, it uses that first person model that you just made. locate it.

 

8) your weapon is now complete! (save for a few nuts and bolts such as weapon mods and all that, but im sure you can figure that out on your own, you're smart people... you're modders for pete's sake :) . Now all you REALLY have to do is change the weapon ID to something you like, save it, find a container in the container tab, rename that container, put your weapon in it, open any location in NV you like down in the render window location thingy down at the bottom, place the container in the game world, save your plugin as something catchy, enable it in the New Vegas launch window, and presto blammo you have a Brand spankin' new M16/Service Rifle with a 30 round mag. Now you can change many weapon attributes in the Art&Sound section such as the sund the gun makes when it shoots, the firing animation (this determined if you fire semi auto, auto, or if you reload it like a bolt action) and now you can change the weapon's base model!!!!

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I hope this tutorial is helpful, this is info compiled from a few internet sorces and at least a month's worth of tinkering with Nifskope, im sure many of you have seen the vids on youtube of how to add scope and silencers to your weapons, so now you can have a scoped, silenced service rifle with a 30 round mag and automatic firing.

 

Thanks for reading and happy modding NV community!!

 

-Kickass119

Edited June 3, 2011 by Kickass119