First Modification

[Bosca]

Hi there,

 

So I was toying around with values in F04Edit and it's been going ok. Now I'm looking into messing around with player models, except it's not working!

I wanted to mess around with the cat model to see what could be done and I toyed with some values: https://i.gyazo.com/8a39e765a05b6c7b345e6f13c6ddb18b.png

So I tried to change the cats voice reference and give it a ghoul head but it doesn't work in game? I figured the values in the boxes were just references to different files/models to use.

Can any of you guys point me in the right direction, or even better, point me in the direction of some good tutorials. I'm utterly lost and the searches I do just bring up topics regarding request mods, or issues with mods that have already been created.

 

Please forgive me if I'm mistaken, it's my first time toying with the models themselves and I'm still getting a feel for this! :smile:

 

Thank you,

Bosca

-edit-

Fixed my gyazo link

 

-edit 2-

I should add when I spawn a cat in game using the base id 0023b857 it doesn't look any different.

Edited February 17, 2016 by Bosca

[PoliteRaider]

I totally approve of the edit random stuff to see what happens, school of learning (just make sure to back up your game files because you will corrupt them quickly with this sort of method).

 

The reason it's not working is you're not just telling it to use a file, you're telling it to use Head Parts which is another entry in the fallout 4 data structure. Anytime you see something in FO4Edit followed by something like this [HDPT:000BD6A0] it means it's another record that you can find somewhere else in FO4Edit. You can find it by copying just the number part, in this case 00BD6A0 and pasting it into the Form ID window in the top left of the FO4Edit screen.

 

So if we open that record we see:

 

http://i.imgsafe.org/15422d9.jpg

 

Notice how there's a flag in there saying "Valid Races". This particular head-part that you're requesting it to use requires that the model in question has HeadPartsChildren (which the cat does not have).

 

Now Bethesda put that in there for a reason, because if you do successfully overwrite that and then trick the game into using a child body part on a cat, the results won't be pretty. Assuming that it doesn't cause any serious problems like the entire game crashing, which isn't out of the question, you'd get very strange results because it's applying a mathematical process to something that it was never designed for. Computers can't use common sense and it will do exactly what you tell it to do, so unless someone at Bethesda anticipated and prevented a particular failure you could get cats with no eyes, cats with eyes miles long or other weird results that were never intended to work.

 

I'm sorry I don't know any tutorials for FO4Edit beyond the basic "how to make it run and edit things" which you've clearly already got a grasp on. The rest is just a matter of looking through the records and trying to understand how the game makes these things work. My first suggestion, whenever you're seeing something that's a link (like I showed above) follow that link and read what it's referring to. Don't expect to find everything neatly contained in one place, everything is built to interact and depend on everything else.

 

Also download some mods and take a look to see how they did things, that's another good way of learning how files can be manipulated. It's a lot clearer in those cases because it only shows what they've changed. Look at what they've changed and follow any links that they're referring to. You shouldn't ever copy someone's mod exactly without permission, that would be plagiarism but you can certainly learn from them and gain an understanding of how mods and the basic game works.

[Bosca]

Sorry my reply never sent!

Firstly thank you for your reply and your help! I seriously appropriate the help! :)

I have another wee question for you however and I was wondering if you could help! I downloaded a mod like you suggested that replaces a model. Here it is for reference: http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/570/? (replaces radroaches with a cat model).

 

Thing is, my FO4Edit is not updating and allowing me to import the .esm so I can see how it was done. I havn't had an issue before so I'm unsure as to what went wrong. Do you have any advise?

Thanks again!

Edited February 20, 2016 by Bosca

[PoliteRaider]

You're welcome, I'm glad I could help.

 

In regards to your other question Replace Radroaches with Cats doesn't have an ESM or an ESP file, which is why you're not able to view one in FO4Edit. This is also why the mod causes so many visual glitches, there's nothing telling the game to expect cats and instead it is trying to load a Radroach but has a folder full of replacement cat meshes instead. To use a metaphor, it's trying to fit a cat into a radroach shaped hole so the cat gets a little bit squished in strange ways.

 

How Fallout 4 works.

 

When you run fallout 4 it does the following:

 

• Check the .ini for instructions on how it should run. Presumably you've changed your .ini file to tell it to load mods.
• Loads up everything from the .ba2 folders, these contain all the textures, sounds, models, etc that are used by Bethesda in the vanilla game.
• Opens up everything in a loose directory in the Fallout4/data folder. It will replace anything from its vanilla game assets with the version it finds in these folders.
• Reads <your username>/appdata/local/fallout4/plugin.txt and sees the list of all ESMs and ESPs it should load.
• Loads Fallout4.esm this file contains all of the instructions of how to run a game of Fallout 4, with all the quests, characters, items and other details.
• Loads all other .esm files. These are known as 'master' files and always load first because other files depend on them. The .esm files may contain new records, adding additional items, characters, etc into the game and telling Fallout4 how to use them. However it may also contain override records, which replace something from Fallout4.esm to make it operate differently.
• Loads your .esp files in the order that they appear on your plugins.txt list. Each time it loads one it will replace any records from previous ESPs with the new ones contained within the new ESP that it's currently loading.
• Runs the game now based on everything it's loaded.

 

Now that you know this you can see how Replace Radroaches with Cats works.

 

• Fallout loads its normal vanilla files from the .ba2 archives. However it then replaces some of them with the new Mesh and Sound files that are in open directories in your Fallout 4 data folder, added in there by the mod.
• When you encounter a radroach Fallout4.esm tells it to load the radroach model from its files. It opens up the replacement Meshes that the mod put in and instead of getting a radroach it gets a cat instead.
• Computers just follow instructions so it doesn't realize that this isn't what it was expecting, it simply puts the cat model straight into the game just like it would a radroach. However because Fallout 4.esm includes details about the radroaches size and other qualities that don't perfectly match with the cat-mesh you get weird graphical glitches.
• Fallout4.esm also says that the radroach should make noises so once again the computer checks its files to get a radroach noise and instead gets the replacement cat noise that the mod put into the data directory instead. Once again it has no way of recognizing that this in incorrect so it simply plays the sound.

This mod is probably not the best one to examine because it doesn't use FO4edit and is simply a file replacer. This technique runs into some problems here as well, which is another reason that it's probably best not to use it as your example.