Adding mods to FO3?

[TheDaedricLordOfBiscuits]

Hi.

I played Oblivion and installed many mods for the game, however I thought it would be the same for Fallout 3.

It was horribly not.

I installed a mod, specifically the Modern Weapons pack for the game. When I opened the .RAR, it included as usual the Meshes, Textures and the .esp. When I went to the FALLOUT 3 folder and then DATA I didn't find the meshes, textures, sounds etc. in regular Windows Explorer files, they were in .BSA files. And yes, I did look up how to install mods for FO3, and it did not include anything about .BSA files.

 

Please do not flame a concerned user, I am very serious about this matter. I always wanted to enhance my gaming experience.

Reply ASAP! Thank you.

[SariDecember]

Hey there and welcome to Fallout 3! ;)

 

Don't be too concerned about the bsa files. The games vanilla meshes and textures come packed in these archives, some times mods have bsa archives too buts the hardly the case. Just drop the respective files in the data folder and its subfolders (meshes/textures/sounds).

I'm not quite sure if these dropped files override the packed vanilla files by default. In any event event, I would recommend you get the programs "ArchiveInvalidationInvalidated" and "Fallout Mod Manager" (FOMM)

Once you got used to the process, installing FO3 mods is a pretty convenient thing! ;)

 

Oh and I forgot: 90% of the mods come with an *.esm or *.esp file. These files need to be placed directly into the DATA folder. Once you start the custom FO Launcher, go to "Data Files" the dropped esp file should show up. Place the checkmark and start the game, there you go. This also goes much smoother with FOMM!

Edited May 15, 2011 by SariDecember

[TheDaedricLordOfBiscuits]

 

Just drop the respective files in the data folder and its subfolders (meshes/textures/sounds).

 

 

Hey, thanks for the help.

But here's the thing. the subfolders of the Data folder, such as textures and meshes do not exist, they only exist as .BSA files. Anyways, I will try my luck and just drop the files into the DATA folder. Thanks!

[TheDaedricLordOfBiscuits]

Failure, in many ways.

I loaded the file using FOMM and launched the game only to have it crash on me.

Yelp!

[bben46]

Just like Oblivion, the meshes and textures files do not exist in the vanilla game. They will be created automatically IF you unzip a mod that has them directly into the data folder. Or, you can create them yourself and the mods will use the folders.

 

As already stated, all of the vanilla assets are in the BSA files. JUST like they were in the original version of Oblivion. I think an official patch actually added the textures file to Oblivion, but I believe the Meshes still had to either be added by a mod or manually.

[Moraelin]

Sounds like you didn't unpack the mod archive with directories. Well, just a guess.

 

Also, if the game crashes right on launching, from my experience the common cause is that one of your mods needs another mod (typically an .esm file) and you don't have it. E.g., you downloaded some gun that needs CALIBR for ammo that's not included in the game. If you activate the mod and don't have CALIBR, the game will crash. Other such common situations are stuff like races that need a specific hairstyles mod, or shop mods that add some shop door for the shop defined somewhere else, or really, that kind of stuff. Most mods include some kind of text file or readme that says what they need. Read it carefully.

Edited May 15, 2011 by Moraelin