Any advice on how to start modding

[CenterWing]

I hope I'm posting this in the right section.

 

I just got on the Forum today, and I'm planing on making mods for Fo4, I have experience in the field of programming, but I'm still lost when it comes to something like this. I was wondering if I could ask questions and receive advice about how to begin.

[PoliteRaider]

Hi, welcome to the forum.

 

Making mods is a lot of fun, so I'd definitely recommend it. Learning can be a little tricky, because while there are tutorials and similar out there on the basic skills, one of the key parts of modding is figuring out how the game does something so you can work with it. It's the big difference between modding and game design. However I think it's definitely worth it and one of the more fun parts of modding is trying to figure these things out.

 

The big question though is what sort of mods you want to make? People do all sorts of different tasks to make a mod, whether it's 3d modelling & texturing, writing, coding, audio editing and much much more. Different mods will use different skills or sometimes require multiple people working together to get all the skills needed. Knowing what skills to learn requires knowing what you want to make.

[CenterWing]

Hi, welcome to the forum.

 

Making mods is a lot of fun, so I'd definitely recommend it. Learning can be a little tricky, because while there are tutorials and similar out there on the basic skills, one of the key parts of modding is figuring out how the game does something so you can work with it. It's the big difference between modding and game design. However I think it's definitely worth it and one of the more fun parts of modding is trying to figure these things out.

 

The big question though is what sort of mods you want to make? People do all sorts of different tasks to make a mod, whether it's 3d modelling & texturing, writing, coding, audio editing and much much more. Different mods will use different skills or sometimes require multiple people working together to get all the skills needed. Knowing what skills to learn requires knowing what you want to make.

Well that's the thing, I just see thing wrong or have ideas. I'd like to learn everything I'd need for a given idea. Although I was thinking about starting 3D modelling first, then move onto other areas when the GECK comes out.

[PoliteRaider]

Well there's nothing wrong with trying to learn everything, just so long as you understand that it's a huge undertaking that will never truly be finished and that your individual work in any one field will probably never match a focused specialist in that field.

 

If you want to start with 3d modelling for Fallout 4, then I'd say your first stop should be Nightasy's video tutorial. While this one specifically focuses on creating armour and outfits, the beginning of the series largely covers the programs you need and the setup required to get them talking to Fallout.

 

 

However don't forget that the basic skills involved often have nothing to do with Fallout 4. It's worth your time seeking out other tutorials for programs like Maya, Photoshop and other tools you might be using. Likewise you don't have to focus just on papyrus scripting, spending the time to read about object oriented design principles is time just as well spent.

[CenterWing]

Well there's nothing wrong with trying to learn everything, just so long as you understand that it's a huge undertaking that will never truly be finished and that your individual work in any one field will probably never match a focused specialist in that field.

 

If you want to start with 3d modelling for Fallout 4, then I'd say your first stop should be Nightasy's video tutorial. While this one specifically focuses on creating armour and outfits, the beginning of the series largely covers the programs you need and the setup required to get them talking to Fallout.

 

 

However don't forget that the basic skills involved often have nothing to do with Fallout 4. It's worth your time seeking out other tutorials for programs like Maya, Photoshop and other tools you might be using. Likewise you don't have to focus just on papyrus scripting, spending the time to read about object oriented design principles is time just as well spent.

Nice to know I'm biting off more than I can chew with this... I don't even know what programming language I'm supposed to use.

[PoliteRaider]

 

Nice to know I'm biting off more than I can chew with this... I don't even know what programming language I'm supposed to use.

 

Yeah it's going to be a big effort, but that's not to say that you won't get results.

 

Fallout uses a high level object oriented programming language called Papyrus that runs in game to handle complicated events for quests, items in game, that sort of thing. You can write 'scripts' in Papyrus that are called based upon in game events, such as a character dying, activating an object, etc. The Creation Kit usually supplies some sort of developer environment for Papyrus, but there are third party tools as well. Scripts can be attached through FO4Edit without the creation kit being required.

 

The Papyrus functionality is a little limited, because Bethesda frequently cheats a little by handling some of their things inside the game engine, so Papyrus is an incomplete tool. However a 3rd party tool, known as F4SE (Fallout 4 Script Extender) is in development which extends this programming language. This new tool is based off of the SKSE or Skyrim script extender and by the same team. Back in Skyrim days it allowed scripts to do a whole lot more.

 

Papyrus for Fallout is a little more advanced than it was for Skyrim, but the exact details aren't known yet as the documentation has not been fully released.

 

You can find more information by looking at the Creation Kit Wiki, a Tutorial, the Caprica Papyrus Compiler for Fallout 4 and the Champollion Papyrus Decompiler for Fallout 4.

Edited March 25, 2016 by PoliteRaider

[CenterWing]

 

 

Nice to know I'm biting off more than I can chew with this... I don't even know what programming language I'm supposed to use.

 

Yeah it's going to be a big effort, but that's not to say that you won't get results.

 

Fallout uses a high level object oriented programming language called Papyrus that runs in game to handle complicated events for quests, items in game, that sort of thing. You can write 'scripts' in Papyrus that are called based upon in game events, such as a character dying, activating an object, etc. The Creation Kit usually supplies some sort of developer environment for Papyrus, but there are third party tools as well. Scripts can be attached through FO4Edit without the creation kit being required.

 

The Papyrus functionality is a little limited, because Bethesda frequently cheats a little by handling some of their things inside the game engine, so Papyrus is an incomplete tool. However a 3rd party tool, known as F4SE (Fallout 4 Script Extender) is in development which extends this programming language. This new tool is based off of the SKSE or Skyrim script extender and by the same team. Back in Skyrim days it allowed scripts to do a whole lot more.

 

Papyrus for Fallout is a little more advanced than it was for Skyrim, but the exact details aren't known yet as the documentation has not been fully released.

 

You can find more information by looking at the Creation Kit Wiki, a Tutorial, the Caprica Papyrus Compiler for Fallout 4 and the Champollion Papyrus Decompiler for Fallout 4.

 

So that's what the script extender does huh? And I'll have to look at Papyrus too. Then there's FO4Edit, I'm not familiar with that, isn't it like the GECK?

[PoliteRaider]

 

So that's what the script extender does huh? And I'll have to look at Papyrus too. Then there's FO4Edit, I'm not familiar with that, isn't it like the GECK?

 

FO4Edit (sometimes known as xEdit since the same program is used for many other titles) is a third party tool which decodes .esp and .esm files created by the GECK by interpreting the hexadecimal codes inside into a more human readable format and allows the user to edit them.

 

While the Creation Kit is a much more user friendly piece of software with an advanced GUI, it suffers from the same problem as most user friendly pieces of software in that it makes assumptions about what the user wants. This frequently results in minor problems with the mods created through Creation Kit, such as dirty edits (although I'm led to believe that this can mostly be avoided in Creation Kit by following the correct workflow).

 

xEdit however does exactly what you tell it to do, thus following the Garbage In, Garbage Out principle. It won't fix your mistakes, it won't make things easy on you, but it just does what you tell it to. For an inexperienced user this can potentially cause problems and occasionally causes people to think of xEdit and the mods created using it with an unfair level of suspicion. Unlike the Creation Kit however it will never cause problems without the user making a mistake, thus it is actually used by most authors to repair mistakes caused by the Creation Kit.

 

Most modders will develop the more complicated content in Creation Kit, taking advantage of the easier implementation and then use xEdit to "clean" the mods before releasing them to the public.

 

At present, the FO4Edit program is not able to interpret all the records in an .esp or .esm file. It can only recognize the ones that are unchanged from Skyrim or which have been identified by users through a process of trial and error. As such some records will display as "unknown" or just show hexadecimal code. These can still be edited, but of course this is going to be a matter of trial and error in order to get any results. Once the Creation Kit has been released though, FO4Edit will likely be improved and rereleased as it will be much easier to discover what each part of the .esp and .esm files does when you have access to the Creation Kit.

[VIitS]

Another recommendation for someone starting to mod: if you see a mod that does something you want to be able to do (such as add an effect, change textures, etc..), study it to figure out how to do it yourself. Most of what I know about using xEdit/the GECK I learned by studying other mods or the vanilla files. While it doesn't help as much with model making (since looking at a model doesn't really tell you how they made it look the way they did), that's where tutorials comes in. And for anything beyond making the actual mesh (such as applying animations, collision, etc...), it still applies to some extent.

 

Hell, I've downloaded a few mods recently purely so I could figure out how they do certain things. And don't worry if you don't know anything about scripting. And you do a surprising amount with just xEdit/the GECK, although there are also a lot of things that are strangely hard if not impossible without scripts that seem like they should have been easy to do.

[Reneer]

There are some wonderful suggestions here already, but I want to add just one or two things.

 

1. Don't be afraid to ask questions. Unless you are delving deep into the weeds, there will generally be another modder out there who will be willing to guide you and lend a hand.

2. Don't be afraid to experiment and try things. I can't tell you how many times I've typed something into the script editor window and found that it actually worked.

2. Don't give up. Sometimes it seems that Bethesda designed the game engine only halfway (oh I could rave about this for days) but just keep in mind that there are hundreds of ways to skin a plugin.