GECK help please

[kevkiev]

Made a custom sniper rifle that I want to be sold at the GunRunners kiosk near Freeside. I saved a new esp (and set it as the active plugin) using FONV esm and my modded weapon esp as the other data files to draw from. The only tutorial I could find was on Bethesda and things were going well until they weren't. (this is my first attempt at anything more than making a simple custom weapon and placing it at goodsprings)

 

Here's the steps I was following - got stumped on step 4. From this tutorial

 

Creating a new container owned by the vendor

1. in the Object Window, under World Objects > Container, double click on any of the VendorContainer* at the bottom of the list.

2. give it a new Editor ID (first text field), and drag & drop the items you want your vendor to sell into the Item List on the right (deleting any items you don't want) and some caps if you want him to buy stuff from you (this is how you increase the amount of money a vendor has).

3. check the Respawns option if you want it to respawn every 3 days, and click OK; when it asks you if you want to create a new Form, click Yes.

4. in the Cell View window, double click on the VendorChestsCell, and drag & drop your new container from the Object Window into that cell in the Render Window.

5. double click on your container in the Render Window, give it a Reference ID (yourNPCVendorChestRef), check a Persistent Reference box, and select the Ownership tab, and select your NPC from the drop down list.

6. for new NPCs, you can also double click on the NPC in the Render Window and select the chest in the Merchant Container tab (this is probably already assigned for existing NPCs): select the VendorChestsCell in the first dropdown, then your chest reference (yourNPCVendorChestRef) in the second dropdown.

 

When I double click on the Cell view window ala' step 4 (the right side of which seems to show a bunch of stuff from FO3?! -sorry for the small fonts, but I see stuff like "flak and shrapnels" and the like) , I got the following image in the render window.

http://i253.photobucket.com/albums/hh70/diggermats/GECKGunnrunners.jpg

 

After clicking "ok" on my new "container" I can see it in the object window (circled in red) but I'm at a loss where I go from here. I couldn't find anything re: GunRunners in the Cell View Window (or am I just not finding it it??)

 

Again, sorry for small print - it seems unavoidable but I'm hoping experienced modders get the gist. The Cell View window is set to "Interiors" (ie where I found "VendorChestCells") if that helps.,

http://i253.photobucket.com/albums/hh70/diggermats/GECKGunnrunners2.jpg

 

I've been pondering this for awhile, but I'm completely stumped. Any hints would be MOST appreciated. Cheers.

[drakeelvin]

Hi,

 

I went through nearly exactly the same process and got stuck on that tutorial. You may want to read this thread, starting with my very last post in it :)

 

Vendor Container Strategies

 

Hope that helps.

[kevkiev]

Ah, ok, thanks.

 

I was making the mod for someone else and I see now it's much more involved than I thought it would be so I think I'm gonna bail. :sweat: Plus, although things were running surprisingly nice right after the 1.4 patch, my game has all of a sudden gone crazy with freeze-ups and CTDs. Can't even run FNVedit anymore (get a fatal error regarding a registry key) so I've got some troubleshooting ahead of me. (damdamdamdamdamdam)

 

But I appreciate the link. Gonna bookmark it should I revisit this idea.

[drakeelvin]

Did you use the latest version of FNVEdit? (June 15)

 

I recall the very first time I ran it, it was really slow to load up. I chalked that up to Vista being dumb, but it took so long I thought it was not even going to start, it was almost as long as Steam usually takes. However, since then its been aok for me and seems to load normally.

 

One thing I do periodically and I did this when 1.4 came out, was I cleaned out my data directory and put in a new one then reinstalled all my mods. I have a ghosted clean data directory that I can install from. Mind you, being a modder I run with 5 or fewer mods at any time, so this is easy for me to do :D

[kevkiev]

Thanks for the comments.

 

Yup, I had tried the beta 8 with no luck and reverted to the 2b6 version. (Didn't make much diff though)

 

It was really strange because I was actually quite happy with my post-1.4 game performance. I think I had maybe 2 or so hrs on it, and things were good. But, like all of a sudden, things started getting REALLY choppy and I'd freeze up or CTD constantly. Going in and out of Bison Steve (I have the new Bison mod) was a sure-fire CTD. Going intof (AWOP's) Frankie's Guns & Ammo (a vendor & shack just S. of Goodsprings) would CTD about 50% of the time - in fact, the whole Goodsprings area seemed to cause problems. Couldn't travel from GS to Jean Skydiving without a CTD somewhere along the way, whether or not I popped in at Frankies. One time, and this was really freaky, I came out of Frankies and there were a ton of these black triangle things all over the environment (which I believe is an artifacting problem, but I don't know what causes it.) Going back into Frankies and exiting again solved the black triangle thing, but things remained very choppy and unstable. All this was right after playing around with the new GECK a bit, but I don't see how that could have gummed anything up.

 

I reinstalled the game this morning and had some joy for awhile, but things went south soon enough again. Tried uninstalling a few mods without success until I just recently uninstalled WIllow companion (which really sucked, I really like that mod) and things seem to have improved a LOT. I've pllayed about an hour+ with no CTDs and the game seems to run a lot smoother. I really miss Willow as a companion, but it's made me rediscover ED-E so that's kinda good. I checked through the Willow Companion thread and nobody seems to be having problems with that mod after the 1.4 so it's likely something with my setup, though I don't know what.

 

I just remembered I never tried the NVSE 2b8 again after going back to 2b6, I'll have to try that again.

 

I like that idea of cleaning out the ol' data file once in awhile. I think I'll try that sometime.

 

Which actually reminds me - kind of a strange thing on the reinstall. I thought I'd deleted the FONV folder from steamapps/common before running the "uninstall" function through control panel, but I guess I musta forgot because when the reinstall was done all my mods were in the data folder. (Though I thought uninstalling FONV in the first place woulda cleaned that out?) I'd actually planned to start clean & fresh from the beginning with a new character, and might do that again if the problems come back. But, at this point, I don't think I can endure another 7-hr. wait while steam reinstalls FONV (man that's a slow download!).

 

Man, that ended up being a long post! :tongue:

[drakeelvin]

No worries.

 

One thing I want to clarify. I made a ghosted copy of a cleanly installed data directory so it takes me about 10 minutes to delete my data folder then copy the ghosted copy back, clean as new. Then I just run Steam and tell it to verify local cache files.

 

In the case of a new version, like when 1.4 came out, I took my clean 1.3 and installed it (10 minutes) then I let Steam verify the local files. Then I ghosted a 1.4 version after Steam was done.

 

I don't see any need to ever reinstall the game, even from DVD it takes about 30 minutes then you have the updates. I only ever reinstall the data folder itself. And I don't compress my ghost image, the data folder is already all compressed files. I just make a duplicate image on an external HD.

 

I can recreate a clean 1.4 data folder in 10 to 15 minutes max.

[kevkiev]

That sounds like a good idea, thanks. One I'll be trying that out in just awhile. The better performance was short-lived (I didn't think the Willow mod was to blame, turns out it wasn't). I've spent the better part of the day trying to figure this out and this point I'm just going to do a clean reinstall and start a new char. Aaargh.