How Hard Is It To Make Mods?

[Doom1991]

I'm wondering how hard it would be to make mods for Fallout 4. Making meshes, textures, audio files, so on. How hard do you think it would be for someone with 0 experience in those areas? Of course the textures and audio files I can find someone to do for me but meshes alone. I'd really like to do a Gun Runners Arsenal mod for the game and I don't think anyone else would get it done without guidance. Also what issues are there when it comes to making a mod like this in Fallout 4 with using guns like That Gun, Bozar, or other guns from Fallout 3 and New Vegas? Any legal issues or anything?

 

If anyone is interested in helping make Gun Runners Arsenal into a mod, I sure could use some modders help on making this. I may not be able to make a lot but I have a keen eye on detail and can provide a great deal of support on what to add, how to add it, stats to balance, and so on.

[threedog1421]

Unless you're going to make it from scratch you can't use any assets from Gun Runners content as it's copyrighted...

[gamefever]

Making mods....

 

It depends on what your making really.

 

Making a Texture is not so bad.

Paint Programs:

-Gimp is free

-Photoshop or Adobe Elements, these cost money but I find are easier to use...

DDS file converter...This is free

How it can be: well its sometimes real easy its like you get a weird map but its a map so its kinda like coloring in between the lines, now that sounds easy but it takes experience to make interesting textures like the stuff you see from Asian Artists.

--Sticking with Posters is fun and easy to do...There are some real nice Tuts on making Worn/Old posters that will fit well in Fallout game...You can take almost any picture and make it look worn and have it fit the game.

 

Making a Mesh

Nifskope: Every Modder should have this even scrubs should have this in there install cause its really that cool....This allows you to open meshes change slots, swap parts, colors, and well a bunch of little things that are useful...Like making sure the mesh is optimized for the game due to expected game flags.

Blender 2.49 to current: Free to use mesh rendering software, difficult to use but its actually a good tool and free.

 

For Fallout 4 there will be some things you have to do to port stuff to the rendering software and that can be complex also, I have only done it for Skyrim and it's probably different for Fo4

 

3DS MAX: this costs some cash so usually its college students that are using this or even simi professionals.

Now and then you can pick up a copy but uh Im not certain about that...I think you get charged rent on these. It may depend on Licensing.

 

Construction Kit/GECK

Its free its out now...Probably a good place to start would be looking up a tutorial and building say a home or fort for some raiders...Pay serious attention to how NavMesh work is done and remember do not delete objects like every noob out there does.

 

The issue for NEW modders with big ideas is that they tend to have ideas that are TOO BIG....its much easier to start with small ideas and build up from there.

 

Example,

You could start by Retexturing a gun in the game and try to make it look better....Then from there you start working up to a whole pack of gun retextures....Later you might do some ESP work to make it so that both your Rexture and the original weapon texture can co-exist in game making it look like there is more diversity.

 

Making it so that both your gun retexture and the original texture can exist at the same time in the game would be actually very cool....People would like your mod even more.

Edited May 20, 2016 by gamefever

[gamefever]

QuoteQuoteQuote

 

 

Example,

 

Worn 10mm Pistol.

 

Open the GECK.

Load Fallout 4.ESM

 

In search box find 10mm,

 

Copy the 10mm

New Edit ID "Worn 10MM"

 

Now you have a copy of 10mm,

Find its texture path, redirect that to your custom texture.

 

Now find the Construction Data for the 10mm upgrades.

Copy that and change your copy over to "Worn 10mm Construction Upgrades"

 

Go into your construction copy...Change the gun effected to your 10mm...

You have to then copy each type of 10mm gun and link it to your construction table....

 

When you get done with that...

 

Create a form entry that contains all the variations of your 10mm.

 

Then find Raider Guns Leveled List,

Add entry and place your FORM entry for your 10mm

 

Now the raiders can have either the original or your texture work for 10mm.

 

 

Later you might cut your teeth on adding a Mesh....

 

Find something neato in the Fallout4meshes.BSA by opening it with a BSA unpacker....

 

Maybe a set of teeth pasted to the side of the gun would look cool....Think about adding Spikes or Bits of Wire...Anything that can change the 10mm appearance that makes it look sick and twisted in a way that others might find surprising...Call it decoration, describe it like the user of the gun took the time to personalize his weapon like back in the old days when your weapon was your life.

 

So get the teeth out and paste them in with Nifskope...

 

Anyway that's just an idea.

 

____________________

 

The most difficult part of making mods when your new is realizing you need to start with small steps.

Edited May 20, 2016 by gamefever

[Doom1991]

 

QuoteQuoteQuote

 

 

Example,

 

Worn 10mm Pistol.

 

Open the GECK.

Load Fallout 4.ESM

 

In search box find 10mm,

 

Copy the 10mm

New Edit ID "Worn 10MM"

 

Now you have a copy of 10mm,

Find its texture path, redirect that to your custom texture.

 

Now find the Construction Data for the 10mm upgrades.

Copy that and change your copy over to "Worn 10mm Construction Upgrades"

 

Go into your construction copy...Change the gun effected to your 10mm...

You have to then copy each type of 10mm gun and link it to your construction table....

 

When you get done with that...

 

Create a form entry that contains all the variations of your 10mm.

 

Then find Raider Guns Leveled List,

Add entry and place your FORM entry for your 10mm

 

Now the raiders can have either the original or your texture work for 10mm.

 

 

Later you might cut your teeth on adding a Mesh....

 

Find something neato in the Fallout4meshes.BSA by opening it with a BSA unpacker....

 

Maybe a set of teeth pasted to the side of the gun would look cool....Think about adding Spikes or Bits of Wire...Anything that can change the 10mm appearance that makes it look sick and twisted in a way that others might find surprising...Call it decoration, describe it like the user of the gun took the time to personalize his weapon like back in the old days when your weapon was your life.

 

So get the teeth out and paste them in with Nifskope...

 

Anyway that's just an idea.

 

____________________

 

The most difficult part of making mods when your new is realizing you need to start with small steps.

 

The problem being that I don't know how to make custom textures. I'm semi-experienced with photo-editing programs like Gimp and Photoshop but the most I've done in the past 3-5 years is pixel art. I've never done 2k textures or anything close to even 1k. Meshes are self explanatory in a sense but the rest will take time to handle. Programs are not really my forte and that's my issue. I understand the basics of program usage but my strong points are critical thinking, leadership, and design. I can put it all down on paper in great detail, I just cannot sculpt the work.

[gamefever]

I started modding with a background in Painting with oils and acrylic paints.

 

I didn't know that mods had to go into

 

Oblivion\Data

 

Whats that?

 

I had mods set up like this sometimes

 

Oblivion\data\data\meshes\characters\ yada yada

 

I really fudged up a whole lot of installations...

 

For a long while I watched videos in languages I didn't even know...I only speak English and apparrantly Im not any good at writing...haha

But none of that matters as long as I keep my ideas small and build them up as I go along.

 

Heck for the longest time I had a Modding Journal...A paper notebook that I wrote every little note that I had learned about modding into...at one point for a mod I built I had 3 notebooks handwritten in college rule....Notes all over them and ideas in the margins.

Edited May 20, 2016 by gamefever

[gamefever]

Here's a way I started to mod...

 

I saw a mod I really liked made by KendoII

 

So, he had a Raider Bar with a lot of sexy outfits for it.....BUT the raiders in the game world would NEVER wear the outfits....So....I decided in my game they would wear the outfits but no one had done the work....So it was up to me if I wanted it, I had to make it.

 

I found a program called Xedit....written by Eliminster..

 

Eliminster had a tutorial that was a 200 page PDF.

 

So I downloaded the Xedit and Tut...

 

Read through the table of contents looking for "how to add armors" well...never found that....ended up reading through almost his whole technical manual by then I felt I kinda understood the program.

 

So I just started looking around for what determines what Raiders wear....

 

Found a mod....It added armors to raiders.

 

Opened that in Xedit.

 

Saw that there were not many entries in the mod....Made it a lot easier to search for the Leveled List Data than combing through Fallout3.ESM

 

It takes time to mod.

I just wanted to add those armors and sure I had doubts but for me it was just an obstacle that I was going and did overcome.

 

The other thing is that there were far fewer people making mods back in Fallout 3.

 

And people were less helpful.

 

They often called people like me bad names.

Edited May 20, 2016 by gamefever

[gamefever]

A good way to make a mod,

 

Find a mod that does something close to what you want to make....

 

Open that up with the free programs and look at how they built it.

 

When a modder told me that....I was like "haha right"

 

Turned out at the time to be the best advice ever.

 

 

_________________

 

Not sure what else to tell you...

 

I had no background in computers when I started modding like 10 years ago.

I started making mods maybe 6 years ago.

 

Now I'm the number one provider of UUNP conversions for Skyrim on the internet with over 1,000 (I think its like close to around there) outfit conversions to my name.

 

UUNP is like CBBE Bodyslide, Skyrim didn't start with a Bodyslide like Fallout 4 did, so every outfit wouldn't really mix well with others...There are still thousands of outfits out there for Skyrim that are likely not interchangeable with their parts. You don't face that with Fallout 4 though...Almost everything is on CBBE Bodyslide.

 

What I wanted...I wanted the outfits to actually fit correctly....I was tired of having like no ability to swap stuff around and have it all work together....I mean UNP has like 50 body types and outfits can have like 100 parts....

 

Imagine trying to mash up stuff from like 3 different outfits made to fit 3 different bodies....Doesn't turn out good.

 

And no one was making conversions....Or there were like very very few...

 

But then I started converting whole packs over and doing it well...

 

Now a year later if you search the internet there are like a bunch of people making conversions available for every outfit each week.

Edited May 20, 2016 by gamefever

[noahdvs]

I like doing audio, mainly synthetic sounds and I think more people should try messing with audio. It's easier than 3D modeling because you have fewer dimensions to deal with and simpler tools, but it can be a bit like painting a picture in the dark sometimes because there aren't many rules to guide you. There are few free complete software packages (Digital Audio Workstations or DAWs) for making your own audio and most of them aren't nearly as good as paid software, even for average people, which is unfortunate. However, Audacity (audio editor, not a DAW) is still good for editing together royalty free sounds into something you like, Reaper is professional software with an infinite trial and FL Studio has the best value for price if you want to get serious along with a UI that makes it easy to get started. Make sure the DAW you use can use VST format instrument and effect plugins. There are thousands and thousands of free VST instruments and effects out there for changing sounds and making sounds from scratch. Don't be afraid to go wild and tweak all the knobs.

Edited May 21, 2016 by noahdvs

[foxcool]

Watch some Bob Ross and learn to paint, everybody can paint, just pick up a brush and do it.