Converting my mod

[SrJulie]

Real life diverted my attention from finishing my Mothership Zeta - reloaded City in Space until recently. I have received some emails asking me to start working on it again. However, having played through Fallout New Vegas I would like to port the mod to Fallout New Vegas. This is especially due to a part of the lore where I would like to take off from starting a new faction...that part where the religious ghouls are helped by the player to launch a rocket and find a new home.

 

The biggest problem is of course the art assets. I will probably have to start over using Fallout New Vegas assets. Obviously I know how to bring Fallout 3 art assets (such as those from Mothership Zeta) and bring them into Fallout New Vegas - I am just not sure if I should. I expect the answer is no; however since both games where published by the very same publisher, Bethesda Softworks, I thought I would double check.

 

Any authoriative answers?

[Quetzlsacatanango]

You can't use FO3 stuff in FNV that wasn't included in FNV.

The good news is that basically all (it seems) MZ dungeon stuff is included in the FNV BSAs. You probably have to make new forms for a lot of it, but at least it's there.

[SrJulie]

Wow...that makes my day. Thanks for the lesson in modding. I opened up Fallout New Vegas with the mod manager and there they where...all of the DLC05mz art assets. It turns out they WERE included with the game. At this point I extracted what I need. Still, I am wondering if it is possible to simply create a new form and refer to the .nif file within the .bsa file without extracting.

 

Thanks for the help.

[Quetzlsacatanango]

Yeah, once the form is made with the path pointing to the desired nif, you can delete what you extracted and it will get it from the bsa instead. You do have to extract them first though, you can't directly browse to an in-BSA file.

[SrJulie]

Thanks ever so much...this solves SO many problems I was having with the mod in Fallout 3. I would rather re-do all the scripting than have to worry about what other mods it conflicts with. Now I can just set "ghoul ship zeta" to hover over the east end of hoover dam and work on my new faction - religious ghouls.

 

 

You are a lifesaver

 

Julie

[SrJulie]

Thanks ever so much...this solves SO many problems I was having with the mod in Fallout 3. I would rather re-do all the scripting than have to worry about what other mods it conflicts with. Now I can just set "ghoul ship zeta" to hover over the east end of hoover dam and work on my new faction - religious ghouls.

 

 

You are a lifesaver

 

Julie

 

O.K. so far extracting the needed art asset from fallout new vegas to create a new form is easy. However trying to get it to refer back to the .bsa file if I remove the extracted .nif files hasn't worked for me -what am I doing wrong?

 

Julie

[Draco856]

You don't have to do anything once it's extracted if the file can't be found in a meshes folder that you extracted it will look in the BSAs, as long as it's in the BSA you don't need to do anything to it. An easy way to check if it's working right is to set up the path in the GECK, then after that's done delete the extracted file and recheck the mesh, if it's there it will work just fine, if it's not there you'll have to have the files extracted in order to work on the mod. It shouldn't matter to those who haven't extracted the files when you release the mod, but generally it's always a good idea to extract the BSAs to avoid any potential mess ups with BSA packing.

[SrJulie]

You don't have to do anything once it's extracted if the file can't be found in a meshes folder that you extracted it will look in the BSAs, as long as it's in the BSA you don't need to do anything to it. An easy way to check if it's working right is to set up the path in the GECK, then after that's done delete the extracted file and recheck the mesh, if it's there it will work just fine, if it's not there you'll have to have the files extracted in order to work on the mod. It shouldn't matter to those who haven't extracted the files when you release the mod, but generally it's always a good idea to extract the BSAs to avoid any potential mess ups with BSA packing.

 

So here is the issue I am having with the current conversion. If I extract the "dlc05mz" files from the fallout new vegas.bsa file everything works fine. If I remove the files it doesn't seem to be looking for the extracted files in the original fallout new vegas nexus bsa file. Instead in the geck I see a diamond shape with an exclaimation mark in it where the new form for the new vegas mz file would be.

 

Does this mean I should simply extract the form from the fallout new vegas .bsa file and include them in the converted mod as separate meshes?

 

On a related side note last night I began having an odd problem. I am trying to put the external portion of the mothership over the hoover dam in Hoover Dam east. However, as I tried to edit mz mods at one point it would jump to a different cell when I clicked on any part of the hoover dam east cell.

 

Thanks for any assistance and advice in converting my mod to fallout new vegas.

[Quetzlsacatanango]

Make sure the path to the nif you extract is the same as the one in the bsa: meshes/dlc05/.../mynif.nif. If you extract it somewhere else, and soemtimes that is easy to do with FOMM, it's not gonna find it back in the bsa. I wouldn't include any nifs in your mod unless you change something about them.

 

For the second thing, your ship is probably straddling the border of 2 cells. If that's the case, nothing to worry about.

[SrJulie]

I see...(I hope) So when I create the new form and do an "edit" to look for the nif file it should be to a file structure I created that duplicates the .bsa file. yes?

 

And it never occured to me that the problem with jumping to other cells would be due to the size of the ship *slaps forehead*

 

Thanks so much for your patience.

 

I will give it a try and let you know how it works out.

 

Julie