Porting Project Brazil FO3 to New Vegas

[Thaiauxn]

My mod, Project Brazil, has been on the shelf since November 2010, and I'd like to bring it to New Vegas. ProjectBrazil.esm currently contains upwards of 30 cells and two world spaces. It has many custom (unique) .nifs and custom textures. It uses lots of vanilla resources, as well as those in the FO3 DLC, not many of which were cut from NV.bsm. Those that were cut, I don't care about, I'll just replace them with New Vegas resources.

 

You can see Project Brazil here, if you aren't familiar with it: http://www.moddb.com/mods/fallout-3-project-brazil

 

I started it September 9th, 2009... I want it to be done this year in 2012. I skipped all of 2011 getting my personal life in order, and I am now healthy & wealthy enough to devote time to this again.

 

I talked to the owner of this mod, who ported his worldspace & interior cells to Vegas: http://www.ravenmodding.terminal47.net/?p=978

 

Last year, he showed me how he moved Claw Peak to New Vegas, and it is possible to port a whole custom worldspace, but it was kindof painful. The method he used was to edit every FormID - literally one at a time - so that it was modified to reference the .esp as a new resource. Then he deleted the dependance on fallout3.esm, moved the .esp to New Vegas directory, and added the dependance to falloutNV.esm. Then the .esp would just update the references to the NV.bsm rather than the fallout.bsm... That was the jist of it, anyway.

 

I spent probably about 5 straight days of no sleep trying to make it work. I edited EVERY FormID for every resource that ProjectBrazil.esm had used. The " * " symbol became something I saw in my nightmares. I had dreams about editing FormIDs for weeks. Ultimately, it failed. ProjectBrazil.esp (i switches it from an esm to esp for this) would crash New Vegas geck. Maybe it was because the .esp is WAY too big, and I need to cut it in half. Maybe I need to just cut the interiors (all of them) and JUST include the world space, which I'm not opposed to.

 

After I finished that, I left my computer behind, because I got a job on Man Vs Wild, helping shoot Season 6. It was a dream job, and i worked my ass off to get it. However, it kinda ate my life for a few months, and after I finished that, I went onto work on a dozen other reality tv shows... thankfully, a year later, I'm between projects, dusting off this old computer, and I want to FINISH Brazil. Scale back the scope and get it done in New Vegas. I'm not opposed to putting in a lot of work getting Brazil to function again, but at the end of the day, while I am very good at terrain, interiors and overall design, I'm very bad at coding and files structures. ;)

 

That stated, is there another way that you can see, that will make this work? If it helps, I can use dropbox to send you the ProjectBrazilNV.esp and the ProjectBrazilFO3.esm, and let you take a look. The first one has all the references edited (all of them) and the second is the mod before messing with the port.

 

Cheers

Edited December 25, 2011 by Thaiauxn

[Thaiauxn]

For anyone that was previously interested, we successfully ported Brazil to New Vegas. I'm still in need of quite a lot of help, and already bugged a few of you to see if you're interested in helping us in the short or long term. ^^

 

You can still view a lot about the mod here: http://www.moddb.com/mods/fallout-3-project-brazil

 

And view our long term plans here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1e0LIIUGTHlWCRbzvC4RcEtrFD8cBdNUUVBeajJw5MBk/edit

 

Here is a quote from Ricker HK on what needs to be done now that it is fully ported:

 

 

Unfortunately the rocks seem to have taken a big hit with missing meshes.

 

Some notes about the conversion:

 

I copied most objects from the FO3 DLC's and main file, to the PB plugin, to avoid broken references. During the cleanup afterwards, this is what I did:

 

1. If an Object had a 0 count (not used in PB) - if it had a model in the New Vegas BSAs, I left it so it can be used (Stuff from Zeta, Pitt, and Anch mostly). Otherwise, deleted it. If it was just missing a texture, I left it too.

 

2. If it was used in the PB plugin, I left it regardless of whether it had a model or not. That way missing models can be identified easily in the geck or in-game.

 

3. If you are going to mass delete an object, it is better to delete it from the Geck, because the Geck will remove all the references to it that you placed in the editor. For example - I delete DLC03RockCanyon19rad127, which is used 5063 times in the PB plugin, but missing a model. If I delete that static using FNVEdit, I just created 5063 <unresolved> errors in my plugin. It would be best not do delete any objects till the red diamomd cleanup is over - especially if multiple people are working on the red diamonds. Just to be clear, I'm talking about deleting the base objects in the Geck Object window, not instances of them that are placed in the editor.

 

4. Deleted references/forms/changed items:

a. Actors - a few Leveled NPCs - Talons were deleted. Some leveled creatures - swamp folk from Point lookout were deleted (no models for them anyway).

b. Navmeshes deleted: Vault 18 Stairwell" [CELL:01034B29], Vault 18 Entrance" [CELL:01020114], Our Lady of Hope Hospital" [CELL:01006367], Water Works Ducts" [CELL:010505EA], Nova Arbor Gardens" [CELL:0102D582]

c. There's no Hellfire armor so you have naked Enclave soldiers.

d. 1 or 2 items missing from quite a few of the 00BrazilSSO* NPC's inventory.

e. Wasteland worldspace renamed. I Didn't delete it because it's the parent of Black Bear Canyon.

f. NV adds stuff to the Weather records, so the FO3 ones show up as corrupt in FNVEdit. I just substituted from NV vanilla for the climates so there wouldn't be errors. You'll have to re-create the Pitt weathers with the NV Geck.

g. The music type 'Tension' was used in some cells. I couldn't bring it over (the mp3 isn't there anyway). Music types just make the Geck hang on loading and seem to be ignored now anyway. Music is different in NV and uses Media Location Controllers and Media Sets. http://wiki.tesnexus.com/index.php/Fallout_New_Vegas_Music

h. Three vault88 door scripts need to be fixed (they point to non existent references).

 

5. I didn't make a portal to the NV wasteland. I Just COC'd to check things out.

 

6. NV Geck - I Recommend you use the Geck powerup (fork), use version 1.6. Version 1.7 has a bug where it won't load up PB. http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=41642

 

The missing meshes don't flag any errors in FNVEdit or the Geck. You have to open the 'Preview Object' and hit the down arrow in the object window and manually count. But there are about 40 static meshes missing, for objects that are used 100 or more times. These have the largest counts with missing meshes:

 

DLC03RockCanyon06rad70 used 317 times

RockCanyon07rad650 used 358 times

VHallSmCrossbeam01 used 358 times

DLC03RockCanyon09rad210 used 381 times

VGalleyMidCeiling used 495 times

VGalleyMidFloor01 used 658 times

DLC03PipeOpen1WayLng01 804 times

RockCanyon06rad70 844 times

CliffCanyonL02rad1559 1049 times

TreeWastelandEvergreen01 1451 times

CliffCanyonL01rad1144 1782

CSBrickSingle01 1804

DLC03RockCanyon19rad127 5063

 

On the bright side, the NV trees and desert rocks fit in with the area. But it looks like it going to be a lot of work.

 

Finally, here's the file: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/55759080/ProjectBrazil.zip

 

This thread can now be locked.

[iyumichan]

This thread can now be locked.

 

Nope. I want to discuss this :P

[Jeoshua]

Then discuss!

[Thaiauxn]

lol wut?

 

Well, at the moment, we found that replacing the missing meshes is really easy! We just have to do it again, to get Black Bear Mountain right. :)

[iyumichan]

Great! That's good news.

[Thaiauxn]

Finally got in touch with Wyll and got your team confirmed. :)

 

Can you send me your email address? I'm about to send a team update? ^^