New to modding, need help with armor mod

[CAKEPWNER]

Hello, I'm working on the first mod I've ever made for anything and I'm obviously making some mistakes so I need some help.

 

I'm trying to create a "Gecko backed" version of an armor mod, the "Wasteland Looter", found here on the nexus in two places as a ported Fallout 3 mod. The mod I have that added the armor is this: http://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/54107/?

 

The armors editor ID in the GECK is: FNVNTResourceWerneLooterArmor

 

What I was trying to do was create a new version of the armor that is crafted at campfires in the same way as the gecko backed armor added by Honest Hearts. The ingredient list was: 1 Wasteland Looter, 1 of each, tanned: golden gecko hide, fire gecko hide, green gecko hide. The output is supposed to be a Wasteland Looter armor with the typical gecko backed armor stats (fire/rad/poison res. +15) and a boosted DT from its standard 8 to 12.

 

I went through the effort of creating the new armor, new armor effect for the new armor, and the recipe to craft it but this is where I started running into problems.

 

1: For one I don't understand the whole "active file" thing. I just activate (check the box) the required mod (the one linked above) and the Honest Hearts master file. I don't know which needs to be the active file and why or even what that does.

 

2: I ended up accidentally figuring out how to kinda save my changes as an esp, but I don't really get it yet. Point being I do have an esp that I created that I assume contains my changes, new armor, etc. but I don't know for sure whats in it.

 

3: I tried launching the game with my esp activated, and everything works fine (no crashing/weird bugs) except when trying to craft the armor at a campfire theres tons of issues with it. First, I wanted it to be craftable at 90 survival, but the requirement keeps getting reset to 0. Second, theres 2 of my new armors in the campfire misc section, but one displays an "ERROR WITH CAST" message in the ingredients area and is missing the pipboy icon. The other one displays fine, but the survival skill req. is at 0 and I can't get it to use tanned GREEN gecko hide from Honest Hearts rather than the "normal" gecko hide.

 

I tried editing out the above issues in the GECK but I keep getting a duplicate of my armor recipe (shows as RecipeGBLooterDUPLICATE000) and the survial req. and gecko hide keep resetting to the above stated improper values.

 

Sorry for the giant wall of text, but it was the only way I could thoroughly explain my problems. I hope that mess above makes sense to someone. Any help at all would be greatly appreciated, as I'm pretty much totally lost at this point.

 

As an aside for anyone wondering, the Wasteland Looter armor is considered a modders resource, as stated on its creators mod page for the orginal Fallout 3 version of the mod: http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout3/mods/18598/?

Edited January 1, 2017 by CAKEPWNER

[madmongo]

I have a theory that the GECK is really a secret vault-tec experiment designed to test modder's frustration levels.

 

Ever since Windows version 3 on a 386, programs have standardized on file->new or file->open. But not the GECK. This is your first introduction in how un-intuitive the GECK is. It truly is a miserable tooleset.

 

The active file is just the file that you are currently editing. Unfortunately, this gets confusing in the GECK.

 

The way you create a new file is you open up the GECK, click DATA, then select any master files you want for your new esp. At this point you don't have an active file for editing. But if you are creating a new file, that's what you want to do (yes, it makes no sense). At a minimum you need to have Fallout .esm selected as a master. The GECK will load the master files, and then you can make your changes, and when you select SAVE, then the GECK will finally prompt you for the name of your new file. Now that you've created a new file, this is your active file for this session. Any more changes that you make will all be saved to the same file.

 

Once you have a file saved, if you want to edit that file later, you just make that your active file and start the GECK. When you save, all changes will go into your active file that you selected.

 

Let's say you want to add resources from another master file to your mod, like say, Honest Hearts. If you are creating a new file, you'd check Fallout.esm and HonestHearts.esm, but you wouldn't select any active file. Later, when you save, that will become your new active file.

 

Let's say you already created a mod, but you didn't include HonestHearts initially, and now you do want to include it. Open the GECK, select Data, make your mod the active file, and also check the HonestHearts.esm. Once the GECK is up and running, as soon as you save any changes, your mod will now use Honest Hearts as a master file.

 

Once you've added a master file to your mod, you can't easily delete it. Well, you can, all you need to do is right click and press Delete when you start up your mod in the GECK, but if you aren't very careful about exactly how you do that, you will completely destroy your mod and render it unusable. There are ways to remove master file dependencies in your mod, but since you are just beginning with the GECK, assume for now that any master files you add are there forever.

 

The GECK will let you load multiple esp files, but where any master files loaded automatically become dependencies for you mod, the same isn't true for esp files. Don't add resources from a different esp to your mod, because that doesn't work. You can only add things to your mod that come from master files, or things that your mod adds on its own. There are ways around this, but again, that gets pretty advanced.

 

On the other hand, loading in multiple esp files can be a quick and easy way to copy resources from another mod into your mod. Just go into the GECK with the other mod loaded, make a change to whatever resource you want (you can literally change something and then change it back to what it was, just so you make sure that entry gets flagged as changed), and save your mod. The changed resource will now be saved to your mod. You have to be careful with this, as it won't work if the entry you are trying to copy depends on other things in the mod that you didn't copy. Generally, as someone new to the GECK, you should probably try to avoid doing this, but if you are trying to copy armor from another mod, this is the fastest and easiest way to do it.

 

One word of warning. If you want to copy a piece of armor or some other resource from another mod, load that esp without making it active, then make a change to the item you want, then save it, and DON'T DO ANYTHING ELSE. Exit out of the GECK, load it with the resource only in your mod and WITHOUT the other esp loaded, and then use the modified resource in your mod. If you try to use the resource while the other mod is still loaded, that can get the GECK confused and it may end up borking your mod as a result.

 

Make sure that the armor you want is in a loose file and isn't packed into a bsa. If it is, you'll need to unpack it to properly reference it in your mod.

 

Once you get straightened out how to properly create a new mod and then edit the mod you just made, I think your problem with duplicate items will disappear. It's probably best to start your mod over at this point though. Once you have errors like duplicate entries, fixing it in the GECK can be very difficult.

Edited January 1, 2017 by madmongo

[JoKelly]

this might you help as you go along with modding, good luck

 

http://wiki.nexusmods.com/index.php/Getting_started_creating_mods_using_GECK