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Trouble With First Firearm Mod


carnagefiend

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Hello, I'm having a ton of trouble with my first firearm mod.

I'm attempting to create a mashup based on the Gatling Laser, the idea being that the Children of Atom converted it to fire Gamma energy instead. I have more than a few problems with the weapon though. This is what I'm working from and what the .nif looks like:

http://i.imgur.com/pu7G2BL.jpg

So, a few things: This was created in Outfit Studio and not Nifskope (if that affects anything).

First problem I'm having is that the weapon is plain invisible. Now, in the research I've done, I found out that the weapon itself isn't in the actual game, but the modifications are (like the receiver). So I duplicated and altered the Gatling Laser receiver file and pointed it to the mesh, but nothing.

Secondly, I noticed that when I fired the projectile is coming from inside my character as well. While the projectile itself is fine, its origin is borked.

Thirdly, when I drop it, the weapon just hovers in mid-air, hence the screenshot. I took it while the weapon hovered, and I wasn't able to pick it up.

Now, keep in mind, I'm a newbie with this sort of thing, and I feel like I almost need to totally start from scratch at this rate =\

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@carnagefiend

Wow! that looks awesome!

thanks for sharing that!

I might not be the best help, given my FO4 Mod Fu is not so strong.

though, I'll offer some perspectives after the jump.

 

 

 

Don't be disheartened - FO4 takes a while to get mods sorted.

it takes a while to learn the ropes and to collab etc.

your mod will be AWESOME if it is as a weapons parts pack, and if it works with Any Mod Any Weapon.

 

I thoroughly encourage looking into the

mib weapons parts pack,

Any Mod Any Weapon,

Pipe Weapons Overhaul,

WARS weapons pack,

Forgotten Weapons port project

as they have awesome how-to guides, and are always looking for more collabers to mod stuff.

either for standalone weapons with no attach points, or complete weapons parts packs with everything.

that, and those guides are far more helpful than the bethnet ones hehe.

 

nifskope and similar plugins are prefered, mainly on account of

outfit studio stuff having this weird thing where it can turn inside-out-y

(the meshes and all can be non-manifold or have weirdness).

that said, it can be theoretically used to make some things hehe.

 

Now, I'm wondering how you've made your mod weapon -

is it a standalone weapon?

is it a mods parts pack?

 

it sounds like, from what you've said, you duplicated a base part and over-wrote the game files for it?

its a standalone, that doesn't have any attachment slots? if you screenshot the weapon at the weapons-bench, that'd help narrow down some of the shenanigans hehe.

so, that might be why the game doesn't know how to treat the weapon,

because there's no Base or refID number for it... so it stops being a weapon or an instance when you let it go hehe.

 

if you made standalone weapon parts,

do those reference restricted class? sometimes, if you duplicate other stuff as the base, it won't work properly,

because it doesn't have it's own metadata tree...

a classic case is making a standalone from other nmm resources, but not having those other mods as the parent and master etc.

 

as for the projectile effect hardpoint,

it has specific locations (ZXY I think they are) from the centerpoint of the muzzle piece.

if you made a standalone weapon, sometimes the zeropoint/hardpoint of the effect node is not put at that spot or with the correct orientation

(see the case of "the home made blowtorch-flamethrower" which burned the player when they use it... hehe)

 

and, yes, if you were thinking of ideas for "any mod any fail" -

the orientation of the muzzle can be changed randomly if you wanted,

for a 'wacky wasteland' "fail-pistol" that is random and potentially fatal for the operator to use hehe.

 

 

 

 

Hopefully this gives you a few options and ideas to look into in the meantime,

until a modder can assist further.

I look forward to seeing what mods you'll come up with, and collaborate on, in the future!

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Well, it turns out I was just using the wrong mesh as the base. I recreated the weapon in Nifskope that had all the bells and whistles for the animation.

So now the weapon is mostly functional, I even got an alternative ammo function to use it with.

The problem I'm having now is that while the mesh works, and the handle moves and the arms for the core move around, I am trying to get the character to grab at the custom ammo meshes, not the original core.

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@carnagefiend

awesome!

that is good news to hear - that you're getting it to work and chugging along.

 

 

 

turning to the animation zeroing points,

I think you have to move them in nifskope or your equivalent program,

as well as make the new animation hehe.

 

you can have some weird situations happen if you dont change the animation,

as the player's arm will 'spaghetti-fi' and go all around the place.

 

For a large weapon like the Gatling frame,

I've always thought the Junk Jet animation seemed more appropriate -

turning the weapon sideways and pointing the barrel down towards the ground to look at the core etc.

 

perhaps, also angling the damaged core towards an enemy, to eject the core as a heavy attack...

(similar to Power Armor core eject attack, though from a spent weapon which uses a power core...)

 

 

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I managed to fix this too. Essentially, in Nifskope, when I applied the meshes to the weapon, I had to ensure that I added the core to the correct branch. So I found the branch the core was in and proceeded to copy the ammo mesh I made to that specific branch.

Presto.

The only problem I'm having now is that the weapon fires projectiles, uses the sweet new Fission Core, but doesn't seem to recognize the barrel as a modification. In fact, the Gamma Repeater, when I open it up in the workshop, has a totally blank template for it. There's no receiver, no barrel, nothing.

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You mean that cone shaped thing on the front of the Far Harbor gamma rifle? I think that's an SFX marker - as in it seems to just add a shimmer-y/glow-y/radiation-y type effect in a cone at the front of the gun.

Um, well, I'm not having that problem, thankfully.

 

The problem I'm having is that the weapon, as of my latest tinkering, has become invisible.

 

I directed the weapon to the dummy.nif as it does with the gatling laser. I created an omod receiver with the actual mesh I want the game to use, as the game itself does. I created a gatling barrel OMOD and pointed FO4edit to the target .nif file.

 

But when I load the game up, the weapon itself is completely invisible. When I take it to the workbench it is totally blank =\

 

EDIT: I think I fixed... something. Hell, I even got something working I had -0- anticipation would actually friggin' work!

 

I think I changed the keywords of the mod to point to my custom keyword for the weapon. I think.

Edited by carnagefiend
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