Modding curiousity

[tomomi1922]

I haven't created a mod from scratch before, so pardon my ignorance.

 

I am wondering how creators test their mods, from scripts to texture/mesh look. Do you have to compile the mod, load the game, and test? Wouldn't that be very tedious, since my game load time can be rather lengthy? I have some small interest in creating a custom new map. But I worry that the learning curve and also creation time would be so time consuming.

Edited April 28, 2017 by tomomi1922

[MissingMeshTV]

The best advice for getting started I ever saw posted on these forums was to start small and simple. It was advice I took to heart. In my case, I started making small tweaks for myself, a few retextures, then started working on a settlement overhaul and a player home for myself. The latter two were really the best way for me to learn my way around the CK. Having a few test projects for your own education in my eyes can be a valuable learning experience.

 

Plan on making A LOT of rookie mistakes. My first few mods (the aforementioned settlement overhaul in particular) will never see life beyond my hard drive because of LOTS of rookie mistakes. But don't get discouraged.

 

As for testing...yes, it can get very tedious but it's a necessary evil. Think of it as software development, because in a way that's what we're doing. I can't remember that last time I actually played FO4. In game for lots of testing yes, but actually playing? Not so much.

 

Everyone has their own workflow, so don't be afraid to some up with your own. If you get various input on testing methods, evaluate them all, "compile" them in your head and figure out what works for you and what doesn't.

 

For myself, I have three machines I test with. I'll run my "main" game and CK on my main rig and have an additional F04 installation for testing. I'll work on a mod for a while, get to a certain point, launch the game, COC into my cell (I do primarily interior cell player homes) play around and try and break stuff, make notes on things I need to fix, then quit and go back to the CK to make those fixes and do it all over again...and again...and.... When I get to a certain point, I'll create archives, zip up the mod and copy it over to my two test rigs to make sure everything works running off the archive as a user would experience. I go through this process at certain landmarks through creating a mod, maybe four or five cycles of the process total. Then right before publishing I'll run through everything from front to back one more time on each machine.

 

I know it's not something everyone is able to do, but if you can test on another computer than the one you develop on it can reveal bugs that running off loose files on your main rig may not show. it also give you the opportunity to test for varying game and hardware configs for performace. Having other people test your mod is probably a good idea is possible.

 

I'm not one for short answers, so I'll stop here. Hopefully some of this has helped...

[chucksteel]

RedRocketTV is absolutely correct, "Start Small"!

 

I can really only speak for myself but, if you look at my mods they all started small, DCInteriors started as six interiors that I never expected anyone to even be interested in. In hindsight it was HORRIBLE, full of dirty edits and deleted ref's but, nice people came along to teach me the errors of my ways. Eventually that mod went from six interiors to Hundreds of interiors opened in FO3. I continued modding and worked on large projects like TTW with a team.

 

Again RedRocketTV is on point,

 

I hardly play the game anymore myself! I am in game testing, checking, fixing and back to the GECK, CKIT or xEdit and test again. Again Again and still make mistakes.

 

but it's FUN!

[llamaRCA]

Do you have to compile the mod, load the game, and test? Wouldn't that be very tedious, since my game load time can be rather lengthy?

 

Yes, there is so much testing and long load times are annoying. I do everything I can to keep my load times as short as possible when I'm testing a lot. I remove most of the saved games from my folder, keep loose folders to a minimum, keep my mod count low, etc.

 

I encourage you to try your hand at modding. It is one of my very favorite things to do. So much fun.

[Lisselli]

I find its best to start modding after you have already played through the game and gained a sense of familiarity with locations, NPCs, creatures, etc. It also is a huge source of sprouting modding ideas. This way when you dive into the CK, you know exactly what to look for and what you want to do. I haven't seriously played Fallout 4 in a long time, but I logged 144 hours into it and finished it all before I started modding. Same thing with Skyrim, 600 hours and I can pretty much make any dungeon I like because I been to all the vanilla dungeson over and over again and have an idea how beth builds them.

For example - when I play Fallout 4, I always want to manipulate Turrets from the Pipboy, and have tried several times to get this right XD.

Once you "become one" with the CK, everytime you play the game, you see everything as a resource. You can look a trash can and call it a reference.. because that's what it is. Then you start getting ideas on what you can do to this trash can(s). When you do a quest, you'd know the quest giver is actually a Reference Alias of that quest.

Edited April 29, 2017 by Lisselli

[Nutulator]

I haven't created a mod from scratch before, so pardon my ignorance.

 

I am wondering how creators test their mods, from scripts to texture/mesh look. Do you have to compile the mod, load the game, and test? Wouldn't that be very tedious, since my game load time can be rather lengthy? I have some small interest in creating a custom new map. But I worry that the learning curve and also creation time would be so time consuming.

It depends on what you're modding and how big it is. A new texture is one of the simplest things you can do. If you just want to replace, let's say all three textures for an object, you would make the texture folder path for that particular object in your Fallout 4 data folder, then just put your textures in it and rename them to the vanilla texture names you're replacing so the BGSM material file picks them up. You can make your own BGSM but it's no necessary for this particular instance.

 

It is quite tedious, especially with clothing items. I remember when I was making my fatigues there was stretching and clipping issues and I would run around in-game preforming all types of moves to see where it would occur next, find it, go back in Outfit Studio tweak the bone weights, and do it all again till I couldn't find anything else.

[DeathMotif]

I'm a software developer and game designer. I decided to throw my hat into the modding arena recently. I agree that the best approach is to start with a small concept and iterate it up to something larger. Later today I will post my first mod for Fallout 4. It's a simple mod to make skinsuits (Vault Suits and BoS Underarmors) craftable and moddable. It's even set up for custom instance naming so that vault suits show their proper affiliation with each vault number decal. (I have to wonder why Bethesda didn't set up vault suits this way to begin with. It's almost as though they are still modding for FO3!). It's a lot of tedious work. Much of it is duplication and linking assets together. However, it's rewarding to see your labor pay off when you run your mod in game and everything works for the first time.

[N7R]

Yeah it is a lot of testing. I had to install a mod that disables the beth log and Special videos when loading into the game so I can just speed the process up and get to the main menu quicker. Every little mesh or texture change I do I have to load in. Every animation tweak I adjust I have to again go in and see if it works right. Every time I adjust like a red dot sight on a scope I have to go in and see how it works. Basically I try to do as many 'fixes' or updates as possible at once so each time I need to load back into the game I'm getting a lot of things marked off my checklist.

 

I have actually never played Fallout 4 on pc. What I mean is I played Fallout 4 on my xbox one when it first came out and thats it. Once CK came out I moved over to pc and started making my mod. So far the 46 hours I have logged on steam for this game has all been on testing my one weapon mod so far. I do look forward to actually playing the game on pc but want my first mod done first.

[Greslin]

I use MO2 to create a sandbox, where the only things running are the base game, DLCs, the mod I'm working on, and the Console Enable mod (if I'm working on something in Survival Mode). When I'm developing something, I use a clean save (right after leaving 111, no mods) that I keep around for this purpose.

 

This solves a couple of problems at once. Load speed is low, and there's nothing in the save game to conflict. I load and save the game via console ("savegame MySave").

 

That cuts a lot of the tedium from it. But yeah, mod testing involves a lot of loading and reloading.

[Lisselli]

When I'm working with modded objects, I make a "test cell" and work with the objects in there so that loading is fast as the game doesn't have to render the outside world, and rendering 4 walls another else static takes like 10 seconds haha.

For any other reason, I look for a save that's in a small area. Stay away from Boston, as loading takes 1,000,000 years.

Make sure to open the console and use qqq(quit to desktop) or open the pipboy and exit from there as it disables auto saves on exit.