New Vegas Mods

[Next2Epic]

Ok, I think I know the answer to this question but it's the first time that I've really installed mods so I decided I'd ask it.

Can you install mods from Fallout 3 on New Vegas? I want to use the Alice custom race from the Fallout 3 mods place (http://fallout3.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=15995), but I just wasn't sure if it would work or not.

 

Thanks in advance for any replies.

[luthienanarion]

No.

[Greslin]

No.

 

Actually, in a lot of cases you can. It just depends on the mod, takes a little effort and knowledge, and isn't guaranteed to always succeed.

 

Under the hood, New Vegas is basically FO3 with a few embellishments, and many FO3 objects and other assets are still listed in the FNV BSAs. The catch is that the headers on the ESP plugin files are version-specific, meaning that an FO3 ESP won't be accepted by the FNV engine, or vice versa. But many of the data records, formats, etc. are identical.

 

So what you can do is load up GECK FNV, save an empty ESP with FNV headers, and then use a utility like TESSnip to copy the individual data records from the FO3 ESP into the FNV one. Save, and you now have the Fallout 3 mod data in a format that New Vegas will recognize.

 

The hard part of course is troubleshooting the stuff that doesn't work, and of course you need to copy over whatever other assets were part of the FO3 mod. But for little things - I've ported grenades this way, for example - simply copying the records over to a FNV ESP often does the job. It's a cheap mod trick worth knowing.

 

(BTW, I just ported Alice to NV using this method. Took me about 10 minutes, no complications at all. Alas, I can't release it, but for your personal use the conversion appears to be an extremely easy one.)

Edited February 29, 2012 by Greslin