GECK crashing while loading a .nif

[FrenchieDwemer]

Well, that's a somehow typical case : I'm trying to get a new weapon of mine into to the game, and it crashes the GECK. Firstly, I do have searched for any fix, but among the few things I could do by myself, none fixed the damn CTD issue.

 

This weapon is actually a patchwork made of various parts from different weapons. I hated the old chinese assault rifle and as a result tried to make a AK-ish model by myself to replace it. It seems that such a weapon, built by copying/pasting branches, is generally very subject to crashes. Anyway, my experience with Nifskope doesn't go further and I just can't see what is wrong with my nif. I tried te Update All Tangent Spaces function, as it was anything I could try to do, only to get another CTD.

 

Anyway here are some screenshots, as pictures explain better than words :

 

http://image.noelshack.com/fichiers/2012/38/1348434759-weap1.jpg

 

http://image.noelshack.com/fichiers/2012/38/1348434821-weap2.jpg

 

At best, I'd be greatly pleased if somebody could investigate the model. I have spent a way too long time on it just to give up so close to my goal and I'd really thank anybody who could help me. Provided I have made none of its parts, however, I don't know if I can send it...

Edited September 23, 2012 by FrenchieDwemer

[GrindedStone]

If it's less than 250 k you can put it in a .rar an upload it here, if not, I suggest creating a file upload on the nexus named misc that you set to hidden, upload it then set it to not hidden in order to share files, just hide it when you are done. This way you don't have to go thru the long upload set up process if you need it again. You can also email it to me if you like if you can't figure that out. [email protected]

 

http://i895.photobucket.com/albums/ac156/grindedstone/Techsupport/SRFile2012_2_23_18_18_12_93.jpg

 

Okay first look at the block list. This is a setting you switch often. It's located in view/blocklist there are options to view in tree or view in list. You use view in list only to set texture paths because you can adjust the collumn. The line at the top between NamelValue yah that line, if you adjust it just right all the texture sets will stick out. Thus you see the below list an can quickly navigate setting texture paths.

 

blahblah...

TextureSet

blahblah...

TextureSet

blahblah...

TextureSet

blahblah...

TextureSet

 

Now that we are on textures. The mesh you have has like 63 million parts. That's a bad idea. You should make those into single parts. Instead of a single lighting calculation an render it's making those on each item. Typically it's not a good idea design wise. Instead you would take all the static parts an join them into a single shape that uses a single texture. Then merging the duplicate materials which often requires manual adjustment of those material settings. Set it up that way an run it thru blender join the parts, export. Most of the time Blender will pick which shapes to combine an which to separate. It might even take a few tries to get it combined better. Nifscope/Blender check Nifscope/Blender check. Then you would paste that into a vanilla mesh, however that is only if you want it to have the same performance fire rate wise on semi auto, or for animation reasons. For example making a weapon you made from scratch work in both FO3 an FNV you would need to paste the rough draft into a weapon that uses the type animation you wanted from each game. Which all depends on the structure an text strings in the mesh which tell the game how to animate it. On Fallout 3 the .kv is actually inside the weapon which is funny, but important to understand why an how the weapon works. A further example is if you took a semi automatic pistol you made exported it from blender then just used that same mesh in the game. It wouldn't be animated, paste those NitriStrip datas into a 10mmpistol mesh, then it will animate an have the same double tap performance as the 10mm ingame.

[FrenchieDwemer]

Wow. I must say I'm impressed by such a detailed answer. Thanks a lot for so much help - I'm really getting fed up.

 

Unfortunately, I am really unskilled in modelling. I'm just not able to complete all this process -I don't even have blender...

 

I think I'll just send my model to you -that's really kind of you to offer this service... Maybe you'll find out something wrong.

 

BTW, I have noticed that the crashes are actually caused by parts I have got from a New Vegas mod : the grip -just before the canon, the trigger, the "scope" (well that's not an actual scope, but I don't know how to call it) -and its lens-, a metallic thingy on the left side of the weapon, and also a silencer -not shown on the previous pictures as I have made several versions, a clear one so as to replace common chinese AR, a "scoped" one for Anchorage troopers, and a scoped+silenced one -which should have replaced the Xuanlong.

[GrindedStone]

It's funny that you say that, because what you just did with this weapon using Nifscope is about 20 times harder than doing the same thing with Blender. It takes about a year to learn how to use Blender though, then another year to get good. Roughly 700 hours to start to get good. After about 1400 hours you pretty much know what you are doing. Then around 2100 you've developed a good workflow. It's basicly the steps you do, but it develops into a order that makes it really fast to create something. After 2100 hours you lose count, an are still many years away from being a 3D artist. Most of the stuff we do is only a step in that process. Meanwhile you look to the current 3D artists doing stuff today far beyond anything you could even daydream about. Those guys eat nothing but art. It's a very tough hobby.

[GrindedStone]

http://i895.photobucket.com/albums/ac156/grindedstone/111aaa%20newer/swtor2012-06-2121-55-47-79.jpg

 

7 hours later... *ahem* GrindedStone dies in his computer chair. Awe, an he was such a not nice guy,

[FrenchieDwemer]

http://i895.photobucket.com/albums/ac156/grindedstone/111aaa%20newer/swtor2012-06-2121-55-47-79.jpg

 

7 hours later... *ahem* GrindedStone dies in his computer chair. Awe, an he was such a not nice guy,

 

Man, you managed to make this piece of s*** working. You truly deserve an award. Just sayin...

 

Well, thanks a lot again. I'd never say that enough.

[GrindedStone]

I've been doing this for almost 5 years now, and I still learn new things. I think it was impressive work on your part. Now though you'll learn a weapon is made up by more than just the mesh/texture asset itself. Enough about models for a while. There's an endless amount of other stuff you can do with weapons. Here's a random 20 of them an I'm sure there are many more. It really is endless, so it's a question of how far you want to go with it.

 

1. Sound - 2D is the stereo sound you hear as the player firing the weapon. 3D is the mono sound that is placed in the game world relative to the player position so that it's a 3D in-world sound. You start with the 2D sound. Find a weapon sound any where you like. Now go grab a sound already in Fallout 3 or New Vegas. Use audacity to play both sounds at the same time an adjust which is more loud. This way you are creating a new sound from sampling basicly mixing some random gunshot sound you found with one that is already in the game. You can even mix two sounds that are already used in the game. Focus on the BANG part that happens when you fire, then the REPORT which happens after that the sound getting more quiet or echo off the world around it. Usually the Report will trail off. Try to limit it to 0.5 or less seconds, but there are some that will last a whole second or more depending.

 

Don't change the volume of the raw sound, I.E. making it louder by jacking up the amplitude/gain. Instead use a 100% volume sound that you rely on the GECK SDK to adjust what it will sound like in-game. This is known as the Static Attenuation. GECK buggs out so you have to hit Okay an accept the adjustment each time you move the slider, then open the form again an hit play at the same volume you play the game at. This way you can set exactly what it will sound like. The high quality method here is to make 3 different 2D sounds each that are only different in a minor way, but enough to tell they are different. When you select the sound in the GECK you either click each + next to the sound or select the whole folder the sounds are in. This way it will cycle all 3 sounds each time it's fired on 2D or 3D. It takes a bit of PC performance to do that so try to limit your file size, to which you might want to encode the .Wav into a lesser sample rate. 48 kHz is the standard, then quality drops a bit to 24 kHz which is borderline almost too low of a quality, but still useable.

 

Once you got the 2D sound, you take it an convert it to mono. When you are in the GECK find a similar weapon, this is a silenced rifle so use the silenced 10mm pistol. This is just to get a general starting point for your attenuation which is more dynamic on 3D sounds, but there are some flags that go along with 3D as well an you can ignore all that if you just find a similar vanilla sound first. When you open up those vanilla forms, change the editor ID first thing, so that it won't replace those sounds, but instead it will prompt you to create a new form using the name you came up with. We use zzzName often to place those sounds at the bottom of the list when it's time to select the sound in the weapon form, you could use aaa xxx or anything you come up with to make that selection more easy.

 

Personally I use a standard setting here. Minimum Attenuation Distance 1275 (max) puts the radius around the sound in the game world @ 60 feet. This is the amount of game world you will hear the weapon sound at 100% volume. Maximum Attenuation Distance 8000 puts the point at which you no longer hear the 3D sound @ about 800 feet away. Default is like 50-100 feet, so you see the 800 feet here makes the game much more realistic, OMG where did that shot come from. You can ignore the rest of the form settings except for the Attenuation Curve and Priority. The curve is how slowly/rapidly the sound falls off. The vanilla's all suck, so instead use a linear falloff. 100 75 50 25 0 easy to set up an works excellent. Priority is a override system if you want some sounds to override others.

 

2. Projectile an Shell Case - While the projectile itself doesn't matter as much, a high quality shell case does matter an even makes a big difference. Maybe you make a shotgun, well use shotgun shells that are colored black or a different color. Use higher detail more shiny brass or worse. It really doesn't matter so long as it's different.

 

3. Alternate Models - Ignore the 1st person model, set it to none, Stick to using 1024 texture maps an it won't matter performance wise, so you save time by not having to create a 1st person model an textures, and the same is true for the world model. Both are optional, less work if you don't use them.

 

4. Damage - I strictly balance it to the vanilla game. Many mods break that, and it's cheating. As a modder you can't balance to that. Though you can balance to the vanilla game as a standard. Start with a 50 skill on normal or very difficult an play test it. Though typically what I do is just look up what the Vanilla weapons damage is set for a similar weapon an I use those settings. If you want more damage then it need to be made a Unique which works better if it is truly unique. I named a assault rifle Tina Jones one time, another pistol was named Plain Jane, with a Unique of Nickle Jane.

 

5. Health - This is the weapon being used an over used until it no longer works anymore. Lower health it will start jamming an need repair. 100 health is the standard. It ranges between 100-800 which is very high. That being said some Items in the game use a 10800 health which never need repair an those are great, but this should only be used under very strict conditions on items so tough they never wear out.

 

6. Muzzle Flash - This is set inside the weapons projectile. Silenced weapons won't spit out a flame. The Vanilla game uses a smaller one for the 10mm silenced, an easy way to replace that on a rifle. At the same time you might want to go larger or huge depending on the caliber of the weapon an depending on if it has a flame suppressor on the end of the barrel or not.

 

7. Realism - I look up weapons on Wikipedia, caliber, weight, an muzzle velocity @ ammo load for damage adjustments if needed. You also learn a lot about weapons this way or by shopping for guns in store advertisements for example. You would be surprised how many ideas you can get from stuff like that.

 

8. Materials - Inside the mesh are many material settings that will make or break the way it looks in-game. You have to play with them to learn about it. When in doubt look at a vanilla weapon. Gloss is simulated by the engine making a estimate based on how transparent the Normal map is. This is a way to avoid work by the original creators so they don't have to create a full work up Environment map/mask asset set. Instead they use a Environment mask to cover the estimate. The mask is the same base defuse texture you use on the weapon to color it, only it's in grey scale black & white an the size is much smaller. The dark colors on the mask won't shine, but the light colors will, hence a mask, a totally black _m will make the weapon have zero shine, just as a defuse or zero transparency normal map will. The option to create a full on Environment map is on the table too if the weapon requires it, an it's not that hard.

 

9. Location - Don't drop the weapon so it's easy to get. Don't build areas that are perfectly neat, it needs to be random an messy. Don't leave or use test containers. Don't change items that has nothing to do with the mod. When you place a gun in the game world you can double click it an look in the extra tab to load the weapon with ammo. You can also do the same with ammo itself determining how much ammo is in the box. You can place about 80 1024 HD weapons inside a room before it starts to lag graphically. Then you would need to create world models or find somewhere else to place those, I like it spread out all over the place personally.

 

10. Icons - Sticklers will make new icons, I instead ignore them completely because I don't care about it. However it is polish, an the best icons I've seen are in color a basic 3D picture of the weapon only shrunk down. It works great if you have time for that sort of thing.

 

11. Player Only - It's wise but not always possible to build weapons so that the NPC uses one version, while the player uses another. It's very smart, but more work to set up. The reason why you would do this is for balance reasons. All the NPC's weapons have low health low damage as a global way to set it. NPC only, Player Only is a much more accurate way to balance the two. When something is killed it can spawn a death loot item. The NPC uses the un-playable but droppable weapon, you have to do that with FO3/FNV edit, but the NPC spawns a death item which is the player version of the same weapon.

 

12. Ammo - I vote that Calibr and xCalibr both suck. I love them both, but there are many players that hate using them, because they don't know the difference between .223 an 5.56mm an they don't want to know either. Truth is they are right. It's a game an most FPS have very simple ammo lists. 5.56mm is the same thing as .223 in case you were wondering there is no difference, but yet both exist in the game the same way that .308 is the same as 7.62mm. The only real world difference is that the Military uses thicker brass for the shell case which allows a slightly stronger load more towards powerful. It's a can of worms even talking about it. So avoid using Calibr & xCalibr if you can to make things easy. 9mm is 10mm, .308 is 7.62, .45 is .44 or 10mm with higher damage than a 10mm. It doesn't always line up right, but it's better than the alternatives.

 

13. Grip - I'd say to use GECK to view NPC animation previews for aiming weapons then adjust the location of the mesh. It's tough, but at least this way you don't have to go in-game to test it an can do it quickly. Stuff like that gets attached to a node on the skeleton. So you can paste branches into the skeleton at just the right spot an it will be the same as what it's like in-game, for example weapons, pipboy, hats, hair, and so on. Though this practice is only for use as a guide or starting point when you are making stuff.

 

14. Spread - Well first FO3/FNV determine spread differently. FO3 uses a minimum an max spread that creates a falloff based on your weapon skill. FNV ignores the max spread setting, using a global instead, an is better as far as leveling goes. I just look up what a similar weapon is most of the time. If it's a modded weapon like a sniper rifle with a heavy barrel I might lower spread. A weapon with a higher fire rate will have more spread. A weapon with a silencer will have less spread. The Mac 10 had so much spread the Army developed a silencer for it just to be able to hit anything with the thing.

 

15. Reach - Melee weapons have to play out in VATS so this reach is the distance the actor is away from the target when those cameras are playing. A baseball bat is like 0.7 to 0.9 reach depending on how much you choke up on the bat.

 

16. On Hit - This setting is to determine if the body part bursts into bloody goo , dismembers, neither, or both. 5.56 .308 is high powered so explode, 10mm neither, .45 explode, Magnum explode, Silenced is neither because the bullet is slowed down.

 

17. Range - This is the range the NPC will use for the weapon, though this is mostly determined by the NPC's AI combat style if it even has one.

 

18. Animation - This is a speed multiplier. It's best to leave it at 1.000 unless the animation itself is too fast or slow. However you can use it to speed up the fire rate inside VATS cameras on semi auto weapons. Most of the custom animations I know of is controlled by Scripts, an it's very difficult to figure out how to animate things in the game for the first few times.

 

19, Script - You couldn't not say script here. You can do anything you want by using a script. It's programing logic in obscript a language that is similar to C++ but much more simple. You are really only giving the game commands to do, but there is a large amount of logic based in it. Once you learn how to read a script it doesn't take long before you are thinking in your head new ways to write stuff. At first it can be very intimidating, so all the gamers are scared of it. It really is very simple once you wrap your head around it.

 

20. Quest & Dialog - These are pretty much the same thing as Scripting. Both of the require heavy amounts of it. Quest to get a weapon is an awesome way to do it, an if you can do that then dialog is controlled the same way. Just like scripting you have to wrap your head around it.

 

http://i895.photobucket.com/albums/ac156/grindedstone/Synx/daga3mahoochmaflaugh.jpg