Fallout3.esm

[cosinusoid]

hello people of the nexus forums

 

ive noticed a few other mods on here that have hacked .esm files , that means somewhere there is an application for extracting the Fallout3.esm.

 

I have been readding through a lot of posts about this subject (usualy related to other Bethesda games) and there is lots of talk about extracting the fallout3.esm , but no conclusive detials on exactly what application was used ( i have tryed various applications , but they all return errors)

 

perhaps i have done something wrong , has anyone readding this post actualy extracted the fallout.esm ? , id love to know what applicatoin can extract this file , so please if you have extracted the fallout3.esm , what applicatoin was it ?

 

thanks in advance to any replys , is this even the right place to post ? , it seams the form is plauged with people asking all mannor of questions relating to fallout 3, offical bugs , mod development/trouble shotting in every catagory.

 

well is early days yet i suppose, everyone is excited about the game , and its problems/possibilities

[vashts1985]

i think what you want is extracting the BSA's

 

the BSA's contain all the models and textures and other ingame assets. the Fo3.esm is just a records file. you dont modifiy that, you create plugin files (.esp) to modifiy those records.

 

look for fallout mod manager. it includes the BSA unpacker as well as a plugin editor for working with the records

[cosinusoid]

thanks for the reply

 

i have been using FO3Archive for extracting the .bsa files, that works great .

ive never modded a Bethesda game before, so please forgive me in being quite vauge.

 

it seams that an application called FOMM should open up the .esm , but it opens up over 800 meg of memory , and adding more. not sure what is wrong there, memory issue i think .

 

what im looking for is the scrips for things like key mappings ,text dialogue etc.

im interested in changing a few of the animations around (ive heard its not possible yet to make new ones).

 

is there anywhere else that these kind of files are kept ? , i cannot find what im looking for in the .bsa files.

 

also , what about those .dat files ?

 

cheers for any further replys

[vashts1985]

FOMM = fallout mod manager.

 

dont know where you are finding that 800 meg figure, but the .esm is huge. it takes a second to load.

not sure about the dat files. ive never heard of anyone messing with them

[cosinusoid]

well , the 800 meg thing happens when i try to open the .esm , with fomm .

 

i look at my taskmanager and its up to 800meg of memory (the .esm is only 200-300 meg, altho one would expect it to get bigger when opened). meanwhile FOMM is just hanging there , perhaps working , perhaps not . all i know for sure is that memory is being used very harshly with no end in sight (thats not to discredit this software ) and ends with a bad reboot 5-10 min into the process.

 

i will be trying to figure out why over the next few days , something that probably should be asked to the developer etc.

 

back to the issue at hand .

 

if i understand what your saying correctly , the .esm need not be extracted beacause there is a way (with FOMM it seams) to make .esp plugin's that replace those functions held in the .esm ?

 

if this is true , then is FOMM the avalible application that lets you view the .esm so you know what to edit ?

 

thanks again for any reply.

[vashts1985]

yes. thats correct. the esm (master file) and the esp (plugin) are nothing but raw data that control everything that happens in the game.

[cosinusoid]

thanks for clearing that up , im a simple hacker who in times gone by had used the C language quite a lot in linux and ive hacked various games over the years, im trying to get to grips with how fallout3 is structured , and then make edits acordingly.

 

i hope this SDk turns up eventualy , all the hacks i want to make seam to be realistic with the tools already avalible . like adding the smoking animation to the player , perhaps adding the smoke/fog effect to the cigarette, infact id like all companions to smoke if i give them cig's (if they dont already , ive only played 30 hours of this game , inside what seams to be 1/4th of the map)

 

most NPCs should work as companions also, i hope this is not to far out for the curent tools.

[vashts1985]

i think you are able to make any changes with FOMM that you would be able to with the construction set, all it does is give you a nice user friendly interface to interpret all that data.

 

if you have the latest version of FOMM most of the values have been translated and marked, its not perfect but everyone is still figuring out exactly what they do, and they are updating the .XML as more discoveries are made.

 

hope all that set you on the right path. =)

[cosinusoid]

this might be a bit premature , and forgive me for wandering into a new subject

but you say most of the values have been translated and marked , is there a table some where of that ? and even better is there an example of what one of the ingame npcs looks like in those values ?

 

thanks again for the information here , i looks like ive got a bit of readding to do . some of the things i want to change might already be somewhere in an eiditable format, like what i said about the player smoking , or differnt NPC's. do you happen to know if there is a file , or folder for the data of the NPC jeriko ? how he interacts , what he says , when etc.

[vashts1985]

http://falloutmods.wikia.com/wiki/Record_Structure_XML

 

thats the xml record structure. most of them are spelled out. some are a bit more vague.

 

if you got nothing better to do and can sit still for a bit you might try wading through the ongoing [donuts] thread over at the official fallout 3 forums. it is like the big discussion about everything modding for fallout 3.

 

http://www.bethsoft.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=913983