Why Can't FO4 Mods Look At FO76 Files For Textures/Paints/Skins Like TTW?

[ImmortalAbsol]

I would love to have textured variants of models that both games have in common.

From settlement items and Junk to Weapons, Armour and Power Armour.

Using the files on the PC from 76, no distribution of textures so no legal or terms of use issues with Bethesda or Nexus.

 

Someone explain to me technically speaking why a mod installer couldn't ask the user where these files are or something similar.

Akin to Take of Two Wastelands or mods that use your 76 files to add an additional radio station?

[StormWolf01]

Heyas Absol. The vanilla assets aren't cross compatible, is my limited understanding of it.

There had been a .nif converter that was removed from the site that had a few details about it. https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/42337

The author of the mod had left comments about the nifs needing conversion. The textures needing conversion. Possibly even the animations needing conversions.

 

This is just a personal theory, so do not take this as gospel. In my mind, it makes sense. It keeps gamers from doing exactly what you're talking about. Particularly with stuff that is from their cash shop. Oh, sorry... Atomic Shop.

 

Now, this I DO know.

In that instance, it would be theft. Plain and simple, due to the fact that it is paid content that is specifically for one game.

Personal use. Ok, yeah. I get that. But considering that is in writing that Bethesda prohibits porting of their assets, even to their own games, due to the pay to play factor, their attack lawyers at Zenimax wouldn't have too hard of a time convincing a judge that doesn't know anything about gaming, to see things their way.

[ImmortalAbsol]

I see, thanks.

 

I'm mostly after the Appalachian BoS chapter power armour for a faction museum, that's base game.

[ImmortalAbsol]

If anyone takes power armour paint requests I'd be very interested.

[StormWolf01]

Heyas Absol. I didn't type that out the way that I should have when I said "Keeps gamers from doing exactly what you're talking about". I didn't mean that specifically at you. Only that Beth knows all too well that the modding community is quite the capable group of people. Sorry if you took that wrong, it was my fault for the way that I typed it.

I was just saying that it would make sense to me, that they made the stuff incompatible for that reason.

 

I'm afraid I'm not very familiar with the actual in-game assets 76 uses. I played it for 3 days on a redbox rental for PS4, not too long after release. Sent it back and made sure that Sony canceled the trial period of their online service, LOL.

(it was My debit card, but my roomies game deck.)

 

You might try there in the section where Newermind was asking what people were looking to see him add to the game. I mean, no guarantees that he'd want to. But he did ask what people would like to see.

[VIitS]

Two points:

1) TTW loads FO3 stuff into New Vegas. Loading FO76 stuff into FO4 would be like having FNV stuff running off of the FO3 version of the engine.

2) The differences in engine and rendering between FO3 and FNV were fairly minor. For FO76, they use textures that are much closer to physics-based rendering than the odd hybrid-ish system that FO4 uses. And when it comes to records, they split things up a lot more so they could have things servers-side to try and prevent cheating. Not only scripts, but spawn rate curves and things like that.

 

Not sure what material changes there were to meshes (as opposed to changes that render the meshes incompatible but don't really affect what you can do with them), but they were definitely significant enough that you would not be able to load them in FO4 (as evidenced by the changes that needed to be made to nifskope to allow it to render FO76 meshes).

 

 

If you actually could get things to work together though, I don't agree that using atom shop stuff could be considered theft. If the files are put on your computer, you can do whatever you want as long as you aren't distributing them.

[BlazeStryker]

As another big point, Bethesda would likely sue your butt for directly taking FO76 intellectual property into FO4. That being said, making yer own stuff that was themed after FO76's is fine. I've been running Boston Natural Surroundings for a while now.

[JimmyRJump]

Besides all of that, taking assets from one game to add it to another is not allowed on Nexus and is reason for an immediate ban. Not talking about mods, as they're not considered assets of a game. You will find loads of mods on Nexus that have clothes, armors and/or weapons from one game and add them to another, but those mods have files that are an approximate imitation of the originals and not the actual files themselves.

[StormWolf01]

Based on Absol's comment about using a mod installer for this, I really don't think that he was talking about distribution of files to other players.

 

However, if an installer such as say... MO2 ... just picking one at random, were able to reassign assets from a different game to another game... My personal "opinion" is that Zenimax "could" get pissy about it, and try to shut that down.

 

Vlits. Good info there about some of those differences with the textures and meshes and stuff. Thanks for that!

I just wanna expand with the explanation of the differences in the records that you were talking about. Which was also a really good point.

 

The differences tween a game, and a game client. Games host pretty much all the game information locally. Meaning, there on the computer it's running on. Game clients don't. For the exact reason that Vlits mentioned.

Examples. The game client will host the image files for say... a monster, weapon, armor, scenery, game UI, etc. That stuff, you "might" be able to actually mod, depending on the game. The SETTINGS for those items, such as the damage, swing speed, weight, ammo used... all of that, is located on the SERVER. So that it is NOT available to be modified by the person using the Client. It requires somebody to have access to the files, there on the game server, in order to mod them.

 

This is why, if you look at the different files that you have in your folders, you'll notice that game clients usually have a lower number of folders in them. Because their only loaded with sound files, texture files, mesh files, encryption files (if the game uses them), desktop files (which is usually just settings for how the player customizes their UI), possibly records of the player's account information, etc etc etc.