Renee's Modding Thread Options

[Renee]

Mod-making thread basically, which focuses heavily on quest-making. The first two tutorials (How to make a fetch quest and how to make a kill quest) are very hand-holdy. They are designed for those who are just starting to learn the art of quest-making. Other tutorials get more advanced, as my wacky ideas have pushed their boundaries.

Just click on any of the links in the post below this one.


Bethesda Units. (How distance compares in-game to real-life).

Xpadder Walkthrough page. Xpadder is a site which allows gaming controllers to mimic the key & mouse functions. Xpadder, or similar programs such as Joy to Keys, are absolutely crucial to get the most out of older games such as Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind, and Oblivion, for those who prefer controllers. They can also be used for newer games (Fallout 3/NV or Skyrim) to provide alternate controlling scenarios during times when a game's native D-pad arrangement needs to be shut off.




This post has been edited by Renee: Apr 16 2024, 06:27 PM

[Renee]

Faction-changing Armor and Clothing

Game: Fallout 3 or Oblivion

Good evening. This one is going to focus on making faction changes, which are caused by simply putting on some clothes or armor. This will work best when changing outfits just before going from one cell to another, and is much more RP-friendly than using console commands.

I got this to work in Fallout 3 last summer, in Janet Telia's game. I was able to get her into a faction which was compatible with the RaiderFaction by having her put on some specialized raider armor, waiting an hour, and then entering a cell full of raiders. Once inside that cell, these enemies were now her friends. The entire faction of raiders remained friendly to her from that point on, all across the Wasteland, as long as she was wearing her special armor.

This works also in Oblivion, but a few things are done different in this earlier game.


----------------------------

1).Open up the GECK, bla bla... First thing we're going to do is to make a customized faction.

1a). MAIN toolbar > Characters > Faction
Go ahead and make a custom faction by right-clicking > New into the Editor ID window. I called Janet's special faction aaaRaiderFaction, though you can call yours whatever you'd like.


NOTE: If modding Fallout 3 DO NOT just use one of Bethesda's factions (such as RaiderFaction). It is better to make a custom faction, rather than adding the PC to one of the game's premade factions. Before I figured this out, I was using the Bethesda raider faction. When Janet put on her raider-faction armor, she was accepted by raiders just fine. Problem was, she could not 'break' out of this faction just by removing her armor. Even if she shot somebody, they would continue to be her friend. Maybe this is a 'friendly fire' sort of function, so that if one raider shoots another, he/she won't just turn around and begin fighting this other raider, when they should be coming after us.

With a custom faction, the results worked just as I wanted them to. There were some limits though, and these limits will be discussed toward the bottom-third of this post.

NOTE:: IF making a faction-changing apparel item for Oblivion don't use a custom faction. Instead use one of the game's ordinary factions such as BanditFaction. Maybe there's a way to make custom factions work but the game seems more hardcoded to only accept the vanilla factions.


1b). Give this faction a Name. You can toggle Evil on if you want to, which will temporarily influence how Karma works.

1c). Right-click > New into the Interfaction Relations window, and use the Opposing/Affiliated scroll-bar to find the faction you want to modify toward your character's custom faction.

1d). Let's say RaiderFaction got chosen during step 1c. For best results, make the Disposition Modifier 100, with Group Combat Reactions toggled to Ally.

Experiments can be tried with numbers lower than 100, and 'Friend' or 'Neutral' can also be chosen instead of Ally, if you want to make this faction-change happen with more of a question mark.

1e). Click OK (closing the Factions panel) and SAVE.


2a). OBJECT window
Go into Items. Edit an outfit (a piece of clothing or armor), and give it a unique ID. Make sure this item hasn't got a script attached. If it does, set this to NONE. Click OK. When asked if we want to save this under a new ID? Click Yes.

2b). The Script Type scroll-bar can stay as Object. Here is what to write.


scriptname aaaFactionChangingArmorScript

Begin OnEquip Player

End

Begin OnUnequip Player

End

Close/save that, click OK (closing the Armor panel). Reopen the new armor, find the script just wrote in the Script scroll-bar. Click OK again, SAVE, and reopen again. Here is the rest of the script.

------------------------

scriptname aaaFactionChangingArmorScript

Begin OnEquip Player

Player.SetFactionRank aaaFaction 1

End

Begin OnUnequip Player

Player.SetFactionRank aaaFaction -1

End

-------------------------------------

Where it says "aaaFaction", substitute this term with the name of your actual custom faction. So for me, I'm typing aaaRaiderFaction where it says aaaFaction.

And here's one final trick which is optional. It it possible to put messages into the game as well. This is for our information only, and is a way to make sure the mod's working. Some may find it immersion-breaking.

** Adding a message into Oblivion is easy. Simply type Message "Type message content here", X into either of the script's Begin and End blocks. X = the number of seconds the message will stay onscreen for. So if I type

Begin OnEquip Player

Player.SetFactionRank aaaFaction 1

Message "I am now a bandit", 10

End

This will cause a message to flash onscreen for 10 seconds which says "I am now a bandit". For Fallout 3 or NV the process requires more steps.




Object window > Miscellaneous > Message
3a). Right-click > New into the window.

3b). For ID, I am calling it aaaRaiderArmorEquipMessage. Copy that name and paste it on a Notepad file.

Give the message a name. Use the Icon scroll-bar to add an image to the message (although sometimes, the icon doesn't work in-game).

3c). Turn Message Box off, and change the Display Time slot from 2 to whatever. I find that 2 seconds aren't long enough sometimes for the message to sink in.

3d). Message can be whatever is desired. In my game it says "Yo, checkit! I am now part of the Raider Faction, beeyatch!"

Ahem. Click OK.

3e). Return to the armor script, and add ShowMessage aaaMessage somewhere between the OnEquip and End functions, with 'aaaMessage' being the name of the message created during step 3b. A second message can be added which denotes our character moving out of the faction.

So in my game, in total, it says


scriptname aaaFactionChangingArmorScript

Begin OnEquip Player

Player.SetFactionRank aaaFaction 1

ShowMessage aaaRaiderArmorEquipMessage

End

Begin OnUnequip Player

Player.SetFactionRank aaaFaction -1

ShowMessage aaaRaiderArmorUnEquipMessage

End


There it is. 😶 This script will make sure the player-character gets added and removed from whatever faction desired, in a never-ending loop. However, there are limitations to this.

-- Make sure your character changes clothes in a cell which is separate from any enemies. Once this is done it's best to wait an hour (press the wait button), and then enter the cell which is being influenced. Over time I've gotten lazy here and there, forgotten to wait for instance, and everything might still work fine. But to make this work 100% it's best to follow that sequence. The faction-changing effect works best this way. Plus, it's more realistic that a bunch of enemies won't change their hostile minds, simply because they witness our toon changing into some outfit!

Edit 2022: I have recently discovered that we don't always need to be in a separate cell for this to work, however it helps if NPCs (if they are supposed to be hostile) don't see our character at the time of the armor/clothing change.

--I tried entering the raider-infested grocery store (the store next to Gold Ribbon Grocery, with all those raiders inside), for instance. Janet entered this store wearing ordinary clothes. The raiders inside were hostile. Then, I had her leave the building, changing into her special Faction Armor. Back inside, the raiders were now friendly. Back outside, change of clothes again, now they're hostile again.

However, after doing this several times, they eventually defaulted to friendly no matter what she was wearing.

...Of course, nobody would do any of this in the game. It's silly to change back and forth like this as we're actually playing. We only need to change into the outfit once before we enter their territory, and maybe change back out of it once, if we're going back into ordinary civilization again. I'm just highlighting that there are some limits, here. These limits won't be found though, until the gamer is doing some heavy experimentation.


--To break her friends-only status, I tried having her attack a raider. He ignored her attack at first, but eventually fought back. Once this moment was crossed, this guy was now NOT her friend anymore, and attacked every time, even if she ran outside and changed clothes from and to the Faction armor. Thing is, only that one raider attacked her. The others were still friendly to Janet.

Bottom line though: when just playing the game normally, change the character's outfit once, wait an hour, and then enter a cell with enemies in it, everything should work. Later, if the outfit gets removed, maybe your character's going back to Megaton or Rivet City (wearing outlaw armor wouldn't be appropriate) all of that should work too.

This post has been edited by Renee: Mar 14 2024, 04:45 PM