Fallout 3 Merchant Tutorials

Parts 1 and 2.

About these tutorials.

I have writen 2 tutorials for Merchants and combined them here to make it easier on everybody. The first deals with adding a chest to an existing merchant. The second is more complicated since it borders on quest making and needed to have its own tutorial just to explain how to set up a new merchant of your own. So the tutorials cover the following items.

Part 1 = adding contents to existing merchants and theory, best practices and other tips.

Part 2 = creating a new merchant, recording dialog needed to make it work, audio file formats and other tips.

To make a new merchant and give it a vendor chest, you need to read both tutorials, but if you just want to add some stuff to an existing NPC, you just need Part 1.

Enjoy.

Fallout 3: Adding items to a Merchant Tutorial

(Merchants Part 1)

Introduction

Much has changed in Geck since the Oblivion Construction Set days. The time when you could copy an PC, make them a merchant and have them sell your stuff quickly and easily are gone. Replaced by hundreds of totally unique NPCs, so any new merchant you make, has to have its voice files recorded and be set up properly before it can be used. Which is beyond the scope of this tutorial so we will focus on exisiting merchants this time.

Some of the new features in Fallout 3s Geck are worth exploring in detail so that is what I will be doing here after I tell you the basics about adding new items to existing merchants safely. .

First I will explain how to add new content to an existing vendor without explaining anything but what you actually need to do. Then I will explain only what you needed to know, giving examples on how best to use these features. So we divide this in to a practical example of what you need to do, and a theory section explaining how things work.

The second part is perhaps the most important part since it will explain how things have changed since the Oblivion days and demonstrate what cool new stuff is possible.

Adding new items to an existing Merchant.

To add an item to existing Merchant, go to the cell window, select "interiors" and scroll down to the "VendorChestsCell" and select it then go to the cells view so you can see the cell and it's contents.

Select one of the chests in that cell and select it, press "control C" to make a copy (nothing will appear to happen but a copy has been made). Now go to the shop you want to add your new vendor chest too and press control V to paste a new chest in that sell. The shop keeper should be in the same cell as your new vendor chest or this will not work.

Now move the new chest outside of the game world so the player cannot access it and then double click on it and select "Edit Base". When the original chest appears, change the ID to something else so it says VendorChestMyVendor or something, this will avoid conflicts. Remove any scripts that it may use too, since we do not need a scripted chest by going to script and selecting NONE.

Next remove everything from the "Item list" and go to the Object window and find the items you want the vendor to sell and drag and drop them in to the item list so they are placed in the new vendor chest. Set whether you want the chest to respawn its contents and your done.

Now OK the window and say yes to the create new formID question.

Now close all windows related to the chest, then double click on the chest you pasted in the shop and open it's reference window but do not click on "Edit Base" this time. In the reference window that appears you will see a number of tabs including 3D Data and Ownership, click on Ownership and change the NPC to match the name of the shop keeper that you want to own this chest and make sure persistent reference is ticked. Remember the shop keeper must be in the same cell as this chest.

If you are unsure of the right NPC shop keeper name, go to the shop you put the chest in, select the shop keeper and then select edit base. The NPC base object's ID is the name of shop keeper that should own the chest. Just find it in the vendor chests reference window and select it. Then okay it and you are done.

How things work: The Merchants own chest.

All merchants in Oblivion and Fallout 3 need a chest to put items in that you sell to them and this chest can contain items to be sold as well as any items you sold to this merchant during the game. They can only have 1 vendor chest for this purpose and is set by double clicking on a merchant in the gaming world and setting it up using the Merchant Chest tab. If you tick the respawn box on the merchants own chest, then when it respawns, it will empty it of anything you sold to that merchant previously and restock it with anything that you placed in the item list for that chest.

If you do not tick respawn, the merchant will remember every item you sold to it until the end of time.

In Oblivion the vendor chest had to be in the same cell as the merchant but in Fallout 3, that is no longer true. Fallout 3 places the vendors own chest in the "VendorChestsCell" cell. But I am guessing it can actually be put anywhere.

The merchants own chest can contain items you wish that merchant to sell just like other chests but because the merchant does not need to be in the same cell as his chest anymore, your merchant can be a traveling sales man and will always sell items from his own merchant chest where ever he goes.

How things work: Additional Merchant Chests.

Anything you add to an existing merchant should be added in a new vendor chest that you place in the same cell the merchant is in. You need only set the merchant as the owner and he will sell what ever you put in that chest providing he is in the same cell. It really is that simple.

This requirement for the Vendor chests to be in the same cell as the merchant goes back to the Elder Scrolls games but Fallout 3 is a little different because of the way the Merchants own chests work. Because the merchant in Fallout 3 will always be able to sell items from his own Merchant chest, he can literally be a traveling sales man.

If you choose to make a traveling sales man and have him stop at specific points around the world to sell goods for a while as happens in Fallout 3 already. You can hide additional merchant chests under the ground at those points where he stops to sell his goods and have that merchant offer different items at each stop he makes.

For example, a merchant might sell Stims and Rads all the time from his own merchant chest but nothing else, but he may travel between a Robot factory, a Weapon Factory and an Armour factory in that order. Picking up Robot parts at the Robot factory and selling them at the Weapons factory, picking up weapons at the weapons factory and selling them at the Armour factory and picking up Armour at the Armour factory and selling them at the robot factory.

So the merchant literally appears to buy stock at one stop to sell at his next stop.

To simulate this, you just bury the appropriate chest at each stop. When the merchant enters that cell, the items in those additional chests will magically become available to buy.

New Traveling Merchants.

As previously explained, these new NPCs need setting up properly and so is beyond the scope of this tutorial, but once you have set them up properly. The information found in this tutorial will work for them. I will be covering this in separate tutorial later.

 

Fallout 3: Creating a Brand New Merchant

(Merchants Part 2)

Introduction

This tutorial assumes you already know how to create a new NPC and will focus on converting an existing NPC in to a Merchant. In Oblivion any NPC you made in to a Merchant this way could not have previously been in the game, otherwise it would keep it's old settings. So to avoid that problem, keep a saved game for testing that was made before your NPC was placed in the game and work with a new NPC not an old one you encountered in the game previously. Then use your save to test your new NPC Merchant and you will always be testing your own changes and not the old NPCs settings. Fallout 3 may not have this problem, but Oblivion did, so I am warning you about it now just in case. Better safe that sorry.

This tutorial will help you configure your NPC as an Merchant, then I will help you set up the quest and explain the voice acting, file formats and other things that you need to know before telling you to read the first Merchant Tutorial I wrote called "Fallout 3: Adding items to a Merchant Tutorial" to finish off your merchant. The voice work section will actually be just as relevant for normal quest NPCS as it is for NPC merchants. So if you need Quest Dialog, you might want to read this tutorial too.

The resulting Merchant should be completely unique and thus will not conflict with any other mod.

Preparing your NPC Merchant.

First lets make a new Voice Type for our NPC, go to the Object Window and scroll down to Voice Type, then select it and go to the window on the right where all the Voice Types are listed. Right click over any of the Voice Types listed and select new. When the window pops up, change the ID by entering your own name in that box (Mine was called Camomerchant because I am making a merchant to sell my camo armour) and set up the sex and default dialog as you want it to be. I usually Tick Allow Default Dialog too just in case any work with my NPC.

Now find your pre made NPC, time to make it in to a merchant.

Double click on the NPC you created then go to the Traits tab and look down for Voice Type, find the Voice Type you just created and select it.

Next Click on AI Data and make sure the AI attributes are set to something that will allow your Merchant to trade with people instead of ripping their heads off on sight. Friendly merchants work best. Also select the type of items you want your merchant to sell and ignore the rest and okay your NPC changes.

Differences from Oblivion.

Auto Calc Stats does not affect Fallout 3 merchants since they are quest base, unlike Oblivion which caused it to disable the Merchants selling abilities.

CLASS does not effect Fallout 3 Merchants since they are quest based now, unlike Oblivion which caused it to disable the Merchants selling abilities.

Barter Gold does not work, the actual gold the merchant carries and uses for trade is now found in their inventory or in their merchants chest. The Merchant Chest if set to respawn, will respawn the merchants gold every 4 days. The NPCs own gold may respawn if the Merchant respawns, you will have to test that.

The Items under Auto Calc on the AI Data tab DO DECIDE what the merchant will sell you but not what they will buy from you. So these options still work but any items not listed as tradable here are lost when the player ends his chat with the merchant.

AI Packages in Oblivion had to have "offer services" ticked for the Merchant to sell you anything, this is now obselete in Fallout 3 because the merchants are quest based. Those of you who wish to limit when and where a merchant is allowed to trade must now use the quest conditions to achieve this. A little more complicated I know but a lot more flexible in the end. I will be covering basic quest making in the future so fear not, help is coming.

Placing your Merchant in the World.

Find a Cell you want to place your merchant in and select your NPC and drag it in to that cell so your Merchant appears in that cell in the game. The Merchant is now ready to have a Merchant chest added to it in the normal way. See Part 1 of the Merchant Tutorials for that part.

Making a Merchants Selling Quest

Go the the Object Window and find Quest, select it and then in the list of quests, right click and select new to create a new quest. Give your new quest a name, give it a new unique ID (add 01 to the end of the name or something and remove the spaces, that is all I do). Since mine Quest is to sell Camo Armour, my quest name is Camo Merchant Quest. Yours will be different.

Set the Priority to 25, tick "Start game enabled" and "Allow repeat conversation topics".

Once you have done that, Okay the quest window so it closes then go and find your new quest in the quest list and open the window back up again. You must do this or GECK forgets what you wrote in the first Tab.

Now you will see Quest Conditions in the first tab, this is where you control when your quests will start, but that is for a quest tutorial not a merchant tutorial so lets skip that and keep this simple.

Fallout 3 uses a lot of character specific dialog, meaning each NPC seems to have its own unique lines and they are also controlled for here. Adding a faction here limits all the dialog to just be used by that faction, adding and NPC here limits it to being used by just that NPC. We will be using it to limit it to just our own Merchant.

Right click in the white area below Quest Conditions and select New.

Make sure condition functions says GetIsID and click on the Function Parameters box and find your NPC in the Object ID window and select it. Then Okay the Select Function Parameters window. Finally make sure Comparison has == in it and value says 1.0000. This basically says run this quest only on our NPC, if you changed the 1.0000 to 0.0000 it would run this quest only if it was NOT our NPC. These sort of switches are used a lot in quests, that is why I bothered explaining it briefly now, so you will recognize the importance of these things.

Now, okay the Condition Item Window to close it.

Adding a new Topic to your Quest.

Setting up the Sell Topic First:

Now go to your quests Topic tab and select it, then under Editor ID select AddTopic and a window will appear with lots of topics listed. Right click in the window and select new, give the new topic a suitable name, I will called this the Sell Topic in this tutorial to prevent confusion that might occur when we get to the other 2 topics in this tutorial, it will be used to sell items so call it merchantsellingitems or something.

Select your new Sell Topic and change the Topic Text Box to Sell Items, this is the name that appears on the Characters menu when you speak to them.

Next right click in the white box below it under info and select new, then type our your new line that you want your merchant to say as he offers items to the player to buy or sell. I just added "What can I do for you ?", that is really all that is needed for a simple merchant, once done okay the window and close it so you return Topics tab in the Quests window.

First select the Speaker pull down gadget and find your NPC Merchant and select it. Next go down to Conditions and right click and select new. Make sure "condition functions" says GetIsID and click on the Function Parameters box and find your NPC in the Object ID window and select it. Then Okay the Select Function Parameters window. Finally make sure Comparison has == in it and value says 1.0000. This basically says run this quest only on our NPC.

If that sounds like you did it before, it is because you did, you can actually right click on any condition already inserted in to a condition box and copy it, then paste it else where but I wanted you to do that the hard way to get used to it because you will do that a lot. This is the spot where you limit the hours this selling quest will be available using other commands if you wish, but that too us beyond the scope of this tutorial but if you want to experiement, the command you need to look up is "getcurrenttime".

Now go down to the bottom and in the Result Script (End) Box, type "ShowBarterMenu" without the quotes.

Tip: ShowBarterMenu is a command that takes an additional arguement eg "ShowBarterMenu PercentDiscount". If you put ShowBarterMenu -10, they will sell items at 10% more than their true value and buy items at 10% less than their true value. If you used 10% then it would sell items at 10% less than their true value and by at 10% more. So the positive and negative values make a big difference. Between -15% and -25% should be a good figure for most merchants.

That is the command that opens up the merchants wares for the player to buy in Fallout 3. It replaces the old Oblivion trade icon that did the same job.

Setting up a Greeting Second:

Do the same again, but this time click on Add Topic under Editor ID and find GREETINGS and add that. This will allow your merchant to greet you, without this nothing works.

Now right click in the white box under info and type in a good greeting for your merchant, something like Hello, Good to See you, anything like that.

Then select the Speaker pull down gadget and find your Merchant and select it. Next go down to Conditions and right click and select new. Make sure condition functions says GetIsID and click on the Function Parameters box and find your NPC in the Object ID window and select it. Then Okay the Select Function Parameters window. Finally make sure Comparison has == in it and value says 1.0000. This basically says run this quest only on our NPC.

Leave the Topic Text as it is, nobody sees this usually when it is a greeting.

Setting up a Goodbye message Third:

Finally do the same one last time but this time click on Add Topic and then right click and select New then type in something like MerchantGoodbye. This will be used to exit from chat with the merchant.

Now right click in the white box under info and type in a a goodbye message.

Now select the Speaker pull down gadget and find your Merchant and select it. Next go down to Conditions and right click and select new. Make sure condition functions says GetIsID and click on the Function Parameters box and find your NPC in the Object ID window and select it. Then Okay the Select Function Parameters window. Finally make sure Comparison has == in it and value says 1.0000. This basically says run this quest only on our NPC.

AND.....

Go to the tick boxes under Response text and find the one that says GOOD BYE and trick it. When the player selects this the merchant chat will end.

Finally change the Topic Text to day Good Bye or something like that, so the player knows it will end the chat.

And remember, all those GetIsIDs you set up above could have been copied and pasted in, saving you a lot of work...just thought I would remind you of that at the end after you have done it. It is good practice for you to do it manually at this stage, helps you remember it.

The Voice Work.

Okay now we will record our voices in GECK and then edit them so they work in the game. I will cover this all in one area so it is easy to look up later. You must do this for all 3 lines above but I will explain it once since it is exactly the same process for all 3 file.

Double click on your line you want the Merchant to say to the player so the Edit Response window appears. Notice down the bottom under Voice Type, there is some information, the path is actually where your finished voice file will be placed, try and remember it. If you have no information there, it is because you failed to set the Speaker on the previous page and failed to set up GetIsID correctly in one of the condition boxes. Check the speaker first, sometimes GECK forgets it.

Record your line by pressing record and speaking in to your Microphone, then hit save when you are done to save the wave file to your hard disk. At this point you will get an error about lip syncing not working, ignore it, Geck lipsync is broken, no point moaning about it, just move on and forget about it.

Now save your mod and exit GECK but make note of the PATH your wave was saved too, we are heading to that folder next. Remember it was listed in the Edit Response window, so if you have gotten the path, go and have another look now.

Since I use Goldwave for editing my audio files I will now use it to edit the wave created by GECK by trimming it and cleaning it up so it is usable in the game. You should load your wave file in to what ever sound editor you use and do the same, you just want a clearly spoken line, nothing fancy.

My wave file was in Fallout 3\Data\sound\Voice\CamoPowerArmour.esp\CamoMerchant since the mod I am making in these tutorials is called CamoPowerArmour.esp and my voice type was CamoMerchant. So you see, the name of the mod and the voice type determine the last 2 folder names. All quest dialog will be placed somewhere in Fallout 3\Data\sound\Voice\ so just go there in future to find your lines, saves you remembering the paths individually. It is important you know where to look for the path, which is why I told you about it above.

Tip: Waves recorded in Geck work directly in the game without needing any changes, but cleaning up your recording just makes it sound better.

A word on audio file formats Fallout 3 accepts.

You can convert your wave files to OGG files to reduce the file size and make your mod a smaller file to upload, or leave them as Wave files. Unfortunately MP3s do not appear to work anymore as Dialog files, probably because of all the cracking up it causes in the game as we found out in the Radio tutorial.

I recommend saving your files as OGG files if you can or if you cannot, just leave them as wave files, they will still work. If you do convert them to OGG files, you can delete the waves, they are no longer needed.