Mini How To's

In this document I will deal with those small tasks that are too small to be worth a full blown tutorial of their own. These How TOs are kind of like FAQs but with more detailed information. So they are half way between a FAQ and a full blown Tutorial.

List of How To's on this Page

How to Load and Save your mod.
Changing the name of your mod.
Compatibility 101: Create your own formIDs
Compatibility 102: Finding out what uses what and the problems involved.
Cleaning your mod the Official way
Computer Terminals.
Customizing your Cell Presents.

How To's

How to Load and Save your mod.

Some noobies have gotten stuck with this first step so lets cover it quickly. Load up the Geck editor, go to the file menu and select save. Then in the "file name" box enter the name of your mod and click save.

To load your mod so you are ready to edit it, click on the File menu and go to data, double click to select your mod, then whilst it is still selected, click Set as Active File. This will tell the editor to save to this file when you need to save your mod next time.

Changing the name of your mod.

You can often rename any mod without dialog in it later by going to the Fallout 3 Data folder and changing its name. You should not change the .esp at the end of the file name though. Also any mod containing dialog uses the mods name as its voice file folder name in Fallout 3\Data\sound\Voice. So if you change the name of a mod that included recorded dialog, you must also go in to Fallout 3\Data\sound\Voice and rename the folder to match the new mod name.

Compatibility 101: Create your own formIDs

When ever you edit an existing item in the editor, click on the FormID and change it before doing anything else, then when the question "Create new formID" is asked when you close the window, say yes. This will make that newly changed item totally unique to your mod and help you make a very compatible mod. Failure to do this will cause your edit to effect every mod that uses that item and could make it totally incompatible with the rest of the known universe. Sometimes you might want to do that but it is always better that it is your choice and not something you did by accident.

Compatibility 102: Finding out what uses what and the problems involved.

Fallout 3 quest orientated and thus follows the quest makers rule book when it comes to compatibility and what you can safely edit. It is one giant quest mod with all the problems that I have been warning others about for Oblivion, only this time I find my self in their boat, having to watch out for other peoples quest related items as I told them to do and so must you.

This is why apparently simple edits cause crashing, it is the old "cleaned and fixed" argument being played out in a full game rather than a mod that I warned people about. You edit something that looks like it was not used by anything because there is no warning about it and and the game starts to crash because it was used but nothing warned you about it. The original quest maker could have told you but he is not here.

So you have to find these things for your self and the best way to do so is not too accurate.

Lets take a look at the Used Info, find a cell in the editors Cell View window, load it up and then right click on an object on the right hand side of the cell view window and select Use Info. A Use Report will appear telling you what uses that item, which is a handy feature, so remember it. Trouble is, not everything that uses it, is detected by that feature and those that are, are not always updated in real time.

For example find a door and try unticking the Teleport Box, so it is no longer linked to the other door or used by anything. Then right click and select Use Info and you will see the door is still listed as used by the other door it links too and will remain used by it until you save your mod. If you delete the door, the Geck will complain that it is still being used even though that is not true, saving is the only way to force an update. So you see the Use Info is a useful tool for finding out what uses something, but you cannot rely on it.

That is the issue most third party tools fall foul of when used to clean mods.

You must learn these tricks and learn to MOVE rather than Edit or Delete items if you wish to avoid crashes. To remain compatible with other mods, it is better to leave the item alone completely. Which makes it very difficult to do anything at all but that is part of the challenge in making mods for Fallout 3.

Cleaning your mod the Official way

Occasionally you will forget to change the FormID on something you edited and will want to fix it, when that happens, this is what you must do.

After loading your mod in to GECK, go to the File menu and Select DATA. Then scroll down to your mod and select it, then press Details. Hidden between Editor ID and the Offset Tabs is the Form ID tab, you need to expand this so you can see it. Clicking on Form ID sorts it out in order. If you know the ID of the item you need to fix, find it and select it. Then press Delete to mark it as IGNORE. Then load your mod in to the editor again and save it. This will cause the mod to IGNORE that edit ever took place.

If you have been using some sort of naming scheme for your mods changes, then it is often easy to spot mistakes by looking for edits that do not use your naming scheme. Everything listed here is an edited item, but becareful when dealing with worldspace edits, some times fixing one thing can cause a series of errors that are a nightmare to fix. And the old PathGrid system in Oblivion was always just a set of numbers so you could never tell where the grid was used.

That is the official method of cleaning mods and is by far the safest way to clean up your errors. I used this system to keep my Cyrodiil upgrade Mods healthy and compatible in Oblivion for years and it allowed me to make 8 or 9 mods that worked together without errors or patches being needed. I was the only person to successfully do that with so many quest mods.

So it is a system that is proven to work and works well but is the slowest least risky method of doing this.

Still I recommend it to you.

Note: Oblivions editor used to mark things you simply looked at as editted and then saved them as edited in your mod, fallout 3 ignores items that get marked as edited if it detects no changes have been made so it does not have this problem anymore.

Computer Terminals

Computer terminals are fairly easy to set up and replace books are the primary source of information in the game. The information can be security protected so the player has to have the right skills to read the contents or left open for anybody to read. Books are fairly old news, and exist mostly for clutter.

Go to the Object Window in Geck and find the Items Menu, scroll down until you see NOTE and select it. We are going to make a computer message for use with a terminal. Select one of the CitadelTerminal notes and change the Name and ID to something new, then change the text to say what you want it to say. Theoretically you could have a voice file here but it has not been tested and as far as I know, Fallout 3 has not used voice files with terminals either, so it might not work.

Once you have written your message press Okay and say yes to the create new FormID Question, then scroll down to the Object Window to the bottom and find the Terminal menu.

Select the first terminal "AbrahamWashingtonTerminal" and double click to edit it. Change the ID and Name to something new, set the Base Hack Difficulty to anything you want. Change the Welcome text to anything you want. The welcome text appears at the top of the computer screen when notes are displaced so its on every screen. Then go to Menu Items and delete everything you see there by selecting it and pressing delete.

Go to the Item Text and enter a name for the Note you selected, this will be the Menu name that appears as selectable on the terminal. Then go to Display Note and find and select the Note you created earlier. It should now appear in Menu Items as item 1. Additional notes can be added to it this way and you can even make sub menus using the Sub Menu feature so menus lead to other menus.

As you can see, you can even use a script to control it or use the result text or Item Result text to do things but that is scripting and that is a much bigger topic that this How To allows for.

Customizing your Cell Presents.

Time to talk about some cool new Cell features in Fallout 3, these are kind of like presents, you can make your own or use existing ones and it changes how your Mods Cells will look. First lets find a CELL to examine. Find AgathasHouseInterior in the Cell View window by going to interior and selecting the first cell. Right click and select edit to edit it. First we have Default Acoustics, these are set up in the Object window under Special Effects in the Acoustic Space menu. You can edit any of these and change the ID to make it unique to your mod, and set up your own.

To do this scroll down the Object Window to Special effects and choose Acoustic Space. Select the first item ExtOasis and Double Click on it to edit it. Change the ID to something new, choose the Environment Type you want, next choose he "Use sounds from region" or choose none if you have your own sounds prepared, if you do have you own sounds added to the editor already, choose them from the Select TESSound button. Remember to say yes to the create new FormID question when you close the window.

You now have you're own acoustic space item, just select it from your Cells Default Acoustic menu under common data to use it.

Next we want to look at Music Type in the Cells window, this is actually just above Special Effects, go to the Object window, find Menu Item, scroll down to Music type and select one of the items that appear on the left. Double click to open it, select your own MP3 and change ID name to something new. Remember to say yes to the create new FormID question when you close the window. Now just select it from Music types and it will play in your cell. Another feature Oblivion lacked. I had use standard play sound commands to do this with custom music in my Oblivion mods.

Now we get to the lighting effects, go back to the cell, do you see Image Space listed under Common Data ? This effects the look of the cell and adds various effects to it to make it look different. If you go to the world menu of GECK on the top of the program and scroll down you will see the Image Space menu, select it to view all the Image Space entries, go a head and select one and take a look. By editing these you can create your own. To do so, just select one from the list that is close to what you want to achieve and select Duplicate, then double click on the copy and rename it to something new. Then edit away and select it as your cells Imagespace setting.

Now go to the Cells window again and click on the Lighting Tab, Notice the Template box, that allows you to select even more cool new lighting feature presents and use the Inherit options on the left to enable or disable parts of that present as needed. Go to the World Menu again and select Lighting Templates. Choose one and double click to take a look at it.

These are simply lighting presents that can be selected for a cell so every cell in your world has the same lighting if you wished it. If you want to make your own. Right click on one that is close to what you want, select duplicate and then double click on the copy and rename it. Then make the changes you want and select it from your cells lighting tab/Template box and select which parts you wish to inherit. The box below the lighting template is the same as the templates own window, it allows you to set this cell up manually if you prefer. Just set the Template to None if that is the case or select a template and turn off inherited parts to set those parts upmanually here.

I am sure you will agree this is cool stuff, much better than Oblivion's system.