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Fallout NV Recipes Tutorial

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Category: Fallout New Vegas Modding Guides

Last Updated on Monday, 12 September 2011 21:18

Written by Giskard

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Fallout NV Recipes Tutorial

Introduction

Recipes mods are nice and easy things to make but have advanced features other areas of modding make use of. So at their simplest they are easy to make, at their worst, they can be an advanced modding topic. So they make a good introduction to modding for those wanting to do something with the Geck NV editor. In this tutorial we will be simply going over the basics so you can see what is involved and I will explain your advanced options as I go. This way you learn the basics and you also see where the advanced stuff comes in to play and can choose to use it or NOT as the case may be. Learning the advanced stuff here will make it easier for you later when you take on more ambitious modding projects. So I do recommend you try the advanced stuff in this tutorial.

The Recipe

A recipe is a special item found in the Object Window of the Geck NV editor under Miscellaneous. If you go and look at it you will see it contains Food, Chem and even Ammo recipes. All of them are created the same way. You have the ID which must be unique, you have the Name which is what the player sees in the game. The Required Skill needed to use it and the Level of that skill. You have the Category which basically names where the recipe will work, e.g. at a campfire, workbench etc and the subcategory which helps define what it actually is and makes it easier to find the item in the editor later.

Below those are the important parts such as Requirements, Ingredients and Output which we will deal with now

Setting up the Requirements:

After you have chosen the ID and set all the data at the top of the form, you have to do create the actual recipe in the area below. How there are a number of ways to add a recipe to the game. First is to leave Requirements blank and allow it to simply appear in the game by default without any further effort being needed for the requirements, in which case, skip to the next section.

Optional Advanced Topic:

The other way to add something to the game includes giving the player something such as a piece of paper with the recipe on it or checking for perk before the player can use the recipe. I will assume you want the player to have a note given to them or allow the player to find it some place and we will introduce our Recipe that way.

Creating our note.

Go to the Object Window and find the Misc Item list, I'll show you the sort of thing you need for this to work.

Find books and look for "VRRCLegionSlaveLedger", that is more or less the sort of item we need to create, so select it and select edit. Now change the ID to myrecipe and the name to My Recipe or what ever name you wish to use but remember it because we need to know the name later. Then in scripts, select the black down arrow and scroll all the way up to the top of the scripts list and select NONE, we do not want a script for this, so get rid of the existing one. Leave Quest Item ticked and the weight at 0 because we want this to remain on the player and not get removed. Quest Item makes sure it stays on the player for us.

Now Okay it and say YES to the question "Create New Form", if you say NO it will edit the "VRRCLegionSlaveLedger" form which would be very bad.

Now you have the book that contains the recipe, put it somewhere in the game word for the player to find. You can even add it to a merchant but you might want to adjust the value of it first so the price feels right.

The best way to give an item to a merchant is to make a brand new chest and assign its owner as the merchant you want to sell your recipe. Then place your recipe in that container. But is a tutorial in its own right and will not be covered here. It is enough for this tutorial to simply leave the recipe on some desk some place, possibly next to a cooker or work bench, depending on what it is you are making, food or ammo etc etc.

Advanced Requirement options.

Go back to the Recipe window, click on Requirements and in the box named Visibility Requirements, right click and select new, a standard "condition item" window will appear, this window is used all over Geck so lets explain this properly so you learn how to use it. What we are going to do is have the recipe check if the player has the note with the recipe written on it before allowing the player to use it. The recipe is not actually written on the note, it just just there to stop the player magically knowing the recipe before it is given to them.

Let me explain what each area does, then I'll tell you how to set them up. So read, understand, then we will do the work.

The Condition Function is actually where script commands are selected, this is simply the GUI version of that command. E.G. meaning window version of a script that does a similar job.

The Function Parameters are only needed by some commands, in our case we need to select our myrecipe note in it, you may have called yours something else.

The Comparison == thing is very important and usually you have to chose between == meaning equal too, >= meaning greater than or equal too, <= meaning less than or equal too or my favorite, != meaning not equal too. The ! is the NOT part. They are all very useful and you will find them used in many programming languages so learning these means your learning how to read scripts and source code, cool stuff :)

Run on subject determines who this applies too, in previous versions of Geck this was a simple tick box and "Run on Target" meant the player, now it is a pull down box. So I am going to assume Run on Target still means the player and the Subject is what ever the player is interacting with. I have not actually checked this out yet so if the recipe fails to appear on the player, try using Subject instead.

Value can be any number but if we use it as a simple (meaning, lets invent a brand new word that means choose yes or no, just to confuse the noobies), then we use 0 for NO and 1 for Yes. This too is standard practice and found in many programming languages. Though they do not always say "this is a boolean", often they just ask for 0 or 1, but it is still a Boolean.

Time to get to work, now I have explained it to you, set up your "Condition Item" window like this.

Condition Function = getitemcount
Function Parameters = myrecipe (or what ever your note was called)
Comparison = "=="<br /> Value = 1<br /> Run on "target" (change this to subject if the recipe does not appear on the player once he has the note above)

That basically gets the item count of myrecipe fron the players inventory and make sure it equals 1 item. So if it is 2 items it will not work, if it is 0 items it will not work, it has to be exactly 1 item for this check to work. >= is the comparison to use if you think more than 1 item of the same time may be added in the future. Btw, you could use this as a way of adding improved versions of the same item. E.g. 2 items means 10% stronger, you just add a new effect to the item you produce and set a condition that is very much similar to that above but change the value to something else such as 2. So if the player has 2 items, the new effect also applies. The same recipe will auto update it self this way. But that is an even more advanced topic, I just wanted to throw that out there as an idea for you recipe makers :)

Setting up the Ingredients

These are is needed to make up the recipe, if you want a health boosting stake, you might use some form of meet and a stimpak or healing powered here. If you want ammo, then ammo cases and powder would probably be what you want here. It is entirely up to you, you could use 5mm ammo + scrap and make it produce a simpak, nobody said it has to make sense but it is probably best that it does :)

Simply select the Ingredients tab of your recipe and select the category then the component. Category helps filter the components and makes them easier to find. Then change the quantity to match the number you want the player to need for this recipe.

When your done, quickly look up each item in Geck and add up their cost, getting a rough total for the value of the recipe. Now add a little bit more to it for profit and make note of the cost of the items this recipe will make, you will to know that for the next part when we set up the item that gets produced because this will be what it is worth when purchased. The selling price is effected by the barter skill remember, as is buying price. So do not be surprised if the player does not get the exact amount you typed in.

Tip:

To quickly find an item, simply type the name in to the Filter box in the top left corner of the Object Window. Then click on the item when it appears make note of the value, then just add up all the values to get you new items cost.

Setting up the Outputted Item

First decide if the item created is something new or something that already exists in the game. If it already exists then the cost of the item will already been determined and you will have to adjust your ingredients so the cost to make it is less than the cost of the item they produce, after all, who makes something when it loses them money to do so. If you want to make your own, then you can give it any price you want.

Lets assume you want to make a new chempak or some sort.

Ammo is found under the Item menu if your recipe is an Ammo based one, this example will be a chemical so lets go to Game Effects and look for Ingestibles. Some items are not food or chems even though they sound like they should be, e.g. scorpion poison is one of those odd things, they care usually found under Misc Item. Since we want to produce a Chemical, our item will be in Ingestibles so go there now and click on the name.

Lets say for the sake of argument that we want the player to become develop Vampire like senses when they drink a modified Blood Pack. Click on Bloodpack and change the ID to Bloodpackvamp, change the name to Vampire Blood.

Then go to results where Restore Health is listed twice, you can make your own, this is just an example to explain it to you.

Optional Advanced Topic

Right click on the first one and select Edit, notice there is a condition attached to it, it checks for the MS09Hematophage Perk before it allows the player to get that juicy +4 health bonus. You can tell it is a +4 bonus because of the Magnitude column in the Bloodback results list. This means those with the perk get a total of +5 health bonus. 4 for this and 1 for the default health listed next.

Required Normal Topic

Now right click on the second one health item and take a look at that. Notice this has no conditions and will apply automatically.

Okay, now go back to the Bloodpack results list and select New so the Effect Item window appears, then select Effect and look for IncreasePerception, we want our players senses to be heightened by drinking our modified bloodback. Now set the range to Self, The duration to 1 minute and the magnitude to 2. Duration is as the name suggests how long it lasts, the magnitude is how many points to add to perception. We chose to add 2 points to it. If we selected "make the players legs longer" than the 2 would be how much longer the players legs where, see how it works ?

That is just an example, do not go looking for some lanky leg mode, none exists lol :)

Now okay that and close the Effect Item Window.

At this point you have to make the new item worth the cost of the material and if you recall, you made a note of the cost earlier. So using that cost, we look at the Ingestible windows result box, under that you will see Auto Calculate, untick that if it is ticked and enter your cost in the Potion Value or in the "Value" box is its ammo you are making. That will be how much this item is worth when produced.

Now OK the Ingestible window and say YES to the question "Create new form".

Now if we go back to the Recipe and look at the output area, you will see the recipe yield box, right click in that and select new, then use the Dialog box that appears to find your new Ingestible and add it to the window.

Now you are done, you have created a new Recipe and have optionally added it to the game so the player can find it and use it.

Final thoughts

Learning what can be done in Geck is all part of modding and the recipe feature has a lot of uses so it is worth taking time to explore this area properly. Only by knowing what can be done, will you get good modding ideas and as you will noticed from the available effects for the indigestible, there are a lot of options. You may even invent a cure for Deathclaw attacks, e.g. a 155mm howitzer fired from extreme range with a Deathclaw homing shell :)

It all starts here in Recipes :)

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