Kelmych

With FO3Edit I looked up the weapon, the mesh is PlasmaPistolStatic.nif and that mesh is available. I extracted it from the meshes BSA just in case and added it as a mod in MO, as I described above. I understand mesh problems cause various kinds of game problems, I just don't know what else to look for or look at since the mesh and the textures are available and I can see them in MO. Is it possible there is an issue with the mesh (I have tried alternate textures so I doubt it's that) and if so how do I tell? It looked OK in Nifscope (based on my extremely limited experience with this tool).

It shows the ! when it's resting on something. Is the ground model different from the the model I see in the CK for the pistol and when I use the console to see the model number? The only model I see is PlasmaPistolStatic.nif .

At times I wish I had more expertise with whatever causes in game texture errors in Fallout. Right now I have a problem with Fallout 3 and I don't know what is causing it. The vanilla Plasma Pistol has a giant red Exclamation point when it is on the ground, indicating there is a missing texture. If it is in my inventory and I use it, both the first person view and the third person views are fine, but if I drop it I get the exclamation point. I've checked the vanilla texture (and normal map) used by the pistol as well the 1st person version of the texture and they all seem fine. I used alternate textures from a different mod (Hall of Weapons) and it is still not working. I extracted the mesh from the BSA and opened it with Nifscope, and checked to make sure the textures it expected had the same name as the ones I was using. They do. I'm using MO so I can't see how Archive Invalidation could be the cause. I used the console to make sure it had the right weapon and it does. It wouldn't matter as much if this didn't stop successful completion of one of the script stages in the Mantis Imperative quest for Fallout 3.

This tab of the Mod Organizer guide include instructions on adding the Creation Kit to the list of executables. It has a lot more detail than I provided.

The guide can certainly suggest some different mods when using ENB. For now I'll add a pointer to your post in the ENB section, and gradually we can add more. For AWOP I'll look in FO3Edit at the weapon statistics for the weapons introduced in AWOP. It might even be easier to integrate AWOP into Fallout 3 than Fallout NV. FWE makes large changes in weapon damage to all the weapons, usually at least 2x, and the weapon-related compatibility patches for FWE make similar changes. The general weapon damage changes that Project Nevada makes in Fallout NV aren't as large, so the default AWOP weapons (with M in the names) in FNV are much too powerful for balance with the rest of FNV. Of course, the various AWOP compatibility patches in Fallout NV including those in NVEC change the AWOP weapons stats to more balanced values.

You forgot the part where during the discussion of a new mod a long side discussion starts on another mod or mods and sometimes there is even some progress or change that happens in the other mod, or at least change in how the STEP community views the other mods value. I'm sure there is an analogy to the political process in this also.

When using MO you need to add Creation Kit to the list of executables in MO, and launch the Creation Kit through MO. Have you done this?

Your post is in the correct thread. I was only suggesting that if you have guide comments to share you might find this thread better. I did a test with only the UUF3P plugin loaded. I get a crash going to testQAItems . I have no way of knowing whether this is caused by some inherent problem such as the one I discus below or some other type of problem. I'd suggest ignoring this particular error since getting to this cell is important for the game itself. COC to a test cell isn't part of the testing methodology that I use. I have read a few comments over the years with Bethesda games that using test cells with large numbers of items can cause problems with some of the larger mods, so I have avoided doing this.

We would appreciate any comments on the guide; it's best to post these in the feedback thread. I'll look at the issue with the test cell The main reason the UI section is fairly strict is to make sure that the menus get constructed correctly. There are a lot of UI mods that can be added without many problems even if they affect menus. Some care must be taken when doing this if additional prefabs are added or if the installation requires FOMM-fork. The plugins from UI mods don't typically affect game cells so most of these are unlikely to cause the problem you mention. You might try a profile with only UUF3P included to see whether the problem occurs. I'm assuming you cleaned the vanilla esm plugins.

I have the same problem with Steam overlays in Fallout 3, but not with Fallout NV or Skyrim. Perhaps the Mod Organizer gurus have a more elegant solution. I realize it's really a Steam problem since similar problems occur with other mod managers.

I'll provide a summary of what I've been looking into for additions later today, including some fixes for the Zealotless ACR weapons and Powered Power Armor.

I've seen (6) when using MO to install some mods with FOMODs, including some of the mods in the UI section. This was for mods that don't need FOMM-fork.

Did you try to use the fallout3 launcher through MO, and did it work? Did you try launching the game with a profile that has only the vanilla files in the left pane of MO?

Thanks for the favorable comments about the guide. A lot of your suggestions were incorporated in the version that is up now. Let us know if you have additional ideas, as well as comments on what works well/doesn't work well. My concentration lately has been on compatibility and game balance. I've been working with the compatibility mods and bash tags to reduce any manual patching in FO3Edit to as little as I can. I've also been looking at the game balance so the game doesn't get too easy at high level and is somewhat survivable at low level (lots of sneaking and avoiding battle at low level when the MMM mod is used). All but a few of the mods in the guide that need LOOT entries now have them.

We'll add a note in the DDSopt guide that while graphic cards are supposed to be able to work with collapsed textures, tools like the CK (and probably other graphics creation tools) don't usually handle textures that are collapsed. Some other comments on working with optimized textures and graphics software will also be added.

Comments about potential problems when optimizing body-related textures were added quite a while ago to the DDSopt guide (e.g., see the sidebar "Note about Uncompressed Texture Files, Body textures and the Batch file" in this section of the guide). While collapsing textures doesn't seem to have much effect most of the time, it can certainly cause problems sometimes with body textures. The other problem I found was converting uncompressed body textures to compressed during optimization, which can also at times cause many problems. The batch files for mods separate body-related textures into a separate folder because they are more sensitive to optimization parameters than other textures. The tint-tone maps are sensitive to optimization parameters, and the textures used for major body parts like the body and head are often uncompressed and can sometimes be quite large leading to different optimization issues. For the vanilla textures the batch files pull out some of the body-related textures and prevent them from being optimized (or in some cases changed at all) or put them in folders where they will not be reduced in size or have their format changed from uncompressed to compressed. This is done separately for the tint-tone maps and the major body textures (especially the model space normal maps). The intention is that the vanilla optimization using the DDSopt guide procedures should not cause problems with body textures. There has been a lot of discussion about the appropriate optimization parameters in another thread about the one large model space normal map for female bodies in the vanilla textures. There is no single answer that's always correct; the MSN in the vanilla textures can be reduced to R5G6B5 at full or half resolution, but gets corrupted if the format is unchanged and it is reduced to half size. For the same MSN file with other body mods the best optimization parameters to reduce size while losing little quality are often different. DDSopt dosen't know which mod the texture file came from, so there can only be useful DDSopt.ini entries when the behavior problem is true for both vanilla and mods that replace the vanilla textures. Most of the value in the DDSopt.ini file is to handle models where the alpha channel is used for unusual purposes. If there are any known problems with body-related textures using the DDSopt guide procedure, let us know and we'll change the procedure or parameters. Since, unfortunately, some of the problems are specific to the particular graphic card or driver software being used there isn't any way for the testing we do to cover all possibilities.

There are several Fallout NV ports of Medic Power Armor from Fallout 3 that might be interesting to try in addition to PPA (I haven't tried these in FNV yet): (MP-48 Medic Power Armor and Prototype Medic Power Armor). PPA sounds particularly interesting. This page mentions that Medic Power Armor is in the FNV game files but the sounds and scripts aren't properly implemented. I haven't gotten the character I'm using for testing to a high enough level in Fallout 3 to use Medic Power Armor or PPA yet, but in my last playthrough of FO3 I used the Medic Power Armor for a while. It's not power armor but you might consider also adding Dragonskin Tactical Outfit since it's quite different than the conventional armor currently in F&L (camo options, etc.).

I tried this and unfortunately I still got the NPC/creature stuttering and invincibility in combat. As you noted, not everyone gets this problem.

It should be just after the cleaned Update.esm and before the Optimized HRDLC.

I had a problem during combat that instead of moving smoothly, enemies would jitter back and forth then jump ahead, then repeat. When this happens they are invincible; they won't take any damage. I searched and found this is a known problem with some systems caused by CASM. I'll put a note in the guide about the problem. I don't think the problem affects all users, and I've never seen this in the Fallout NV version of CASM.

I forgot to add that. I'll put it in the guide.

I took the vanilla ESM cleaning part from the Fallout NV guide; I'll change it.

I haven't seen any evidence that collapsing the portion of the Skyrim terrain textures that DDSopt collapses causes problems. If STEP wants to take an official position that collapsing should generally not be done, there should be some technical results that indicate there is a general problem. There are certainly a few examples of texture collapse that causes problems, especially for textures used for interface screens. Other than interface textures, "DDSopt.ini" contains one Skyrim texture and 3 Fallout New Vegas textures that are not properly handled when collapsed. Note that testing of these has been done on 1 or 2 cards vs. a large set of cards, and they were added to "DDSopt.ini" because there is evidence that they can cause problems on at least some graphics cards. I'm the source of the one Skyrim example; however, this is the only example I have observed in Skyrim using my graphics card. Here is the quote from Ethatron (it's included in the DDSopt guide); he indicates there could be a problem but note that he never says that collapsing should not be done: " planar (1x1) textures - The number of textures which have only one distinct color value (monochromatic). These textures may be converted to 1x1 size without loss, which reduces size and should increase performance, although not all hardware likes 1x1 (reasons unknown at this time)."

Does the cursor not show up in the menu used to load a particular game save, or only once a game is running? The most common cause of mouse problems is that an xbox controller is plugged into the computer. By the way, these can be used with Fallout 3/NV if desired by following the instructions for controllers in the Fallout 3 guide. Did you compare the menu files in your mod list with the UI mod directory screenshots I added to the guide as a link. If the UI mods aren't setup properly I suppose this could happen. If you don't have a controller, then searches suggest that the problem is a mod plugin that's overwriting some of the menu-related records in the game. I am using all the non-optional plugins in the guide and I don't have this problem. It's always possible, of course, that a plugin file has been corrupted. Are you using additional mods that are not in the guide?

I've been testing MMM with the mods in this guide to see how it works. I am creating a bashed patch that is currently using the bash tags in LOOT in the August 28 masterlist. I have provided a large set of bash tag data/updates for Fallout 3 mods, including MMM and some of the Blackened compatibility patches. The MMM creator is part of the Blackened patch team and these patches are quite recent, so when MMM used they are the preferred compatibility patches. I also sent the LOOT team some additional bash tags for MMM and the Blackened patches. I have not seen any body/clothing/armor problems so far. The enemy NPCs have a varied set of weapon types. I haven't looked carefully yet at the leveled lists that affect what armor/weapons these NPCs get, but I do see in FO3Edit that the compatibility patches includes such data. You'll start seeing more cleaning data and more bash tags for the mods in the Fallout 3 guide as the LOOT masterlist adds these updates to include more of what I provided.