GUIDE General Feedback

[EssArrBee]

I still want to find the hex values for the greyish-green that you see on the box cover, and an appropriate blue to represent the water since it is so important in Fallout 3.Id be interested in knowing what others think of the usefulness of the texture resolution notation I added (the icons need redoing, but hopefully someone better at this than I am will do it). It's one of the data elements I suggested adding to mod pages a while ago.

As for finding a hex color, save an image of the cover and open it in paint.net. Where the color palette thing is click more and the hex value is like the fourth box down. Use the tool that looks like a mouse pointer and click on the color in the image and the hex value pops up.

[EssArrBee]

What part of the image? The grey-green kinda goes from light to dark on the cover. 

[Kelmych]

The one you mention seems fine for now. I put a blue-gray color like the Pipboy uniform in for the lines, but it is too close to the color used for highlighted text so I'll need to find another color. I can't think of another dominant color in Fallout 3 except for lots of dark gray. Maybe the yellow in the Pipboy uniform/hair would work, but I was trying to avoid any yellow since it's the main FNV color.

 

The new Fallout 3 background that DoubleYou did is cool.

[DoubleYou]

You ought to be able to use this template for your MedRes, HiRes stuff: https://wiki.step-project.com/Template:Indicator

[Kelmych]

Thanks. I didn't realize we had this. The guide now looks a lot better, at least to me.

[Brainfever]

This guide really made me wanting to comeback to capital wasteland. Installing FO3 already and probably within the week I'll try to complete the whole guide and start testing stuff.

 

Some notes that should be taken under consideration; FO3 is an incredibly crash-prone game and needs to be treated specially under Windows 7-8. I still remember I couldn't start my game for days I would just get a CTD before intro, couldn't find any obvious reason and then one day I decided to de-activate the AMD Gaming Evolved App running in the backround and voila the game started normally(!). It wouldn't be a bad idea to warn people how tricky this game is. Programs and applications running in the background should be limited to the absolutely essentials and all the rest closed/disabled. This game really hates Windows 7-8, I mention it again.

 

About the mods; we all understand how old this game is and this applies for the majority of the mods made for it as well. You 'll see in the process that many of the mods you include in your guide have dirty edits, identical to master records, need FO3Edit cleaning, etc, plus the mod authors back then were quite sloppy compared to how sensitive and serious they are nowdays. You can still see in many mods descriptions the authors suggesting to masterupdate their plugins (something unnecessary after the 1.7patch and probably a pretty good cause for many malfunctions in-game) or you can find dozens of incomplete and leftover mods.

Not to mention that many mods with ITMs and UDRs might even break if they get cleaned. One that comes to mind right now is BenTweaks [ https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout3/mods/10318/? ] were the author states himself that we shouldn't clean his mod.

 

Anyway, as I said I kept a documentation of all the mods I had in the past and needed to be cleaned(or check if the cleaning process is actually needed). I 'll sort out the ones that are not in the guide and I will send you that txt as soon as possible.

 

By the way, the amount of conflicts in cell and worldspace is humongous. I don't have the knowledge/experience to tell whether there are crucial and need to be dealt with a custom patch or anything but there are too many. I think the most affected ones are lighting mods like Realistic Interior Lighting which the merged plugin from Paradox Ignition comes flagged as a master plugin thus it gets overwritten by a pretty good amount of mods(in cell and worldspace, things like lighting templates, etc).

Edited August 24, 2014 by Brainfever

[Brainfever]

A few more mod suggestions:

 

LiL - An Eye Improvement Mod [ https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout3/mods/19163/? ] Amazing eyes retextures, works great with Fallout 3 Redesigned.

 

Whiter Teeth [ https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout3/mods/2579/? ] Same as above.

 

Fallout 3 Project Beauty HD - 5 Oclock Shadow Plugin [ https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout3/mods/16343/? ]

 

Distributed Necklaces and Chains [ https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout3/mods/20211/? ] Helps with the always visible neck seams, when using body replacers.Epic Mini Nukes [ https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout3/mods/20242/? ] If Weijiesen is involved in a mod, you know it's gonna be good.

 

IMPERFECTION - The Definitive Creature Mod [ https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout3/mods/18434/? ] This along with MMM make the wasteland a truly alive and dangerous place to wander around.

 

More Map Markers [ https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout3/mods/2446/? ] Very useful and essential mod. Choose "Skip download" in the popup message when starting a new game.

 

Vault 101 Revisited [ https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout3/mods/13308/? ]

 

Better Rivet City Church [ https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout3/mods/11020/? ]

 

Fort Independence Redesigned [ https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout3/mods/17939/? ]

 

Enclave DX [ https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout3/mods/6365/? ]

 

Winterized DX [ https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout3/mods/6167/? ]

 

Hellfire DX [ https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout3/mods/6776/? ]

 

Tesla Power Armor DX [ https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout3/mods/7626/? ]

 

Tribal DX [ https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout3/mods/6520/? ]

 

Dark_Maggots Chinese Stealth Armor Retexture [ https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout3/mods/5605/? ]

[Kelmych]

Thanks for the suggestions. A few questions:

 

• How does the Eye improvement mod compare to the improvements in Lings and Mikoto's mods?
• Do the *. DX mods overwrite any of the Bornagain mod textures? If so, how do the DX and Bornagain mods compare? There are multiple options in several of the DX mods; what is your recommendation on these?
• How does Imperfection compare with MMM?
• There are many Chinese stealth armor retextures. Is this the one you prefer?

 

I already use More Map Markers and will definitely add it.

 

Others I'm looking at include the following; any comments/opinions would be helpful. I've used a few of them but most are ones that seem like they might be useful. GNR Enhanced includes some bug fixes that aren't in the Unofficial Fallout 3 patch in addition to more songs; I found it useful on my last playthrough:

Big Town Overhaul

Generator Noises 

Cinematic Sunglare or LadyDeadlock_AtmosphericSunGlare

Core Robots 

The Crimson Caravan 

GNR Enhanced 

Point Lookout Reborn 

 

I haven't looked yet at the Ojo Bueno Fallout NV texture replacers to see which items (like your suggestion of safes) might be used from these mods.

 

 

Over the past few days I changed some styles to make the guide look better. A style sheet was added, the notation icons for texture resolution were changed, the heading text color is now from one of the Fallout 3 green colors, the line colors are from the brownish Pipboy color (I scanned a picture in the Fallout 3 manual), and DoubleYou created a background template and used Fallout 3 as the example (thanks).

 

As I look through my older Fallout 3 mods it's certainly disappointing that so many have disappeared from the Nexus and were not brought up on another mod site.

[Brainfever]

1) Hmm, to be honest I was never fan of Earache's mods that touched NPC's -completely opposite with his Book of Earache which I consider to be the best weapon replacer mod for FO3. It made NPCs look like barbie dolls and the same applies for the eyes and hair textures. Not my style, so since I've never used them I can't really tell if LiL - An Eye Improvement Mod is better or not. I remember it makes the eyes really cold and gives them a reflection that for me seemed exactly what was needed along with Redesigned. As in every other mod category with a variety of options to choose from, personal taste is what matters in the end.

 

2) That's why I left out BoS Dx, Outcast Dx and T51b DX mods which they obviously conflict with the Bornagain armors. I think the rest of them will be fine.

 

Recommendations, were ">" means download and install:

 

Enclave DX: > Enclave DX G, Enclave Pulse

Winterized DX: > Winterized DX, NEEDED MESHES

Hellfire DX: > Hellfire DX - Cinder

Tesla Power Armor DX: > Tesla Power Armor DX, Helmet bluish eyes 

3) About Imperfection from the mod's description page:

 

"This mod should be run BEFORE Mart's Mutant Mod in Fallout Mod Manager in order for both mods to function properly. This mod should not conflict with any other major mod. If it does, please alert me ASAP. This means that it does NOT conflict with:FWEFOOKMMMApocalypse Armory"

 

Actually, it's not one or the other since they are kinda different. MMM makes encounters more crowded and difficult and adds some variety of critters, while Imperfection does that(again from the mod's description):

"THIS MOD ADDS:91 New Feral Ghouls25 New Vicious Dogs16 New Mole Rats39 New Deathclaws20 New Centaurs7 New Giant Ants13 New Yao Guai12 New Mirelurk Kings61 New Super Mutants45 Other New CreaturesAnd many, many more creature varieties.Faction creaturesNew faction-relevant creatures are added. I won't spoil much, but it's obvious that the Enclave were boring in vanilla, if you know what I mean. It's a simple necessity to add tamed creatures to the wasteland. These tamed creatures usually follow their owners.Also, not all creatures may follow stereotypes anymore. You may even find some friendly Super Mutants wandering the Wastes."

 

I think it could play nice along with MMM although I 've never tried it personally for various reasons(the old plugins of Imperfection would cause CTD's, while now there is a new version which says it fixes all these issues).

 

4) Yep, I think its the best one out there but again tastes are different. Probably you could also suggest HiRes Chinese Stealth Armor [ https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout3/mods/5666/? ] as an alternative choice.

 

Big Town Overhaul looks interesting never seen it before, nice find! It sure makes Big Town an actual BIG town.

 

Core Robots, I 've seen it before in other modding guides but it's not my style again. Don't forget that the Mr.Handy and Robobrain vanilla models are exactly the same with the ones appearing in the original Fallout 1-2 games, another reason why I never liked this mod.

 

Point Lookout Reborn is very interesting but if I remember correct it has some conflicts in quest or script sections with Updated Unofficial Fallout 3 Patch and FWE in FO3Edit. I think it needs testing before added to the guide.

 

GNR Enhanced, a must-have mod. So simple

 

The rest, either I see them for the first time, either I've never went in the process of trying them, but Crimson Caravan from what I've read in the description includes Arefu Expanded which redesigns Arefu into a more interesting place something like Big Town Overhaul I guess. Definitely worth a testing.

[Nozzer66]

Have to agree with Brainfever on point 1. Not an enormous fan of Lings and Mikotos for eyes. They're handy for a few extra hair styles, if you can find decent textures. 

 

Was using LiL for eyes ages ago and I'd forgotten about it till I saw it mentioned above.

[perrob]

Just spent this evening installing most of the mods on this list. Quite a few wrong links, mods listed that aren't available, lack of BOSS/BUM sorting notes (I had 21 unrecognised mods, and I didn't install everything on the  list). 

 

Would suggest you put a note at the start of the guide saying it requires user to make their own compatiblity patches. That's a bummer finding it out at the end of hours of work just downloading, installing, and tweaking.

[Nozzer66]

It does mention at the start it's missing Boss/Bum notes. I've been going through and adding my own as I go through each 'group'.

[EssArrBee]

The guide is about two weeks old and we are working on switching both fallout guides to loot.

 

Should be done soon.

[hamgelu]

What about Quo Vagis? You guys think it could be added to the guide?

[Kelmych]

Just spent this evening installing most of the mods on this list. Quite a few wrong links,

I found 2 bad links when I checked.

mods listed that aren't available,

I leave links in the guide for mods that are temporarily unavailable; this happens regularly with Nexus. The last time I checked there were 2 unavailable mods plus the Armor Repair Kits mod that is listed as being under modification in the guide.

lack of BOSS/BUM sorting notes (I had 21 unrecognised mods, and I didn't install everything on the  list). 

BOSS and LOOT depend on users providing data so they can update their lists. They are receiving very limited Fallout 3 data, as you might expect.

 

 

Would suggest you put a note at the start of the guide saying it requires user to make their own compatiblity patches. That's a bummer finding it out at the end of hours of work just downloading, installing, and tweaking.

 

The bashed patch created from Wrye Bash does quite a good job in removing a lot of the incompatibilities among mods in this guide. Unlike Wrye Bash for Skyrim, Wrye Flash for Fallout 3 and for Fallout NV support all the bash tags. Looking in FO3Edit, I didn't see major incompatibilities when using the mods that aren't described as optional and the existing compatibility patches listed in the guide along with the bashed patch. For example, the bashed patch seems to handle the lighting records added by Realistic Interior Lighting quite well; it forwards them to the bashed patch along with the rest of the non-lighting records from other mods. In Skyrim handling lighting records can take a very large effort in manual patching. 

 

 I found a few mods today that will need additional bash tags. Over the next months more bash tags for additional mods will be identified and provided to the LOOT team, and shown in the guide, to improve the bashed patch. Eventually manual patches will be considered.