I have started using a few new mods for my latest FO3 character Loviatar.

Wattz Laser Weapons - adds two new laser pistols and two rifles, based on those from the classic Fallout games. There is a version that replaces all the vanilla laser weapons, and a standalone (I am using the latter).

EVE - Energy Visuals Enhanced - I just stared using this, so I am not absolutely sure about it. It looks like it overhauls all the energy weapon visual effects, like how bodies explode and turn to ash, etc...

Hot Energy - allows you to use energy weapons to burn though locks, instead of picking them. Your success is based off your Energy Weapons skill. Works great for an energy weapon user!

I also created my own home-made Radiation Resistance mod. I found out it is really easy to change the maximum Rad Resistance cap from 85% up to 100%. All you have to do is change the Game Setting fPlayerMaxResistance. The number you put it becomes the new cap.

I love the look of that EVE - really nice to see some diversity in the appearance of the energy shot!!! Is it random, or do certain energy guns do certain things? Anyway, Awesome!

I'd already seen the gun in your screens; and on this third one - that is kind of cool, like maybe if they made it where you had to be over-radiated (like over 500 or something) for it to work would be cool; something that gives you a reason to be able to have energy coming from your fingers enough to melt a lock, lol.

This is a really interesting playthrough you are doing here, can't wait to see what all you do with it !!!

I am not sure about everything EVE does yet. I have seen some new ash piles, and a couple of really cool new critical hit effects. In one of them a dozen beams of light came shooting out of the Raider's body, and then he exploded into light. But I don't know if they are random, or if the effects are tied to specific weapons yet.

The Hot Energy mod is supposed to simulate you using an energy weapon to melt the lock off. But there is no way to actually script it using the gun. So it just makes a new sound effect when you melt a lock. I like it a lot, it makes a lot more sense than my mad scientist learning how to pick locks.

Yes, she is most def a different kind of scientist! She needs to be overseer of a vault, see what she does with that!

But I def agree, it does make more sense that she would do something like that rather than a mundane picking of locks.

That EVE sounds Awesome!

I stopped using EVE. I started having random lockups in the game after I started using it. So I removed it, and the problems stopped. So I am guessing it was causing the issue.

In other news, I started using Unselect Quests. It is a workaround for the way the game always forces a quest to be active, with its map marker always visible. What it does is create a dummy quest called Survive!, that has no map marker and cannot be completed. So you can just select that quest, and not have to deal with quest markers.

I need those quest arrows at certain times, like finding a place like Bailey's Crossing - though I have finally begun to remember where it is in relation to the Red Racer factory; but finding the Red Racer factory is sometimes an issue, lol.

If I didn´t have quests with no map markers I would get that mod. As it is I can go without, but it is indeed nifty

I came across a mod for New Vegas

Mojave Delight (Not Safe For Work!) is a face texture mod I just started using. Rather than replacing the vanilla textures, it creates a bunch of new races with its modded textures. Each race has a differing level of makeup, from Girl Next Door who has none, Posh Princess - who has some, Bombshell - with heavy makeup, and Goth - which is self-explanatory.

It is supposed to be for the Type 3 Body mod. But I don't like how that looks. But Mojave Delight works just fine without it, with the added bonus of it not being a nude mod that way.

The downsides are that copying faces from or using savegames for faces won't work with this, because of the custom races. There is also a limited number of hairstyles for the new races. The latter is fixed with a patch on the Mojave Delighted page. Delighted is an addon for Mojave Delight. I tried it, and was not impressed, so deleted it. But if you look down in the Old Files section at the bottom, you will find the Mojave Delight Patch-MikotoBP file. If you have the Mikoto Beauty Pack (and you should!) download it and replace the original MojaveDelight.esp with the one from the patch. That will add all the hairs from Mikoto to the Mojave Delight races.

There is also a version of the same mod for FO3, but I am happy enough with how people look there already.

I started using Vault Girl for FO3 a few days ago in place of Pitt Gal Stats. So far I am loving it. It does not have replacements for all the weapon pipboy images, but neither did Pitt Gal. I love the art style.

There is a New Vegas version here, and I think the modder is working on an FO4 version.

I just discovered Loading Screens Replacer for Fallout 3. It adds breathtaking in game pics as loading screens.

Kinda neat


Will you be using it?

I installed it. But I am playing New Vegas right now, so it will be a while before I see them.

I think that this mod is made for Lopov! I have not tried it, but the name alone makes me think he should give it a try.

It has Steve in it!

I wonder if it also comes with Janet, Jerry and Captain Ballarms?

Haha, it's the Hobo: Mojave Edition. I love the guy's looks in the screenies.

I see that this Hobo has the same basic outfit as my Hobo except that his is enhanced in some ways. And he comes with his own house, something my Hobo can't brag about because he doesn't call any place a home.

Here's a mod to fix the buzzing sound glitch which I encountered today. Suddenly there was a loud buzzing sound present, at first I thought it's something related with my sound card, then I realized it's the sound of a ripper. After googling I found it to be a fairly common glitch in Fallout 3, though I haven't encountered it yet until today, which occurs when there's some NPC in the area and has a ripper unsheathed.

The console command "killall" also solved the situation because the ripper-wielder was obviously killed but I didn't like that all raiders, animals and other possibly peaceful beings had to die as well. The mod which I linked to above, solves the problem instantly.

Thanks! I get that bug with the ripper sound effect all the time. It seems that every time I go near somene with a ripper, that sound keeps playing forever, even when I leave the cell. I always had to save and reload to get rid of it.

I don´t get that bug at all. I do however often get one at Tenpenny Tower where it keeps playing the menu music forever.

I just uploaded two of my house mods for New Vegas.

Goodsprings Small Player Home does just what the title says. It turns a formerly boarded up house north west of the General Store into a player home. It is a small, three room house with bed, workbench, reloading bench, and campfire, along with lots of safe storage.

Novac Player Bungalow does the same in Novac. It turns a boarded up bungalow in the motel parking lot into a player home. This one only has a bed, campfire, and workbench. But there is a reloading station outside, in the gas station across the street from the motel.

Good work! What I like the most is that your homes aren't over the top, they're ordinary homes and actually look like homes, instead of some palaces or even vaults that can be found on Nexus. If I hadn't finished creating Blondie's house in Novac a few days ago, I'd use the Novac Bungalow as her home. Now I'll save it for some future character.

@Rosa - Do you announce your mods on Nexus somehow when you release a new one? Just interested.



Oh, but now I reckon I´ll get an answer like "Get New Vegas and try out the mod first. Then we´ll talk"

Thanks Lopov. I prefer my character's lairs to be small just for convenience. It is easier to find all my stuff/ put it all away if there are only a few rooms to spread out in. Plus I always want to keep myself immersed in the game, so I try to make them as reasonable and lore-appropriate as possible.

I created a hostile NPC and put her into wasteland, everything works fine except I can't hit it in VATS. What should I do in the GECK to enable this feature?

EDIT: I figured it out, I had to check a box in the Destruction Data.

Do'h, I forgot to reply. When you release a new mod on the Nexus it shows up in a little sidebar on that particular game site's main page showing the latest six releases. If it gets enough kudos, it will also get put upon on the main banner up at the top of the page. Other than that, I don't do anything myself.

One question: how can I achieve that some NPC is not hostile at first but gets hostile after getting close enough to my PC?

Go to the Actor -> AI Data tab. Check the Aggro Radius Behavior and set a distance. If I understand things correctly, that determines the distance the actor will attack at. It is how the animals in Skyrim first growl at you, but only attack if you move too close.

Thanks. It worked but it was a bit problematic to find the proper radius so in the end I made the NPC friendly when she approaches SX4 but after exiting the conversation she gets hostile automatically.

Fiddling with GECK is quite addicting. I learned a lot of new things today (packages, dialogues, that kind of stuff) and time flied past so quickly that I didn't even notice it was dark outside when I was done.

I created all hunters in SX4's game though some of them are initially disabled. The first one is the "least complicated" - as soon as the mod runs and timer passes 7 AM, the first hunter will activate herself and walk towards SX4. Upon meeting him she'll engage him into a conversation after which she'll get automatically hostile.

The 2nd one will be placed outside Smith Casey's Garage, idling around until SX4 gets close enough at which point he'll greet him and just as the 1st hunter, attack after the conversation is over. The "force greet" stuff took me a while to figure out, I had to watch a tutorial on how it's done.

The 3rd one will get enabled as soon as the 2nd hunter dies and will appear a distance behind SX4. He'll be hostile by default and will instantly begin shooting at SX4. The 4th one will get enabled in the game as soon as the 3rd one dies but will wait for SX4 at a specific location. When she dies AND when SX4 reaches a certain point in the MQ, a group of four hunters will get enabled in the north of the wasteland and they'll begin walking towards SX4, attacking him on sight. Once they're dead, SX4 will found a note from the Doctor, telling the leader where to meet him once SX4 is dead. He'll head to the meeting point (close to Springvale), where upon entering the trigger location the Doctor and three more hunters will appear around SX4 and the final fight will begin.

So far everything works as intended, now it's time for polishing.

A few days ago I started using Immersive Pickup Sounds for FO3. There is a New Vegas version here. So far so good with the Vegas version. The new sounds are good - and appropriate for items they are for, though I am still getting used to them.

Today I came upon Decrucifixion for New Vegas. It allows you to free crucified victims from crosses without killing them. It looks like you need a Stimpack or Super Stimpack to do so, and Medicine skill helps. I am trying it out, but I think I have already gone though all the areas with crucified people already in Hecate's game.

I also read that you can get them down without any mods if you do something to the victims that cause them to be knocked down. The Ranger Takedown is supposed to work. Or apparently using boxing gloves, since they cause fatigue damage that eventually knocks the target out instead of killing them. Bean bag shells might work too.

Now that I am back to playing FO3 again, I have a few more mods for it to share.

FO3 Flora Overhaul gives the Capital Wasteland a whole new look. It comes in several flavors, from total devastation to forested. I am using the forested edition, which seems more realistic for 200 years after the war.

Farms of the Wasteland adds crops to the various settlements. It seems to have a very small footprint, and just changes a few small areas around the settlements to add in the corn. It doesn't add any npcs, or do anything else. But it does convey a great sense that these places are self-sufficient.

A World Of Pain for Fallout 3 adds in a bunch of new interior spaces throughout the wasteland. So far I have only come across one of the new places in Greyditch. It was very well built, with a lot of attention to detail and clutter that made the space come alive (or come destroyed!). It was a real tough battle with the enemies though.

I did not like the lighting either, but I never do. So I made a small mod for it that gave every new interior the Shack Default lighting and image space. I put that before Fellout in my load order, and now it looks much nicer.

My modded version of Fellout for FO3 is here on Dropbox. I took the regular Fellout with Brighter Nights, and made the interiors a little brighter so I can see better, and cleaned up the imagespaces and weather even more, to give the game more color, and make it easier to see things.

The Moribund environment mod has just been brought over to Xbox 1.

It makes the world seem way more apocalyptic, as if the bombs landed 2 weeks ago rather than 200 years.

Check out the trailer

I haven't downloaded it yet but would love to use it for my survival character.

Whoa that looks spectacular, WW. It drew an emotional response from me.

So I lost both my credit cards last week, which means I couldn't order Fallout 3 for my PC. But I just got new cards today, meaning I will hopefully have this game on PC tomorrow.

My first character is going to need an alternate start mod, and will also not be coming from a vault, meaning he won't have a Pipboy, so I'm looking to see if there are two mods out there to cover this? Thanks. I'm sure the alt-start mod will be easy to find, but I want to see your suggestions because some of these will be better than others. The "no Pipboy" mod might be harder to find, of course.

There is a no Pipboy mod. It is called Pipboy Readius. It removes the pipboy and gives you a little hand-held tablet in its place. I loved the idea of it, and tried it out. But you hold the tablet at a slight angle, and reading all the text crooked just drove me crazy after a while.

But as far as a pipboy goes, I am sure there would be plenty of them laying around the Wasteland. I don't know why we don't see more characters with them. You could RP any number of reasons for a character starting with one. From it was passed down through the family, or they stole it, or scavenged it, or took it off someones body, or even bought it from a mechant, etc...

There are some alternate start mods as well. I tried one once, but found I liked the vanilla start better. Most of my characters don't follow the main quest, or the official game story. For them I just pretend the tutorial in Vault 101 was just a strange dream. I still like doing it for the same reason I always do the tutorial in Oblivion. It gives me a chance to get to know my new characters before getting them out in the 'real' world.

I made a little mod that adds a variety of different weapons to where you start in the Vault, that way I can arm up in whatever way fits a new character's style. For example Hecate started with a rifle, because she is a riflewoman/sniper. I think Molly Hatchet started with a baseball bat but it might have been a fire axe, because she is a melee fighter. Holland Smith started with the 10mm submachine gun, because she is a full auto weapon user.

Once me characters get out in the world I just ignore the main quest and its prompts, and go about my business. My backstory for Holland Smith was that she was a US Marine who fought in the Great War. She was taken by the aliens of Mothership Zeta before it went nuclear. So I did the tutorial with her in Vault 101. Then after she got out I used the coc command to teleport to the Recon Craft crash site. From there she was automatically sucked up to Mothership Zeta, and I started the dlc with her as normal.

It was the same with Oda Hidetaka, who was a 16th century samurai woman. I did the tutoral in the vault with her too, went to the Mothership, and considered her real game to start once I got there.

It may seem kind of clunky doing it that way, but I really do like that time in the tutorial, and getting a feel for what each character is like.

Thanks SR, it is okay if the Pipboy Readius mod is not perfect; it's only going to be for my first character, and he'll be more of a test than a true roleplay (yeah... we'll see about that, Gade). This is going to be the same guy who will wish he were in a real military, Major A. Holl, so those other mods you dug up awhile ago (the army clothes and the motorcycle) might also be in his game. See.... he's already turning into a roleplay. X(

I know what you mean about vanilla starts = a dream. I did this in Skyrim dozens of times; rolled a nu t00n, started him or her out in the tutorial, and then RP'd that it was some sort of dream as I rushed through it, with the sound on my TV turned down.

Hopefully we'll be seeing Major Andrew Holl tomorrow.

Hey, what mod manager should I be using for Fallout 3? I plan on getting this game on PC today. I don't actually know what managers there are out there, but let's keep in mind that I won't be modding this game too heavily (maybe a couple dozen plug-ins by the end of the summer), so I won't need something with some huge learning curve.

Thanks!

I use Fallout Mod Manager, which is basically the same as Oblivion Mod Manager. For sorting mods, I use BOSS.

I also use FOMM as well, plus The Fallout Script Extender (FOSE), which a lot of mods require.

Hey you're right on time. FO3 literally just finished downloading. Cool, this makes everything a lot easier. I am psyched.

Game installed, but won't work. I try to start it without or with the fose_loader and it keeps telling me that "ordinal 42 not found" and then points me to a specific folder where this is missing. I have to go on Google now. Apparently I'm suipposed to update Gaming for Windows Live, so I try this and it says THAT can't be installed either. I'm going in circles trying to figure out what's wrong.

Edit: I got this figured. For anybody else who is having ridiculous problems getting Fallout 3 to run, there is a mod over at THE Nexus which is called Games for Windows Live Disabler?. I got this downloaded. Problem was, this program wants the game to already have an INI configuration file sitting in the Documents > My Games > Fallout 3 folder. So what do we do?

I wound up googling a lot. Somewhere, I found a link offering a pre-made INI file, again over at THE Nexus. All I had to do was place this file in the Fallout 3 documents folder, installed & ran the GFWL disable program, and *BOOM* the game finally worked. Problem is, I have no idea where I found that configuration file now.

Yeah, the Disable mod is mandatory now when GFWL isn´t even up anymore. Again, one reason I never get online required games

mirocu, you don't know what a hassle that was, getting Fallout 3 to just start. It was ridiculously difficult and frustrating.

Anyone knows what's the console command in FNV for the animation which allows one to sit on the ledge? The same one exists in FO3, there it's called dlcpittsitonledge but in FNV for obvious reasons this command no longer works. I tried omitting dlcpitt, adding various dlcXX and loose before the command but nothing works.

I had the same issue in FNV, with that and a few other animations. I never know which ones are going to work, and which will not.

I do in fact as I had the same problem myself. Thankfully though, as I´m used to fixing game related problems on my puter it went fairly smooth. Still, frustration always kicks in until I know what to do


Glad you got around it, Renee

Can't help you Lopov. Maybe one day I'll be playing New Vegas finally, and come across the same problem, and find that obscure tidbit through Bing or Google that'll solve!

Oh and I'm glad to hear you're messing with Blondie again. New Vegas = Blondie, right?


I've definitely improved at figuring stuff out haven't I? I used to freak out and cry in these forums about PC stuff, right? Now I'm a lot more level-headed, but ... I'll still take those frustration moments at a minimum please, thank you.

At this point I´d say you know even more than me since you make your own mods and I don´t

I found the New Uniques mod today and came upon this power armor. At first I thought it's a joke from the mod author but then I read that it was actually cut from the vanilla game. Since Ally completed PA training thanks to the OA DLC, she might take a round through Point Lookout in this piece.

Ally needs a green suit of powered armor!

I've been checking Nexus today for possible homes in Novac bungalows and found a bunch of them except that most of them were overpowered and unrealistic and didn't look like bungalows at all from inside. Then I came upon a relatively fresh Novac Bungalow mod and TBH, I wasn't expecting much before checking the pics but after doing so I immediately liked it a lot, especially the campfire on top of the oven was a nice touch and it was the only bungalow that actually looks like a bungalow in Novac would from inside. Then I checked the author and everything became clear to me...it's a mod from our SubRosa!