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Fallout G.E.C.K. guide

F.E.A.R. 2 SCARY GIRL’S BACK

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102 March 2009

Given that most old-school Fallout fans reacted to Bethesda’s recent sequel to the series in the way a Slayer

fan would to the band announcing its new celtic folk direction, we can expect some pretty epic Fallout 3 mods in due course. Whole new cities, a ton of references to beloved characters, more new loot than you shake a Radscoprion stinger at… All thanks to the Garden of

Eden Creation Kit (aka G.E.C.K.) – the offi cial toolset for Fallout 3, which was released to a pleasantly surprised community just a few weeks back.

Unfortunately, it’s absolutely terrifying. No cheery paintbrushing of desert landscapes or instant depositing of a hundred Mirelurks here: every single step of the process is complicated and time-consuming. And hugely rewarding, of course. It’s a very powerful bit of kit because of this, and with some know-how will let you eventually create your own areas in this dystopian future, your own characters and most important of all: your own adventures. It may well be daunting at fi rst, without some of the graphical niceties of a GUI that holds your hand, but it’s well worth persevering. With the G.E.C.K. you really can set the world on fi re with your creations.

By way of introduction to its mathematical bulk, we’re going to start small: no level building this issue, but instead a gentle meet ’n’ greet with scripting. Rather than affecting how the game world looks, this is key to what you can do in it. Specifi cally, we’re going to talk you through how to create a simple quest. It might not be the adventure of a lifetime, but it’ll introduce you to some of the core concepts behind Fallout 3’s scripting.

Once you’ve conquered this, admittedly, tricky bit, we’d advise going off and spending a lot of time on the G.E.C.K. wiki (geck.bethsoft.com); for now, much of the toolset’s undocumented, but that’s swelling over time thanks to the kindness of the community. Next issue, we’ll round off with a quickie guide to creating whole new areas in Fallout 3. ¤ Alec Meer

Simply the G.E.C.K. Quest-making 101 in Fallout 3’s mod kit

Step 1: Getting started First of all install the G.E.C.K. Oh, and if you’re running the Steam version of Fallout 3, you’ll need to install the G.E.C.K. into your Steam directory ‘\Steam Apps\Common\Fallout 3’. Then load it up, and immediately hit ‘File’, then ‘Data’. On the left-hand side, check the fi le called ‘Fallout3.esm’ and hit ‘OK’. This loads F3’s main data into the G.E.C.K. Next, hit ‘Save’ – this’ll store any upcoming fi ddling in one plug-in fi le. Give it a name and ‘Okay’ away. Turn your attention back to the G.E.C.K. itself, which you’ll see is split into three main windows. We’re after the one on the left, the Object Window. On the left of it, scroll down to and select ‘Quest’. Then right-click on the right-hand pane, and select ‘New’. If you want to check how any other quests work, you can select ‘Edit’ instead.

Step 2: What’s in a name?A new window should have popped up; the fi rst thing to do is to give your quest a title – tap whatever you like into Quest Name. More important is ID, which should be a short, one-word jobbie you can remember easily, as you’ll need it later. Don’t worry about most of the other options for this simple quest, but do check ‘Start Game Enabled’ so that you can access this quest from the off. Also tap ‘50’ into ‘Priority’, then click ‘Quest Stages’. Any quest contains at least two stages – a beginning and an end. You can have more stages, but we’ll keep it simple. Right-click under Index and select ‘New’, then tap in ‘10’. This low number signifi es it’s our starting stage. Next, over on the right, click the ‘Edit’ button. Type in ‘SetObjectiveDisplayed WHATEV 101’ (replacing ‘WHATEV’ with whatever your quest’s ID is).

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March 2009 103

Step 3: Got to have a goalThat’s set the quest to display its objective when you trigger its opening stage. Now to actually create that objective. Click ‘Quest Objectives’ from the top, right-click under ‘Objective Index’ and hit ‘New’. Just underneath that, there’s a line reading ‘Objective Data’ – enter ‘10’ in the Index (referring to that quest stage 10 you made earlier), and a short summary of the goal under ‘Display Text’. In this case, our objective is just to leave the building – so something like ‘Get lost’ will do it. Now head back to Quest Stages and create another stage as you did in the last step – but this time make it ‘100’, don’t worry about ‘Result Scripts’, but check the box marked ‘Complete Quest’. That’s the basic structure of the quest sorted, but now we need to fi ll in the details and drop it into the Washington wasteland. Finally, at least for this section, ‘OK’ out of the Quest window and save your project for good measure.

Step 4: ScriptingNow, time to write a script. Click the pencil icon from the toolbar at the top, and select ‘Script’ > ‘New’ from the window that opens. Scribe the following in it (replacing each ‘yourquestid’ with, unsurprisingly, your quest id):

scn yourquestidstage10triggerSCRIPTbegin onTriggerEnter playerif getStage yourquestid < 10setStage yourquestid 10endifend

This means the quest will be activated when you enter a certain area in the game. So, after saving your new script, let’s make that area.

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4

…AND IT WAS GOOD1 You can navigate to anywhere in

Fallout’s world by selecting it from the ‘Cell View’ window. Under ‘World Space’, select the rough area you want (the building insides are all listed under Interiors), then double-click on something on the right to load the area into the Render Window.

2 Here you’ll see the game world in full 3D. Navigating it is oddly counter-intuitive – scrolling the mouse wheel zooms, while clicking down the mouse wheel and moving the mouse will pan across the view. [Home] and [Page Up] will rotate the scene, while holding down [Shift] and mousing will grant you something like full camera control to fi nd the exact spot you need. A shortcut is [C], which cycles through a bunch of preset angles.

3 While Cell View documents everything that’s already in the game, the Object Window is where you add new stuff from. A lot of stuff in it can be simply dragged and dropped into the render window, but quests and dialogue require some fairly arduous scripting.

4 The coloured blocks show important things like the current NPC patrol zones, triggers and entrances. To stop displaying them, hit [M].

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104 March 2009

Bathroom surpriseHow to add your fi rst monster

The easiest way of adding baddies to Fallout 3’s world is to use pre-made versions rather than trying to create your own bespoke-statted foes. So, let’s leave a lurking Radscorpion in the Megaton toilets. From the Cell window, select ‘Interiors’ and ‘MegatonMensRestroom’. Find an empty spot, then from the Object Window click ‘Actors’ > ‘Creature’. From the list on the right, click on ‘LvlRadscorpion’, then drag that name into the Renderwindow. You’ll see it appear as a big white M with an arrow through it, and you can move it around by left-clicking and dragging. To adjust its height placement, hold down Z when you move (as in the Z-axis – X or Y will similarly affect how you move it).

Once you’ve got the placement right – be careful it’s not clipping into any walls or objects – double-click on the M to bring up a new window. Click on ‘Levelled Actor’ from the middle row of buttons, and change ’Level Modifi er’ from ‘None’ to whatever degree of challenge you fancy. Then save, load up Fallout with your plug-in activated (see step 6) and head to the gents’ for a nasty surprise. Now practice adding in other objects.

Step 5: Area effect Down on the bottom right of the screen is the ‘Cell View’ window, from where we can jump to specifi c portions of the world. Select ‘Interiors’ from the ‘World Space’ drop-down menu, and scroll down to ‘Megaton Clinic’ (or wherever you like really). Double-click on it, and a top-down view of the building’s insides will appear in the Render Window. Zoom into it with the mouse wheel (holding down [Space] or [Shift] while moving the mouse will pan across it). Now we need to create a trigger to start the quest. At the top of the screen, fi nd the icon of a cube containing a ‘T’. Then click and drag a line across a few feet of empty fl oorspace – the idea is you’re drawing the diagonal of a cube. Click again, then move the mouse up and down to set the trigger’s height. Click again to complete it. A box marked ‘Activator’ will pop-up; check the box marked ‘New’, so you don’t overwite anything existing.

Step 6: RewardingUnder ID, we need a relevant name: something like ‘yourquestnamestage10TRIG’. More precise is script – select the name of the script you made in step 4 from the drop-down menu under ‘Script’. Leave the rest blank and ‘OK’ out. Now, go make another trigger (as in step 5), but this time select ‘Megaton World’. Draw the activator outside the clinic front door, and repeat the process replacing the 10s with 100s. Same goes for creating a new script. Head back to the quest window and under ‘Quest Stages’ click ‘100’ then enter this in result script: ‘RewardXP 200’. Tada: a reward just for going outside. Save then load up Fallout 3. From the load menu, select ‘Data fi les’ and check the box for your new plug-in. Your quest should now be in the game.

Above The Fallout 3 equivalent of a spider in the bath “With Fallout 3’s G.E.C.K. you

really can set the world on fi re with your creations.“

InDepth

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