Rock, Paper, Shotgun

New Vegas G.E.C.K. Mod Tools Released

By Quintin Smith on October 20th, 2010 at 1:14 pm.

If I ever write my memoirs as a games journalist I'm calling it GUNS.

That was fast! The New Vegas edition of the Fallout 3 “G.E.C.K.” mod tools has been released, and even boasts a new, improved tool for editing dialogue with “built-in support for low-intelligence dialogue options”. Modders? Get modding. Everybody else? Enjoy the incredibly disturbing video of a New Vegas bug I’ve left beneath the jump. I’ll be happy when we’re playing games that are meant to behave like that.

My own experience of New Vegas has become a lot more stable after my outburst yesterday. Seems I had a run of bad luck, compounded by the game not telling me about several different and VERY IMPORTANT controls. Hopefully I’ll have my review up by tomorrow afternoon.

Stick with this one to the end. It has quite the finale.

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117 Comments »

  1. 20/10/2010 at 13:18 Rich says:

    That’s some Tim Burton shit right there.

  2. 20/10/2010 at 13:19 malkav11 says:

    That…that was something special.

  3. 20/10/2010 at 13:20 noobnob says:

    “built-in support for low-intelligence dialogue options”

    yes yes yes yes yes yes yes

    • 20/10/2010 at 14:19 Wulf says:

      This was one of my favourite things about NWN1/NWN2. I remember at one point I had a character who was particularly dim, but had a belt with an insanely high intelligence modifier on it, so he kind of went from being a caveman to being Steven Hawking depending on whether he wore the belt or not. The differences in conversation options were pretty hilarious.

    • 20/10/2010 at 17:13 Tei says:

      So this guarantee some dude will roleplay the whole game with a dumb character?
      I am looking forward for that :-D

  4. 20/10/2010 at 13:20 Rinox says:

    That’s fucking scary.

  5. 20/10/2010 at 13:21 Baboonanza says:

    That’s the best thing I’ve seen all week!

  6. 20/10/2010 at 13:22 sredni says:

    Bugs are scary. I was running Ocarina of Time on an emulator recently and it kept swapping the textures, so that Link’s face changed between a shield, an octarok and a heart icon.

    This was funny scary though. I think

  7. 20/10/2010 at 13:22 Rinox says:

    Also: I just hope before someone releases/ports a mod to make the dialogue text size smaller before I start playing on Friday. *crosses fingers* Come on my yank friends, hurry that mod up!! ;-)

  8. 20/10/2010 at 13:23 Brendan says:

    Holy fucking shit.

  9. 20/10/2010 at 13:25 vanarbulax says:

    The brothers in The Void are the closest I can think of where such human disfigurations were intentional.

    Though I fear the day a developer heads your advice and a major title comes out which is just mind-warping and paranoia inducing glitches from moment to finish.

  11. 20/10/2010 at 13:31 Latro says:

    But dont you see, the quality of the dialog, the characterization, and all that REQUIRES that kind of sacrifices! And its not like things like this actually destroy all that good work and excellence! :-P

    • 20/10/2010 at 14:08 tomwaitsfornoman says:

      Bullshit. All games should be perfect in every way and if they aren’t we should lynch the devs.

    • 20/10/2010 at 15:05 Latro says:

      Alternatively, failing at the boring QA process ends up screwing you when you are trying to display all that creativity. But hey, what the hell does boring software engineering principles do in the way of my software mediated art?

    • 20/10/2010 at 15:40 Lars Westergren says:

      Yeah, any bug in a game is a personal insult to you.

      ….hang on, all the sarcasm and counter sarcasm in this thread is giving me a snark overload. Could we stop now?
      :)

    • 20/10/2010 at 15:47 tomwaitsfornoman says:

      I’m sorry, I would repeat yesterday’s debate with all the sarcasm I can muster, but I have to go polish my beret collection now.

    • 20/10/2010 at 19:24 Wulf says:

      The sad part is that I actually think these sorts of glitches are absolutely brilliant. If we had perfection, we’d have none of that. Perfection makes life shit, and gives us nothing to laugh about/be freaked out at.

      :p

  12. 20/10/2010 at 13:33 Irish Al says:

    Fuck me. I might actually prefer that to the non-bugged experience. It’s as nicely surreal as the desert airfield easter egg in Hidden & Dangerous 2.

  13. 20/10/2010 at 13:35 Tusque d'Ivoire says:

    right at the beginning during this character creation talk that the doctor does, you can choose this one perk which in my mind immediately translated to *mindfuck* perk, which is why i can’t remember the actual name.

    Has anyone found out what it actually does? South of the starting village up on the ridge i found this chair overlooking the valley next to a nice little 60s table and some bowling balls lined up next to it. Right when i saw that, on the top left a dizzy looking Fallout mascot boy and a text saying “…” (and only that) appeared. and it was over.

    this game seems to have quite some whatthefuckery under its hood.

    • 20/10/2010 at 13:49 Lars Westergren says:

      @Tusque

      > one perk which in my mind immediately translated to *mindfuck* perk, which is why i can’t remember the actual name. Has anyone found out what it actually does?

      The devs couldn’t agree about the “tone” of the game, so a lot of the more surreal and comic contents and encounters were removed. if you liked these from Fallout 2, choosing this perk puts these encounters back in.

    • 20/10/2010 at 13:53 malkav11 says:

      Yep. I don’t actually recognize that particular reference (assuming it is one), but things like the befedoraed skeleton in the fridge that I found last night should be a bit easier to pick up on.

    • 20/10/2010 at 14:19 Lars Westergren says:

      Btw, we are having a bit of a nostalgia thread going on Reddit about these little tableaus in Bethesda games that are pop culture references or tell a wordless story. One of the best things about these games IMO.

      http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/dtlvx/see_indy_fallout_knows_that_whole_fridge_in_a/

    • 20/10/2010 at 14:46 Huggster says:

      Bioshock had these little vignettes as well.
      The worst I found in FO3 was an automated robot butler that went round a house reading stories to the dead children in bed, and going off to do chores. Really creepy!

      Also one of the ultimate film scenes for this kind or thing is in “Stalker”, just before they get to the wish granter. You will know the scene I mean, it is very affecting.

    • 20/10/2010 at 15:04 tomwaitsfornoman says:

      @ Huggster

      I remember that! I thought it was a reference to Bradbury’s “And There Will Come Soft Rains.”

    • 20/10/2010 at 16:44 Tusque d'Ivoire says:

      Alright, i actually found that fridge with the fedora amongst charred remains of man, but all i thought was “HAT!” I seem to spend too much time reading RPS.

      In Fallout 3 i had a weird feeling when i met that playboy guy in his bachelor pad with his two bunnies. I think i had to get a key from him. i hope to get lots of these moments when playing Fallout NV.

    • 20/10/2010 at 16:58 Delusibeta says:

      Wild Wasteland, I think is the perk you’re talking about.

    • 20/10/2010 at 19:54 Wulf says:

      That’s particularly awesome.

      I just love how they make this stuff optional, it’s like the hardcore mode. You can either choose to use it or not, and whether you do or not is completely up to you, but doesn’t require a mod. It’s a nod to older PC players who remember RPGs which did require vital elements, and a nod to the modders who’ve created mods like this for the games in the past, since Morrowind, Oblivion, and Fallout 3 had mods like that.

      But now we have optional silliness too, so you can opt whether you want a serious wasteland or a more bizarre one, more similar to the older Fallouts, so a Fallout 1 wasteland or a Fallout 3 wasteland, then.

      That’s just… really neat.

    • 21/10/2010 at 05:37 Gritz says:

      The reference you’re not getting is Johnny Fiveaces from Zybourne Clock

      http://shii.org/knows/Zybourne_Clock

      There are a few other Something Awful references in the game too. At least one of the devs is a goon.

  14. 20/10/2010 at 13:37 Tyshalle says:

    Where’s the achievement for getting blown by Stigmata?!?!

  15. 20/10/2010 at 13:40 Tom says:

    That mainstream studio-bound hack? I was thinking David Lynch filtered through Dali.

  16. 20/10/2010 at 13:41 Tom says:

    Wtf that was meant to be a reply to the top comment, stupid thing ><

  17. 20/10/2010 at 13:44 TheAngryMongoose says:

    I haven’t played the game. Is he suppose to do that?

  18. 20/10/2010 at 13:46 pidesco says:

    That in the video bug was in Fallout 3.

  19. 20/10/2010 at 13:55 Fwiffo says:

    There’s been a worrying number of reports around the net that some Win x64 users are getting abominable performance regardless of system specs. It appears to manifest around human npcs, causing fps to drop to the single digits in some cases. I hope it gets fixed for friday!

    • 20/10/2010 at 17:31 Danarchist says:

      Of course, since I dont have any pc’s that aren’t x64, and I can afford the game as its payday, and I just finished kings bounty armored princess and have nothing else to play. Of course its bugfuck.
      God hates me, I think it has something to do with the nun orgy

  20. 20/10/2010 at 13:55 Pobblepop says:

    Bugs are sometimes fascinating, I wonder what the numbers are doing underneath his head spinning around?

    • 20/10/2010 at 14:04 Lars Westergren says:

      An off-by-one error in the algorithms for detecting current head position or calculating next head position most likely.

      As the old programmer saying goes – “There are only two hard problems in Computer Science: cache invalidation, naming things and off-by-one errors”

    • 20/10/2010 at 19:10 PleasingFungus says:

      It looks like the code that determines which direction he rotates his head to get to the angle specified by his animation (tilted a bit left, a bit right, straight on) is giving the reverse of the correct answer, so to turn 5 degrees clockwise, he’s rotating his head around 355 degrees counterclockwise, and vice versa.

      With extremely entertaining results.

  21. 20/10/2010 at 13:59 Cael says:

    I wish this happened to me

  22. 20/10/2010 at 14:12 coldwave says:

    It happened in Oblivion too.

    There was a gif lying around somewhere in which a STOP RIGHT THERE CRIMINAL SCUM guy is bending like that while on a horse.

  23. 20/10/2010 at 14:30 pipman3000 says:

    yeah that happens to me too sometimes.

  24. 20/10/2010 at 14:50 laikapants says:

    The weird lounge set up overlooking Goodsprings is apparently a reference to Johnny Five Aces from The Underside.

  25. 20/10/2010 at 14:59 heh says:

    Anyone who has a multicore processor and wants the game to run a lot more smoothly as if by magic, add these lines to fallout.ini (and you may want to add them to the other two configs as well):

    Find: bUseThreadedAI=0
    Change it to: bUseThreadedAI=1
    After it add: iNumHWThreads=2

    Enjoy.

  26. 20/10/2010 at 15:06 Erunion says:

    goddamn I want bugs like that. Those are the kind you tell watercooler stories about. Mine are more of the “quicksaves are useless” variety. :(

  27. 20/10/2010 at 15:19 Korabishi says:

    It may be an issue with quaternion interpolation. Quaternions are used to represent bone keyframes (like the neck bone) that are blended smoothly – you can’t directly interpolate rotation matrices.

    When you blend between two keyframes there are two directions to go: the short arc, think an acute angle for small movements, or the long arc, which is almost full circle used for quick turns or snap movement.

    The difference between these is just the sign convention used in the quaternion data. If one quaternion is positive and the other is negative, the head goes all the way round. Usually the animation tool outputs correct data in export.

    Either they used a different animation toolchain to Bethesda, the engine is screwing up selecting the short arc, engine updates got out of sync with the animation data, or (most likely) the Bethesda engine is crazy buggy.

    • 20/10/2010 at 15:44 Lars Westergren says:

      Huh, that has to be one of the most informative posts on any forums I’ve read this week. Thanks Korabishi.

    • 20/10/2010 at 20:01 Wulf says:

      I completely concur. Having played around with quaternions (I HATE QUATERNIONS) in Second Life, I actually had a basic idea of what was going on there, but this sheds a hell of a lot more light on it than what I originally understood.

  28. 20/10/2010 at 15:22 Pepelusky says:

    There are some mods in vewvegasnexus.com already.

    • 20/10/2010 at 16:04 Oozo says:

      New mods including a “slightly more hardcore hardcore mode”. Now, they only have to go up to “seriously more hardcore hardcore mode” (changing a few parameters, so that eating a donut in 3 weeks won’t get you through life) and I’ll be all happy and hungry when the game arrives one of those days!

  29. 20/10/2010 at 15:31 Antsy says:

    I confess, I laughed out loud when he said “Looking good so far”

  30. 20/10/2010 at 15:48 MrSafin says:

    I laughed so much that I’m in tears!

  31. 20/10/2010 at 15:50 The Innocent says:

    That face in the water is Nick, not Coach, I’m pretty sure. Stretched out so he looks fat, but it’s distinctively Nick.

  32. 20/10/2010 at 16:14 Cooper says:

    I’ll be happy when we’re playing games that are meant to behave like that.
    Aye. I’m consistently disappointed that, given that games have the aesthetic potential of painting (i.e: they can represent anything (or, equally, nothing), there’s such a clamouring towards high fidelity and realistic simulation.

  33. 20/10/2010 at 16:28 MooCow says:

    These people need to tell Gearbox how important it is to keep stuff moddable and allow the userbase to correct your mistakes.

    GBX seems to be hell bent on ruining DNF for everyone and not including moddability..

    <3 that Obsidian are keeping things open.

  34. 20/10/2010 at 16:32 Quests says:

    Moo-tatioooooooonn!

  35. 20/10/2010 at 16:32 wcanyon says:

    Movie isn’t showing. Reloaded page several times. There’s a flash player there but it says “Movie not loaded” when I right-click.

    • 20/10/2010 at 16:46 Delusibeta says:

      While I’m here, version 0.0 of FOOK for New Vegas is already released. It only fixes a few bugs found (and probably not that bug in the video), but it’s a start (especially considering it was online before NVGECK). It’s available here: http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=34684

      On the topic of “model is broken” bugs, aside from the Spycrab, I had fun with Worms 3D breaking on occasion, and worms stretching to silly shapes.

  37. 20/10/2010 at 17:27 Silv says:

    I just saw IGN review, game 8.5 for consoles, 9.0 on PC, wtf?
    Is it that good then with all this crit. + whine going on:)?

    Funny part was that in IGN review – there’s a hardcore mode that isn’t not recommended etc., only proves the fact many nowaday games are so softy, don’t like to spare to thinking (prolly skip most dialogues:P) .
    this hardcore mode seems one of the most interesting little extras of the game why I’d like to play it.

    . there’s two types of games.. mainstream and indie:) 9.0+ games are where indie people get resources and put their _ideas_ into game:)
    It is not very hard to make “decent” shooter on an decent engine… but if you make an RPG, you shouldn’t do shooter just with dialouge choices..

    Still gonna try it, but it’s cheap imho that devs KNOW that game is buggy and instead of fixing they launch tools for modding the game cause you know hardcore FO1,FO2, fans who played FO3 will start modding it cause it hurts their eyes,ears, heart :))

    • 20/10/2010 at 17:57 Danarchist says:

      I havn’t trusted IGN reviews in a long time. I stick to RPS, g4tv, and believe it or not gamestrailers reviews. And even then depends on the reviewer, if they have some hat-sideways straw chewer reviewing an rpg and not a console sports game I ignore it.

  38. 20/10/2010 at 18:04 jeremypeel says:

    That bug is simply wonderful. Particularly when his head starts to turn as he says, “I hope you don’t mind, I had to go rooting around there in your noggin…”

  39. 20/10/2010 at 18:12 Vinraith says:

    I’m very glad they got mod tools out the door so quickly on this one. Obviously it was easier than with FO3, being built on the exact same engine and such, but it’s still a nice show of support for the PC version and mod tools really are that make Bethesda games my favorite RPG’s at the end of the day. I’m looking forward to a new Fallout Wanderer’s Edition, or the equivalent thereof, to really up the survival ante and the immersion. Til then, though, I’ll give vanilla a whirl and enjoy it for what it is.

    • 20/10/2010 at 20:26 Optimaximal says:

      To be honest, they probably BUILT the game with the modified G.E.C.K., such is the general power and expandability of the toolset.

    • 20/10/2010 at 20:35 Jason Moyer says:

      I could be wrong, but I don’t get the impression that New Vegas actually needs mods to be made difficult. There’s an entire area near where you start where, at least at level 4, the lowest level creatures are killing me in 1-2 hits, and my weapons are ineffective against their armor.

    • 21/10/2010 at 05:42 Vinraith says:

      @Jason Moyer

      It’s not about difficulty so much as emphasizing survival. Needing to eat, drink and sleep (which are apparently in the game via hardcore mode but too weakly implemented) make for a much more compelling and immersive game in my opinion. Combine that with scarcer ammunition and supplies and you get a game where it’s all about careful scrounging and weighing your next move carefully. Will scavenging that abandoned office building cost more resources than it nets you? Where’s your next meal going to come from? How do you keep your rad levels in hand when you have to keep eating and drinking irradiated food and water? FO3 is very nearly the perfect post-apocalyptic RPG, IMO, once it’s been modded up to force these kinds of decisions on you. I’ve got high hopes for New Vegas to be even better after a bit of community work.

  40. 20/10/2010 at 18:36 Max says:

    Holy fucking exorcist!

    I was laughing yet frightened at the same time.

  41. 20/10/2010 at 18:38 Silv says:

    I also can recommend Classic Game Room reviews on youtube, they’re quite funny mostly, but still seems more or less objective and enlightening :)

  42. 20/10/2010 at 19:00 Saiko Kila says:

    I’d appreciate a mod which adds some realistic sounds to that bug.

  43. 20/10/2010 at 19:32 Keith says:

    I’d say that bug adds some well needed (frighteningly) eye-catching glamor to the otherwise Plain Jane Oblivion models.

  44. 20/10/2010 at 19:32 Lars Westergren says:

    Ok, it seems the head spinning thing is caused by corrupt mesh files. You should verify the game files on Steam if you see it, that should fix it appearently.
    http://kotaku.com/5668552/fallout-new-vegas-has-bug-issues

    This was a known but which was supposed to be fixed, but seems they had a bug regression:
    http://techland.com/2010/10/18/the-bergman-files-five-funny-bugs-eradicated-from-fallout-new-vegas/

    • 20/10/2010 at 23:04 Shadram says:

      Is there any information on how to patch this bug INTO the game?

      Best video I’ve seen in a long time. I watched it at work, and everyone looked at me funny. Until I forwarded the link to the other developers near me, and now everyone’s laughing. If only our bugs were anywhere near as entertaining…

  45. 20/10/2010 at 19:33 geldonyetich says:

    I was hoping the character was hallucinating or the doc was a mutant or something, but no, it just gets worse and worse throughout the video.

  46. 20/10/2010 at 21:50 Vandelay says:

    My favourite bit was either when you are standing up and his head is spinning at your crotch or when he is floating around and says “Looking good so far.”

    Absolutely genius and is one of the first things that has really made me want to play this game. Although this is clearly a bug and not a demonstration of a developer trying a different style, I concur with some of the other sentiments, more games need to be inspired by surrealism.

  47. 20/10/2010 at 22:15 LintMan says:

    Is this intro bug something everyone’s seeing, or just on certain video cards, etc?

  48. 20/10/2010 at 23:11 Oak says:

    I’d really like some kind of realistic gun and gunplay mod. I know awful combat is a Fallout tradition but it’s really grating on me this time around; maybe it’s just bad luck, or maybe the iron sights feature is making it even more obnoxious that I can hardly hit the broad side of a barn and when I do, it’s about as damaging as a bee sting.

    • 21/10/2010 at 10:48 Thants says:

      It is an RPG, have you put points into the relevant skills?

    • 21/10/2010 at 13:24 malkav11 says:

      The relevant skills are surprisingly irrelevant outside of VATS. I’ve one shotted more than one escaped convict from hundreds of yards away with a Varmint Rifle and a Guns of 10.

  49. 21/10/2010 at 01:34 eridyn says:

    That’s trippy. And almost horror game like. Also quite enthralling when drunk – or do only I find such true?

  50. 21/10/2010 at 11:06 Jolly Teaparty says:

    It’s like a two-for-one game!

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