Beginner's Guide to Modding FALLOUT: New Vegas (2020)#1 - Getting Started

[Music] it's amazing to think that it's been nine years since my original modding Fallout New Vegas series here on YouTube but what's even more amazing is New Vegas is still going strong so it's time to dust this series off ladies and gentlemen welcome to the 2020 edition of modding Fallout New Vegas before we start let's talk about who this video series is for it is primarily for beginners people who have not modded fallout new vegas before and may well be a little nervous about doing so however if you're a veteran of modding and you're just here for a bit of a refresher course i will include timestamps in the description for each section and you can skip right to where you feel you need to be now you are going to have to do a few things before we start installing mods the first thing is if you've installed the game but you've not run it yet do it now set the options and hit play this is because the game sets up several files called any files these are settings files that we will need to edit later on so you need to have run the game at least once it's a good idea anyway check that the game in its unmodeled state of vanilla state as we tend to call it is working make sure you've got no problems before you start next make sure you know where the game is installed I've installed mine on my F Drive which is where I install most of my games under steam steamapps common Fallout New Vegas many of you will have it on a different drive perhaps even on the C Drive under Program Files I generally recommend against doing that because windows can sometimes have extra security on that folder and it may and I stress the word may interfere with certain mod management tools later on you can work around it you can fix those issues but it is just a little easier if all of your games are installed on a different drive that's how I recommend doing it but the most important thing know where it's installed you'll know if you're in the right place because you will see files like Fallout NV dot exe and fallout NV launcher dot exe if you find this folder but those files don't have dots exe at the end of them it's probably that you have file extensions hidden don't panic go along to view and make sure file name extensions is checked if you turn it off they disappear turn it on it's a it's a useful feature to have enabled the third thing you're going to need is a Nexus mods account I will leave a link down below so you can go and sign up this is where I'm getting most of the mods that I will be installing during this tutorial series signing up is free there is a free account you can also sign up for a premium account that gets you more servers more connections but it is not essential to follow this video series you also need to be able to open archive files that are in the 7z format the rar format or the zip format WinRAR will do there are probably a number of other programs the one I recommend is actually 7-zip I will leave a link down below and finally you will need a mod manager this is a program that helps you install update and uninstall mods there are many great options for mod managers for Fallout New Vegas but the one I'm going to be using in this video series and indeed the one I do recommend to beginners is vortex that is the mod manager that was created and officially supported by Nexus mods themselves if you don't have a mod manager installed and you're going to install vortex now I do have an entire series devoted to vortex I will put a link down below to the first video where I show you how to install it so that's what you're going to need you're going to need to run the game at least once you're going to need to know where the game is installed you're going to need an account with Nexus mods some sort of program to extract archive something like 7-zip and finally you're going to need a mod manager something like vortex if you've got those five things sorted out we're ready to begin yippy the standard Steam version of new Vegas will only use up to two gigabytes of RAM which by modern standards is not a lot luckily there is a mod called the FNV for gigabyte patch up that will double that to four gigabytes and help give us a little better performance and more stability now the GOG version of the game is already four gigabytes aware you don't need this patch however there may be a reason to install it anyway I'll talk about that when I discuss the next mod however for now if you are using the Steam version of the game you definitely want this mod to download the mod go along to the files section on Nexus and then hit manual download this is a mod you will have to manually install you will not be using your mod manager I'm going to manually download mine to my desktop once the archive has downloaded you're going to need to open up the Fallout New Vegas game folder again and depending on the archive program you have chosen you do have a couple of choices on how to install this mod now the easiest way if you're using something like 7z and probably WinRAR is to simply double-click on the archive and it will open it up and then you can take the fallout env patched exe left click on it and hold the button and just drag it to your game folder and it will install it that way if that doesn't work if you can't drag and drop from the program you're using just a right-click on the archive and extract to this folder name and once the folder has been created you can just open it up and then you can drag the file across as you would do with any Windows File and then all you need to do is double click on the fallout env patch dot exe it will go on for a second or so you press a key and you're done it's patched obviously now we should check that the game is still working however one interesting thing about this patch is you know the launcher that normally opens when you run the game well now if the patch has done its job if you launch right from Fallout NV dot exe it will skip that and go straight into game which can save you a few seconds so as you can see I now know the patcher has actually done its job and in fact personally at this point I would actually remove the normal icon you used to start the game and perhaps right-click and send to desktop a shortcut to Fallout NV dot exe itself so from now on I can just double click there and go straight into the game don't worry you can still go into the launcher if you need to by going back to your game folder and double-clicking on fallout NV launcher dot exe but let's face it you're going to do that a lot less than just trying to run the game directly one other thing of note is if you have the script extender installed for Fallout New Vegas this patched version of the game will now load it automatically you don't have to run the script extended directly and this is true for the GOG version of the game - so this is why GOG users may to use that patch as well but what is the new Vegas script extender I hear you ask well I'm glad you did the new Vegas script extender or nvse as it's known is probably the most essential mod that you can install it will help with stability bug fixes and is required by so many mods that you're going to want that I put it on the essential list without any hesitation you're going to want the script extender now to download the script extender you're going to go to nvse silver lot dog org I'll put the link down below and download the stable version download that to wherever you need I'm going to download it to my desktop again once downloaded you can double click on the archive to open up your archive program go into the first subfolder nvse 5-1 b-24 and then you're going to need to copy all of these files actually you only need the DLL files and the Exe file but you can bring the text files as well left click and hold drag over to the game folder and release and believe it or not that's it nvse has been installed now traditionally to run the game with nvse loaded you would run the nvse loader and you should be aware of that you should know that just in case you ever need to do it however if you've installed the patcher you don't need to run this executable you can run the game as normal and it will actually load nvse for you of course you need to do that you need to start the game a hundr everything is working once you get to the menu you can check to see if you've got nvse running correctly by pressing the button to the left of the one key this is the tilde key on a lot of keyboards but not all depends on your region but it will be the key to the left of the one usually you press it and this little bar should appear it down here you then type in get NV s e version press ENTER and it should say nvse version 5 if it doesn't say that you've got a problem if it does say that you've got nvse running you've got it installed and you're ready to move on now that you have nvse installed one tweak I suggest you make is to go into the data folder right click anywhere and new folder call that folder n v SP then go into the folder right-click and do new text document and change the name of the test document to nvse underscore config dot i and i yes i want to change it this is the configuration file for nvse and you can open this now either by using your favorite text editor something like notepad plus plus or indeed the standard notepad that comes with Windows if I double click I think it just goes there this opens up I then need to type in the following I've actually got it copied memory in square brackets default heap initial alakh mb equals 400 if you save this press ctrl s this will help with stability and preventing crashes later on some places will recommend setting this to 496 but I'm reliably told that may be a little too much and can cause problems most of the mods that I'm installing in this video are not the sort of mods that adds something that's easy to see in game we're focusing on stability performance fixing bugs those sort of things however there is one small bug that we're going to fix with the next mod that is very easy to see that is a certain micro stutter that the vanilla game has I'm going to start moving sideways now and you will see this little micro stutter every second or so there's just this tiny little stutter some people actually can't see it believe it or not but for many of us it's unbelievably annoying you can actually see it even if you turn with the mouse or if you run forwards it's just a little less noticeable strafing side to side is where you tend to see it so the next mod we're going to install is going to fix that the mod is called the new Vegas tic fix and it's the first model installing in this video using the mod manager I'm going to go along to the file section and I'm going to click on mod manager download now if you don't already have the program opened it should open and start downloading there you go download started download finished now before I install this mod one thing that I'm going to do is I'm going to go to the settings for new Vegas and the workaround tab and I'm going to allow BSA redirection this ads archive invalidation don't worry too much about that at the moment just make sure it's enabled it's got a little green tick go back to mods and you should see you now actually have a mod enable leave that again don't worry about it too much go to the tick fix that you just downloaded and hit this button or this little warning up here install it will install the mod I then need to enable the mod and that's it believe it or not it's installed if you are curious as to what happened the mod manager has installed files in the data folder under nvse plugins and we now have some files here don't worry too much about this right now what's more important is you boot up the game and check to see if the Mahdi's working and I start strafing side to side I can immediately see that the stutter has gone the movement is very smooth no hints of a stutter whatsoever same is true if I turn or on backwards and forwards the stutter has gone honestly this is one of my all-time must-have mods now that you've seen how easy it is to install a simple mod using vortex we're going to speed things up now and cover the last four mods at once these four mods are ones I'm going to be installing because they fix an awful lot of bugs and problems with the base game they include Yukichi guys unofficial patch or yup unofficial patch nvse Gipp LNF vese plugin yes terrible name and what I believe is pronounced else to e owls tweaks another great name you can actually download all four of these mods at once so I'm going to go along to the yup page files and download with the manager mod manager download on the main file there are some of the files in different languages if you would prefer that hopefully the download will have started yes then I'm gonna go to the unofficial patch nvse files and download that file has it started know sometimes the Downloads do not start and you need to hit the download button just check to see what's going on in the background for Gipp ln nvse again one file hit download download started and then else do e ai's tweaks for this one we're going to need the main file but we will also need the in e file seen as we've not downloaded this model before we're going to need this one under the optional files stewey tweaks in e and once all of the files have been downloaded we can start installing them before you do it is generally a good idea it's good practice to check the front page of every module installing and read the entire front page it can be a little daunting but it sometimes contains very important information some of it might be information that you don't quite understand at the moment I wouldn't worry too much about it but I am gonna start with the Yukichi guy on official patch yup which he's there and I'm just gonna click right there and it will start installing it I will then enable it enable all know that means there were multiple plugins there was more than one plugins for that mod if I go to the plug-in section I will now see I have all of the official files these are the files that come with the base game if you have all of the DLC but I now have yup base game plus all DLC ESM and this NPC fix file so it's got multiple files you will need to enable them all if you get that message I quickly check that I can get as far as the login menu just to make sure there's no major problem now it it's probably still a good idea to load in a save somewhere close to the beginning and just getting game and make sure nothing horrible happens but with this mod and many mods like this you won't see much in-game straightaway the important thing is I've got in game and nothing horrible happened next up I'm going to install chip Ln and vse plug-in this does fix a fair number of bugs all by itself but it's also required by the unofficial patch nvse so let's get that one installed there we go just click there it does its thing I click enable and it's deployed and that is done again I am just going to double check that I can get in game although I'm pretty convinced I will be able to you may get sick of testing out each model one at a time but it is good practice eventually you will become familiar enough with the mods to be able to predict which ones you can install at the same time but right now just check each time next the unofficial patch nvse and you might be thinking to yourself what wait a minute I've already installed something called the Yukichi guy unofficial patch why am i installing another unofficial patch well they work on different things and the model for this mod actually recommends you use yup along with this mod so don't worry these mods are compatible and they do fix different things this mod requires not just all of the DLC but it requires the plug-in we just installed and nvse so it does a fair number of new things so let's install that one and and once again you know you know the drill once it's enabled just check and get in game and finally stewey tweaks enable and then stewey tweaks in e again enable one thing here you will definitely need to run the game at least once for this mod to be completely installed because if you go along to the data folder inside your Fallout New Vegas game and go to nvse plugins and you'll find the nvse stewey tweaks dll and the nvse stewey tweaks any file if you open up the ini' file itself you see it's pretty blank at the moment there are no options that will actually fill up once you have started the game and when you leave the game if you go back to the in e file and look at it now you can see there are now a lot of settings that you can tweak I would generally recommend if you're a beginner you don't change anything here yet a lot of these settings are for some of the tweaks some of the quality of life improvements that the mod gives we're just using this model right now for its engine fixes if you want to see the full list of things it will actually allow you to do you can check the front page and when you're comfortable you can start editing that file and see what it can do for you but for now we're just looking for a stable bug-free well-performing game and that is it for this video ladies and gentlemen and I know some of you are thinking wait is that it is that all I wanted something more I wanted new textures new lighting new quests a revolver that shoots dragons I wanted something with more umph and I get it I really do you're excited you're looking forward to adding tons of mods but trust me this was an important step you've installed mods that will make the game a lot more stable have a lot less bugs and perform better and more importantly you've installed some of the essential mods that will allow you to install some of the most advanced mods you can get you've got a really good base now and in the next videos we will begin to build upon that and we will begin to install some slightly more impressive looking mods so I hope you could join me for those videos I look forward to seeing you there and until then remember as always have fun [Music]

Channel: Gopher

Views: 879,279

Keywords: gopher, gophersvids, game, gaming, modding, mods, mod, fallout, new vegas, beginner's guide, modding fallout new vegas, fnv, vortex, FNV 4GB Patcher, New Vegas Script Extender, (NVSE), NVSE Config, NVTF - New Vegas Tick Fix, nvtf, tick fix, Bug Fixes, Yukichigai Unofficial Patch - YUP, Unofficial Patch NVSE, JIP LN NVSE Plugin, lStewieAl's Tweaks

Id: cPo5pDT3bKA

Length: 24min 31sec (1471 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 19 2020