(Quite a bit of this will just be a copy/paste from my reddit post)

Three days ago I decided I want to learn to mod. I put on my favourite hat, jumped out of bed with a triumphant roar and rushed out into the big wide world with my beloved canine companion, sparky, to make myself known. I'd have women all over me, I'd have job offers coming at me from every angle, I'd be featured in TIME magazine ...

... except it didn't happen quite like that, I didn't rush anywhere - that would be tiring, and I won't, because life don't work like that.

I'm back from uni for a week, which means plenty of free time. Booted up fallout NV, checked nexus mods, was subsequently dissapointed by the apparent lack of content - that, or mods for skyrim have spoiled me. I did have a look at a perk pack which seemed interesting, but it wasn't quite for my tastes.

"Hey, I have an idea", said my brain - though brains can't usually talk so it was more an internal monologue if anything, "let's learn to create mods! I mean, we've managed to get at least a hundred skyrim mods to work together which is impressive (by a new modder's standards, at least), and we have at least an hour and a half of practice with scripts - even though we can't remember which it was exactly. What could possibly go wrong?"

So I grabbed the GECK being all gung-ho, found a couple of tutorials for creating custom perks in the GECK, and despite my gung-ho attitude combined with a realistic sense of impending failure ... I don't think it's going all that badly.

Admittedly it took a little time working out what an "ability" was, and "entry points" took a little toying around to work out what they were, but I got to the point where I felt like I could create something basic. Make something with a level requirement which increases damage against certain enemies, or complicate it a bit further and give it a guns level requirement and make it deal increased damage when using pistols only. I only had a vague understanding of how "Ability" type perks worked, and I could probably make a kind of variation of paralyzing palm that applies only to blocking enemies (though I'd have no idea how to increase or decrease the chance).

So I tried it more - took the advice given to me and looked through all kinds fo weapons and actor effects and abilities, looking for similarities and differences between them and tweaking them to get a feel for how they worked.

At this point I've had limited success. To test what I could and couldn't do, I tried to create a weapon which would - rather than firing bullets - throw bullets. Like ... with the character's hand. Just kinda ... throwing bullets at people. I also decided I wanted to try give it a special melee attack, "Fist Full'a Frags" which would basically be a punch which applies the Two-Step Goodbye's explosion effect (because bullets and monk power) and preferably uses the remaining ammunition in the "clip".

What I've achieved is using the throwing knife as a base to work off - I've changed the model of the knife (rather, taken it away) while retaining the throwing/holding animation, so it loosely looks like the character is holding something in their palm and throwing when I press fire. I've changed the knife projectile to a 10mm round, removed the impact effect of the knife (so random knives stop appearing in hit targets) and I've changed the reload animation to type E (revolver) which looks ... kind of like placing some bullets in your hand (if you have bad eyesight). I still get the revolver sound when reloading, however, which is a tad frustrating. As for the melee special attack - it just ... doesn't. The option is available in VATS, and I can use it, but using it simply teleports me into melee range of the target and performs an awkward half-throw-punch motion that deals no damage whatsoever.

From here, I've moved on to trying a more complex perk. I've at long last created something I'm relatively happy with - when health is < 100% and >= 100%, a regeneration effect kicks in, as well as a turbo time dilation effect which lasts until health = 100% or health < 85%. To balance this out (it was a trait) I added a secondary "stimpacks will fail when below 50% health" by modifying the stimpack ingestible. PRetty stoked that it actually worked, I must say.

I've still had plenty of trouble, though, One of my earlier plans was to create a perk which would give a brief time dilation effect upon killing an enemy - or preferrably, upon decapitation. This gave me ... a lot of trouble. I could achieve the effect when an enemy's health fell below a certain point, or when my own health did - but I couldn't get it to trigger on a kill, whatever I tried.

So, a plethora of stupid questions I pose to you:

1) Is learning to create perks a good starting point for learning to use the GECK? That's one reason I'm starting at this point - I feel like it's a good starting point. From here I've moved onto weapons a little, and am playing around with abilities and actor effects too now. Is there a better place for me to start?

2) Is a hybrid melee/ranged weapon possible? Like my attempted bullet-throwing-bullet-punching-exploding monk weapon I detailed above where I use a special attack to excecute a melee strike. If it were possible, how would one achieve such a weapon (and how do I rid myself of that accursed reload sound?).

3) How would I go about triggering an effect upon a kill? I've looked at Meltdown and Grim Reaper's Sprint for guidance, but the former just has an entry point of "Has Meltdown" (How dreadfully helpful) while the latter has "AP gain on kill" specifically for it - which is just as unhelpful.

4) Is there a function for checking my character's inventory? for items I'm looking to create a perk that provides a passive damage bonus depending on how many Psycho are held in inventory (Perhaps a "placebo effect" type thing, or a slow-drip feed of the chemical). I've had a look, thinking "of course there will be one" - but if it's there, I haven't found it yet.

5) How much scripting ought one learn? I have a very limited knowledge here - enough to know vaguely how an "if" statement works, but that's about it. Where would one go to learn such a thing, and how complex/difficult is it?

I think that's all the noob questions for now ... bound to be more in the future, though.

Cheers to whoever actually read through all that

A very enjoyable read

But you've got my head spinning with what to talk about. Although I do think all of those questions can be answered.

I'm not super fly with the geck , but I do think im good at working through the problem and coming up with un obvious solutions.

So If you want to pick one of those your most interested in ... Ill start with some research testing to give you my best possible answer.

I'm sure more people will chime in though.

Oh ya ... and let me say this about scripting.

First ... it is necessary ... but it can be simple or complicated.

So to start ... you need an Idea of what you want to do.

And after you learn some basics of how to put a script together.

Then its a real good Idea to read up on the list of functions found here http://geck.gamesas.com/index.php?title=Category:Functions

And I don't mean read every little tick tack ... just familiarize yourself with them ... and put that link on your hot bar.

Then when your thinking about your idea ... you browse through to find the function to best suit you ... but thats also besides knowing the best place to make the script run. Which you'll figure out as you go ... So no worries about not knowing enough about scripting ... forget thinking that before hand , because eventually you'll find what you need.