Experience Control by Kinguin


Download Link: http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=10597


Pictures

http://img651.imageshack.us/img651/7575/expcontrolpic01.png
http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/5083/expcontrolpic02.png
http://img10.imageshack.us/img10/3852/expcontrolpic03.png
http://img64.imageshack.us/img64/8025/expcontrolpic04.png
http://img23.imageshack.us/img23/2618/expcontrolfosepic01.png
http://img3.imageshack.us/img3/5333/expcontrolfosepic02.png
http://img36.imageshack.us/img36/9826/expcontrolfosepic03.png
http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/6289/expcontrolfosepic04.png
http://img25.imageshack.us/img25/4925/expcontrolfosepic05.png

http://img138.imageshack.us/img138/9572/expcontrolfosepic01v12.png
http://img535.imageshack.us/img535/9875/expcontrolfosepic02v12.png


1. About the Mod

When you activate this mod in your load order and launch Fallout 3, a book should appear in your inventory under "Aid" after a moment or two. Currently this book does not have a Pip Boy icon, however this may change in later versions. A Pip Boy icon has been added to the book in Experience Control FOSE v1.1 and Basic v1.2. This book when read will show a menu, with the Basic version you can control the overall percentage of experience gained from 0% to 300%. If you have the FOSE version of Experience Control you can control individually how NPCs, creatures, hacking, lockpicking and discovering locations effects your experience points. And as of FOSE v1.2 you can effect how much experience is required to level up.

Make sure that if you download the FOSE version of Experience Control, you have the Fallout Script Extender on your computer. If you do not, the FOSE version of Experience Control will not work properly.

If you lose the book, simply use the StartQuest console command to add another book to your inventory.

Example FOSE version: "StartQuest ExpControlQuest"
Example Basic version: "StartQuest 0100155A"

Substitute "01" at the beginning of the Form ID for the Mod Index of where the ExperienceControl.esp is loaded in your load order.


2. How to Install

FOSE version: Open the ExperienceControl FOSE v1.2.7z file and extract the ExperienceControl.esp to Fallout 3\Data. Then activate the mod in your load order before playing Fallout 3.

Basic version: Open the ExperienceControl v1.2.7z file and extract the ExperienceControl.esp to Fallout 3\Data. Then activate the mod in your load order before playing Fallout 3.


3. How to Uninstall

If you are playing Fallout 3 version 1.5 or higher: Deactivate the ExperienceControl.esp from your load order.

If you are playing Fallout 3 version 1.4 or lower and have the Basic version of the Experience Control mod: Read the Experience Control Book, then select the "Prepare for Uninstall" button. Next save and exit Fallout 3. Deactivate the ExperienceControl.esp from your load order and the save you pressed the "Prepare for Uninstall" button in will be safe to play.

If you are playing Fallout 3 version 1.4 or lower and have the FOSE version of the Experience Control mod: Use the following console command: "RemovePerk 01003E1D"

Substitute "01" at the beginning of the Form ID for the Mod Index of where the ExperienceControl.esp is loaded in your load order. Next save and exit Fallout 3. Deactivate the ExperienceControl.esp from your load order and the save you used the RemovePerk console command in will be safe to play.


4. Questions and Comments

Please direct bug reports to the appropriate bug report topic on the Fallout 3 Nexus or the [RELz] topic on the Bethesda Game Studios Forums. Constructive criticism and ideas are appreciated, as long they are not in the bug report topic. If you want to contact me via message, you may do so in the Bethesda Game Studios Forums and the Nexus Forums. My username in both forums is Kinguin.


5. Last Thoughts

You may use any part of this mod for your own, as long as you give me credit for my work. Also, it is appreciated if you inform me if you do use parts of this mod. All of my work in the ExperienceControl.esp is prefixed with "ExpControl". It can get quite confusing with the FOSE version of Experience Control, so if you have any questions on how the mod works feel free to ask.


6. Credits

Thank you to Bethesda Game Studios for creating Fallout 3!

Thanks to Microsoft Word, for without "Search and Replace" it would have taken me forever to complete this mod.

Thanks to the various musicians of the world, for keeping me entertained and focused throughout my scripting.

Thanks to the people who made the Fallout Script Extender, due to their work this mod has more options then ever possible without FOSE.

And a big thanks to the Bethesda Game Studios Forums! I would name specific members, but then I would be terrified that I left someone out. Whether someone helped me with a problem, or I was looking at solutions to other member's problems, no matter what I was always learning about the GECK here. So thank you.

This looks like an awesome new take on a concept that has been done before. Kudos!

...now you just need to create a pip-boy icon for the book...


Question #1: In the FOSE version, what is the "Choose Level Option" (3rd screen shot) all about?

Question #2: When you are using the menus, does it indicate to you in any way what the default setting is? How about the current setting? (Both would be useful)

Oops, I forgot to mention the mod doesn't have a Pip Boy icon. I will fix the description. I wasn't sure of whether or not I could point my book's icon to a vanilla resource without requiring it to be packaged with the mod, so I figured I would wait until all of the bugs had been reported and upload an icon with the next version.


This is going to be tough to explain, but I will try my best to. When you kill a NPC or creature you gain a certain amount of experience based on what difficulty they are considered to be. For instance in vanilla Fallout 3 if you killed a level 9 NPC that NPC would be considered a "Hard" NPC and you would be rewarded the amount of experience points "Hard" NPCs give you. With this mod you can change what is considered to be a "Hard" NPC or creature with the "Choose Level Option" button, so if you wanted a level 12 NPC to be considered "Hard" even though it is above the "Hard" difficulty then you can do that with the "Choose Level Option" menu button. You can also adjust other difficulties as well. Does that make sense? I can try to explain further if you would like.


With this mod there is a "Current Experience Settings" menu button in the main menu that shows all of the current experience settings, there is also a "Set Experience Points to Default" menu button that resets the option you chose to the default vanilla Fallout 3 setting. Unfortunately you can't see either of them in the pictures because you have to scroll down in Fallout 3 to look at them. I may add another picture or two later. So you can always reset the settings back to default and look at them again if you need to. However either way I might add a note to the mod in the next version that keeps the vanilla settings recorded.

Thank you! I always play on Very Hard, but it gives me way too much EXP! Kinguin, you're the man!

Thanks for the clarification. :tops:

Pip-boy icon: Makes sense. I'm just a stickler for pip-boy icons, since many people ignore them, which results in breaking immersion (for me at least). "I haven't gotten to it yet" is a -totally- acceptable answer.

#1: That makes sense to me, though I'm not sure how much of that is because I already understand the mechanics of how FO3 deals with it in the first place. I mention this only because it occurs to me that this may be confusing within the mod itself. (Then again, I am going -purely- by the screenshots... currently stuck at work, so I cannot look at the mod itself right now -- so maybe it does make more obvious sense with the parts I haven't seen)

#2: Cool. For my own part, I would request being able to see defaults and current settings, without having to "reset to defaults" (depending on the circumstances, that can be a real pain, when all you really wanted to do was compare your current settings to the defaults). Being able to see that within the interface would be preferable to a separate note (that you have to switch back and forth to). I'm thinking something along the lines of:

Current (default) NPC "Hard" Experience: 35 (60)

(Such that if you then "reset to default", you'd see)

Current (default) NPC "Hard" Experience: 60 (60)

Keeping the information within the menus, while more work on your part, also keeps it more easily usable by the end user IMO. (/trying to be helpful)

@ Harmy52: Thanks.

@ DarkUncleBoh: That all makes sense, and I may do that in the next version. Unfortunately I can't give it too much thought right now as I have to leave for somewhere. But I will address any posts when I get back.

The 3rd Type makes great Pip-Boy Icons. He made one for my menu in my Ammo Limit mod.

Well as I can't texture at all the book itself is just a generic vanilla resource. So I doubt it would require much of a Pip Boy icon.

To use a vanilla Pip Boy icon I would have to point my Experience Control book to the right file, which I didn't have to do with the model since it came with the template book I used. I just want to be 100% sure I can use a vanilla Pip Boy icon without requiring it to be packaged with the mod, if I can't then I will try to either find a new Pip Boy icon or learn how to do it myself.

I did download The 3rd Type's Icon Making Guide so that will hopefully help, although I haven't really gotten far into it yet.

This looks amazing. Thanks a lot, grabbing it now.

Thank you, I hope you like the mod.

The next version of Experience Control will probably address DarkUncleBoh's suggestions of a Pip Boy icon and putting the default settings where they can be seen on the menu system. Although I'll probably hold off on that until some people have had a chance to play with it, so they can get their suggestions in or report any bugs.

You can. As long as the icon stays in the original folder and you don't move it over to your own. You may just need to extract that one icon from the Textures.bsa so you can point to something in the GECK. You don't need to include that file in your mod as the game gets it from the BSA archive if there's not another to replace it.

Regarding the mod, I could certainly do with this. I play on Hard and even with a slower levelling mod find I'm getting too much experience for the smallest things. One mod I downloaded only rewarded me with 1 EXP each time I killed one of its enemies. Some complained about the measly amount but I preferred it. Getting 35 EXP each time would have been far too much, IMO.

Will try it out this afternoon

Thank you for telling me this. I will add an icon to the book in the next update then, to both the FOSE and Basic version. I hope you enjoy the mod, please let me know if you have any suggestions or spot any bugs.

Edit: One small question I have to anyone who knows the anwser, how do I adjust the size of text on my mod's description page on the Fallout 3 Nexus? I know it's odd to ask this, but I don't know. I just want to raise the size of the same text I did on this page.

Edit 2#: Never mind the above question, I found a page that describes how it works. For those who are also interested in learning how to add links or change font etc... for their mods here is a link that should help explain it: http://www.tesnexus.com/articles/article.php?id=251

One thing I forgot to ask, is it fine to use on an existing character? My current one has just started the Broken Steel questline and is Level 15. I make new characters all the time, so it wouldn't matter if I have to

It's fine to use an existing character, it doesn't effect anything that would require you to create a new one.

I actually forgot about new characters, my mod gives you the book almost instantly via a quest. However I forgot to add a check on whether or not the Player is in the tutorial quests. So I have a feeling it will give new characters the book when they are a toddler. Something else I will probably need to fix in the next version.

Trust me, he'll think of something. I originaly used the book Guns and Bullets. He came with a Ammunition Crate

Maybe in the future I'll ask him, I have seen his work in Misc Item Icons and he is very good at it. However right now as it is just a generic book I don't think it needs a custom Pip Boy icon. So for now I'll just use a vanilla Pip Boy icon.

Has anyone had a chance to play with the mod yet?

I have added a Pip Boy icon to the book and the default settings are now displayed in the "Current Experience Settings" menu button. I will also add a check that will ensure the Player is outside Vault 101 before receiving the book. Or is it preferable to receive the book when the Player is in Vault 101?

I will probably upload the next version of Experience Control in a day or so.

Experience Control FOSE Version 1.1 has been released. It adds a pip-boy icon to the Experience Control Book and it adds the default settings to the "Current Experience Settings" messages. It also ensures the Player is outside of Vault 101 before the Experience Control Book is added, which should also fix a bug ladyhawke noticed over on the Fallout 3 Nexus that new players would receive the book but it would later get removed by the tutorial quests.

Experience Control Basic Version 1.2 has also been released, it adds the same as the FOSE version 1.1 does.

One request I have to the users of this mod, sometimes someone asks me what do I recommend for experience settings. Honestly I haven't a clue, as I don't spend a lot of my time actually playing Fallout 3 and when I do I am usually beta testing Williesea's Vault 64 mod or testing my own mods. So if a user of this mod finds a particular setup with the experience settings that they like, I would appreciate it if you posted it so that I could maybe refer it to someone else.

I had thought of asking others that same thing as there are oodles of choices. In the end I wrote down what I got each time I received XP then halved it once or twice.

I found that when the mod loaded and if I didn't set anything up right away I'd just keep levelling up over and over. I'd started a new character (to play with another mod) and we'd just left the Vault exit.
The main things I wanted to change was the XP gained on discovering a new location and the amount XP from killing another NPC. After getting all of 1 XP for killing zombies (Zombie Apocalypse) I thought somethig fairly low would be better (for me).

The rest of the settings I just chose a number in the first option available. I don't really understand what it means with modifying Very Easy/Easy/Hard, etc NPC's (like in the 4th FOSE image in the OP) so just basically picked a number at random under the first option
As said earlier there were really only a few things I wanted to change.

Over time I'll likely get the hang of it and figure out settings that work for me. I haven't played with it a whole lot yet.

Congratulations on your release, Kinguin! I just read through your OP and there are a couple of things that I thought I'd mention:

With FOSE installed, you can refer to quests via their editorIDs in the console, negating the need to adjust for load order.
http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/ also has a "Search and Replace" feature, and is more suitable for Fallout 3 scripting due to the possibility of http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=10322, as well as the fact that code is treated as code rather than formatted text.

With regard to having separate FOSE and non-FOSE versions, you (and your mod's users) might find it easier to combine them both into a single plugin that detects whether or not FOSE has been loaded. A good method of detecting this is outlined in JustinOther's http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?showtopic=1070012 resource.

Cipscis

EDIT:

Thought I'd mark the occasion:

This is my 4,500th post.

Cipscis

In Fallout 3, a NPC or creature's difficulty is measured by their level. For example, a super mutant master is considered to be "Very Hard" because his level is 12, while a super mutant brute is considered to be "Hard" at level 9. So you can adjust those two different creature's experience reward separately.

Good luck with the mod.


Thank you.


Thanks for mentioning this, I'll test it out myself and update the OP when I learn the correct new console command.


I'll look into it as it sounds very useful, thank you for telling me about it.


I'll look into this as well, it does sound simpler to have a single version. Although on the other hand the FOSE version of Experience Control has so many more options then the Basic version does which bumps up it's file size roughly 2,575KB over the Basic version. I'm not sure how comfortable I would be with a mod user having that much used up space that doesn't do anything because they don't have FOSE.

Thank you for all of this new information which I am sure will come in handy.


Congratulations.

I am really sorry about it but the last version of Experience Control was severely bugged. It would give out incorrect experience settings when the "Current Experience Settings" button was pressed and changes made to those settings would revert back to the original settings when Fallout 3 restarted.

Experience Control FOSE v1.1 Repaired has been released, it should fix all of the bugs mentioned above. This version should essentially be what the original was intended to be. I am sorry to those who downloaded the last version and were disappointed by it.

Thanks go to ladyhawke over on the Fallout 3 Nexus for finding the major bug fixed in this version, and thanks to Cipscis for helping to fix it.

Experience Control FOSE Version 1.2 has been released. It adds the option to control how much experience is required to level up.

One warning though: Recently Arwen posted in a different topic stating that some people had problems with mods that changed a certain game setting when they had the Broken Steel DLC. This mod effects that game setting, however it is through scripting so I don't think it applies here. Even if a user of this mod does run into that problem I believe they can easily reset the value back to default with the "Set Leveling Experience to Default" button.

I have tested this mod myself with the Broken Steel DLC and have had no problems, however as I am not 100% sure this bug won't occur I advise all users of this mod to at least be cautious through the first few days and report any bugs you find.

This mod also fixes a bug in the last version. And I had to remove the "Prepare for Uninstall" and "Reinstall" menu buttons to make room for the new "Leveling Experience Options" menu button. So if you are playing Fallout 3 version 1.4 or lower you will now have to use console commands to uninstall the mod (See OP for details).

I will update the pictures soon with new ones featuring the added options of FOSE v1.2.

Edit: New pictures are now in the OP.

Hello, minor update: FOSE version 1.2.1 has been released. It fixes a minor bug that I found in a recent playthrough that while not game or mod breaking was certainly an annoying inconvenience. I hope not too many people had a problem with it.

Since I'm in a bit of a modding mood I'd like to see what else I can improve with the mod, but to be honest I haven't any ideas so if anyone has some suggestions I'd appreciate it.