I've searched these forums and internet but can;t find a simple straight answer to a seemingly simple straight question:

What exaclty can G.E.C.K. NOT do?

In other words, what are it's limits? Can you, for example, make a huge outdoor space and load/ spawn the player there from the beginning, effectively creating a complete "new" game? Or can you ""only""(!) add dungeons to the exisiting main world (Fallout 3.esm) and perhaps mod the certain main aspects of the main game? (stat tweaks, weapons for example)

The last time i modded for fun, was with the BUILD engine from 3D Realms (way, way, WAY, back people. It wasn't called a 2.5D- opposed to a proper 3D-engine or nothing....)

You could almost make a complete new game from start to finish (if you wanted too "waste" years of your life) with the tools provided. You could let the player spawn in your word from the very the start. In effect, you could create a complete new game from the ground up, being only limited to the game engine (and as i recall you could even make your costum sprites en textures etc etc).

I came across g.e.c.k. after playing FO3 alot and dicided to try my hand at modding once again. And after 12 years I might as well be a complete noob at it. I'm just rying to get myself motivated into poring evening after evening of hard work to make just 1 tiny dungeon / area.

If it's been asked and answered a millions times: I'm soory. It's just that I couldn't find a simple explanation of what you can't do with Geck.

Thanks in advance !

I only have a moment to answer, but long story short: They made the entire game with the GECK. So you can do almost anything they did in Fo3, and then some. The only limitations are your imagination, and the limits of the game engine.

To elaborate slighty;

It cannot do much with the HUD. (changing items locations on screen and how they look and are displayed)
It cannot change how some things are calculated. (Anything that isnt controlled by a global variable, ie the amount of experience needed to level up at each level)
You cannot do some things with scripts but alot of that is fixed by FOSE. (Fallout Script Extender)

As well, when it comes to wanting your own content, you may need to invest into learning how to create your own textures and such in other programs. But if you're fine with everything they have in game, G.E.C.K is all you need to remake this game

Many thanks for your response and making this clear to me. I'm hyped !

Oblivion and Fallout share the same basic engine, and someone in that game has come out with a complete overhaul called Nehrim. It's a game all it's own that has maybe 40-50 of gameplay hours to it that has nothing to do with the Oblivion game itself. It's only using the same engine, and of course the editor. Though it might share some of the artwork, I'm not positive about that. So there's no reason why someone can't do the same thing with Fallout if they wanted to.

Incidentally, the Fallout engine was built on the one for Oblivion, and there are still alot of functions and references from that game in the GECK that aren't currently being used. So you wouldn't necessarily be limited to making a Fallout type of game if you were to create one from scratch, you might be able to come up with some sort of hybrid between Oblivion, a swords and sorcery type of game, and Fallout. Not all of Oblivion's functions remain in the GECK but there are enough that you could make something quite different from Fallout if you wanted to.

^ agree with this however;

While that is possible using the G.E.C.K, you'd also need a group of people, or yourself, who has extensive knowledge in other programs to create textures, models, basically everything to make a new game.

They only did world building and level design in the GECK. it does a little more than that besides, but i wouldn't say -they made the entire game with the GECK, because you can't actually make an entire game with the GECK.


and 90% of the oblivion game content.

That's not really the case. There's no reason why you can't use the same graphic resources that the game uses and just create a whole new storyline using them. As Ghogiel pointed out, that's how they did it with Nehrim. Most of the artwork came from the Oblivion game, they didn't create that from scratch. They just put it all together with a new plot and storyline independent of the original game.

I think he was saying that if you wanted to create an Oblivion/Fallout hybrid then you would need knowledge on models and textures.

In which case he is probably right, seeing as Fallout 3 doesn't have any swords or sorcery in it already.

Careful, an Tes:IV/Fo3 hybrid is a big no-no. The models and textures from one cannot be used in another, even if you own both games and already have it all. It has to do with licensing and such.

I understand what you're saying, but that's not what I really meant. I said that thinking that he would create all the textures and models himself. If I remember correctly, the files aren't compatible anyway.