Description:

This is an anolysis done to compare the differences and similarities between game assets found in Fallout3 and in Fallout: New Vegas. The goal is to establish a list of assets found in both games that can be used as a template for mod transfer from Fallout3 to Fallout: New Vegas for those of us hoping this is possilbe. The data are tabulated and calculated in an Excel 2007 spreadsheet that shows the differences at the File Level between assets in the Fallout3 and Fallout: New Vegas games. You may need a viewer to see the file if you don't have a modern-enough version of Excel, the total asset list is almost 300,000 lines long between both games.

Source:

To gather this information I decompressed the BSA archives from both games into separate sub directories on my hard disk. I then transferred this disk to my Linux system where I could execute unix-level commands on the files, and ran several commands to extract the total list of files and parse differences between them:

> find . -type f >> ../FNV_file_list
> find . -type f >> ../FO3_file_list
> vi FNV_file_list (and used this command to remove leading periods: :.,$s/^\.//g
> vi FO3_file_list (and used this command to remove leading periods: :.,$s/^\.//g
> comm FNV_file_list FO3_file_list >> FNdiff.txt

This produced a tab-delimited file with three columns showing me which files are in just FNV, which are in just FO3 and which are in both games. I then loaded this into Excel 2007 and broke the data out across 7 different tabs with a Summaryanolysis tab showing the results. After an initial anolysis I concluded that the majority of all assets in the BSA (~80%-85%) are Voice files and LOD files, neither of which are of any concern in transferring mods as both are very specific to their given platform. LOD files for Fallout3 have no application in the New Vegas world, and voice/lip files are extremely unique and easy for all to identify. If Moira or Harkness starts talking in a New Vegas mod, it would be instantly identified and called out by everyone as in violation. Thus for this anolysis of assets I did not include the LOD or Voice files, which reduces the total volume of assets under anolysis from ~300,000 down ~55,000 across both games.

Thus for this anolysis I am considering all Meshes, Textures, Sounds and Menu files - with the exception of the LOD textures and Voice files. I will called this "Adjusted Assets" for purposes of clarity in rest of this review. I believe the Adjusted Assets encompasses > 99% of all content that would be under consideration for use in both games or would be found in mods for either game. There may be rare cases in which mods use Voice files from Fallout3, and we can say categorically without any doubt that these files Cannot be used in New Vegas mods, and leave it at that regarding voice files. Lastly, this is anolysis was done at the File Level, not the FormID level inside the GECK. This means that they may have/did preserved FormIDs for allot of the assets they kept in both games - a breakdown on that is for a later anolysis.

Outcome:

Good News overall, out of the total combined Adjusted Asset count of 54,930 files, 18,008 are common to both games (common meaning they share the same file path, file name and file size). Said another way, 32.78% (roughly 1/3) of all Adjusted Assets in Fallout3 were transferred to Fallout: New Vegas, and are thus common in both games. The breakdown from the summary anolysis tab of the spreadsheet is shown below:

Summary anolysis:

Total Adjusted Assets in Fo3: 35,496
Adjusted Assets found ONLY in Fo3: 14,325
Total Adjusted Assets in FNV: 43,269
Adjusted Assets found ONLY in FNV: 22,597

Total Assets for both Fo3 and FNV: 54,930
Adjusted Assets found in BOTH games: 18,008
% of Adjusted Assets Shared in both games: 32.78%

This bodes very well for our ability to transfer cells and/or use content from Fo3 in F:NV, though in many cases it means that we will have to replace assets that didn't make the transfter with similar ones from Fallout: New Vegas. The critical list of shared assets that are eligable for use in mods transferring from Fallout3 to Fallout: New Vegas is the "SharedAssets" tab of the spreadsheet. If there is a way to programmatically remove any record from a transferring Fallout3 mod that isn't on either the SharedAssets list or the OnlyInFNV list, the resulting mod file would be valid and legal for use in Fallout: New Vegas as it would only contain records found in the FalloutNV.esm master. Perhaps not an easy task to be sure, but in the hopes that a solution can be found the "SharedAssets" list and "OnlyInFNV" list can be used as an "Allowable Asset List for Mod Transfer from Fallout3 to Fallout: New Vegas" (by any other name). I included .txt files with just the SharedAssets tab data and "FNVOnlyAssets" tab data as optional files to the spreadsheet for those that don't wish to download 35+ megs of excel.

The entry on Nexus for the spreadsheet and text file is http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=34774

Let me know if you have any thoughts or comments, I welcome all feedback (especially if/where I screwed up).

Cheers,

Miax

Good man! \o/

Also, this bodes well for mod transference.

Kudos :celebration:

So has it been determined if the nifs are the same version format or if there are any changes?

There are some small changes to the Nif format, but primarily in new node types and the like - you can use nifs straight from F3 and plug them in to NV with no changes, as far as I know. NifTools has already been updated to deal with the new format, too, I believe.

@Echonite

I made a little test with Breeze's male body NIF (which are most of my new armors for FNNCQ2 based on) shortly and I had no troubles in NV.

@Miaximus
:goodjob: Thanks for your hard work it's very helpfull.

According to throttlekitty, there are some minor differences.
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1122265-initial-technical-details/
The relevant posts start at post #41.

The only assets from F3 that might have problems in FNV would be effects that used controllers for Fire Refaction.

Aside from that, everything should be golden.

YES!

Most of the assets I was most concerned about were transferred over.

I have a map containing hundreds of cells with many, many assets. As long as the grass of Point Look out made it, those terrain textures, and all the terrain and trees of Vanilla Fallout 3, then I should be fine. It looks like all the rocks and canyon pieces made it, which was imperative. Not, just aslong as the cubiwall bits and boardwalk from Point lookout are there, we'll be okay. Many Mothership Zeta meshes/textures are in...

Looks like Project Brazil will make the transfer mostly intact, since the majority of our work was hand crafted.

http://www.moddb.com/mods/fallout-3-project-brazil

Thank you very much for this anolysis!

Do you think you can do the same for the Project Brazil .esm?

Awesome!

FYI, http://www.cygwin.com/ isn't a bad thing to have around when you just absolutely have to have a bash shell.

EDIT:

I wonder if it's possible to build a 'wrapper' ESM, that would substitute the missing FO3 content with appropriate FNV content. Not everything could be done, of course... save a lot of work later, perhaps. I've not been that far down the rabbit hole, so I really have no idea if this is possible.

I'm as happy as a pig in poop.

Thaks for the kind words

@throttlekitty,

From what I understand the minor changes in the NIF files had to do with adding a node for IronSights and a few other things. The NIF files that came with New Vegas were post-processed with a higher version of Havok so that their collision data was more efficient, but that the engine is still backwards compatible with the old format. So for us changing a mesh and saving it under a new filename simply means it will be slightly less-efficient in game for Havok purposes. All the more reason for us newbs to follow Echonite's tutorials on how to create Collision in an efficient manner, and very good news for all of us that made meshes for Fallout3 and want to use them in New Vegas. I want to offer a big THANK YOU for updating the NifTools. I very much appreciate that! :celebration: :goodjob:

@0563511,

I plan to manually prune my mod of Fallout3-only assets actually. For example the Statesman Hotel assets are gone, but I made a hotel in my mod that uses some of it's assets. However stuff like the hallway and room-walls assets can easily be replaced with similar hall/room assets from the OffHall kit that did get shared in both games. I plan to do this manually in the Fo3 GECK first, so that should transfer become possible, I won't loose _any_ assets as they will all be from the SharedAssets or NewVegas assets lists. An automatic way would be Great, but likely very challenging programmatically as the code would have to know what to replace with what. If someone manually creates that list however, it might just be doable.

All of this is a mute point if we get unlucky and can't transfer mods from Fallout3 to Fallout: New Vegas. One of the best and only people capable of doing it has said he would look at in a while, so all we can do is patiently wait, hope, and get our mods as ready for transfer as possible by pruning them of as many Fallout3-only assets as possible.

Cheers,

Miax

I only have to prune about five percent of the Flying Dutchman :celebration:

Still, it's finding where I put the five percent that'll take up 95% of the time :unsure:

I'm planning on using shared assets for the ships, so that the Flying Dutchman can be in both games, and any land locations will be dependent on which game it's in

No spoilers on where the ship will be moored in NV though :hubbahubba: