Overview
Most of us use the console more than we’d care to admit. But there are a bunch of little tips and tricks you can learn to make the most out of the console, from bugfixes to becoming Courierzilla.
Preface: tl;dr i know this crap because I have too much time on my hands
I’m the kind of girl that likes to know exactly how the engines of each game tick. I try and learn all the console commands, all the INI settings and what exactly all of this does. I once spent a good few hours in a Half-Life 2 session reading what each and every convar and command did (and changing most of them) just so I would know how to do it. And it pays off: Somewhere out there is a guy who is convinced I work for Valve because I fixed a broken Synergy game once.
But enough about me, you want to know what this guide’s going to teach you, right? Well, it’s going to teach you many ways to do pretty much the same thing, as well as a bunch of ways to improve what you’re doing.
Just so you’re all aware, almost everything in this guide also applies to Fallout 3. A fair bit of it applies to Oblivion and Skyrim as well. I may make a Skyrim version of this guide in the future. Maybe. It’s more likely if you bribe me.
Targeting Things: Because sometimes it’s not the player you want to affect
The first thing you need to keep in mind is each and every entity in the game world, from NPCs to stimpaks to the Lucky 38’s front door, all have a thing called a “reference ID”. It’s an eight digit hexidecimal number between 00000000 and ffffffff. The left-most digits of this number are the reference’s “load index”, which refers to where the reference comes from.
- A load index of 00 means the reference comes from FalloutNV.esm, the vanilla game.
- A load index of “ff” means the reference comes from your save. This is the case for projectiles (bullets, thrown spears), dropped items, randomly generated Freeside thugs, things you spawned with the console, et al
- Any other load index means it came from a mod. As far as the console is concerned, DLCs such as Old World Blues are mods (though they tend to have low load indexes like “01”, “02” because they’re ESM files).
The rest of that number identifies the individual reference, and has no significance aside from that.
In addition, every entity in the game (not just ones in the game world, but things like quests, radio stations, etc) have a “base ID”, which shares the same pool as the reference ID. To keep the difference straight, think of reference IDs as the actual thing, and the base IDs as templates or character sheets for that thing.
This guide will make use of some neat shorthand: you can omit any leading zeroes from IDs. So “00015169” is equal to “15169”. Incidentally that’s the base ID for stimpaks.
Note however that this does not mean zeroes in the middle of an ID can be omitted. Meaning “90210” is not identical to “921” (neither of those are actually associated with anything as far as I know)
The Fallout New Vegas console has three ways to target things:
- By clicking on the intended target with the console pulled up. Obviously this only works when the target is within view. However, if you miss, you don’t need to click again, just scroll the mouse wheel (thanks monol1th, I didn’t know that one until now!)
- By using the PRID command.
- By prefixing the command with “<refid>”
As an example: Suppose I wanted to target Loyal to make him flip the bird (more on this later). Loyal’s reference ID is “000ff26a”, which we can shorten to “ff26a” (see “Some Nifty Shorthand” above). There are three ways we can do this:
- I can click on him and then run the command.
- I can enter the following two commands into console:
prid ff26a playidle LooseMiddleFinger
- Or I can be Ms. Efficient and combine those into one command:
“ff26a”.playidle LooseMiddleFinger
This would target him, run the command, and then untarget him.
An important thing to note here is when you combine the reference ID and the command into one line, the targeting isn’t persistent: meaning your target won’t stay targeted. Therefore if you need to run a bunch of commands on one reference it’s best to click on him or use PRID instead.
Keep in mind that any time you need a reference ID and you want to affect the player, you can use the special reference ID the player has: “player”. e.g.
Note that even in the case of combining reference ID and command, you do not need to put quotes around “player”.
General NPC Manipulation
Now that you have an understanding on how to target things, you’re going to want to know how to make your targets actually do things. While there are full on categories of things you can do, I’ll save larger things for their own separate sections. Here, I’ll just put general NPC manipulation commands.
Factions and Reputations: Diplomacy, be it economical or shotgun, is always encouraged
The following commands exist for modifying your reputation with certain groups in the Mojave (notice that I’m not calling them “factions” – this is to reduce confusion, see later).
A frequent complaint that I’m seeing (even though it’s rarely if ever voiced directly at me) is that I don’t list the IDs on this guide. This is for two reasons:
- This would make my guide too close to a “do everything for me” guide, which is not what I want. I want everyone to actually understand what they’re doing instead of just blindly entering things into the console.
- There are just far too many IDs for me to list everything you could possibly want.
However, in the case of reputation IDs, I make an exception, because not only are there so few, but because they’re buried away (difficult, if not impossible, to find in GECK, and the Wiki has them tucked away in a page only vaguely related). So here they are below.
See here’s the thing: In the engine, “factions” are groups of entities. They’re a lot less complex than the reputations, and many of them don’t even reflect in-game status (e.g. some NCR factions are not marked as enemies of some Caesar’s Legion factions, despite the huge war). Even the player has a faction: “PlayerFaction” (base ID of 1b2a4, and since there’s a huge number of factions that’s all you’re going to get from me there). The following commands are what we have to work with.
Actor Values: Because you’re not quite skilled enough.
Actor values are…wait for it…values related to actors. Here, “actor” means NPC or player (or in some cases creature), and not Robert Downey Jr.
Fallout: New Vegas has the following actor values:
All of the following commands require a target.
Idle Animations: Dance, Veronica, dance! Now puke!
There are two ways of finding an animation to use in Fallout New Vegas:
- In The Wild: If you’re playing, and you see an NPC doing an animation you want to do (like polish a glass, smoke a cigarette, puke, whatever), you can open the console, target them, and use the command “showanim”. This will spew a bunch of information about the targeted NPC’s animation, most of which you probably don’t care about, but the last line, starting with “IdleAnim:” gives the name of the animation. Some animations require you to match the NPC’s sit/stand state exactly, meaning not just whether or not you’re sitting, but whether you’re sitting in a chair or on the floor (and sitting on the floor requires use of special furniture markers which the player can’t normally use).
- In The Zoo: Open the GECK, load FalloutNV.esm by itself, then go to Gameplay -> Idle Animations. You’ll be able to look through each animation by category, as well as look up animations for other creatures like bloatflies (I don’t recommend trying to make the player use those anims by the way). The same restrictions on animations apply.
Once you’re sure the proper conditions for your animation are met (you’re sitting/standing, delete where appropriate), actually starting the animation is easy: target your target, and use the playidle command. To use my example from earlier and make Loyal flip the bird, you’ll want to do this:
Close console, et voila: Loyal suddenly got very angry at you. Note that some idles loop forever. I haven’t yet figured out a way to stop an idle animation from playing, so until I do (and update the guide accordingly), please save before doing any sort of animation playing on someone (ESPECIALLY THE PLAYER, you may find you’ve completely broken your game if you play some idles on yourself)
The Console, Mod Development, and You
Let’s not forget the original purpose of the console: a developer tool. As such, there’s a bunch of commands in the developer console designed specifically for helping Bethesda/Obsidian (and by extension mod developers) with their creation. Although, I suppose if you were morally bankrupt you could use them for cheating too.
Variables and Quest Stages, The Things That Keep Track Of Which Shirt You Put On Today
Fallout: New Vegas has quite a few sorts of variables.
Firstly, you need the quest’s base ID. Secondly, for setting the stage, you need a list of stages. As much as I’d prefer to recommend the Vault for quest stages, they’ve recently changed the “stage” column on most of their quest pages to not match GECK stages, so try Nukapedia.
The following two commands exist for quest stage manipulation:
Firstly, let me define <variable>.
- If your intention is to get or set a quest variable, you need to format it like so: “quest_id_IN_QUOTES”.variableName . prid will not work here, don’t try it.
- If you intend to manipulate a global variable, all you need is the variable name.
The actual commands are as follows.
GECK numeric game settings require a mod, sadly. If you want a change, you can try to find a mod on the Nexus, otherwise you’re gonna have to learn the GECK.
INI settings are changed by opening Fallout.ini/Fallout_default.ini (or FalloutPrefs.ini depending on the setting) in your favorite plaintext editor (if you don’t know what that is, then it’s Notepad). Keep in mind that the default FONV launcher overwrites Fallout.ini with Fallout_default.ini at launch, whereas alternative game launchers (such as NVSE loader or FNV4GB) do not. When in doubt, make the changes to both.
By default, not every variable you can change is in the INI (the game engine will assume a default). You can force the INI to have all possible variables by running the console command “saveini” (this will take a while and it will look like your game froze, be patient).
Extra Resources and Conclusion
Need a reference ID for something? A base ID? A list of all console commands so you can try things yourself? The Vault[www.falloutwiki.com] probably has what you need in stock. If not, try Nukapedia[fallout.wikia.com] (though since that was originally The Vault I doubt you’ll have much better luck). Neither site has a list of idle animations though, you’re going to have to use the GECK for that.
This concludes my guide so far. Do you have any other subjects you want me to cover? Say so in the comments, I’ll impart whatever knowledge I can.