Hello GUNners!
Welcome to the December 2017 edition of The GUN Insider. Here we take the opportunity to learn more about some of the most accomplished modders within the gaming community.
This month we spoke with Niero--a relatively newer modder who most people will know from his excellent mods on the FO4 Nexus. In just over two years on the mod scene, Niero has released or helped with over 30 mods that have received not thousands, but
millions of downloads.
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GUN: Thank you for taking the time to talk with me and GUN. You go by the name of Niero on the Nexus but can you tell us a little about yourself personally? E.g., what is your real name, what do you do when you’re not modding, do you go to school or work?Niero: My real name is pretty easy to find, it's out there on my ArtStation links. I do very boring workplace management stuff to pay the bills, and gaming/modding is how I spend my free time. I never went to any sort of design school or took any sort of video game college courses. I've always been a learn by example kind of person so everything I've done comes from dissecting and reassembling things in new ways.
GUN: Looking at your mod history, you’ve been very busy since the release of Fallout 4! Where many modders moved to Fallout 4 from Skyrim or New Vegas, all 32 of your mods appear to be for this one game. So, this begs the question: how did you get involved in the Fallout 4 modding community?Niero: I've been modding for as long as I can remember, but never did anything worth sharing until Fo4. My mods for Skyrim were mostly very small personal balance tweaks to Xarrin/Ogureboss' Skyrim:Requiem overhaul. Requiem is a very technical overhaul and seeing and tweaking its mechanics taught me a lot about how ES/Fallout games work. Things really took off recently because I was able to apply most of that knowledge to Fo4. I'm not sure I've ever gotten involved with the community though, I have almost no posts on the Nexus outside of support though my mod's comment threads; it's fun to read the community drama, but counter-productive to participate in it.
GUN: Over time, one can definitely see a progression in your modding scale and skills. You began with some small, customizable attachments and have now worked your way up to re-imagining factions at the conceptual level. What programs did you have to learn along the way to facilitate this development and how were you able to learn what you needed?Niero: I learned basically everything from scratch, I went in to Fo4 with just a basic understanding of 3d software. Zbrush is the core of everything looking so nice, learning it was not easy and I'm still pretty sure the program is built upon some sort of new-age cyber witchcraft. I learned Zbrush with tutorials off of Gumroad, for anyone looking to learn: this page (http://wiki.polycoun...d_Tutorial_List) off of polycount's wiki is a great index of great Gumroad tutorial authors. Substance Painter is the other big program, it was much easier to learn after using Photoshop for years.
GUN: Your mods have fairly wide variety. As someone who personally spends his mod time mostly on armor related mods, it is impressive to see other modders like you who can tackle armors, weapons, effects, and scripting. What drives you to such great ambitions and how do you deal with the frustrations of learning new skills?Niero: I wouldn't ever call learning frustrating. Learning is a part of the hobby; if it's ever a struggle then that just adds to the feeling of accomplishment when it's eventually figured out. Ideas motivate me to do everything. When I get an idea in my head it burns until I can figure out how to realize it, and ideas can come from anywhere. For example, the Recall Collar is a mechanic that I've known about for years from DOTA, but it wasn't until I started playing Overwatch that I thought to translate it into Fo4.
GUN: Talking first about your weapons, your break-action laser is a very cool mod. What inspired you to create this? Did you enjoy creating all the customization options or did this feel tedious to you?Niero: The default lasers in Fo4 were a massive step up from Fo3, but the one effect that fell completely flat was the shotgun muzzles. It never sat right with me that the ballistic shotguns were so effective while the energy versions were so worthless, so that's where the motivation came from to make a super powered laser shotgun. As far as the design goes, I only briefly used the double-barrel shotgun before upgrading to the combat shotgun, but I remembered how satisfying that reload animation was and wanted to put it to good use. Customizations are the best part, I often go into a project with a specific vision in my head and by the end I will prefer the 'customized' version of the project over the original idea.
GUN: You have also worked on some other weapons including the cut concept weapon for Coursers you released with trainwiz. Can you tell us a little about those other weapons? Also, do you have plans for more weapons in the future?Niero: I think I've done 7 total weapons, most of them were for Trainwiz now that I think about it. The first weapon mod was the Fireworks Cannon, which was originally supposed to be a novelty weapon for Maxwell's World, I sort of ran with the concept and made it it's own mod, but I left out the clown themed stuff to be part of Maxwell's. Then there was the Plasrail, that project was more complex and about learning the cool things Fo4 weapons can do. I did a few more for Maxwell's like the Raygun and the Incinerator, but those were fairly simple. The V3N bio-rifle was my first attempt at scripting in Fo4, I still get a kick out of using the sticky napalm ammo and igniting enemies with thrown cigars. My next project will most likely be a weapon, so folks can look forward to that.
GUN: Your mods often have a theme to them: robotics and energy technology. Can you tell us why you often choose to mod with this theme? Where do you draw your inspiration? Looking back, can you see any points in your earlier life where you remember developing an affinity for robotics and technology?Niero: Hah, I'm going to catch some flak for this one: I hate ballistic guns in Fallout 4, that's my inspiration. Ballistic guns are so much more effective than energy weapons that energy weapons are really only good for role-playing. If I wanted to shoot bullets I can go to a gun range or play other, better, gun simulators like STALKER, Tarkov, CS:GO, R6:S, Battlefield, PUBG, ect. The robotics/cybernetics stuff originally came from Metal Gear Solid V, I specifically wanted a prosthetic hand for my character, and using parts of the new Powerarmor made perfect sense, the whole project grew from the one little replacement hand.
GUN: What exactly is CROSS?Niero: It's a poorly made-up acronym...but really its my real name that I used to mark mods as my own back in Skyrim. I would name small tweak mods things like 'CROSS_REQ_SoulCairnWispFactionFix.esp' so that I could easily find them in my load order and keep them grouped up. When I started with Fo4 I had no plans to do public mods so I kept the tag on my mods.
GUN: Your Crit Gore-verhaul is a visually stunning mod that puts vanilla work to shame. It also seems to draw on a different skill set than your other mods. Can you tell us how you decided to make this mod and how you were able to accomplish it?Niero: The Crit-FX mod came from helping Anon on /fog/, they were complaining about red bones popping out of their character, I asked for a screenshot and immediately recognized what was going on, the default gore effects attach a skeleton to the character before applying a melting effect shader so that you see the silhouette of bones as the character melts to a ash pile/puddle, in this case Anon had god-mode on so the effects applied but they didn't die and were stuck with the temporary gore mesh attached. That tiny mechanic got me thinking about what I could do to apply that effect permanently and the Crit-FX mod grew from there. The scripting side of the mod took a lot of what I learned from how Skyrim's spells work, so while it looks like a totally out-of-the-blue scripting marvel it's actually from lots of experience in Skyrim's papyrus scripting.
GUN: Your most recent release--the CROSS Brotherhood Recon--is a great looking mod that successfully reimagines the BoS at the conceptual level and then executes the concepts in-game beautifully. Tell us a bit about the development of this mod and its reception since release.Niero: The Recon Uniform originally was just a test bed for messing with the cloth physics on the longcoat. I'm pretty surprised the Recon Uniform was so well received, but I'm happy that the community likes the sort of thing that fits in with the wasteland and isn't particularly flashy.
GUN: You have already shared images of your WIP Courser armors and you are, at the time of this writing, ruling the Nexus image share. It appears with this mod that you have, again, reworked a group from the conceptual level. The designs and ideas you are working with here work very well in the game and are a clear improvement over vanilla designs. The Coursers in particular always felt bland--like a concept that fell flat and there was no time to fix. How much of your concept work is done on your own and in what ways do you sometimes partner with others?Niero: The Courser Strigidae Suit is based on some ideas given to me by TheKite, the whole visor thing was her idea and it sparked my imagination. It made sense to me that the Coursers themselves should always appear completely human, but they ought to have the Institute's tech to give them an edge where their outwardly-human parts can't keep up. I never felt the original Coursers were bad, the world does a great job of making them seem scary, but it only falls flat by making them so rare and yet so normal when you do finally find one. I should note that the Strigidae mod is not intended as an overhaul, but it does make Coursers with the Strigidae Suit a bit better armored.
GUN: Regarding the Coursers, do you have any timeline of expected release? I’m sure the community is itching to get their hands on these goodies.Niero: Dec 1st is the release.
(Editor's note: it's out now! Link: CROSS_Courser Strigidae)GUN: Do you have any future plans you can talk about? What modding areas are you setting your sights on next?Niero: More non-ballistic weapons for sure. I've also got another Institute-ish outfit planned out.
GUN: Thank you again for taking the time to speak with me. Do you have any closing thoughts or anything else you’d like to share?Niero: Thanks, this was fun. I'd like to thank anyone who has ever donated to me or even just used my Gumroad link with my recent mods.
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Until next time GUNners!
We hope you enjoyed this interview as much as the staff involved enjoyed it. Thank you to our core GUN Insider team
@William Lionheart @DVAted @keatit71 
Finally, many thanks to Niero for taking the time out of his busy schedule to talk with us and let us briefly inside his world.
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