Creating Radio Stations

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This page is intended to help users in creating new radio stations, from getting it to show in the world to scripting help for playing random music.

Note: This is a guide to getting a fully functioning radio station up and running. If you need to just get a radio station to broadcast a looping sound a lot less effort is needed to get it to work.

Important information on file properties

Music files for the Pipboy should be in either WAV or MP3 and 32-bit float and can be either Mono or Stereo.

You will also need a copy of your file with the suffix _mono. You can export this as a WAV or Mono OGG file at 32 bit float (MP3 files cannot be used for the mono file), sample rate is not important. The mono file should also be placed in the same file directory as your normal Pipboy audio file. This mono file will be what is played out of speakers and radios in-game. Without the mono file the game will either attempt to play the Pipboy file out of the NPC radio or nothing will play at all and if the Pipboy song is played at the same time an NPC radio is playing the same radio station the Pipboy radio will start stuttering heavily.

The mono file is not needed if the radio station you are making is intended for Pipboy use only and will not be used anywhere in the game world. But for stations intended to also play on NPC radios the mono file is required or else various audio bugs will happen.

Getting recognized

There are a lot of things you need to do just to get your radio station to show up in game.

1. First you need to create a TalkingActivator
   • Start the ID name with 'Radio' to easily group it with other radio station.
   • Be sure to check the box 'Radio Station' and 'Cont. Broadcast'
   • Now select a model for your Activator, (GNR uses the model 'terminal01.nif')
   • In Radio Template, select AMLRadio. The radio template determines how far away your radio will be able to be heard from when coming from a radio object ingame.
2. Next you need to put your TalkingActivator in the world. I suggest if you are going to have a physical presence in the game put the activator on your radio station building. Otherwise you can place it anywhere, I suggest you place it directly outside Vault 101, inside the side of the hill so as no strange graphics take place in the world and easier to locate.

   Locate your Activator on the 'Cell View' window and right click and press 'Edit'

   Navigate to the 'Radio Data' tab, Change the data to what you want. Explanations here

3. Make a [Voice Type] for your radio station. This will save disk space, and make locating audio files easier which will be explained later. Example ID name MaleUniqueThreeDog. Add the new voice type to the TalkingActivator
4. Create a script to be used in checking for last played song and other things. For now just create a script with the following variables, we'll add on to it later.

   ScriptName Radio_Script

   short LastSongPlayed

   short LastSongPlayed2

   short LastSongPlayed3

   short LastSongPlayed4

   short LastGreeting

   short LastGreeting2

   • Create a quest.
   • Make sure it's set to start game enabled(Or not, depending on where you want it), and most importantly, Allow Repeated Conversation Topics.
   • Attach the script to your quest.

Radio Setup

For any songs that you wish to add to your radio, you will need to create an appropriate sound form for them. They should be set as 2D and Dialogue Sound only. Point to your song file, and adjust the static attenuation as needed. Remember that the radio template you added earlier will determine how loud the file is over a distance so don't adjust the min/max distance for the sound. Refer to the sound file properties above for the correct sound setup. The GECK can't playback audio files that are MP3 or OGG but can with WAV.

You will need to attach your sound to the response in your quest in the Sound File dialog menu. In the Response text type the name of your song and for MP3 files put the name between 2 curly brackets like so {Song Name}. Never use curly brackets with WAV files as this can cause the song to be silent in the Pipboy, instead type the song name without any brackets.

1. On the Radio Tab you must add the RadioHello topic, this acts as the first topic that starts the chain of your Radio.

1. Your RadioHello topics should be set as Run Immediately and if you have more than one, set them to Random, and the last one to Random End as well.

1. For creating a purely music based station, simply create a new topic, and add all of your music as new infos there. Set them as random, and random end for the last one. Give them all conditions based on the variables you created earlier, and in the ReseultScript Begin, set the last song played to that songs number, then the last song played 2 to last song played etc etc. Now go back to your RadioHello, and in Link To, select your new topic. You're all set!

For news radio stations, it's following the same method as the music. Now however, you have to decide how you want your stories to be setup.

The first option is to create a new topic for every individual story. This will allow for incredibly long stories, at the cost of having to create many topics if you want lots of stories. Keep in mind, Radio Infos can only have a single response.You would set your stories up as new infos in your stories topic. Then, you set the Link To, back to that topic, so that once one segment has been done, it will move onto the next. You will need to iterate through a variable, conditioned on each INFO, to make sure that the INFO's aren't played over and over. On the last one, make sure you set your counting variable back to 0, and link to something else. You also need to set each info to link from the same topic that your story is in. Consult the FO3 Galaxy News Radio quest for this method. FO3 uses this method extensively, whereas NV does not.

Your second option, is to split your story across multiple topics. If your stories only need 3-4 lines of dialogue each, you simply create 3-4 topics, and in each info in your first story topic, set a variable to whatever number story you want, then link to the second topic, with the second topics info conditioned to the story number you set in the first topic, with the Link From being set to ANY for ease of use.