Reminder - in all my tutorials, green text can be skipped by modding vets, and red text can be skipped by beginners. These are side notes meant to clarify something I imagine certain readers will have questions on, and if they are not targeted at your skill level, you can skip them or ignore them if they are over your head or seem obvious.
The Magazine Press is the big sibling of our Newspaper system. Instead of a daily paper, it prints a brand new magazine issue every week or two (somewhere between 7 and 14 in-game days), which the player can grab from the Magazine Rack that comes with the building. Printed issues also find their way into Commercial Bookstores.
Just like news articles, issues can react to what the player has done in their playthrough, and reading an issue can mark locations on the map or trigger anything set up in our Unlock System! So a magazine could reveal a hidden stash, hand out a building plan, or even kick off a quest.
The big difference from the newspaper is that magazines are all about the cover - and the reward. Each issue is a little collectible with its own cover art, and just like the perk magazines in the base game, each issue can give the player a bonus for collecting it. So in this guide we'll go over getting your art onto our magazine models, setting up the issue itself, and giving it a reward.
Note this documentation is based on changes introduced in the 3.8.0 patch. If you are not on that version or later yet, some of the explanations in this guide will not match what you see.
If you haven't done the Newspaper Articles guide, don't worry - this guide covers everything you need. If you have, a lot of this will feel very familiar, as the two systems were built to work the same way!
You will need the basics of the Creation Kit, which includes loading and saving plugins, and searching for items in the Object Window. All of this is covered in my Creation Kit 101 video.
You should also have an addon config set up for your plugin. If you don't, go through the Your First Addon tutorial first, or check out the Addon Registration guide.
For the cover art, you'll need an image editor that can save .dds files, and the Material Editor by ousnius. No 3d modeling required - we're going to reuse our magazine models and simply swap out the cover!
Whatever you like! A magazine is a great way to add a little slice of life to the Commonwealth, so think about who would actually be publishing it.
Perhaps it's a guide for settlers living off the land, a pulp adventure story written by a traveling caravaneer, or a glossy fashion rag some Diamond City socialite puts out to show off the latest looks. Maybe it's a technical journal from someone tinkering with robots in their backyard.
The idea is that these magazines are post-war, though if you like the idea of your settlers figuring out how to replicate the style of pre-war, or reprinting old magazines - you can do that too!
Do I need to write the articles?
Nope! Unlike news articles, our magazines don't have any pages to read. The cover is the star of the show, along with the reward the player gets for collecting it - so that's where to put your effort.
For inspiration, look at the issues we included with Sim Settlements 2. You can find them by filtering for SS2_PerkMag under Items > Book - such as Afterglow, Bottlecap Cavalier, and Modern Ghul.
All of our magazines use the same two models - one for the magazine you see lying around the world, and a more detailed one for when the player inspects it in their inventory - and each issue swaps its own cover onto them. So your first job is making a cover texture, and a material file that points to it. Your one material will work for both models!
The _d at the end of the file name stands for diffuse, which is the color information of a texture. It's a naming convention used throughout Fallout 4, and a good habit to follow so you (and anyone helping with your mod) can tell your textures apart at a glance.
Some of our issues, like Afterglow, also use a glow map (the _g texture) to make parts of the cover light up. If you want to get fancy, open Materials\SS_IndRev\Magazines\AfterGlow01.bgsm to see how that's set up.
When the player looks at your issue in their inventory, the game doesn't use the magazine you see lying around the world - it shows a separate, more detailed model called the Inventory Art. For all of our magazines, that's the base game's high-res comic model with our cover swapped onto it, and we've set up templates for both pieces.
Now that you have a cover, it's time to create the issue itself! This is the actual item the player picks up and collects.
Wait, why a Grognak comic?
Our magazine model was built from pieces of the base game's comic books, so the model itself still points at those comic materials. The original side of the swap has to match what's in the model, which is why you'll see Grognak there on every one of our magazines - it's the replacement side that gives each issue its cover.
{.is-info}
Only ever do this on your copy! If you edit the Material Swap on SS2_MagazineTemplate itself, you'll change the cover of the template for everyone using it. Make sure the window you're working in is your duplicate before changing anything.
What are all these keywords for?
Your copy of the template comes with three keywords - leave all of them in place. SS2_Tag_MagazineIssue tells Sim Settlements 2 this is one of its magazines, PerkMagKeyword lets the Magazine Rack display your issue just like the perk magazines you've seen on racks throughout the Commonwealth, and FeaturedItem is the base game keyword that shows off collectibles when the player picks them up.
We'll come back to this record to give it a reward and a pickup message a little later. For now, let's get it printing!
Before we get into the fun stuff, like reacting to in-game events or rewarding the player, let's handle priority - which is how Sim Settlements 2 decides what gets printed next.
Only one issue is printed at a time, so we've created a few rules to decide which one it will be.
- Once per in-game day, each registered issue is checked to see if its requirements are met, at which point it becomes eligible. Issues without requirements are eligible right away.
- When it's time for a new issue, the eligible issue with the highest iPriority is printed. If several share the highest priority, one of them is picked at random.
- That issue then stays in the Magazine Rack until the next print date, somewhere between 7 and 14 in-game days later.
- Once every eligible issue has been printed, the press will reprint issues the player hasn't read yet, and after that, older issues at random.
Setting requirements is a little more involved, so we'll skip that for now and build up some motivation by getting your issue into the game first!
Now that you have an issue set up, it's time to tell Sim Settlements 2 about it!
If this is your first time working on an addon, or you haven't created addon configuration data yet, check out this tutorial.
That's it! Skip down to the You're Done section for steps to quickly test and see your issue in the game.
The best part of this system is having your issues react to what's happening in the player's game. A special edition covering the fall of the Institute will feel a lot more special if it shows up right after the player had a hand in it!
On your issue's SimSettlementsV2:Books:MagazineIssue script, click the blue word Requirements to reveal the properties that control when your issue is eligible to print. All of them are optional, and if you fill out more than one, all of them must be true.
Since MustOwnSettlements and ClearedLocations use UniversalForms, you can point them at settlements and locations from other mods without making those mods a requirement for yours. If that mod isn't installed, your issue simply won't print.
Just like the perk magazines in the base game, every one of our issues gives the player something for collecting it. There are two ways you can do this, and you can use whichever fits your magazine best:
We're going to recreate a simple bonus like the one from Modern Ghul. There are three pieces to this: an Ability (a spell that's always on) which holds the actual bonus, a Perk that gives the player that ability, and then pointing your issue at the perk.
Why are there two? Fallout 4 actually has two kinds of radiation - from the environment, and from things you eat and drink - so the game uses a separate effect for each. Most bonuses only need one effect.
Our Modern Ghul perk has a second rank because both of its issues give the same bonus. Your perk only needs the one.
Want to do more than change a stat?
Abilities are the simplest kind of perk, but perks can do a whole lot more! Entry Point entries let a perk hook into specific game mechanics, like changing barter prices, the damage of certain weapons, or what the player finds in containers - that's how a bonus like Bottlecap Cavalier's extra caps from quests works.
The best way to learn is to study the perks already in the game. Browse through Actors > Perk and open up the base game perks you know from playing - the regular perk chart ones and the perk magazine ones - to see how their entries are set up. Chances are the bonus you're dreaming up is very close to something that already exists!
On your issue's SimSettlementsV2:Books:MagazineIssue script properties, you'll also see a section called OnReadTriggers.
A few ideas to get you started:
To learn how to set up your own Unlockables, check out the Unlock System documentation, which explains everything an Unlockable can do.
Just like with the newspaper, the idea behind TriggerEvent isn't to let players bypass the requirements on our Unlockables, it's to give you another interesting way to unlock your own content. So if you're going to provide alternate unlocks for any of the SS2 content, just be immersive about it, and let people know in your mod description that you're doing so.
Whichever reward you choose, you'll want to tell the player about it! When the player picks up one of our issues, a message pops up saying something like "You've collected an issue of Modern Ghul! Gain +5 Radiation Resistance."
Our messages and perks also point at a small Flash (.swf) image in their SWF File field, which is the picture that pops up with them. The template message uses a blank magazine cover image, which is a fine choice for yours - creating your own is beyond the scope of this tutorial.
If you're not interested in this, and you just came to get your magazine printed, you're done and can move on! Otherwise, here's how to make your own building that works as a Magazine Press.
In order for your building to fully function as a Magazine Press, you need two things in your Stage Items: SS2_MagazineBuildingRegister, which simply tells SS2 that your building is a Magazine Press; and a Magazine Rack for the player to get their issues from. Then, if you'd like, you can also have it send printed issues to Commercial Bookstores like ours does.
Add the Activator form SS2_MagazineBuildingRegister to your building's Stage Items. It's an invisible marker, so you can tuck it anywhere in your design.
SS2_MagazineBuildingRegister was added in patch 3.8.0, so if you are not finding it, make sure you're on 3.8.0 or later!
Once your building is built, SS2 knows it's a Magazine Press, and as long as at least one Magazine Press is active in the player's settlements, it keeps the presses running on schedule - printing each new issue when it's due, even while the player is off adventuring.
Newspaper building designers will find this very familiar - it works exactly like SS2_NewspaperBuildingRegister. In fact, they share the same script; ours just has its MagazineManager property filled in, which points it at the Magazine system instead of the Newspaper.
By default, we've included the Container form SS2_MagazinePressRack. It automatically restocks with the current issue when it loads in, and swaps in the new issue each time one is printed. Add it to your Stage Items for every level of your building, just like ours does.
The rack shows off its issues using a series of display points built into its model, so if you want a different look, you'd need a model with the same display nodes. The easiest option is to stick with our rack, and build your design around it.
If you want your building to also send printed issues to Commercial Bookstores like ours does, you need to do the following:
Our ProducedItems entries point at the leveled list SS2_PrintedMagazines, which SS2 fills with each issue as it is printed, and target the SSBookStore vendor type - that's how your printed issues end up for sale in Commercial Bookstores.
Now players will be able to collect new issues from your Magazine Rack, and pick up ones they missed from Commercial Bookstores!
Time to get in game and check out your work! Since a new issue only prints every week or two, we'll use a console command to skip the wait.
Sim Settlements 2 includes a Cheat section in the holotape under Tools > Cheats. From here you can unlock all of the plots and building plans to make it faster to test things like your addons.
Don't see your issue in the rack? The rack only restocks when it first loads in, or when a new issue is printed. If you already had a Magazine Press built, leave the area and come back so the rack refreshes.
If you just want a quick look at your cover, you can skip the building entirely and add the issue straight to your inventory with player.additem X 1.
While this guide had a lot of steps, most of the work is the art, and once you've made one magazine, the next is just a new cover, a quick duplicate, and a drag onto your formlist! So go make a magazine, and give the Commonwealth something new to collect!