Need help making a Radio mod.

[TenaciousTurnip]

I'm planning on making a radio mod for Fallout: New Vegas. Not just for music, but one that rivals Galaxy News Radio from Fallout 3. Commenting on quests and their outcomes, addressing the player personally or just talking about the event depending on the player's level, stuff like that. I looked up a few tutorials and I've spent several hours looking at how Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas make their radio stations, and I've made a working prototype. However, I've gotten to a fork in the road.

 

Fallout 3 does the radio broadcasts about completed quests by having each quest as a topic and every time a line of dialogue runs, it links back to the same topic but adds one to RadioGalaxyNewsQuest.ExploitVar, and the final line of dialogue links to the news ending topic. So the first line of dialogue would have the variable at zero and then the result script would add one, the second line would require that RadioGalaxyNewsQuest.ExploitVar be at one, and then the result script would add one to make it two, etc.

 

In Fallout: New Vegas, though, they have three topics for all of the quests, and on the first topic (RNVNewsStory) they set the RadioNewVegas.nStory variable to whatever they want it to be for the quest. (31 for Three Card Bounty, for example) Then they link it to RNVNewsStory2 and on to RNVNewsStory3, depending on if there is more dialogue to say after the first topic, and the second and third topics for each quest require RadioNewVegas.nStory to be set to the number for that quest. When the last topic for that quest has been spoken, it links to the news transition or ending topic and sets RadioNewVegas.nStory to 0.

 

So basically, Fallout 3 has one topic per quest, and Fallout: New Vegas has three topics for every quest condition in the game.

 

What's the difference between these two methods, though? (Besides the obvious reasons) Does having fewer topics take up less disk space/have less of a performance impact? (Even though it's the same number of audio clips) Or is that just there to help reduce clutter in the GECK?

 

 

If I made no sense whatsoever, it's because I hardly understand this stuff myself. Hopefully someone out there understands what I'm talking about. I could upload screenshots of what I'm talking about if people are having a hard time understanding.

 

Thanks.

[TenaciousTurnip]

Well, file size shouldn't make too much of a difference. No point in waiting, I'll just try it both ways, and see if one of them isn't horribly broken. If all is well, I'll just do whichever one I like better.