Back to gaming after 30 years

[RattleAndGrind]

I started gaming in the mid 1970's. Does anyone remember "SOUTH, SOUTH, EAST, DOWN, THROW AX, TAKE AX, LOOK AROUND, THERE IS A DEAD DWARF HERE, THERE IS A CAGE HERE, TAKE CAGE, ...." (there was no shift key). That was the state of computer gaming. ADVENT was the game, and I modded that game, twice (I hate Fortran). I was the sadist who randomized the "Twisty Maze of Rooms That All Look Alike".

 

The last time I gamed seriously was to play the Legend of Zelda on my sons Nintendo back in the mid eighties. Then I got seriously busy raising children and racing rats and chasing the Joneses and eating other dogs. That's a chunk of my life I will never get back. But now I am retired.

 

A half decade past, I was watching my adult grandson playing Fallout New Vegas. After a long discussion about the state of gaming, he convinced me to give it a try. I love it. I decided right there to spend the rest of my retired life killing Ghouls and Raiders and Bandits and Necromancers (he showed me Skyrim too).

 

I was bi ... aaah ... complaining about a problem I was having and my grandson pointed me to reddit. I discovered that there were mods to video games and I wound up here (yeah, it took five years). I am gonna give modding a try, again.

 

I want to start with Fallout 4 and need all the help and pointers i can get.

 

Thanks, and wish me luck.

Edited June 22, 2016 by RattleAndGrind

[iXenite]

I highly suggest taking a look at Gopher's YouTube channel. He is very good at providing tutorials on modding. I do believe he has some tutorials for Fallout 4 as well, but his general tutorials should be helpful in learning how to use Nexus Mod Manager.

[soupdragon1234]

I started gaming in the mid 1970's. Does anyone remember "SOUTH, SOUTH, EAST, DOWN, THROW AX, TAKE AX, LOOK AROUND, THERE IS A DEAD DWARF HERE, THERE IS A CAGE HERE, TAKE CAGE, ...." (there was no shift key). That was the state of computer gaming. ADVENT was the game, and I modded that game, twice (I hate Fortran).

 

Sure, I remember that game, or at least ones like it. Text based adventure games. Maybe not the original adventure but ones just like it. Some of them were very good, too. :happy: I also remember endless wrestling with the text parser too. Had to get the phrasing exactly right or it woudn't accept it. Nothing more frustrating than knowing the solution to the puzzle but not knowing the exact word sequence to input. :sick:

 

I think it was probably the first thing I ever modded too, there was this damn dwarf that would show up and throw an axe and there was a 33% chance it would kill you and you'd be knocked back umpteen level or even restart, my memory is hazy. It was completely random and nothing whatever you could do about it. So I got into the game's code and modified it so it had a chance to injure but not actually kill. Anyway, welcome. :smile:

 

edit: if you're having a particular problem and its a well known one theres almost certainly a mod out there already to fix the issue you're having thats the advantage certainly of Bethesda's games there are countless mods available so usually no need to make it yourself if so. Unless you want to...

Edited June 8, 2016 by soupdragon1234

[bben46]

Welcome back. My own first foray into actually modding rather than just playing computer games was Space Wars on an IBM 360 running a FORTRAN version on punch cards. My mod was a single punch card that changed the gravity constant. I think that was sometime in the late 1970s. I played Colossal Cave on a UNIX system and am well acquainted with being eaten by Grues.

 

Computer gaming has come a long way since then. :tongue:

[Andomesa290]

Welcome back. My own first foray into actually modding rather than just playing computer games was Space Wars on an IBM 360 running a FORTRAN version on punch cards. My mod was a single punch card that changed the gravity constant. I think that was sometime in the late 1970s. I played Colossal Cave on a UNIX system and am well acquainted with being eaten by Grues.

 

Computer gaming has come a long way since then. :tongue:

it is pitch black, you are likely to be eaten by a Grue... man those were the days, remember when DRM was as simple as having the manual and you had code words, like in battletech the crescent hawks revenge... oh well maybe some day gaming will be like that again. :unsure: by the way battletech the crescent hawks revenge was a gift from my wife after our honeymoon... I particular liked how you would have to enter code words, made it seem "classified" we had lots of fun and still do, i guess gaming runs in the family...

Edited June 21, 2016 by Andomesa290

[Harrzack]

@RattleAndGrind: YES! Do amazingly remember Advent. Around 1982 +- -I went to a DEC class in "The Old Mill" and came away with a mag-tape of the game. Was working at a medical billing house in King of Prussia, PA - and while they were largely a mainframe house - they had just started using the "toy" (as the IBM heads would say) PDP-1170s for hospital data collection.

 

I loaded the game to the system, and there were about 5 of us who would play at different times... I even took a BeeHive terminal home and dialed in via an acoustic coupler (!) and could play as well. Also did real work with it - but that is another story.

 

"So what - you want to kill a snake with your bare hands?" -- how many times did i sigh and say 'No' and try something else... Sigh.

 

I can still remember many of the rooms: Swiss Cheese room, Bedquilt - and damn those twisty windy passages!! PLUGH!

 

Actually had the Fortran source code but didn't have the presence of mind (or skill) to make use of it.

 

Interestingly - the fact that it was a TEXT adventure has, I think, cause the experience to be FAR more memorable that those I've had with the new games (Unreal Tournament aside). The graphics are real eye candy - but I don't think you can beat the human imagination for vivid details and memories.

 

Now tackling FO4 - and it is a mix of fun and frustration!

[Neoyoshi]

Good luck in your new post-apocalyptic adventure! :D

[steve40]

Oh the memories. I fondly remember Adventure/Colossal Cave, the Zork series, and of course, I found the Babel fish many many times :) I still have all these games on my PC, there are some wonderful emulators and IF interpreters available, such as Frotz. But my first foray into computer gaming would have been Pong and skeet shooting using a dedicated console a couple of years before Star Wars hit the big screen. Later I became addicted to LPMuds in the 1990's, which is how I learnt my scripting skills :)

[JaYmZeE311074]

I also started gaming in the 1970's - I've never stopped and do my best to avoid meaningful employment because as your signature says - enjoying yourself is not only not a waste of time - it's the only way to fly!

 

That signature is from Fallout New Vegas - the Ghoul in Freeside - she says that - I forget her name.

[RattleAndGrind]

I also started gaming in the 1970's - I've never stopped and do my best to avoid meaningful employment because as your signature says - enjoying yourself is not only not a waste of time - it's the only way to fly!

 

That signature is from Fallout New Vegas - the Ghoul in Freeside - she says that - I forget her name.

Actually, the basic of both and the John Lennon quote "Time you enjoy wasting was not wasted" are all based on a comment by Bertrand Russel (a late 19th/early 20th century philosopher), "The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time".

Edited July 11, 2016 by RattleAndGrind