Power Armor Compass Elevation

[YaliJin]

Elevation of quest markers and, more importantly, enemy markers were always available to us in past, yet the "marvel of technology" that is the power armor fails to show whether the objective/enemy is in the upper or lower floor.

The only reason for this decision i can think of, is that someone at Beth was really drunk when he/she decided to exclude elevation of objects/markers of the power armor compass.

 

To this day there is not a single mod that "fixed" this issue, so here i am kindly asking for one.

[mauvecloud]

I have wanted this as well for a while, it's part of why I don't bother using power armor anymore. Some of the changes related to power armor make sense for the sake of realism (e.g. no sitting/swimming while in power armor) or game balance (e.g. needing to repair the power armor), but the compass hud while in power armor should provide more detail, not less. I have thought of 3 ways this limitation might currently be implemented, which might help others who want to try to make such a mod:

1. It could be some sort of "mask" image in the texture files that blocks the elevation/distance markers from being visible in the Power Armor HUD - this seems unlikely, though, since if it were the case, by now one of the PA HUD retextures should have done something about it.

2. PowerArmorHUDMenu.swf might be ignoring the details provided by the game that the regular hud menu uses to show the distance/elevation indicators. Unfortunately, I don't know swf well enough to find where this happens, even with JPEXS Free Flash Decompiler. I've tried just using a copy of the DEF_UI hud menu renamed to PowerArmorHUDMenu.swf, but that crashes on launch.

3. The game might be sending less data about the markers to the power armor hud menu, in which case some sort of code patch would be needed to make this possible, rather than just a mod. IDK how to verify whether this is the case, though.

[YaliJin]

I have wanted this as well for a while, it's part of why I don't bother using power armor anymore. Some of the changes related to power armor make sense for the sake of realism (e.g. no sitting/swimming while in power armor) or game balance (e.g. needing to repair the power armor), but the compass hud while in power armor should provide more detail, not less. I have thought of 3 ways this limitation might currently be implemented, which might help others who want to try to make such a mod:

1. It could be some sort of "mask" image in the texture files that blocks the elevation/distance markers from being visible in the Power Armor HUD - this seems unlikely, though, since if it were the case, by now one of the PA HUD retextures should have done something about it.

2. PowerArmorHUDMenu.swf might be ignoring the details provided by the game that the regular hud menu uses to show the distance/elevation indicators. Unfortunately, I don't know swf well enough to find where this happens, even with JPEXS Free Flash Decompiler. I've tried just using a copy of the DEF_UI hud menu renamed to PowerArmorHUDMenu.swf, but that crashes on launch.

3. The game might be sending less data about the markers to the power armor hud menu, in which case some sort of code patch would be needed to make this possible, rather than just a mod. IDK how to verify whether this is the case, though.

 

The fact that you can't seat and can't use certain terminals in front of chairs is annoying. More so is the fact that you can't swim / jetpack yourself out of water (i've posted a request some time ago for a jetpack that works underwater, but apparently skimpy and "slooty" mods are more important. About the repair, i also find it useless as you finally don't have to repair normal armor and weapons; that's why i use https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/33763 which adds paints (copies of the vanilla ones) that make the power armor pieces indestructble.

 

I have very little knowledge of the creation kit and not enough time to learn some. My only opinion is that the power armor compass and the regular one are separate "sub-programs" and that the power armor one lacks some instructions that the regular one have. Not knowing the creation kit, the mod could be just a simple copy/paste of certain lines of code or something more complicated.

 

Still, being 2019 i'm surprised no one managed to make such mod yet. I can understand more people love to mod Elder Scrolls (myself included as my second favourite game of all time, after Super Mario Bros, is modded Skyrim), but FO4 is a pretty big thing, and the first Fallout where power armor was done almost right.

Edited July 6, 2019 by YaliJin