zanity

STATIC reflection maps (textures captured from the game editor, then placed on ingame reflective surfaces) are as old as the 3DFX Voodoo1- and are literally nothing but another ordinary alpha texture. More 'modern' are the reflection BOXES that may be semi-realtime generated - and are still used in the FAKE 'ray tracing' of Battlefield 5 on the new Nvidia 2000 series GPUs (so-called 'RTX'). Some people get confused with PORTALS and real time reflections in water and marble floors. Portals (seen in the really old Duke Nukem and Quake 3) are just ANOTHER render of the world space, usually with lower detail. Water and floor rreflections are a much simpler planar method. True reflections cost way too much for their impact in most games- fake 'artistic' 'reflections' are usually more than good enough. This is why the entire 'fake news' 'fake ray tracing' horror from Nvidia, that lowers GPU perfomance between 60% and 75%, is a dead end. Did you know REAL ray tracing (never used as the standard render path in even the most expensive CGI cartoons) requires thousands to MILLIONS of rays per pixel that must each be bounced around world space multiple times. The BEST Nvidia card (2080TI) at acceptable framerates at 1080 can do around ONE ray per pixel with ONE collision. That's ONE ray not one thousand. You cannot ray trace in realtime even on the 'latest greatest' GPU. What Nvidia means is a tiny number of rays hitting a standard cube reflection map (as in BFV) which is no-ones definition of 'ray tracing'. Beth's engine, even in FO:76, is decades out-of-date. But with more VRAM and more shader power, even those old render methods can be made to look pretty good by a great graphic artist. So long as people do not expect miracles from engines that should have been taken out back and humanely 'ended' years ago, many may feel somewhat satisfied.

If Beth allows the audio files of FO:76 to be 'hacked' and replaced with other music under copyright, Beth becomes potentially liable for copyright infringement of material protected by the most vicious lawyers on the planet working for music publishers even more sue happy than Zenimax. And the user who hacked his/her game to place new copyright music into the game also becomes liable EVEN if that person owns the music legally. This is down to PERFORMANCE RIGHTS. Please people, the always ONLINE nature of FO:76 changes all the rules. Even if you are playing music in the background, and the always on microphone of FO:76 broadcasts that music to other players, you are potentially liable UNLESS you have a broadcast licence. Now I'm not saying that anyone is coming after you on this technicality if you do play the game while you music system plays in the background- BUT hacking your game to put other copyright music in the files is a really BAD idea. And old music performed RECENTLY is usually under copyright as well. Look here's a TRUE story to prove things are more dangerous than you imagine. Years ago DISH (a premium direct broadcast satellite service in the USA) faced 'piracy' by people using PCs and card readers. The card readers themselves were NOT any form of pirate device- just standard equipment designed to interface to any standard 'smart card'. But DISH raided a supplier of these perfectly LEGAL smart card interfaces, got the customer list, cross checked it against a list of DISH customers who had recently ended their DISH contract, and extorted money from these ex-customers with ZERO actual proof of 'wrong doing'. And NO, the smart card reader supplier was NOT providing any form of 'pirate' PC software with the readers they sold- just plain vanilla industry standard readers. DISH just knew, by following forums like THIS one, what suppliers hackers recommended. So please, don't be fooled into thinking this place is 'safe' just cos the other 'paths' on the Nexus are 'tiger free'.

I and others have explained the words of Bethesda's most senior managers over and over on this topic. How 'private' servers have been now defined as servers you RENT from Zenimax server farms, and not server code you run on your own PC. And how OFFICAL modding means Atom Store downloads that will alter the rules of gameplay on that private server (like say, introducing a form of 'deathmatch'). But still there are those who listen to the voices in their own heads rather than Todd's very explicit words. So now I will explain why, even in the Bizarro world of "Todd always loved our modding community, and he still secretly supports us and will give us that pony for Xmas", third party mods CANNOT happen. With an online game, even one that may exist in various forms on TRUE private servers, the publisher is legally responsible for the online experience. Kids play these games in massive numbers- and NO, the pretence of an 'adult' rating cuts no ice here. And so do 'sensitive' vulnerable adults. These vulnerable adults are already crying like babies in various Fallout forums over the 'nasty' 'wicked' players who do 'bad' things to themselves and their virtual 'possesions' ingame. The technical term is CAN OF WORMS. Beth ain't, in a million billion years, open the can of worms third-party mods on an open world game represent. Beth can, of course, fully moderate and curate 'mods' on their own Atom Store. But third party mods, by DEFINITION would have to be a thing Beth both permits but cannot possibly control. Does Beth want to account for a 'SECOND LIFE' experience in any copy of FO:76. No, no, no! The logic expressed here is both plain, AAA industry standard and unassailable. So why are some people ignoring it? Becasue these people 'think' PR double-speak is a promise of things to come rather than a placation of a certain sector of the fanbase. Beth does a LOT of PR double speak, but it also does a lot of EXPLICIT descriptions of its actions and intentions that reach the required legal standard for any corporation that could be held to account. The bag scandal IS a scandal because there Todd (at E3) and Beth did NOT double-speak, but explicitly and illegally lied about the FACTS of the collectors ed. And the 'fallout' (Beth has now lost the Reddit/FO76 forum having kept support there even against the worst reviews of the game) shows exactly what Beth would have to face if it was ever insane enough to allow third party mods in FO:76. What scares me is that to understand why Beth will never allow Nexus style modding for FO:76 does not require significant smarts nor an understanding of this particular industry. It is basic commonsense, an awareness of corporate vulnerability and liability, and a general knowledge of how the world works. Yet even the creator of Sim Settlements had a video expressing his anticipation of the moddable version of FO:76. WTF? PS Beth could release a SINGLE-PLAYER version of FO:76 (honestly I think the odds of this are less than 1-in-1000 down to Todd's arrogance, not the saneness of the decision), even without adding back into the game a story, dialogue trees and NPCs. If this happened, Beth COULD allow this single-player game to be modded like Fallout 4 (but they won't- even here the desire for PAID mods is all Todd is now about). But no, an online multi-player title from Beth will never see third-party mods, 'private' servers or not.

People HACKING into the fundamertal mechanisms of FO76 are basically assuming Beth is as incompetent in this area (ie., wouldn't protect against such hacks) as they are in the general game itself. WRONG. There are but two 'professional' aspects of FO:76 1) the Atom Store (where children and vulnerable adults are taken to the cleaners). Only reading yesterday the rant of a 'whale' who spent 3000 dollars on Elder Scrolls Online loot boxes (yes, Zenimax is a pioneer in gambling in games) in a vain attempt to 'win' the seasonal item of supreme 'value'. 2) The anti-hack mechanisms that prevent day one chaos on FO:76 servers. The 'big boys' in the Fallout 4 modding scene are NOT trying to hack FO:76- they wouldn't be that stupid. Some may have experimented with things like simple texture replacers, but that is it. Which leaves those that just haven't got the 'MESSAGE' no matter what Beth does (and the Bag Scandal is just the latest Beth clear-and-loud message to the community). Once again one of the replies in this thread refers to coming modding- which Todd Howard has stated will NEVER happen in Fallout:76- and 'private' servers, which Bethesda has stated only means RENTED servers from the Zenimax server farm running 'mods' from the Atom Store that will chnage the gameplay rules on those rented servers to some degree (say to add a 'deathmatch' mode). Some very foolish and very naive people claim that Nexus would NOT have opened this forum and 'modding' section if mods are never officially coming to this game. WRONG. This forum and the 'mod' section here imply no such thing. Indeed it is worse. If an illegal (in Beth's eyes) turns up here or has a clear origin from comments posted here, a classic HONEYPOT trap is sprung. Zenimax lawyers can request, and will receive full co-operation from the Nexus- including all details of people associated with the planning and execution of the 'illegal' mod. Some of you are so terminally naive, you honestly think you bask in the 'immunity' 'goodwill' of Todd Howard. That he is your 'friend', your 'saviour'- your 'protector'. Ask the whales who sank 200 dollars on the collectors ed how that worked out for them. Zenimax altered the EULA agreement for FO:76 to explicitly declared ALL modding of ALL FO:76 files illegal, incluidng the .ini files. Some of you seem to think that sue happy Zenimax, that even sued WB over a mobile game that used the same dev tools and dev libraries an INDEPENDENT dev used to build Fallout:Shelter, in a pre-emptive strike to get WB to back down over legal action to stop Rage 2, a game filled with code WB paid Avalance to make when the game was Mad Max 2, will give Nexus hackers a free pass. Yes I know you think this game is a dumpster fire, and Beth will be 'grateful' for your attempt to 'fix' the game- but honestly this is the stupidest fantasy any person could use to self-justify hacking. NO Beth will not be grateful. ESO came out as a cynical cruddy rip-off, but years later it is a loot box laden horror pulling in the big bux for Zenimax. It is either this future for Fallout:76 or a simple death with hard legal action against anyone who attempts to keep the cancelled project 'alive'. If FO:76 becomes another ESO, any OFFICIAL modding will be done with Beth's own tools by people employed by, or under direct CONTRACT to Beth. Any unofficial modding will remain highly illegal. So either way NO REVERSE ENGINEERING of Beth's assets is needed or will be tolerated by Zenimax. Even if YOU think you might be 'used' by Beth in the future to make mods for them (say because you are a talented modder here for older games and Beth wants to 'borrow' your mod in some form for Fallout:76), you have no incentive to prepare for this 'generous' (hohohohohohohohohohoho) financial 'offer' from Howard's people by hacking now. Indeed the last people Howard would associate with are self-proclaimed hackers of FO:76. So your are illegally trying to hack FO:76 why again? When there are so many games big and small these days that welcome modders with open arms. Games by good, nice devs who love their supporters.

Anyone who follows 'Yongyea' (sp?) on youtube knows he was a potential influencer Beth hoped to get on his side. Recently, out-of-the-blue, Beth 'gifted' him the 200 dollar special edition of Fallout:76- which is not so much the game but various 'collectables' aimed usually at vulnerable adults. The 'big' item was the power armour helmet, which seems adequate for 'display' but too flimsy for cosplay. Anyway amongst the lesser (very) other items was one other standout- a Fallout branded canvas dufflebag. One might see how this item could have been just as interesting to many fans. But... Beth is a vile vile company, so when it discovered, after universally falsely advertising this collector's ed, that the canvas bag would cost a few dollars to make, it told the far east promotional goods company to forget it, and use a NYLON POS bag instead. After all, it was hardly if the fans had the 'brains' to notice. I first heard about this weeks ago when a weary youtuber reviewed the damaged rubbish helmet in disgust, having decided to send the whole thing back for a refund- but in passing said "look here, Beth even did a biat-and-switch on the bag". Now Beth apologists and paid Beth PR agents who appear on every significant FO:76 forum, will claim this was the fault of the supplier- but unfortunately for Beth, various employees of theirs already gave customer feedback admiting Beth had swapped out the item for "cost" reasons- and if customers were not grown-up enough to accept Beth's right to swindle for better profit- well tough. So the "far east supplier got it wrong" excuse is NOT even in play. Well today, after growing outrage (tho the cheated customers in Europe where consumer rights still mean something should simply have demanded a refund), Beth finally offered 'compensation'. And this is where things get REALLY bad. Beth's compensation is 500 Atoms- that's right 500 pieces of their made up fantasy currency. I guess the bosses of Bethesda are weeks away from swapping their employees from a salary paid in dollars to a salary paid in ATOMS. And the employees' medical benefits will soon consist of that employee or his/her partner or kids visiting a 'doctor' online in Fallout:76 . The ONLY compensation for people vulnerable enough to pay Beth 200 dollars for a lousy collection of poorly made items is to give those customers exactly what they paid for. And in this case that means Beth going to a specialist outlet to have a batch of Fallout branded duffel bags manufactured and sent out on request to everyone who purchased this special edition. Outside the AAA game publishing biz, even the most bent of companies wouldn't hesitate to do this when caught out. For only AAA game dvs think, in this age, they can get away with being such 'SCOFFLAWS'. Todd Howard and the Zenimax bosses literally think THEY are above the law, yet we know Zenimax is a sue crazy company. This duffel bag scandal is a systemic indication of where Beth is today, and just what they think of their customers. The only good thing about this particular scandal is that outright sales fraud on a physical item is a much cleaner point of outrage for most observers than a nebulous series of unforgiveable choices in a computer game. Fallout:76 was a project that tried to answer the question "how badly can we treat gamers and an existing fan base, and still increase our profits by using lootboxes (planned for FO:76 all along but put on hold because of current scandals arising from EA's Batllefront 2) and microtransactions?". Todd considers he has a definitive answer- to build future games that are targeted at the NEW customer base from the beginning, and make no pitch to the old fanbase. That way the old fanbase outrage and expectation of quality and value is nullified. When you go loot box and microtransaction, you must go FULL lootbox and microtransaction. You must ensure 100% of your intended customers are children and vulnerable adults, and eliminate informed and reasonable critics. IMMORTAL, ETERNAL, INFINITE- notice how AAA publishers are using these terms to describe new entries in their old fan favorite IPs. Next year's Doom ain't called Doom 2, and is designed from the ground up to be 'gaming as a service'. I've said it before and I'll say it again. If you are an old school Beth fan, have a 'funeral' for Beth today and get the grieving over and done with. Then remember the good ole 'Beth' by honoring the memory of the departed in revisting Skyrim, Fallout3/NV/4, with the happy modding community here. Do NOT be tempted to play with the Monkey's Paw - the dead-alive Beth is more horrific than anything you could imagine in your worst nightmares.

1) there will NEVER be third party mods allowed by Beth for Fallout:76- not Novemeber 2019- not ever. 2) there will NEVER be private servers you run on your own PC that you mod- NEVER. 'private' servers are servers you may each month to RENT from Zenimax server farms. 'mods' are PAID downloads from the Atom Store that modify gameplay rules on the rented server. NOT my opinion. Todd Howard's definitive statement on the situation. And they're not likely to even do this since the game is AAA's biggest failure, set to go F2P in the near future and rely entirely on Atom Store revenue. Back to this thread's topic of unapproved mods... A mod to 'sell' ammunition when the ruleset for current servers is this does not happen. What could possibly go wrong? I don't know- maybe a POLICE RAID on the home of the person producing and promoting such a mod. Yes really. Rockstar, with GTA online, have already engaged in exactly this form of police state action. I understand many people here are terminally naive, still thinking Beth is some sort of 'good guy'. Nothing could be further from the truth. 'Mods' that impact the general gameplay on a Beth server are not mods but illegal hacks. And the law is well established in Britain, Canada, Australia, the USA, and many second and third world hell-holes where big publisher money is 'welcomed' that online game 'hackers' should face the full weight of the criminal and civil law. IF people mess with Fallout:76 mods here, it should only be with things that modify the experience on the user's CLIENT system. Better textures. Better bodies. Stuff that other players will not see or know about. And the owners of Nexus, will in a heartbeat, turn over details of any 'modder' on this site who is accused of engaging in illegal hacks. To even talk about hacking the way gameplay works in 'fallout:76', even for 'testing', is as stupid as it gets. Please protect yourselves. Please don't be mislead by the pre-existing community here into thinking you have a 'right' or a 'duty' to continue the LEGAL concept of modding Fallout 4 into Fallout:76. If you must do this kind of thing, here is NOT the place to talk about it. The hard truth is that Bethesda and modders have parted ways FOR EVER. Beth is now another kind of company altogether. It isn't going to have a change of heart in the future- Beth's future is all mobile games, loot boxes and microtransactions- gaming as a service- as much money as possible extracted from kids and vulnerable adults- and the power of their billions smashing to dust anyone who dares to offend them (like hacking their online games). Please listen to what Todd Howard says, NOT what you think he says. He is a remarkably 'honest' and outspoken man. Not the 'sweet little lies' about nebulous and undefined futures, like Starfield and Eldere Scrolls 6. But the FACTS that Todd Howard lays down with total clarity. NO private servers for Fallout:76 in the form you think you want. NO mods for Fallout:76 in the sense you understand modding. And ZERO tolerance for third party modding of Fallout:76. Only yesterday I read a thread in the fallout Reddit (NOT the FO76 reddit Beth set up and controls) where a person who couldn't get the game working on his ultrawide monitor contacted Beth support talking about his attempts to modify the .ini file. He got a response back from Beth's LAWYERS warning him that modifying ANY of Fallout:76's files was a serious breach of the Law. For modifying the lines in the .ini file that simply control the games resolution. Beth is NOT your friend, and in the context of Fallout:76 Beth is fully your enemy. PS above and beyond all this, the FIRST anti-cheat system the awful lazy devs at Beth will soon introduce into Fallout:76 (and will be part of the attempt to shrink the size of future updates) will confirm the correct nature of all game files (outside user options). Simple hacks into game files will then cause the game to re-download itself. Trying to circumvent this by keeping older game files will mean your game is no longer compatible with current servers.

Your fellow players are 'parasites'- charming, just charming. All cos they don't play as you do. Here's a CLUE. You should be grateful for anyone who willingly paid for this game- and willingly continues to play. AND you should understand that unless a multi-player game is CO-OP only, or offers co-op only servers, LEGAL griefing (as opposed to hack cheating) in the game is what the game is designed for. Logging out MAY seem like a meta exploit- but Beth very carefully chose to give players this option. I hate every thing Beth chose to do with Fallout:76, but that is one person's opinion. Willing players clearly have another (else why would you give Beth your money in the first place, when since E3 people like me have clearly spelt out Beth's intents and desires for the game). A game like FO:76 is all about the hardcore 'power play'. That's why the best took pride in beating the END GAME on the very first day the full game went live. Here's a clue- on a multiplayer game, any player should be free to play in whatever way they like (without using hacks). If there is an 'exploit', that is 100% the fault of the dev's lousy QA, and never the player's fault. The PROBLEM with Fallout:76 is that many maive and foolish purchasers of this game have only ever experienced the SAFE SPACE of single player open world Beth games, and arrogantly think the same 'safe space' logic should apply to a multi-player game. In fairness to Todd, he said over and over again he wanted DRAMA in his Fallout:76. That Fallout:76 must not be about 'safe spaces', but cruel spaces- just as you'd expect in a post apocalypse drama. In reality, a player of Fallout:76 must make their 'fun' however they can, including exploiting the log out trick. If you hate this, there is a very simple answer- PLAY BETTER GAMES. Do not financial encourage lousy developers. Even if you love their IP. I love the Fallout IP- but this does not mean I'll accept buying and playing a broken mess of a Fallout game with no internal gameplay mechanisms of note or value. I personally do not think Beth can be saved, and believe Beth will never again develop a traditional open world game. But if YOU think they can and will, it will only happen if people send Beth the loudest possible message when they purposely betray their core audience with a cynical disaster like Fallout:76. Remember, tomorrow Todd could pay an external team to make another entry in the Fallout or Elder scrolls Franchise using existing tools and engine and get something back at least as good as Skyrim or better than Fallout 4 within 2 years, and at less than ONE THIRD of the dev costs of Fallout:76. He could even hand over the dumpster fire that is Fallout:76's code and tool resources to an external dev, and get back within two years a CO-OP game with actual NPCs you can have a conversation with. Internally, under Todd Howard's management, none of these things are possible. And yeah, an external dev under cheap contract to Beth CANNOT make a state of the art game like Dying Light 2, open world Metro, RDR2, or Cyberpunk. Their game would be the same dated engine- but it would be made fast and be fun to play for those of us that have really liked the earlier games. But this is a NON-TOXIC view. When one willing player of a new Beth game is calling another willing player a "PARASITE", our once friendly community has succumbed to TOXIC TODD syndrome. It never had to be like this- and seeing what FO:76 has done to our community makes me sad.

I do not think Todd will bring down the BAN HAMMER without prior warning, and the disasterous reception and sales of FO:76 means Todd does not want to upset the handul of players he does have. Had the game had any success on launch, the gaming press would have taken Beth to task for allowing 'exploits'- but to be ruthlessly honest, in the pitiful state FO:76 was released, the official game critics would have welcomed the random 'fun' of hard core cheaters doing weird and wonderful things. So Todd Howard has other things on his mind than the current hacky mods on the PC version (which of the three versions is the one he cares least about by a wide margin). Now the DAY ONE attempt to prevent hacks will be a crude check of the game's installation files- probably 'punishing' the user with a forced RELOAD of the entire game if file 'corruption' is detected. Annoying, but not a game ban. So today I think you're safe using any form of mod on your game. The usual advice for modders of online games is to keep your ear to the ground. If you hear rumbles of discontent from your publisher, it might be time to be more careful or stop using the mods altogether. But before then it should be OK.

Sorry- no 'modding' EVER in Fallout:76 in the sense anyone here means. At least 'officially' as opposed to hacking into the game (as some are doing today). Here's what Todd Howard has stated in multiple interviews (recent). 1) By 'private' server, Beth means a server RENTED from a Zenimax server farm, NOT server code running on your own PC. 2) By 'mods', Beth means BETH code downloaded from the Atom Store that changes the gameplay on the 'private' server. For instance an Atom Store 'mod' that you PAY to add 'battle royale' mode to that server you have rented. The ONLY relation Nexus mods have to this concept is that Beth MIGHT steal some more of the best modders from this site to work on Atom Store 'mods' (where once again such devs would be the lowest paid in the AAA game dev biz- how Todd loves that fact). Oh, you say- but if the dumpster fire that is Fallout:76 continues its downward spiral, won't Todd be 'forced' to give in to our demands? Sorry, this is the most naive ill-informed opinion possible. This is not how AAA devs work. Ask the many teams that tried to continue supporting defunct games from other publishers, and then had their work shut-down after legal action from those publishers. Beth will seek to maintain complete control even over the rotting corpse of Fallout:76. There are two scenarios left for Fallout:76- either the revenue from children and vulnerable adults spending hard cash on the rubbish in the Atom Store gives Zenimax an acceptable rate of return after it goes F2P OR Beth shutters the entire project after an 'acceptable' period (which in this biz tends to be a couple of years for mega flops). The 'proof' of Beth's 'faith' in this 'game' will be future 'DLC' releases in 2019 (major new content). If all one gets are sad pre-coded stuff like the 'vaults' 'opening', then Beth has already accepted the game is dead. So what can Nexus modders do in the meantime. 1) go back to Fallout 4 and give up on the idea of modding a multi-player game. 2) Think of a 'great' mod idea and directly pitch it to Bethesda in the hope they'll "employ" you to make it for their Atom Store. There is a third alternative, but that is to hack Fallout:76 regardless, and be part of a movement that acts to take the game away from Beth control. But believe me, Nexus won't support this work- Beth will issue legal take-downs even if the game has at that point near zero sales- and hacking when a corporation paints a target on your back has become a very dangerous pasttime in the last few years. Look, people like me painted a 100% accurate picture of what Fallout:76 would be a day after the E3 reveal- and then pointed out the significance of each of Todd Howard's post announcement statements. The ONLY thing I said that proved not to be true was the idea that you could not play with other selected people. Even here I did NOT get this wrong. It was Todd Howard's demand all along that you always played with randoms. He wanted this for many reasons- to FORCE emergent role playing- to PROHIBIT teams of power players from stroming thru the game in a day- to PREVENT the random instance of the gameworld you get everytime you log in from being a major downer. In the end even Todd could not persuade the company to not implement a traditional lobby mechanism, so you CAN play with 'friends'. But that wasn't the idea until very close to the game's release. Anyway my point is that the naivety shown in this forum is amazing. People still willing to ignore reality after all that has happened and been said. For heaven's sake, I even saw a vid from the lead of Sim Settlements yesterday talking about his modding plans for FO:76. Not only is this time wasted on an utterly fruitless path, but when ther truth stick finally hits you people, you'll likely just give up on all Beth games altogether in disgust. And that would be a real shame. I get that Fallout 4 lacking multi-player SEEMS to make it a sadder modding target now- but think about just how poor and pointless the multi-player proved to be in Fallout:76. This genre of games just doesn't suit mutli-player. And you cannot bang into the ancient engine good multi-player concepts. Could there be a GREAT mutli-player game in the vein of the Fallout IP on a new, better engine from another publisher? Of course. But this is not what we have in any way from Beth. Modding a Beth game needs to play to its strengths, not play a game of 'let's dream'. And if you ignore multiplayer, what does (in theory) FO:76 bring to the table for modders- absolutely NOTHING- a backward step in every way over Fallout 4's now very well supported use of the creation/gamebryo engine. A 'new world' you say? Well didn't Far Harbour and Nukeworld also introduce 'new worlds' yet I did not see Fallout 4 modders rushing to take on those new areas just cos they were new. The 'dream' of modders 'fixing' FO:76 is just that- a very silly and utterly refuted PIPEDREAM. FO:76 was built from the ground up to be walled off from the Nexus community BY DESIGN. Todd, as he has screamed from the rooftops, wanted ALL 'new' content for FO:76 to be monetised to the max- with all monies going to Beth. As far as Todd has always been concerned, free third party mods steal the very bread from his mouth. Want a true flavour of Beth's 'thinking re:FO76- go to the Reddit FO76 subreddit (NOT the Fallout one). The FO76 subreddit is fully controlled by Beth (their creation, their moderation lead) and is one of the foulest things I've ever witnessed online. The groupthink that Beth orchestrates there is missing from even the most niche cult games on Steam pages. The FO:76 community is the very opposite of healthy. In comparison, Fallout:4 is a nice quiet backwater, disowned by Beth after the flop of Fallout 4 VR (and the fact that the very inefficient game ports badly to current 'mobile' devices unlike Skyrim). Beth's last concern with Fallout:4 is ripping console users off with further Creation Club microtransactions- and even that must be fading rapidly now that FO:76 is out. For Beth, if the Fallout IP has a future, it will be in some Fallout Infinite mobile trash which is but yet another reskinned product from one of the Chinese giants. I now firmly believe Beth will never again release a new traditional open world title. They just do not have anywhere approaching the technical ability to make something acceptable in the future, and while Todd Howard still runs the company, they cannot change. And for the tenth time I say that leaves us with what Beth has already released with modding tools, ie., Fallout 4 and earlier. Which is not as we would have it, but still a lot better than nothing at all. Todd's "jam tomorrow MAYBE" is really "cr-p tomorrow at best". Nothing worth waiting for, and certainly nothing worth planning for.

When the game that was NOT Borderlands 3 bombed, Gearbox suddenly discovered a new love of the Borderlands Franchise in its original genre form. But Gearbox is a small company with a game every couple of years or so- so what could they do. Bethesda is a massive corporation with the planet's richest 'game daddy', and can afford to lose interest in a once billion dollar franchise like Fallout, after an horrendous misstep. So I think for the longest time going into the future, our scene will remain Fallout 4 + mods. Sadly Fallout 3 and NV, good as they are, are way too primitive visually for most people today. Nothing on the horizon looks like adding to the moddable world of Skyrim and Fallout 4. So, in this forum (not Skyrim) it is a question of what can keep us coming back to Fallout 4. One factor is that many people who play the game are maybe only now getting PCs that can run the game well. Which itself will breath new life into the game. A lot of our best modders are now working for Beth's Creation Club and Atom Store (and incidently are the lowest paid coders and artists in the AAA game biz- free modders to microtransaction modders is a lousy career path- it you want to get into the paid game biz, please do it properly and get a proper wage). However the Nexus modding scene continues, and I think the current fiasco (new vanilla Beth vision vs old heavily modded Fallout 4) speaks volumes for why the Nexus existed in the first place. Yeah a lot of people do NOT mod- especially when you take into account console sales- but then again look at the download figures for the most popular mods here. The pity is that Fallout:4 is now disowned by Beth (save for 'updates' breaking the .exe in order to try to persuade people to give in and use paid CC mods). I've been using Rimworld ('dwarf fortress' genre) and that game has mods and is still supported by the devs. Same as with so many interesting titles on Steam. But Fallout:4 will see no more DLCs. Today it is what it always will be mods aside, like current Skyrim. So the question is "what will keep us playing?". Or "what will keep modders interested in still making new mods?". After a LOT of years, the Total Conversions finally start to appear. NV has just got a big one, and I think we get 'Miami' soon as well. But I must say I've never been a fan of TCs. They are amazing work- and amazing co-ordinations between a lot of modders (many of whom come and go in the project during its long gestation)- but I always feel they are a 'step too far' in the sense that they never come close (in my opinion) to an official major DLC. There are some things best left to a pro development environment- just as there are some things modders can and do a LOT better than paid Beth employees. Too much complexity (especially without access to the studio tools Beth uses for their own more complicated work) shows (to me) too much of the limitation of TCs. OTOH, the modded 'followers' of Skyrim (a certain infamous blue cat) and the iNPC team have done insanely good work in inserting complex new content into the existing world space. If you haven't heard of INTERESTING NPCs, google it- the team has place holders on the Nexus, but their project, like Sim Settlements, really lives off the Nexus. I was playing the Nukaworld DLC, came across amazing new content near the entry to Nukaworld, and then realised it was the free iNPC mod, and not from the Nukaworld DLC. A lot of people here might naively say "but aren't the better modders waiting to work on the dumpster fire called Fallout:76 when it introduces 'private' servers and 'mods'?". Well you may think that when FO:76 goes F2P is a few months, that will turn its fortune around- but actually the F2P move for a game that once had a AAA price tag is but the final death rattle for the title. That ex-Epic guy's self-financed disaster called 'lawbringers' refused to go F2P for this very reason, and the guy just cancelled the game outright instead- he could have wasted another few months as a failed F2P, but he understood a bad rejected game is just that. And the 'private' servers are, In Todd's definitive own words, servers you'd rent from Zenimax's server farms- NOT your own PC. And 'modding' means MICROTRANSACTION PAID 'mods' from the Atom store you'd run on your rented server. Again in Todd's explicit words. So if Fallout:4 modders are thinking of, and working on designs for Fallout:76- unless they intend to be (very low) paid workers of Beth, those plans are not going anywhere. Fallout 4 cannot get any type of multiplayer modded into the game either. The much simpler Skyrim has a promising co-op mod that never releases. The 'nuke your world' gameplay of Fallout:76 could be added to Fallout:4 (in a generic copyright free way) since FO:76 simply adds a rad-storm effect to the nuked region, but otherwise doesn't even singe a blade of grass, or cause one leaf to fall. The spawns change in the nuked area, as does the loot- all easy to do in fallout:4. It's just I don't see the point. Oh collecting/decoding the launch codes and having nuke launch bases to raid is cool- but the aftermath in Fallout 4 would be rather naff. But one did have the option to launch a nuke strike in Fallout 3, and launch a missile in NV. Yet I've always noticed that story mods are NOT (iNPC aside) common in Fallout 4 like they were for earlier Beth games. Whereare the great fallout 4 followers like the brilliant Skyrim followers? All those mods that added tons of new dungeons to Fallout 3 and NV. I always felt that with Fallout 4, Beth set a lousy example (storywise) that modders kinda adopted. So visual mods Fallout 4 has in spades- and objects for your (pointless) settlements, and clothes and bodies. But Fallout 4 never seemed to inspire new stroy-telling. Even with iNPC, it is no where as inspired as iNPC is for Skyrim. Of course fighting felt like it had a point in Fallout 3/NV/Skyrim, but not Fallout 4- fallout 4's story-telling is strangely broken and unsatisfying. Of course, that's down to the game having clearly at least THREE attempts at story design before release, and the version released ending up with the 'best' of these three different ideas mangled together. The whole human synth thing being the major downer that I feel uninspired a ton of would be story modders. It's like Fallout 4 needs a grand story reboot that different mods try to serve, rather than having mods try to 'fix' the original unsatisfying and boring narrative. Not a reboot that changes the world physically (like a total conversion) but one that re-interprets the existing game world. The 'WHY' of it. Otherwise we dip back into our heavily modded Fallout 4 to get our fix of something other games do not currently offer- but each time, even with visual improvements, it just becomes more and more familiar, and less and less mentally challenged til, before we know what has happened, we haven't launched the game in many months. Imagine if Sim Settlements served a new meta story that explained the whole world-space narrative of Fallout:4. A fella can dream. Without such I know I'll end up entering the same building one time to many, hear the same dialogue one time too many, shoot the same things one time too many, and then, sadly, it will be 'game over'.

Your post makes no sense. Why? Because you do NOT mention a price limit. If price is no object, obviously you build a "more money than sense" solution with the latest Intel and Nvidia parts. If, on the other hand, its "how cheap can I go and still have a first class 1080P gaming system"... 1) old second hand office unit- ensure it has an Intel i7, at least 8GB of RAM, and can take an external PCI express card. Then add (shudder) an Nvidia 1050TI, since these are low power and won't need an external power cable (which Office PSUs rarely offer). 2) A cheap AMD Ryzen 1600/1700/2600x on a cheap motherboard with a cheap 470/780/570/580 AMD GPU and 16GB RAM. This is the sane new no-compromise CHEAP build. 3) swap the above GPU for a cheapo AMD v56 (which is way overpowered for 1080P). 4) get a very poor value Intel 6-core CPU that can clock to 5GHz, 16GB RAM, and a very poor value Nvida 1070 - really badly coded games like all the Beth open world ones favour Nvidia and the fastest single core Intel part. 5) go crazy and buy an Intel 9700K, a Nvidia 1080TI and 32GB of fast RAM. Avoid any of the new Nvidia 'Turing' cards- they are the GPU equivalent of Fallout:76- all hype with a level of crashes and bugs never before witnessed. The failure rate of all these new cards (2070/2080/2080TI) is literally beyond belief. But this option is way over-priced for the performance boost over option 2). each of these options increases in price, obviously. But as for 'perfect' heavy modded Fallout 4 performance- no such thing. When the engine is overloaded, no hardware can save it. Honestly I'd go for option 2- especially since next year sees the AMD Zen2, and new 7nm GPUs from AMD and Nvidia. Now is a bad time to overpay for your new PC. PS try to get a GPU with 6-8GB of RAM. You'll read and hear peeps saying 4GB is enough for 1080P- well I have first hand experience of knowing it is not. Increasing numbers of games require 4GB cards to turn DOWN the highest texture settings. And highest TEXTURE settings never have a performance impact (if you have more VRAM)- whereas every other graphic setting does have an impact as raised. An 8GB 570 is base level for good 1080P. And they are now selling for LESS than Nvidia's vastly slower 1050TI (but do use more power).

All these techs, in their latest form, can be pretty good. Long gone are the days when it was 'active' vs 'passive'. Indeed the buzzwords today describing LCD tech are pretty meaningless. Instead look at ther REVIEWS of models you consider with respect to the type of gaming you like. And take into account your preference for room lighting. A given display works quite differently in the dark vs a well lit room. By the way, the manufacturing methods used to make displays today are all pretty neutral. The idea that one good display tech is inherently more expensive than another (for given size and resolution) is false. So really a good gaming display, no matter what its supposed tech, is tweaked to do better under a given set of circumstances. And many tricks are used by the driving electronics to FAKE supposed actions by LCD that the LCD cells literally cannot do in reality. Many of these tricks focus on 'blurring' cause by LCD latency. And these algorithms have different degrees of acceptability to different people (like the 'rainbox' effect on micro-mirror projectors that some people swear they always see, yet the majority of us train our eyes to NEVER notice again after the first few hours of use). I'd say ANY well reviewed GAMING monitor using any tech is good enough for the vast majority of people. But if you are a 144MHz nut, or an "I always see rainbows on TI's micromirror tech projectors" person, or a "the blacks, the blacks- I cannot believe the blacks" type- then you need to find reviews written by someone with the SAME tastes as yourself.

While Beth has had no official response to having released AAA gamings WORST received successful franchise sequel ever (yesterday's 'big gaming' reviews were actually WORSE than the specialist platform reviews that had already appeared- and they were bad- this is unprecedented), people with insider knowledge (remember Beth is a massive multi-site corporation so leaks happen) have stated that Todd is crowing from the rooftops about the millions flooding in from the 'Atom Store'. So people, in case you still don't get it, old school Fallout and elder scrolls are DEAD. Drop your fantasies of any truth in traditional new entries in these franchises ever coming from Beth in the future (remember, LIES are the cheapest form of propaganda ever- what Todd told you at the end of E3 was lies designed to PLACATE). 100% of elder scolls and starfield and fallout, if they happen, will follow the monetised multi-player example of Fallout:76 exactly. Gambling and microtransactions aimed at kids and vulnerable adults. The 'game' will be a simplistic shoddy badly coded shell designed to hold the monetised mechanisms, and only the monetised mechanisms will have any quality in presentation and function. As for Todd placing Fallout:76 assets into the Fallout:4 PAID shop- of course he will. He is already placing standard FREE fallout:4 assets into the Atom Store. Todd Howard has recently, on multiple interviews, stated that Starfield and all other open world games from Beth in the next 12+ years will use Gamebryo, the broken, obsolete and inefficient engine that makes Fallout:76 so awful. This is all the information you need to understand the direction Beth is now taking. There is literally zero interest at Beth in making state-of-the-art open world games like RDR2, Cyberpunk, etc. Like I said the idea instead is simplistic SHELL games that act simply to hold the gambling and store mechanisms. These low weight shells have the obvious advantage of also running well on the primitive mobile GPU chips that run OpenGL ES- the dumbed down simplistic API favoured by companies like Nintendo. And by 'well', I mean in the sense of scalability and porting. A day after E3 revealed Fallout:76, people like me explained exactly what Fallout:76 would be, and why this was so terrible. I know many of you put your fingers in your ears and sang "la, la, la- I'm not listening". Now people are repeating the SAME mistake when they are told that Starfield will be another Fallout:76. THIS thread, for instance, asking if the microtransactions from Fallout:76 will be brought to Fallout:4, is the height of foolishness. Who do you think is making the rubbish on the Atom Store? Largely ex-modders from Nexus (who are now the WORST paid employees in AAA development- how Todd loves that fact). Of course that shoddy rubbish- usually an asset that would be less than ONE HUNDRED THOUSANDTH of the content of a AAA game, yet sells frequently for ONE TENTH of the purchase cost of the whole game itself (let that fact sink in for a second)- will be sold by Todd wherever fools may buy it. Skyrim assets appear for sale in the Fallout:4 store for heaven's sake. Only one thing could save the future of Fallout 5 or Elder Scrolls Next (nothing can save Starfield- you think Todd could possibly make a decent game in this new direction even if he wanted to?)- and that thing would be if 100% of people rejected Fallout:76, and refused to spend a cent on any microtransactions in ANY non-F2P game from Beth. Hence nothing about Fallout:76 (including its new assets- of which in the base game there are nearly none) should be of interest to Fallout 4 fans UNLESS one means FREE legal mods on the Nexus that might do LEGAL copies of things present in Fallout:76.

The tool authors have made it clear they don't want their tools used to mod Fallout:76- which makes things 'diificult' for sites like Nexus that claim everyone needs to give coninuous 'permission' for everything, rather than follow the Open Source licence model. And Beth is on the edge of implementing the cheap and nasty 'anti-cheat' method of inspecting the files on your machine to ensure they remain 'unaltered'. Which puts another dampener on the enthusiasm for many modders to create texture replacements for FO76. Many online game devs have banned a significant proportion of their customers for altering their game files. Most current modders are waiting for the 'official' word from Beth- but that word has already been given - "NO third party mods". So we are in phony war period when modders COULD be delivering large numbers of straightforward 'easy' mods like texture replacers- but instead they hold back. But the very frequent updates from Beth- which are clearly going to continue at tens of gigabytes a week at the very least for the foreseeable future- also mess with the unofficial modding scene. How do you stop the update wiping your mods. At the mo, you cannot, so mods would need to be reapplied each time AFTER it was determined that the target files had not changed in the meantime. I'm not sure why the Nexus opened up a Fallout 76 modding section at this time. If the idea was to force Bethesda's hand, well there are a ton of actions Beth could take in response that really would not bode well for this site in general. The press, and the gaming press in general, are currently VERY big on DEMONISATION- especially the demonisation of USER-friendly internet resources. The whole "most legal things are acceptable here" could be easily used by Beth's PR teams to paint a giant target on this site. So your simple request for better blood splatters really opens a can of worms. Beth would NOT want the expression of 'adult' ideas like 'gore' in this game to come under the control of the users. Beth will defend their own decisions- but they do not want to defend YOUR ideas or mine in a 'multi-player' experience. Why do you think text chat ain't in the game? In the USA, recording AUDIO comes under WIRE-TAPPING laws (laws that were passed to prevent newspapers from gathering the taped evidence of government officials and politicians accepting bribes originally). So user SPEECH in Fallout:76 won't be used against Beth. But written words are different. Beth did not want the press reporting and expressing outrage at the words TYPED by some gamers. So no text chat. Small dev hardcore survival games like Rust get away with everything, cos they are a niche aimed at hard core gamers. But Fallout:76 is as mainstream as it gets- don't be fooled by the game's 'adult' rating. Beth HOPES the game is so successful, it is under a constant press microscope and many modders from older Beth games also FEAR this 'microscope'. A lot of people are nervous, scared and keeping their distance (modwise). The irony is that the one group who ain't cautious are the true hackers of games. So the 'mod' scene will be replaced by a very thorough hacking and cheating scene. The game has already been hacked to heck and back (the 'power gamers' youtube streams always rely on hacks and cheats). The true skilled hackers take a pride on how long they can use hacks WITHOUT being discovered. Only sad amateurs use obvious 'aimbots' and 'wallhacks'. Beth has simply replaced one third party coding scene with another. If you want to really know what is likely to come from our side of the community, go research similar online games and look to see what the extent of mods for those games are like.

Er, no- everyone is demanding PUSH-TO-TALK to avoid this potentially disasterous situation (where the game acts as a listening bug in your home when you are unaware others are hearing everything picked up by your microphone). Todd however has stated that master coders are needed to code a mike toggle function- so the 'fix' will be in one of the many 50GB updates (yeah, I know ONLY 16GB for the PC version) that turn up in the next few weeks- just don't hold your breath. To make this reply relevant to THIS forum- while Beth has literally stated that it is really hard to program a toggle function- the wonderful FREE modding scene for Fallout 4 actually delivered a 3D headphone sound patch for Fallout and Skyrim which works brilliantly. If you haven't tried it, give it a go- it is so much better knowing the exact spacial location of the sounds. And this is why we love the Nexus. No lame Todd excuses about how one line of code is 'hard' so you must wait weeks and weeks for the fix. And mods that do not have to be multiple gigs in size to add features. To be dependent on a corporation is a terrible thing. We are here to prove we do not have to be. FO76 is teaching a lot of very hard lessons.

Gaming is not a cult or a an organised religion- but AAA publishers use the well understood psychology of both to 'game' gamers. Today unpaid Beth cultists, carefully led by a team of PAID 'reputation management' posters in all significant forums online, are defending Fallout:76 with ever more toxic language. And THIS, not the astonishingly poor quality of Fallout:76, is why we should all be so unhappy with Bethesda, and especially Todd Howard. I once had an association with Activision. The BIG boss proudly told me and my colleague how HE actually wrote the 'reviews' for key Activison games in the key gaming magazines of the time (this was before the Internet age). I didn't doubt this for a second (magazines are slaves to those who provide the major ad revenue- same as the major corporate gaming sites today), but what amazed me is that he felt a need to announce the fact. Most who enjoy Beth games have no idea how the corporate world works, let alone 'big' gaming. And since many gamers are, shall we say 'special', they are just waiting to be led by the nose by any 'unfortunate' force that happens to emerge at the top of one of these companies. But many gamers are actually well informed these days- and these are the gamers who have been expressing increasing amounts of outrage at Beth since the announcement of Fallout:76 at E3. Now it's out, I can say the game is far worse than even I imagined. They did relent, and put in a 'lobby' system to allow people to play with 'friends'- in the end even Todd couldn't stick to his promise that you would be always forced to play with RANDOMS (a thing he really desired to FORCE the player to 'roleplay'- and to prevent hardcore 'power' gamers from teaming up and screaming thru the game in ONE DAY- which as we now know is exactly what happened). All the planned gaming modes that the original F2P team discussed in that documentary were removed. No proper multi-player 'dungeons' were designed No attempt was made to compensate for the player levelling problem- high level players spawn high level monsters in dungeons currently occupied with low level players fighting low level mobs- RUINING the experience of the low level player. And most sickening, when the infamous nuke goes off, there is NO model replacement for the region of the map nuked. This last I literally could not believe. It seemed so obvious that Beth would have created a second, fully nuked, version of the map- and would use the stand-off time of the initial nuke blast to bring into the current game world a circle of the blasted data centred on the explosion. The TECHNICAL INCOMPETENCE of Fallout:76 is unlike anything ever seen in the gaming industry before. FO76 solves literally no problem. It is a pure DEVOLUTION of Fallout 4, while 'borrowing' most of the assets from Fallout 4, and putting NEW assets behind a pay-wall in the microtransaction Atom store. Oh, for sure, none of this prevents desperate FO76 gamers from inventing their own 'fun' with friends in the game. I saw one stream last nite where the lead was trying to play 'hide-n-seek', tho the fact he 'fast travelled' to hide rather killed the point for his 'friends'. But even here the inability to mod is key. Say you decide 'TAG' might be fun. With any kid of modding system, modders would quickly bang in nice game mechanisms for ideas like this into FO76. But Todd Howard has banned mods FOR ALL TIME. When Todd has talked of 'mods' and 'private servers', he has made it clear he means PAID 'mods' only available on the Atom Store, and severs RENTED per month from Beth's server farms. FO76 players are held hostage to game code that exclusively comes from Bethesda- including all future 'game' modes. But FO76 is a failed 'asset flip' (which is why Beth has bribed the big corporate game 'journalism' sites to delay their reviews for as long as possible), and is not going to see significant investment in the future. It will be MORE important for FO76 to train Beth's customers to the new reality- and that means no more mods, and most of the new content in a 60 dollar+ game locked behind pay-walls. Todd Howard again has stated with absolute clarity that Starfield, Fallout 6 (yes, Fallout:76 is Fallout:5) and Elder Scrolls Next will all be on the hopeless ancient Gamebryo engine, just like Fallout 3, Skyrim, Fallout 4 and Fallout:76. No traditional Beth game using this engine could possibly be successful on the new consoles coming from Microsoft and Sony next year- but Todd's new 'trad' games are not even due any time in the next THREE years. This paradox is simply answered. Fallout 4 was the END of the line. All future Beth products (in this game genre) will have the form of FO76, or monetised MOBILE games. IF a game called Starfield does eventually release, it will be nothing like the game Skyrim and Fallout (before 76) fans might imagine. No- it will be primitive, dumbed down mobile rubbish- with microtransaction markets designed by leading exploitation psychologists to extract the maximum amount of money from children and vulnerable adults. And it won't need any form of leading edge 3D engine. But today, even the shilliest of 'pro' gaming journalist is hit for six by the state of Fallout:76. Even if they do their best to hold their nose, any gaming critique has to be negative. So, as one or two emerging PAID reviews on Metacritic proves, the most sensible simply embrace the corruption and scream "this is the best Fallout game EVAR!!111!!!1" (I kid you not, the best 'professional' review for Fallout:76 on Metacritic at this time has this exact form). In fairness, most current 'pro' reviews there hate the game. Anyway, today Beth's greatest crime was not Fallout:76 itself, but using this game to turn what was once the nicest gaming community fully toxic. Todd's war on free third party mods, war on the GAMER'S ability to mod their own game in whichever direction they desire, and war on traditional fans of Skyrim and Fallout who expect some actually content for their 60 dollars, and expect ALL the game content (excluding major DLCs) to be freely and EASILY available without spending money on microtransactions, has ruined the community forever. What we had before is never coming back. Instead we old school Beth fans become the luddites and hermits- saddos holding on to our ever aging heavily modded copies of Fallout 3/nv/4 and Skyrim. Believe me, the demonisation of our group will explode over the next couple of years. Modders will become 'moral criminals' stealing the very bread from the mouths of the 'real' developers. There is no morality at Zenimax, or love of gamers or gaming. There is but pure greed. In any industry greed and the needs of customers CAN coincide, but just as often or even moreso it will diverge. Beth made BILLIONS from Fallout 4 and Skyrim thanks to YOU- but in the end that was not enough for Zenimax. Yes, Fallout:76 is a commercial failure, but that is not the point. Fallout:76 is the future. Gaming as a service. Pay 60 dollars for a cheap asset flip, and then pay and pay and pay and pay and pay for microtransactions to gain access to the 'new' content. Get it right and it ain't a billion dollars of sale for a title, but billion after billion after billion for a game with maybe even more money being made a couple of years after release. And why do people whine so loudly over one particular publisher doing what all the big boys are doing? Because sadly ONLY Beth made this genre of games where the modding community could have such a wonderful impact. By some curse of fate- there are no alternative publishers. My dream was Nexus using its resources to back OPEN SOURCE replacements for Fallout and Elder Scrolls- entire RPG ecosystems designed and supported by the free modding community. Not using Beth's IPs, obviously, but mining the SAME sources of inspiration that Elder Scrolls and Fallout used themselves. It could still happen- a kickstarter would raise an insane amount here for such projects. But in the meantime the backlash at Fallout:76 is really recognition that a Golden Age has ended.

One of my fav mods is the little used TRUE NIGHTS. There's a vastly more popular mod (darker nights?) which follows the tradition of similar mods for Skyrim, but 'true nights' is literally real world darkness for Fallout 4. Don't you just hate modern games that use the terrible "day for night" trick of cheap movies and TV from the 60s and early 70s? You know, when a scene was shot in full sunlight, then artificially 'dimmed' and sold as a night time scene- a technique loved by cheapo producers for the 'night' scenes could both be shot during normal working hours AND using the same film stock and camera settings. Games do it cos a significant proportion of gamers HATE dark screens- and many games don't even bother switching off their shadow systems for night. But 'True Nights' mean night is BLACK- the blackness country folk tell city folk they never experience thanks to the ambient light from a night-time city. Black so a torch is ESSENTIAL (and headlight mods really really effective). Black so the experience of traveling at night is totally different from day. Not for everyone, but darn, for me the game is now meaningless without it. The apocalypse, and the end of civilisation means that night becomes something us city folk have likely never even conceived of. I that's what I want in MY Fallout. Watching the saddo FO76 vids, and knowing night in that game will always be a lame annoying version of day is another reason to despise the massive downgrade the game represents- and to love what mods bring to Fallout 4 and Skyrim. PS I get the OP. I've discovered some excellent mods late despite frequently inspecting the Nexus because, for some reason, they never gained any traction. Even Youtube channels like MxR (in the days before demontisation and the ad-opaclypse) would frequently highlight cool mods I had never heard about. Also I tend to trust that the only mods worth thinking about are hosted here- tho i know that isn't always true- and that the dreadul 'politics' that has mods frequently vanishing from the Nexus is a real detriment to the enduring usefullness of this site. Grown-up, unpaid volunteer dev work like open source software CANNOT vanish when a dev bursts into tears and wants to take his ball home. No- the open source community- which is one million times more advanced than game modding- accepts a model where contributions are both out there forever, and can be used by other open-source devs freely if the licence is respected. My one gripe about the Nexus is that it actively encourages the very attitude open source absolutely discourages, yet both exist for exactly the SAME reason. My fav open source programs will be easily available forever, and the good ones more than likely now supported by new people. But everytime I come here I fear some fav mod will have vanished - especially if Beth has been stirring the pot again.

In games like these there are solid code reasons why it is a bad idea to do combat purley based off in-world 'physics' (what the characters- bosses, NPCs, the player etc) are seemingly doing. A certain amount of 'cheating' is common in the code to cause what APPEARS to happen to match player expectations. A good example of this is how many 'followers' do not actually 'follow' you if the game thinks they are out of the sight of the player, but are constantly RESPAWNED in the vicinity of the player (behind obviously so the player doesn't see the 'respawn'). In a 'mob' battle (I believe these now happen sometimes in the new Assassin's Creed: Odyssey) you are NOT witnessing any form of real simulation. But the game designers will tweak the mechanisms in play until the gamer seems to get a pleasing result. 'Friendly' Fire has always been a hot-button topic cos many 'serious' gamers think they want it for 'reality', but the devs usually find a full-on FF system is disasterous for gameplay. Expecially for spammy region effect weapons like spells, fire and explosions. And game devs want their games to be FUN, not machines that meet the needs of obssesive compulsive types. I think Fallout 4 went to extremes in making things easy for the devs. So raids on settlements are always totally pointless- and I don't ever thinking that there was any 'realism' in the combat between attackers and defenders- I always assumed FF was fully disabled for the NPCs. Skyrim seemed a LOT better (and more ambitious) in this regard- attacking a bandit camp with a good follower seemed to actually have 'weight'. Honestly I don't think these types of question have useful meaning for Fallout 4. Ambitious combat modders tried, in the early days, to increase combat situations to match those seen in Fallout 3, but soon gave up in disgust as Fallout 4 would rapidly become unstable- especially if the extra spawed combat NPC's persisted in cells the player left- simply running thru downtown Boston with such a mod active would soon crash the game. Fallout 4 is very very dumbed down compared to Skyrim and Fallout 3. There is good reason why all the good follower mods exist for Skyrim. And FO76 devolves even more compared to Fallout 4, with vastly worse AI and combat. Honestly I think Fallout 4 is best enjoyed for what it is, and NOT questioned or poked. Modders had high hopes for the game when it came out, based on their Skyrim experience. But these modders left disappointed. There is good reason the great Fallout 4 mods are largely cosmetic. So I cared about FF issues in Skyrim. In Fallout 4 I cared not one whit, for I understood how fundamentally hopeless the combat framework was in the new game. And I just played it as the Beth devs intended- as a vastly more 'casual' game than Skyrim.

I'm not artistic so, like the OP, if I try to create something I don't know, I'll unconsciously bias to forms I do know. Thus the 'mistake' of trying to feminize a male form, rather than doing a pure femine form from the off. A skilled artist can use a few few strokes of a pen to create a clear typical female or male image on paper. Yet those few strokes will certainly NOT be a realistic eye, nose, mouth etc. So the answer to the OP's question lies in doing what any good artist does- namely LEARNING what elements make us perceive a face as male or female. And to this end the answer is simple- go on Youtube and search any of the many thousands of excellent drawing tutorials. Do NOT assume that just because you are looking at faces all day long, and KNOW what a really sexy female face looks like, you'll obviously be able to draw or model such. The greatest thing about the Internet is the learning tool aspect- IF one bothers to use it that way. The greatest library and teaching tool in Human History is free, and near universally available. Just cos the net is littered with trash and distractions does NOT mean one cannot use it for learning. Games have evolved amazing character creation tools- and Beth's face sculpting (which I think is licensed) is one. But just because one owns a great tool does not make one a great artist. The matter of talent is not mitigated because the tool is so amazing. We all know that real artists learn figure drawing cos of the old joke of the art class and the naked model. But what the obsession with figure drawing proves is that it is NOT easy and NOT natural, even tho we see people of all types all day. Would this skill have to be taught (to even many natural artists) if it were easy? So the simple truth is that Beth provides a great sculpting tool, but does not provide the art lessons, and most people's experience with the tool will be laughable and pathetic- hence the preset system. But to get better, likie I said, the answer has NOTHING to do with Fallout and everything to do with how aspiring artists get educated. However, even with the best advice and classes from expert artists on Youtube, a vast amount of practise is then needed to learn and skill-up. Do not puzzle at the fact that even after hours experimenting, one's results are still g-dawful. Only on nasty TV dramas for the hard of thinking do characters suddenly aquire skills that in real life take years to master if at all. Is this forum the best place for art advice (or even coding advice )? Actually it is pretty much the worst place. Modders use art skills and/or coding skills in their work all the time- but they will have gained their skills more conventionally and honed them via a LOT of practical practice. OTOH we have mods where the modder is great at some things, hopeless at others, but needs to do all the things themselves so we accept some dodgy aspects in gratitude for the whole. But for the individuals skills themselves, I would never expect a non-artist to come to being even close to acceptable to even the work of a mediocre trained artist. Same for coding. And this fact is hard for many people to accept in the modern age, where true skills and the vast amount of hard work required to hone those skills is down-played in all popularist media. PS ever watch SF's brilliant show 'Face Off'? A 'reality' show very much to the point of the OP's question- tho focused on practical 'Hollywood' facial make-up skills. After ten seasons or so the show had to end because it could no longer find enough constestants of sufficient quality (and the contestants were not 'diverse' enough for the channel down to the simple fact that only certain types of people seem to seriously consider this career path). In early seasons, the producers would take a few 'token' contestants who expressed an interest in make-up and give them a 'crash course' before the show began. But the judges- pros from the industry- demanded the right to eliminate contestants on merit alone- so the 'tokens' were removed within one or two episodes. And in the end this looked worse than never having the 'tokens' in the first place. 'Git Gud' is a much mocked Internet meme- but it is an eternal truth. It means there ain't no cheap advice as to how you become proficient in a skill. There wasn't 10,000 years ago, and there isn't today- no matter what TV may tell you. Me- I'll rely on the TRUE experts everytime and never try to replicate their skills. I have my own fields of expertise, and like so many of my type, they are not artistic in the image sense. Why MY brain cannot do what the brain of a natural artist can so very easily is both a puzzle but a joy as well. How boring life would be if we all had exactly the same access to a given list of skills. I rejoice that when I come here (well the section hosting the mods) I see certain types of work I could never replicate, and I have access to that wonderful work for free. TL:DR use the presets of a person artistically skilled enough to know what they are doing.

The OP has some of the most nasty and toxic "respect Beth or else" dev responses I've ever seen- and proves just has nasty Toxic Todd has made our community. Beth deserves ZERO respect. If Beth's many 10/10 FO76 user reviews on Metacritic, clearly produced by the usual paid Indian troll farms (so called 'reputation management' services) don't convince you of Beth's rotten biz practises, nothing will. Beth is no-one's 'friend' but a money making machine for the thoroughly ROTTEN Zenimax corporation (go Google the long criminal history of the top people at Zenimax- its hardly hidden). For sure we could 'like' Beth when it was making games that met our needs, but beyond this... FO76 is a ten dollar game with another ten dollars worth of content behind a PAY-WALL of thousands of dollars in the microtransaction store- that Beth wants you to pay 60 dollars for. Never forget this. So awful and CHEAP is FO76, when you drop a nuke Beth even failed to model a ruined version of the game space. That devs of Fallout 4 tools are telling you to CRAWL at the feet of Bethesda and beg the 'right' to change your game - cos you are nothing but 'dirty cheaters' if you mod WITHOUT Beth's explicit permission is sickening. Everything is broken in FO76, including once again textures PURPOSELY stored in vastly inefficient forms to artificially inflate the amount of GPU VRAM needed (Beth wants the recommended specs to be 'high' to give the impression to the naive that the engine is 'modern'). I should know. I originally played Fallout 4 out-of-the-box on an old 1GB 6870. Fools who believe the lies spewed by Beth would tell me my initial terrible experiences were down to ignoring Beth's recommended specs. But heavy modding later, with vastly BETTER textures and low level VRAM OS hacks (which fooled Fallout 4 about the true amount of VRAM), the game ran excellently, all on HIGH. Beth had literally sabotaged Fallout 4 to make it seem like it needed far higher specs than it really did. Cos Fallout 4 could be freely modded, this sabotage could be mostly reversed. The giant clue is an engine looking as bad and dated as FO76 does, yet runs far WORSE than state of the art engines doing far far more like RDR2 and Dying Light. That the modding tool devs now think themselves in bed with Bethesda makes me sick. Zenimax loves nothing more than idiots WHO WORK FOR FREE, producing work that makes the owners of Zenimax even richer. Of course, ex-nexus modders who now work for Beth's creation club are the POOREST paid artists and coders in the industry- a very unfortunate fact. But one job of FO76 was to make the free modding community turn toxic, because this community has NO FUTURE in Beth's future plans. Beth is NEVER going to support non-Creation Club modding of FO76 (and to Todd's credit, he has said this loud and clear over and over and over again). And those pie-in-the-sky 'private servers'? Todd has stated recently, IF they ever happen, they will be RENTALS from Beth's own private server farms. So no officially allowed third party modding of FO76 ever. And no 'private servers' on your PC ever. Which leaves unofficial modding (and the toxic attitudes and actions taken by current dev tools against this) and the inevitable VERY unofficial reverse engineered thin server module which will allow you to play offline. When this module first appears, this community will be in fuill blown civil war, just as Beth desires. Modding made Beth successful in the 'difficult days'. Believe me, they have zero gratitude for this. Today zenimax asks "don't these HACKERS simply eat into our potential micro-transactions profits?" and Todd answers "why yes, that is exactly what they do". It is clear from posts of modding tool devs that they would have prefered the Nexus to have BANNED FO76 mods pre-emptively. I have suspicions why the nexus did not (everything is 'politics'). But the only reason Beth hasn't acted against the nexus YET is the astonishing commercial failure of the launch of FO76- and Beth's current 100% focus on getting the PAID mainstream journalists to say something positive about the game. Honest trusted independent Youtube game review channels, like Worth-a-Buy and Jimpressions have been 100% negative. Beth thinks that at this moment, it is sensible to leave PC FO76 'modding' alone. This changes when 'cheating' (like that actually means anything in a 'game' as lame as FO76- 'cheating' would actually make this game more interesting) becomes a hot button issue in the yellow gaming 'journalist' outlets. These fake news outlets are chomping at the bit to demonise modding and the Nexus. Conflating 'cheating' and 'hacking' with the Nexus modding community - with the assistance of quotes from skyrim/fallout 4 mod tools devs- would have Todd Howard howl with delight. The LAST saving factor for our community was the fact that many old school gaming 'journalists' loved Skyrim and Fallout with mods. But now Beth is mobile, microtransaction and 'gaming as a service' only, THESE journalists are being sacked and replaced, one by one- replaced by faux SJW types with the theme "modders are yet another example of entitled toxic males". Beth wants and needs paid journos to sing the praises of FO76, and laud all the ways it is NOT Fallout 4. Reading this in the FO76 section of the Nexus? Know this is but the 'calm' before the storm. The storm is coming and this community (general PC game modding) will never be the same afterwards.

The best way to add text chat is via OVERLAYS and a third party chat program that runs in the background. This form of chat needs to know NOTHING about FO76, or modify the game in any way. The great thing about PCs (until Microsoft finally ruins them and bans third-party win32 code, only allowing intstallation of walled garden trash from its app store like Apple) is the users ability to run low level code, and run multiple programs at the same time. This way games can be 'streamed' even when the game itself lacks such support, by having the GPU driver intercept and encode the game output in real time. Games without speech or text support can have it added by running third party speech or text apps in the background. So wanna text chat with your FO76 mates, go GOOGLE a solution. A solution NOT coded for FO76, but a solution coded to overlay the text screen on top of any game, with a keyboard intercept that can swap between the keys going to the game and keys going to the text app. Best of all? This type of software is OPEN SOURCE, FREE and very well supported. Don't depend on code from the big boys (clue- windows inbuilt apps are the worst of class- the free alternatives are infinitely better).

It is to Beth's eternal shame (or the shame of people who pre-ordered this game depending on POV) that the first desired mods/fixes are FOV slider, push-to-talk, and control mapping designed for the PC, rather than poorly ported from the consoles. Talk about a low bar for a game from a company with supposedly DECADES of experience in this genre. Talk about 'Oliver Twist'. "Please sir, can I just have combat AI that isn't defeated when I stand on any surface 6 inches higher than the Deathclaw I am 'fighting'. I was watching the DAY ONE end game videos from 'elite players'- and oh, the mechanistic 'fun' they were having. Spamming the 'melee' attack button, with zero quaility animation right next to the level one million 'dragon', as the dragon, with zero quality animation (once stuck on the ground) pointlessly spammed melee damage on their power armour- until the dragon's life bar tediously made it to zero. The WORST so-called 'combat' I've seen in a video game ever. No 'flash' game ever had worse combat than this. The icing on the cake? A nuke doesn't even take the leaves off the trees or burn the ground. Long before release, I was convinced Beth had a "ruined" version of the map, and when a nuke went off, swapped the 'ruined' data for the radius of the blast into the player's world. It seemed to me even a company as LAZY and technically incompetent as Beth could code at least this. But the nuked area is the SAME as the un-nuked map is to every degree, save for the yellow/green shader effects, and the spawning of different enemies/loot. Absolute inexcusable trash. Even Skyrim/Fallout 3/Fallout 4 could modify areas of the map after 'special events'- but not FO76. FO76 gamers pay for exactly one properly done thing - a new world space littered with audiolog missions. Even the two main DLC's for Fallout 4 had to be much more than this to justify their much lower prices. The obscene asset flipping of FO76 makes matters even worse- ensuring that FO76 LOOKS like a Fallout 4 mod. Anyhoo, people speaking openly would mostly admit to wanting the 'mod' that allowed 'offline' play, and thus enabled every other type of mod.

Beth, focused as it is on the 'safe' console versions, would instinctively leave the PC modding scene alone initially but for TWO factors. One- the vile clickbait trolling of the mainstream gaming press (like Polygon and Kotaku- shudder, merely saying these names makes my flesh crawl) is going to force Beth's hand. Gaming's 'yellow journalism' hates PC gamers with a passion, and knows how to stir the pot. In this case it is the "cheaters on the PC thanks to 'illegal' mods" ploy. And Beth, with zero anti-cheat code worht a d-mn in the game itself can only deal with 'cheating' in the short term by checking your FO76 installation and ensuring you use only the original files. Two- but the real deal for beth is when reverse engineered thin server modules appear, allowing FO76 to be hacked for single player offline use. Beth's server protocol is so utterly simplistic and primitive I'm certain that the reverse engineering has been completed by many teams across the globe, and unofficial servers well on their way for release. If Beth chooses to ignore PC mods for the time being cos the game needs more bad publicity like a hole in the head, it will not ignore offline hacks. And once Beth is forced to take legal action against offline hacks, it'll lump all unofficial mods in the same category. You know what's so sad/depressing/sickening. A TON of Fallout fans would buy FO76 even knowing the base game stinks IF the game allowed unrestricted Nexus style modding. If the game was no better than present BUT could by hacked to offline. And these people would by playing 60 dollars for the 'privilege'. However, a game that STILL has SKYRIM bugs long fixed by unofficial modders on this site, and Fallout 4 bugs long fixed by modders on this site (yes a ton of FO76 code directly inherits from Skyrim, including long documented bugs) - bugs that cannot be fixed by mods- conceptually sickens sane gamers. These bugs are documented to the most professional degree and have been known by Beth for many many years, yet Beth has refused to fix any of them - and FO76 has the SAME bugs. Beth not only uses an ancient, inefficient and broken engine, but even when outsiders FREELY identify and document bugs, bugs that outsider modder PROVE can be fixed, because their mods fix them, Beth refuses point blank to fix the bugs in their current or new releases. Anyone who gives Beth even an atom of respect after learning this fact is an utter fool. And the ONLY reason Beth acts so badly, and gets worse with time, is because people keep buying their games - financial pressure is the only pressure gamers can exert on Beth that has any chance of making Beth change.

1) unofficial mods (any mod by any person not directly employed or in the pay of Beth) exist only for the period before Beth brings down the BAN HAMMER- which is going to happen very soon now. Why? Cos of 'growing outrage' about 'cheating' (the pot stirred by the big click-bait gaming 'journalism' sites) which is 'fixed' in the first instance by Beth inspecting your INSTALL directly and banning any user with unauthorised modifications or additions to the original files. 2) 'private servers' (which are 95% likely to NEVER happen down to the essential design and intent of FO76- and the commercial failure of FO76 which makes their dev expense even more unattractive to Beth) are KNOWN to be servers rented out by Beth, and not servers run by individuals on their own machines. This comes from many explicit statements from Bethesda. 3) There was a possibily that FO76 was mostly client side, meaning that an offline 'hack' may have been possible. Now it seems that too much is done server side to make such a hack trivial. The hope for offline single player now lies with a VERY unofficial reverse-engineered server code block that you'd run on the same machine as the client. However, this 'mod' would make pyrates happy and Beth very unhappy, even as it finally allowed unrestricted modding of FO76 for those who bought FO76. Beth will wage legal war on any unofficial server, but Beth's 'ace' is their constant updating of the client that would keep making such unofficial servers out-of-date. 4) The official future of FO76 is very bleak. The engine is too primitive, and the AI and combat systems too weak and poorly designed for new game modes to be usefully possible (like Battle Royale or even any decent deathmatch). Likewise simulation and survival cannot be done well. FO76 is designed for PAID microtransactions like weapon skins and new clothing and furniture, and pretty much nothing else. Beth is set to open up 'vault' 'dungeons' in the game with the same rubbishy broken combat and poor loot. Without a doubt, even the greatest fallout-fan skeptic of FO76 would like to travel the world of FO76 once just to witness new world content- to treat FO76 as a single-player 10 dollar DLC addition to Fallout 4. But this is the last thing Beth wants. Beth has told the big bosses at Zenimax that FO76 is a full blown Skyrim/Fallout 4 scale AAA release, and will need to keep up this pretence for the next 12 months at least. In six months time FO76 may have near zero sales and hardly anyone online, but Beth will still claim in the press that it is the greatest success ever. In this biz failed games are promoted as if they are MORE successful than the real hits until the very day the publisher admits the game has failed and makes it F2P or cancels the servers (we've seen this pattern repeated over and over with massive AAA failures like destiny 2 and lawbreakers over the last few years). With the Diablo fiasco, Activision merely doubled down and told fans "eff you, we're going mobile on ALL our major IPs, and we're going to bribe the mainstream gaming press to call PC gamers even nastier names in the future". Beth is doing more mobile and 'gaming as a service' than even Activision. Next year's Doom is a 'gaming as a service' release. Only Rage 2 is a proper game, and even then just because the dev had originally made it as the sequel to Mad Max, before WB cancelled the project, and Beth picked up the 80% finished title and paid to have it 'rage' flavoured instead. PS the paid boosters of FO76 on Youtube (any blogger 'positive' about the game) are all now raving about how much 'money' you make when playing it. Yeah, microtransactions are spun as 'proof' you make more money than you paid to own the game. Each of these bloggers, following scripts provided by Beth, tell you have many hours you need to play on avergae to "earn back" the 60 dollars the game cost. "Hey, I can now afford SIXTY DOLLARS of merchandise in the microtransaction store from 'atoms' I was awarded just for playing the game. See, all you toxic FO76 'haters', Father Beth has actually given us this game FOR FREE once you play it for a few hours". Our community was once the nicest, most innocent, harmess, friendly. Toxic Todd has transformed it into an Orwellian warzone- and once modders/hackers make the first unofficial servers there will be so much blood in the water.

LOTS of post apocalyptic material in the cheesy 70s. BUT maybe started with the much earlier "I am Legend" (not the Will Smith third or fourth version, but the early 60's Vincent Price one). The zombies/ghouls certainly came from there. Tho they were originally 'vampires'. The film you found is one of a whole bunch, some from famous authors like "A boy and his dog". That is VERY fallout, but more from a 'raider' perspective. Most famous is Mad Max, tho the dreadful Fallout engine could never do vehicles (or even horses well). The REAL question is does the Fallout universe have anything original? Fallout's future retro is but a love of 1950's SF movies (like forbidden planet). The nukes from everywhere. The vaults from many sources, tho the cruel psychological experiments are a bit more original. The wasteland and raiders from everywhere. Supermutants and synths stolen from other SF sources. Anyhoo I remember the OP movie from the days the BBC had a hard-on for showing this type of genre film just after 9PM in the mid to late 70s. This is the one where the guy loses an arm? Beth bought the Fallout IP to save their own need to use their 'imagination'. So Fallout 3 was boss. Fallout 4 vastly less so. And FO76, narratively, an utter joke. The movies were spicy grind-house tales, and this made them 'adult' and fun. All Beth knows today is how to dilute and make things 'vanilla' for the 'mainstream'. The faux clickbait 'controversy' of wolf 2 is not good adult world-building - it is actually just 'childish' 'shocks' for a very vanilla market. The first rebooted wolf was infinitely better. Now there's nothing 'grindhouse' or classic pulp SF (that you haven't already seen as nauseum in previous Fallout games) in Beth's latest Fallout. And this speaks to the hopeless future of the IP at Beth. I remember loving these movies at the time because they had something about them. The same reason Fallout 3 was such an astonishing experience. But these films rarely had sequels. The original 'planet of the apes' movie cycle could have been given the fallout game treatment. Actually, given the ability to now render half-decent fur, I'm suprised no-one has done this. You'd get soemthing like a cross between Skyrim (the ape lands) and Fallout (the old remnants of earth). Ah- a person can dream. It always amazes me that given how trivial Beth open world games are to replicate, and how poor the beth games really are against what they could be with even a little pro-effort, that Beth is left alone to make games in this billion dollar (profit per title) sub-genre. RDR2, Witcher 3 etc are really in a different gaming sub-genre. Beth could have spent a FRACTION of what RDR2 cost, and less than half the dev time to have made a single player successor to either Skyrim or Fallout this Xmas, with a good chance to match the sales of RDR2, and easily beat COD and Battlefield, but instead... Maybe someone else will rediscover the genre films of the period, and understand that Beth has no legal stranglehold on any part of post apocalypse story telling. Take inspiration or even buy the rights to one of these movies, and give us some much needed competition. But I rate the chance of this happening at zero. For some inexplicable reason, when those that could do open world games well choose to do so, they want fixed protaganists and baked in hard coded narratives that ensure all players have much the same experience. Worlds we'll love to enjoy once, then move on to the next game. But living worlds where the player makes their own story like Fallout (before the latest) and Skyrim, sadly its either Beth or no-one, and with Beth's new direction now its no-one . Well at least many of us have these old films to discover or rediscover. PS do they allow external links here? Let's say not. So go to Wikipedia and search 'List_of_apocalyptic_films'. For 'history' or 'politics' subjects, never touch Wikipedia with a barge pole. But for pop culture, it's mostly "wow". Ah "Damnation Alley"- that's the one I was trying to remember. And "I am Legend" was entitled "last man on Earth" in it's first incarnation. What did we do before the net?