FluidFire

OK Fallout Fans... here's a little trip down memory lane, in the form of a photo tour of Detroit. I decided to post this link up here, because of the haunting familiarity between some of these striking scenes in the gallery, and things I've seen in Fallout/FalloutNV. Detroit You have to hand it to the graphics designers behind Fallout, after looking at these images, you really do get a feeling they did their homework in the art department.

These forced-down-your-throat updates rather suck for us rural players with low-bandwidth. Why can't it be normal, publish an actual UPDATE file I can download at work and bring home on a USB drive? No, instead, I'm forced to bring my laptop in to work, run Steam, update the game, then bring my laptop home and copy the entire massive frigging directory over wifi to my gaming PC. Do you know what was wrong with normal published-on-DVD/download patch distribution method? Absolutely nothing. They've "fixed" something that wasn't broke in the first place, taken the concept of real ownership away. Consider this; I still own Zork, on a 5.25" floppy disk, for my ancient Commodore 64. If I *really* wanted to I could hook that bad boy up to a 1541 drive and an old television, and play the game. Because I own it. On media. I've had that game 25 years now. The developers are long gone, the media is no longer manufacturered, but I can still play it. I can also play X-COM, and every other PC game I've bought, if I choose to, if I fire up DOSBOX or a 486. :) But I can't play New Vegas right now because this damn update - a game I just purchased two months ago, because they decided I, as a player, was not responsible enough to actually own a physical copy of a game and download updates on my own. >>> Insert favored profanity here <<< Steam. I bought Mass Effect, Left for Dead, and Supreme Commander 2, and NEVER got to play them. Left for Dead I broke in half when I got the DVD home and found out all it had on it was Steam.exe. I'm capped at 600MB/day on Hughes, no chance of getting that downloaded. Supreme Commander 2 actually had an installer, but wanted to download 2+GB of updates the day I brought it home. Well, there goes that idea. I broke that disk in half also. Mass Effect I never got installed, as soon as I found out it was Steam, I gave to a coworker. Finally, with New Vegas, I was willing to stick my foot in the water simply because Fallout is my favorite series, ever. I'm really regretting it, in many ways. Sure, steam is "grrrreeeat" for people with sufficient bandwidth. But guess what? There's a large percentage of the world - even our wonderful, modern, high-tech America - who have the facilities for neither DSL, nor Cable, and who have to live with ridiculous bandwidth quotas with Satellite providers. Steam will be the end of PC games, one way or the other. </rant>

Man that's really weird. It's only happening on that ONE door. I did the same exact thing on other doors around the wasteland (replacing the static with the working door), and it saves & works just fine. The only odd thing about that particular door is that it's *directly* on the border between two wilderness cells. Don't know if that might be causing the weirdness, but whatever. Guess I'll need to find a new home for the NPC.

Also, it changes the Cell to an "Interior" when it's obviously not... this is happening in Boulder city if it matters. Trying to open up that boarded up shop on the corner across from the saloon, to place a new NPC.

OK .. minor edits to wasteland cells in Geck are causing Geck to crash when saving, and corruption of the mod. For example, removing the boards on a door, and replacing the door with the working door version, then saving are causing corruption. Any idea what I might be doing wrong? It's driving me nuts.

Vendors use containers that respawn. In Geck go to World Objects, Container, filter for "Gunrunner", and you'll find the VendorContainerGunrunnerHQ container that has the gunrunner's vendotron inventory. Filter by VendorContainer and you'll find the rest.

What I'm concerned with, is I typically use my normal data directory for everything - playing, modding, etc. I kept an original unaltered version in case I ever screw something up so bad, to avoid having to reinstall (good thing, I had to do this very thing last week). The third copy is used only when I go to test the installers of my mods. I swap out the "working" data directory I normally use for a clean one so I can see if I get all the textures, meshes, sounds, etc included in my release candidate build. But, if Steam updates the data files in my working data directory, I'd be swapping old ones in for my testing. Which may someday lead to a condition where I'm tearing my hair out over why in the heck something ain't working, or the game crashes, when it's just a version problem... So it doesn't really matter whether I'm using FOMOD or distributing an archive... the potential problem is in testing prior to the release. And whether I'm going to baffle steam or the FalloutNV exe by throwing an old (original) version of the data files in there for testing. Make any sense? Maybe there's a better way to do it, or maybe it is a non-issue and I won't ever run in to problems. Dunno.

From Bethesda's GECK FAQ: It is not presently possible to read which mods a weapon has equipped, by script or otherwise. Weapon Mods can be scripted. However, they do not run their OnDrop or OnEquip blocks when they are attached to a weapon. If the script contains OnAdd blocks, the game will crash when the mod is attached. In addition, attached Weapon Mods are effectively destroyed and merged into the weapon itself- they do not run their scripts, and cannot be detected using the GetEquipped function. Presently, through scripting, it is not possible to attach a mod to a weapon and not possible to remove it later. Mods are implemented by swapping the model, not by adding components to/revealing components from a single pre-specified model. This means that the number of models required increases exponentially; 2 models for 1 mod, 4 models for 2 mods, and 8 models for 3 mods. This reduces the former technique of hiding weapon subsections to change the weapon's appearance, and contributes to larger package sizes when distributing plugins. ^^ This is why weapons mods are HUGE compared to Fallout3. And, it's also why things like 20th century weapons (with add-on's) will take forever and a day to port over to Fallout. Mod authors have to make a separate model for every single attachment. Instead of just adding / hiding parts of a weapon dynamically... you've got to include models and textures for every single variation. For example, DreadWolf's Glock 18c and Glock 20 pack that I recently added to Reload requires *20* separate meshes. Each of those have to be aligned for iron sights, etc. It's a real nightmare, to be honest. Basically, the moment you attach a weapons mod to a weapon, it is destroyed, and the scripts attached to it are rendered useless because it no longer exists. In addition, the parts of the script you'd NEED to keep track of what mods have been attached to what weapon will CRASH the game if you try. My gut feeling is they didn't get this feature "finished" in time for production. Maybe we'll see an update later???

OK Quick question about how Steam applies updates. I run multiple "data" directories, as follows: Data < the one I mod in / use mods in / play in, unpacked Data_Orig < the "clean" vanilla install, still packed Data_Mod < test install, unpacked - I test my mod installations here to see if I missed anything When Steam updates, does it change files in the Data directory? I.e. if I get a Steam update, then rename data to data_current, and rename data_mod to data, will I have inadvertantly reverted myself to an old version of the game???

+1. Bonus points if you make it not require FOSE, I don't like not being able to play my game after an update until FOSE catches up. Extra bonus points if you do it and I can use it in my Reload realism mod, earn you a spot on the credits list....

It's just like Taco Bell in Demolition Man. Eventually there won't be anything except Steam. But, like in the movie.. not necessarily a good thing. Personally I *hate* steam. I live in the country, and have a craptastic Internet connection (Hughes satellite). This means when a patch comes out, I am done playing / modding until I have to drag my laptop to work with me the next day to update the game. If the update comes out Friday night, I'm screwed until Monday. This doesn't really go over that well sometimes, but I haven't got fired for leeching on company time/bandwidth ... yet. Then, when I get back home, I have to dump the directory on to my workstation (which takes a REALLY long flippin time since the data directory is 6+ gigabytes). Personally, steam is a pain in the #%##%, and I hate it, but whatever. Gotta live with it, or not play.

^^ Ditto. Three of the bunkers are caved in behind the door - you can see it yourself with 100 lockpick. You'll get nothing at all out of those intercoms. :)

Sounds like one of the body replacers you are using was made for FO3. Rename your meshes/character directory to meshes/character_temp and fire up the game to see if the problem corrects itself. That'll cause the game to use the packed BSA vanilla content again. If so.... you found your problem.

Haven't touched it since Nov 5th, Reload has been consuming all of my time. Did you want anything done to this mod still?

Bingo! Thanks for the heads up!