BlackCompany

I hope this is the right place to post this. If not, my apologies. I had a couple of questions, and days on the Wiki have offered no answers. So, can a quest script: -Alter the Timescale in game, and then change it back again? -Repeatedly stop and start other quests using the Start/Stopquest commands? -Cast effects on the player using CIOS (Cast Immediate on Self?) That's really about it. Common sense tells me quest scripts should be able to do these things. Some testing, however, tells me I might be wrong. Any clarification would help immensely. Also, if anyone is aware of "if conditions" which quest scripts simply refuse to recognize I would appreciate a heads-up on this. Most especially: ismoving, and if conditions based on time of day are helpful in the extreme. Thanks everyone.

For those wondering, I am hard at work re-writing mods from the ground floor. This is partly due to technical difficulties and partly to the new patch and my desire to make sure I incorporate all the new leveled list changes - and there are a few. My target release date is New Years Eve, and my hope-for-but-not-likely-to-make-it date is Christmas Eve. What's new this time round? The Wasteland is no longer your friend: -Reduced Loot: 50% less ammo loot, 75% fewer caps and prewar money. no guaranteed Stimpaks outside of Vendors, and Stims are now worth at least 75 caps each (before you add in the Barter Town mod, and you should.) -Nuorishment from food is reduced. Your Survival skill will need to increase in order for you to make the most of the meals you eat while adventuring. -Needs become needs. Which means combat, daytime heat, and health levels will affect needs for sleep, food and water. I WILL make this happen, and I will do it without NVSE if possible. -NPC's will now be able to use Armor Piercing capabilities. Many NPC's have learned the value of Armor Piercing rounds. Now they intend to put them to good use. I have found a way to simulate AP rounds with NPC's, without their having to use and carry loads of Ammo for you to loot. This method is completely transparent to you and you will never notice it - until the bullets (or the lasers, or the plasma) start flying. When you find your armor totally negated, pray you have a Stimpak handy. -NPC's will fight smarter than ever. They will use cover, look for it more often, stay behind it longer and step out to fire only briefly. -No more Nerfed creatures. The latest patch nerfed some of them enough. I will not change it - but I won't reduce them further either. -Locational damage and explosions will matter. Getting hit by explosives will likely kill you in short order. Taking head shots (or giving them) will result in more damage than shooting at the chest. -Cripple effects will slow you, and they will hurt. Also, radiation will be more of an issue, and Radiation suits will protect you 100% - so long as you keep the suit completely undamaged, that is. Good luck. -Laser and Plasma Rifles will be able to switch over to EMP Rifle mode at any workbench - provided you have "discovered" the trick to doing so. Raising your Science skill lets you see this new recipe, and raising your Energy Weapons skill lets you perform it. Better yet, so long as you have the parts, you can continually switch back and forth between the two weapon types. NO changes made to vanilla weapons in order to make this happen, of course. Perfect for another run at HELIOS. These are just some of the many changes I am (successfully, for the most part) testing right now. So far, so good. I will also be re-introducing some perks, AND NEW TRAITS. These will be balanced traits intended for Character Creation. Perks will be real, positive perks. As always, ALL leveled lists will be unlocked at level 1, with the exception of Weapon Mods. I plan to remain compatible with WME going forward, as I use it myself. So, no more weapon changes in my mods! Hope you're looking forward to it. My goal is to make this the most challenging overhaul available for New Vegas, and to do so with fewer version releases than in the past. I want this to be perfect, or as near as can be. If it isn't let me know and I will find a way to improve it if it can be done. Thanks for tuning in.

I do in point of fact know. Those mods were all pulled not long ago for technical reasons. At first I intended to re-post them. Then I began having major problems in my game. Likely this was due to having created all of my mods prior to this recent patch. I am currently re-creating ALL of my mods, from scratch, with the newest major patch installed. I will be posting the Perks mod, probably with a description of the new perks in place from the get-go (that is the goal) along with a host of other files. The target date is New Years Eve; the Hope-for date is Christmas. Get ready for a truly deadly Wasteland Experience this time round. I promise.

I fail to understand the mentality that claims each sequel or new release in a franchise needs an entirely new game engine in order to feel "new." FONV does feel like very large DLC content for Fallout 3. But the graphics and engine are not the reason why. The problems arise from other, more important problems, such as: -The 50's/Atomic Age "lore" is growing both stale and old. Drop it. Near to 300 years after the bombs, I think a new "culture" would have arisen to replace this. A tougher, less idealistic culture at that. -The lack of a wasteland. Bethesda, for a wonder, actually got this right. This is supposed to be post-apocalyptic. New Vegas was like Oblivion in a desert, with guns. No "Wasteland" feel at all. Totally dropped the ball here. -Lack of challenge: HardCore mode? Really? Food and water were all over the place. As were guns and ammo. Industry and normal life were to readily apparent in this game. How about we relocate to a true wasteland, and drop this "Read Dead Fallout" thing? -Dated graphics and a buggy engine. I know I said that each new release in a franchise does not necessarily NEED a new game engine to feel new. On the other hand, when your engine is as bug-ridden as Gamebryo, and your physics are as poor as those on this engine, its time to move on. -No Shooter mechanics. So this game wants to use guns as weapons. Ok, how about crawling, rolling/dodging, firing from cover, sprinting and bullet time. Where are these realistic movements in this series? 4 Games in the series and we still cannot even sprint without mods, and firing from cover and dodging are still missing. As is the ability to wield offhand guns/weapons, gunslinger style. In my opinion fallout needs a reboot. Drop the 50's atomic age "lore". Move to a time almost directly following the bombs (50 years after, say.) Drop radio stations (all the space you save in the game by eliminating those audio files can then be used for something truly interesting.) Lacking the desire to reboot, at least move the game to an honest Wasteland. Keep hardcore mode and lets make the next game more about survival and less about ripping off SM Stirling plots. I'm surprised the guy hasn't sued.

Greetings all. As some few might notice over the course of the next few days, I have removed my mods from the Nexus. I was in no way forced or coerced into doing so. Rather I have chosen to move on from Fallout New Vegas, and from the Fallout Series entirely. In fact I am swearing off any games made using the Gambryo engine for the foreseeable future. I will finish the main quest for FONV by Christmas if not before (it cannot come soon enough.) I have had my fill of overpowered flying insects and mobs of Deathclaws. I have had my fill of even the baddest, toughest character pouring points into speech because all relevant checks use this one stat. I enjoy a game which offers plenty of open exploration - alas, New Vegas is not that game. I have a passion for post-apocalyptic settings. New Vegas dropped the ball entirely in this regard. Combine all of these things with the excessively bug-ridden nature of both the game, and the GECK tool set, and you have a recipe for frustration. Adding spawns to the game crashes it. Changing arbitrary info totally unrelated to quests breaks them anyway. Adding new NPC's to the game via an esp file causes crashes on both save and load. After working many, many hours in private on the giant let-down that was Oblivion, and then modding for FO3 despite its many bugs I have had my fill of both this world and the bugs which place so many limits upon it. Therefore I am completing the game in the very near future. After doing so I will be moving on from the world of Fallout. I will not miss it. One last note: I still think the franchise that is Fallout can be saved. A new game engine is a must. Rebooting the series to a period immediately following the war and instituting hardcore mode in a place where water and food are actually rare, would also go a long way toward drawing me back into future games. As for radio stations, either drop em or make them interesting. I never listened to them in New Vegas at all, and the audio is just taking up space in my game which could have been used on things that were actually interesting. So, enough of my rant. My thanks and apologies to fans of my mods. I enjoyed spending time with you. Perhaps TES 5 will be a far better game than either Oblivion or Fallout has proven to be to this point. If so, look for me then. Until that point, its simply time to move on. As my graduation from college looms, life no longer permits me time to turn on a game I would rather not play just to support mods. Thanks for your time and all of my best.

I wholeheartedly agree with the punished-for-exploring feel in this game. When you hand players an open world game, where the devs want you to go first shouldn't matter. A game is either open world or it isn't. Period. Exchanging invisible barriers (which are already far too common in this game) for those which walk and have health points is no excuse. Case in point, the firs thing I heard was "go south to Primm, then to Novac through Nipton." So of course, what do I do? I go north. And I get slaughtered. Didn't take long to figure that those Deathclaws, which hang out in the Waste yet never attack either Goodsprings or Sloan, were only present as a walking barrier between you and New Vegas. Pretty sad, really. Coupled with their annoying speed and gods-awful poison effects this is one major reason why I drastically nerfed Cazadore hit points and Deathclaw Perception in my overhaul. Its an open world game; the player should be able to take whatever route they please. As a modder I understand the complications arising from the possible permutations of where the player has and has not been in game at any given point. So test for em. Its one of the many things you're paid to do. On another note I have also noticed the distinct lack of reasons to explore. While I am no fan of purposeless dungeon raids (I actually despise them like I hate few things on earth) I am also no fan of a largely empty world where there exists nothing worthy of discovery. This, is such a world. "Dungeons" are brief, often pointless affairs; large areas of the waste remain devoid of life, including enemies, factions, or buildings (other boarded up 'cutouts' taking up space.) Simply put even when you do explore, some beefy walking barrier keeps you out of interesting places until so late in the game that you have no need to obtain the sort of loot said baddie is guarding in the first place. That, or you arrive at some large building to find it boarded up or useless. Lastly, some exploratory quests which did not lead you back to working for the NCR would have helped. In one game (a waste of 10 hours of my life) i TRIED NOT to get that damned radio. Still got it, somehow. Sad, really, that all roads seem to lead to the NCR in this game. Difficult to role play an explorer when you have ranking officers issuing you commands more often than not. This is why all of those "Join the Legion" mods for Oblivion were, imo, a total waste of time and effort (yes, I tested them.) Turn us loose and let us explore or make a linear action game with a tight story and tighter progression. Choose one, please. I'm not judging one over another. Just pick and stick.

Nice ideas so far. Personally, there are a few things I would like to see for the next Fallout game: -Return of Damage Threshold as opposed DR (yes, I am the one). With DT I feel like armor actually works, as opposed to just "catching" a percentage of my damage for me. -Return of Hardcore mode. Except this time, make the settings global variables and make the needs actually matter. And make the items like fresh water actually somewhat rare. I mean hardcore is optional, so why not make it hard core? -Return of item/ammo crafting. Lay off the alchemical ingredients. Picking flowers is NOT something that belongs in RPG's, despite industry opinions to the contrary. -Return of ironsights -dodging, diving, crawling, sprinting and additional support for melee characters (optional NPC's always use ammo mode?) The biggest change I would love to see, however, involves atmosphere. As great a game as NV Is, and it is, it nonetheless feels like Oblivion in a desert. The world is settled, civilized (by which I mean established governments exist, the world is a place of order for the most part.) For the next game lets return to a real, honest, hit-directly-by-a-bomb Wasteland. Get rid of all the industry (I mean really, a post-apocalyptic wasteland where people work 9 - 5 jobs for arms merchants? Seriously?) and lets go back to a DC-esque "Wasteland" environment. Make it stark, dark and foreboding, including the weather from time to time. Keep up the excellent work with choices, consequence and factions which matter; this is good stuff. Lets just change locales and maybe even introduce some new factions to the mix. A return to the Eastern seaboard would not be a bad idea. It got hit harder, loot would be rarer and the world more desperate.