LuciaofArroyo

hey guys, Just checking in to say that I've been verrrry busy lately and haven't had a lot of time to spend on here; I just haven't had the time to really do anything at all with it in the last week. I will return in a while and get back to work on the NPCs and dialogue... so don't think I just got bored and wandered away ;) although this mod is getting really big now, are we making a Legion version suddenly? :o Um.. anyway, I'll be back soon!

I'd rather spare the tedious business of having the player become quested to clean up Nipton when the player hasn't likely been there since the beginning of the game.. I think it's better to introduce Nipton out of the blue, and have the clean up already having happened. It seems more realistic that settles would have appeared on their own, rather than it being a deliberate rebuild venture by NCR (they've got their hands full already) or another faction. There are still building opportunities that the player can dictate later on after all. Gecko pelts and hide armor would definately be an option... maybe have some extra hunting miniquests where one of the Trapper NPCs becomes a temp companion, and goes off huntin' deathclaws :devil: I don't really mind either way, I do prefer the flag though.. or they could be left with the mark 1 cop face maybe.. What roles will the securitrons have in the NCR version? Actually that trooper face gives me an idea... I can't remember where this came from, but there must have been an old TV show were the soul or brain of a soldier gets uploaded into a robot... that securitron face reminded me of that. Weird stuff and an interesting storyline idea... lol That's totally got my vote ;) I had no idea there was already a mod for Marcus, that's pretty cool. I'm being mindful about characters who are already heavily involved in other mods, like Sunny. If there's no need to include them, then they shouldn't be interfered with. And that goes for the massive World of Pain mod; when we get into detail on the mapping we're going to have to watch out for making locations which clash with locations from that mod. That's easily doable. After House gets cut off from the network, or dies, and the Securitrons don't turn hostile it suggests that there's some kind of backup program which keeps them performing their preordained patrol duties. But technically speaking, you would think they wouldn't function at all. I predict painstaking quests involving the Followers of the Apocalypse and Fantastic as they try to figure out how to crack the securitrons and make them part of the NCR forces properly, instead of leaving them as police robots for the central Strip. http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/691109-an-independent-new-vegas-mod/page-77&do=findComment&comment=8709601

here, let me introduce you to the world of DIY in-game building and bedding; http://newvegas.nexusmods.com/mods/46195/? It's not the same as the bedroll textures, but you can spawn a mattress and campfire..

Just running this concept by everyone, I think the guy who first suggested it should get the last word, but here's my take on (all versions, house/NCR/independent) Nipton; The player is approached by a kid who delivers a letter from a group of former Legion slaves who are looking to settle in the ruins of Nipton, and they want the approval of the player, since the player's all important and influential now. This starts a quest to go to Nipton and meet with Isaac, the leader of the settlers. He explains their situation, telling the player that his small group just want to settle down, and they can make a living off of the local animals (the two trappers will take it in turn to patrol the surrounding area, one by day and one by night) and trade the hides for what they need- but Isaac wants the player to agree to them being there, thinking that this'll scare off any organized raiders and keep the NCR away from the town. The player can negotiate with Isaac for a reward, and after agreeing to help them Isaac reveals the location of a Legion stash buried near Cottonwood Cove. After agreeing to let them stay, the kid appears and says that a gang of salvagers have come to raid the town. The player can go and speak with them and either convince them to go away, kill them, or agree to let them have the town after being promised a share of the spoils from what they can find in the town (at which point they wait for 12 hours ((until the player has wandered away)) and then teleport into the town, and the settles all vanish), OR the player can negotiate with them and the settlers so that they can both share the town. The last option works out best, since the player can now trade with both of the settler Trappers for coyote and dog pelts and trade with the Salvagers for junk workbench parts. If the settlers are allowed to stay (after Isaac has been agreed with, and remains alive), then Nipton spawns a few more tents and wasteland "tribal village" stuff after 24 hours. And of course, if the settler option is chosen, then the player can talk to Isaac later and build stuff for the town (a New Vegas Militia Outpost? :wink: ), or ask the trappers to hunt certain animals- dogs, coyotes, geckos etc. to determine the pelts they have for sale. But uhh.. yeah, that's it :smile: Any thoughts? Anyway, back to business! I'm not ruling it out, I'm just thinking it'd be difficult. But if you can figure out how to make it run smoothly with all the companion variables then sure I'll go with it; the Christine and Veronica story you laid out was pretty cool after all :wink: You mentioned you wanted to do a storyline with Ghost ages ago, what would that involve? Ah that sucks :sad: There's no rush on this stuff.. we've got a long way to go yet so take it easy :wink: That's exactly right, most of them do voices for a bunch of different characters (and some of them don't bother to change their voice on any of them) so we can cut and paste audio from all of them, if we have to. Also, idk if anybody had anything in mind for Marcus, but Michael Dorn also does a huge amount of voicework for Marcus in Fallout 2, so that right there's another cut and paste source for audio, if anyone's interested in doing some super mutant stuff. Gah... see how great Marcus was back then? This is why people liked Fallout 2. The new voice actors not even bothering to change the tone of their voice on General Oliver, for example, is one of the sad things about New Vegas that new fans probably don't realize lol

I'm inclined to leave the companions alone, there's waaaay too much that players will have done with their companions for us to know exactly what will or won't work with the specific companions. Or having them become integral parts of new quests only to find that player number 6,002 managed to get all of them killed during gameplay, and so player number 6,002 can't complete one of our quests because of it. For some of the minor companions though like Rex and Lily, we can work with them a lot easier than Veronica or Boone or Raul, or Cass. That's just my opinion though... I predict a lot of trouble with them. Although I love the idea of Cass setting herself up with a little bar somewhere in Vegas, we could just build that and stick her there for the fun of it lol I thought she might be a problem so I've written her out of the early stages of the NCR Version; explaining away her absence as overseeing admin stuff back in NCR territory. She's been replaced by a brand new character, a Mr. Major Henrys from a Recon division who'll be a little easier to find a voice for. She'll come back and be involved in quests of course, but I'm hesitant to give her a lot of dialogue unless we've got somebody who can emulate her voice properly, unless, as I think we're going to have to do, we leave a lot of the audio empty. Or rather I mean, we leave the audio empty and we can fill it up in an update later on down the line if we do find a voice for her, that's what I mean to say :) That's my working solution for it, I'm sure as this gains momentum we'll have a few more volunteers here and there. You think this mod is ambitious? Devin wants to remake New Vegas into Van Buren!! Hey, I'm in this project just to see those Fallout 2 Gun Turrets brought to life, and all that beautiful sandcrete architecture ;) This mod isn't really that difficult to do, we've got plotpoints, we've got a talented writer (hello), and we've got a very talented scripter and modeler. The only thing we're lacking is enough people to physically build worldspaces in the game, but other than that, which is a minor issue, we're not trying to do anything that can't be done. I think this might belong in that thread... http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/691109-an-independent-new-vegas-mod/page-74&do=findComment&comment=8679612 ...to keep track of what's happening at which location and in which version.

ok, i'll be helpful lol So far we've got: Hoover Dam 1) All Versions - Van Buren inspired town on the exterior in all versions - little boat there for exploration missions, trade missions with crimson caravan, a hell of a lot of new merchants and mini quests 2) NCR Version - Hoover Dam Office Sections become an NCR HQ, NCR missions into Arizona and down the Colorado River, NCR Troops have a larger presence on the exterior/town of the Dam, NCR sandcrete terrain buildings and Fallout 2 Gun Turrets 3) House Version - Office Sections largely empty :( Securitrons have a presence on the exterior/town of the Dam 4) Independent Version - (up to the player; can mix and match the above) extra trade missions - player can convince the locals to support a New Vegas militia outpost for trade purposes Nipton (hearing suggestions) 1) All Versions - clean up the town and put out the fires, put some settlers there 2) Independent Version - player can rebuild the town Mojave Outpost 1) All Versions - mega rebuild with the Sandcrete building set and Fallout 2 Gun Turrets 2) NCR Version - many more missions here (that goes without saying) Black Mountain 1) All Versions - reopen the facility for the players faction of choice Crimson Caravan HQ 1) All Versions - rebuilt as a small NCR Fort 2) NCR Version - many more missions here New Vegas City 1) House Version - gradual high tech rebuild as all Houses missions (as yet undiscussed) progress 2) NCR Version - larger NCR presence, minor resculpting of Vegas and Freeside with NCR flags etc 3) Independent Version - totally up to the player; able to build new businesses and conduct trade missions etc

Nice job on the voice acting, welcome aboard! There's a lot of dialogue still being written so it'll be a while before we've got any real scripts to be voiced. Hang in there ;) Wait, wait, wait! What about Sloan, Primm, McCarren, Novac and all of the city New Vegas? And Nellis! And Helios! And the Fiends!

The office section would be a pretty good place to make a new official NCR headquarters/ military base to overlook Arizona, I don't know about the House version though... maybe another securitron vault? It's hard to imagine what House would really do with the Dam when he's gotten his hands on it, other than do the same thing as NCR; mildly tolerate a civilian/worker population which they all have to tolerate otherwise there would be nobody to work the machines. Actually maybe this is a good middle ground for Hoover Dam; in House/Independent/NCR there'll be a settlement on the exterior of the Dam, so the town will be there, and then the office section inside of the Dam is changed to reflect either House/Independent/NCR. The NCR version would have more content at this location since they're all about pushing into Arizona, and House would have relatively little content, and the Independent version would well.. be a mixture of the two, depending on the players choices. http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Sacred_head_of_the_Vault_Dweller http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Crashed_whale http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Tin_Man Could be a nice expansion for the Wild Wasteland trait ;) I mean, if the chances of encountering these were like 5% or something small with each fast travel then it'd be great; a good way to give the player little reward items. Thinking about it, this would have been easy as hell for the game makers to have put into F3 or Vegas..

I was just talking about an NPC i completely made up and posted as part of the line up for the NPCs at the Bazaar :) That's not a bad idea... i mean, having Nipton reemerge at a proper town. There's some good ideas in that thread too, it might not be a stretch to have the player do something to rebuild the place as an NCR or an Independent township. Although it's kind of out of the way, and everybody's pretty much dead to the east of Nipton, and the main trade routes from Hoover to Vegas to the Mojave Outpost don't go anywhere near it but... I mean, if it's just a cleaning up of the town (how long have those fires been burning? lol) and adding a few settlers there that you're wanting, then that's easy enough to do. We've got something like that going on here; the working concept is that General Oliver and his Troopers are pushed back from the Dam and Oliver takes it upon himself to continue the fight, despite NCR wanting to end the war entirely.

Just a model, we can travel with it using the fade-to-black sequence. I didn't mean to imply that we should restore those locations, rather that a good little plot point for missions would involve using the boat model to zap the player to brand new remote areas -caves, islands, little places or wherever- for the sake of missions. But these locations would be isolated like the Legion camp, only accessible from the boat. Actually this is probably the easiest way in the world to make linear (linear as in older videogames which aren't completely wide open for exploration) quest areas; the player is told they're going to an island, but the area cell consists of a cliff face, the boat, and an entrance to a cave- the water is blocked by invisible walls. If you know what I mean. This method would work for vertibirds too, now that I think about it. This could be used for exploring old world rural villages, or a science station, those of kind things. I figure for NCR this is a great way to give the impression that they're expanding their territory without having to construct vast new open areas. Yeah it's a nice thing to include, really simple to do too. It doesn't really make much of a difference to the exterior, except that without the ability to enlarge the interior of the buildings by giving the impression that they extend inside the Dam, then we're limited on building space again. It's not a big deal though, we can expand the buildings onto the top side of the Dam and put people where they need to be. So... what were you planning to do with the Office section of the Dam? It's used for NCR troops in the vanilla, but there's a ton of space that isn't being used for much of anything. Oh, just the idea the different versions of the same NPCs might sometimes deliberately appear in different versions of the Ending; one lowlife NCR soldier with a minor role who's pushing Jet in the NCR Ending ends up being one of Olivers elite troops with a bigger role in the Independent Ending, it reflect on the poor judgment of Oliver, that kind of thing. Different conversations and different roles for the same NPCs, if you get what I'm saying :wink: Any luck finding that TES program btw?

Hey, if you want a challenge, Devin, see if you put together an NCR Patrol Boat ;)

That's what I was saying; the NCR version has more troops and key quest-related NCR NPCs, and the Independent version doesn't- it has a few NCR troops as part of a trade treaty, but none of the same key NPCs, a whole different batch of key quest related NPCs. eg. remember that drug dealing trooper with a minor role in the NCR version who becomes one of Olivers trusted men in the Independent/House version? That kinda thing ;) Since Hoover Dam was an NCR town in Van Buren, and since it makes sense that the Dam will become a landmark for trade routes and will need civilian workers for the machines, then there's going to be a bustling settlement going there in any scenario- except Legion who I understand don't even want the Dam as a power source. I was saying that if we're going to have this settlement at Hoover Dam, and put the effort into it, then we should get as much use out of it as possible. I'd go with this option. But I do agree, on second thoughts, that the lower power plant areas shouldn't be "teeming with civilians" (not that i really intended that), and that they should be limited to the immediate office section inside the Dam. Armed NCR Troops at the entrances become securitrons in the House/Independent, you know, it'd be easier to implement i guess. Legion? What Legion? When they're defeated at Hoover Dam, and the best of the men are dead, what more can they do? There's some bugged dialogue from Cassandra where *after the battle* she explains that the Legion have totally scattered. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvPnc5UZ_D8 Those were my thoughts exactly. We've agreed that Mr House wouldn't want a community at Hoover Dam at all, since it takes away a lot of the tourists and trade from New Vegas itself. Gosh, Mr House was my Ending Of Choice, I feel like I shouldn't be a part of this anymore lol Ok so, "Hoover Dam + the town" only appears in the Independent and NCR versions, i think that's what we're all agreement on, right? It's no big deal if people do want to include it in the House version because, as far as the work I've done with NPCs goes, the House version hasn't even been started yet, and obviously I'd been in favor of including it, to some extent. We can have "fade to black" sequences to give the impression that the player has taken a train ride, if that's something necessary for quests. Actually it crossed my mind that there could be a little harbor at the bottom of Hoover Dam to fast travel the player, and a boat, to the abandoned Cottonwood Cove or new cell areas like -forgot the name of it- the nuked Legion camp. Maybe NCR is exploring the lake and finds new areas, and send the player to investigate them..?

It's not such a big deal. Areas that are deemed "military access" can be sealed off with prison cage walls, and locked doors watched over by NCR Troops, with only Engineers beyond them. If keeping the citizens out of there is a problem when the doors are unlocked, then it's possible to keep the doors locked, and talk to an NCR guard through the bars; "Hi, can I go through here?" "Sure you can!" *fade to black + player is transported through the door + sound effect of door closing* "Wow, I'm on the other side!" I can't see any inconsistencies with having Hoover Dam in both NCR and Independent versions, the only difference in the NCR version would be much less NCR troops around -a more minimal NCR approach; the Hoover Dam citizens would still seem to be tasked with light maintenance duties, and going about their business no different to if troops were hanging around beside them. In both versions the same citizen dialogue could even be used; one citizen is complaining about the NCR Troops, and in one version there are many of them, and in the other version there are only a handful. It's not a glaring inconsistency, that's my point.. unless I'm overlooking something? I may be..? :o

Ah but we're using this in both the Independent and NCR Endings; so in the Independent, the room is just an office for NCR to watch over the trade routes, and in the NCR version, the player can be assigned to that office -promoted by Cassandra- but the player will still have other locations to have a real home. That's somewhat true, you're in the right direction, but a lot of the quest and story points are things we haven't really gotten into in terms of specifics, so I get where you're coming from, because I don't know what's going on with absolutely everything either lol. The basic ideas is that, aside from the basic office (featuring in both mods), the player will be able to buy a house (or business, a building anyway) either topside or at the bottom of the Dam, and in addition there's the Van Buren Lab- so two main Player Houses at Hoover Dam, plus the NCR Office. So far me and Devin are on the same page with all of this stuff, I'm making the NPCs and writing dialogue used in the quests, and I guess I've kinda taken it on myself to draw up an *idea* of how Hoover Dam should be- I'm not ever going to say "you absolutely have to do this", that's why I'm just giving rough ideas of what should go where and leaving the little details down to artistic lisence and the imagination of builders. It just has to be that way so that quests, NPCs and the dialogue fits in with the town. ok, i exaggerated :) If it's possible to do that to extend the areas of the Dam, then sounds good.. I'd want to leave the Visitor Center as an NCR post in both versions though. The idea is that the main areas inside of the Dam; the Offices and the Power Plant areas are becoming part of the inhabited town area -divided up with junk walls to make little houses and shops and so on-, a bit like this; http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120221223842/fallout/images/b/bc/Fo2_PMV_Valdez_Interior.jpg Actually it's probably easier to extend the Dam just by adding doorways leading into new cells.

I tried using the KDS portable "stuff" mod to give you an idea of what I had in mind, but that took too long lol here (see attachment) try that kind of layout. We don't need the ammo crates and work areas inside of the office, since the whole building is an NCR base and they'd have their own area for the stuff. This should be first and foremost an office, it doesn't so much extra stuff in there, you're right, it's too small for that. Maybe stick a refrigerator where the Nuka Lamp is in the corner too- and a chair behind the desk and all that stuff. I mean, this is Brigadier General Cassandra Moores (and the players) executive office.. not a frathouse :)

Nah.. it's just a pretty picture of Legion troops for a stall selling Legion helmets pulled off of dead Legion troops. Nothing pro-Legion about that ;)

http://newvegas.nexusmods.com/images/4717656-1375285726.pnghttp://newvegas.nexusmods.com/images/4717656-1375285726.png http://newvegas.nexusmods.com/Images/53494/? They're huge, but resize them until they're as small as they need to be lol These are 80% transparent, so they'll blend in with wherever they're placed. Think of them like grafiti to be thrown up onto a big sheet of scrap metal; that's what I'm going for. Devin, can you "nif" these into GECK placeables? :D

I can think of a few things especially with teh deathclaws, going off of their variant forms from BOS (larger, more muscular, exoskeleton, chameleon abilities regained etc). The idea is that the bioweapons were exposed to additional FEV, radiation etc by vault tec personal, but the same could have happened in the lab we're discussing here, via happenstance. Speaking of Lab content... http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Environmental_Protection_Agency http://falloutmods.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout_2_Restoration_Project_guide_-_New_areas Something like Mr. Chemmie! would be useful to include to manufacture rad-away and rad-x, and unlockable injections that boost skills and stats, that stuff's always a win. I think it's better to say that they were somewhat low budget for their time, which still makes them massively high tech for the Wasteland. There was, in Fallout 1 and 2, Vault 15(?) next to the Shady Sands/NCR town which Tandi wanted access to just to carve it up for useful bits of technology to benefit the town; water purifiers and computer equipment, databases with maps and schematics, that kind of stuff. http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Vault_15 NCR isn't capable of creating power armor or pristine plasma cannons like the Enclave were/are, so they're limited to what they can salvage from the high tech facilities in terms of weapons and equipment. It's presumed that NCR has gotten first dibs on a lot of high tech facilities, army bases and Vaults included, but their engineering and construction capabilities would be described as Jury Rigging at best; like the salvaged power armor. So, if NCR gains access to a Vault or somewhere like The Sink, for example, they'd go in there and strip it and bring back what they can carry. I look at it like Dark Age europe after Rome, the Colosseum was still standing, but it was chipped away at very sloppily for hundreds of years by salvage teams to get the marble to sell it on or build palaces for themselves.

It has the cool Vault City gun turrets that blend in so nicely with sandcrete that that's main reason I'd want to use it, however, other than that single bit of furniture, it's a really nice looking (and very clean) high tech building set that could be used for the Lab areas of Hoover Dam. There was some discussion about the player accessing Van Burens secret lab to give the player a high tech facility /player home all of their own, and that's not a bad idea at all. http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Hoover_Dam_Sub-Level_1C If you look at the textures of the Meo Vault, it's not specifically labeled anywhere as a Vault if you know what i mean; there wouldn't be any doors appearing underneath Hoover Dam that are labeled Vault 101 or anything.. that'd really blow the atmosphere if there were lol A brothel made out of sheets of scrap metal at the base of a Dam isn't very erotic either :) If you can make it look good without making it look so good that it looks out of place, then that'd be cool, that's what I was worried about- that it wouldn't fit in very well. But i mean, if it's an older brass statue, maybe a few scorch marks here and there, then I guess it'd work. I'll keep that in mind when I make the NPCs for the bar, and label them "strolling" or "sitting" or w/e, if there's a way to ensure that a few NPCs remain permanently sat down around a table, as if they're talking to each other, then that'd look pretty good too. I don't think it'd be something to create in nifskope, but Gunslinger, make use of the paper maps that the NCR have at their outposts and have them on the walls, that'd be a nice addition... hmmm... that's all I can think of right now. I definitely like the idea having the Ranger pistols mounted too.

Well, regardless of what we want to do with it, that character would be the source for any/all custom robot upgrades. Specific ones like Marylin could be equipped with an extra layer of armor, or have more efficient targeting abilities, that kind of thing. I'm cautious about doing anything to the main bulk of the securitrons as well... we'll see how it goes, i guess! Did you have any character profile or looks in mind for the Robotist? I'm leaning towards japanese myself...

ohh just had a flash of inspiration! The robotist character... aside from being responsible for the new robots floating around... there can be a quest involving the player taking Marylin to him, or taking him some Securitron schematics and from there he can make upgrades and additions to the securitrons; adding an extra layer of armor, that kind of thing. Like a robot body shop tailor made to the securitrons.

These are great. I take it it'll be no problem to put the Dustys Desires and the bazaar signs (when i get to doing them) into the game lol I'll try and get some of those done either this evening or tomorrow so it's ready to be used. Thank you, thank you. I was thinking the main entrance sign for Dustys would be painted onto "chunk of scrap metal" and hoisted above or beside wherever the door may be, I was wondering how that looks and whether I need to improve on the textures of signs. I can do that, but I didn't know whether it would be necessary or not. If it looks cool when it's put into the game, then it's fine as it is. I also started on a few other signs of the same style and font to be placed inside of the bar, just to use as decoration on the walls really. How about the Mojave Outpost texture.. the two rangers shaking hands? To have in gold would look a little out of place, but if it's scrap metal then it'll blend in perfectly... then it's just a matter of positioning lights to make it stand out... it could be a centerpiece in the middle of the bar or behind the bar, or mounted on the wall... geez, i don't know. I'll think of something good when we get to looking at the bar properly. btw do let me know when you've got a way to merge .esp files together, I'll send you the updated NPC Resource when you have, and -idk if you read it- but to get sandcrete and the meo vault interior building sets working properly we're probably going to have to merge them too, maybe make them into an .esm? You know more about that than I do so... over to you.

a little sign for the whorehouse... (see attachment)

Yeah, Cassandra in the Indy version, but also hers in the beginning of the NCR version- the player can be assigned her post, so to speak, at the Dam in the full NCR version. But either way, it functions as an NCR post to oversee trade between NCR and Arizona, or to oversee NCR expansion into Arizona.

As long as they're Sierra Madre beds and ovens :smile: That's exactly right, in the NCR version it can be Cassandras Office Suite, with bookcases and nice decorations, a small bed and wardrobe fenced off by a Sierra Madre hotel room vanity screen... you know I'm not so hot on the idea of making a standard player home with all the mod cons... it should be more focused on it being an office, with sleeping quarters as a second thought. It can certainly have a hot plate and refrigerator space, giving the impression of being a drinks cabinet or a small home bar inside of it. It's the HQ of the NCR after all, it should be a command center primarily, but a command center where it's possible to catch a few hours of shut-eye is possible. There are other places in Hoover Dam where, hopefully anyway, we'll have it so that the player can actually buy a building for themselves where it'd be more grand.