Fallout 3 DIY

[IgusK]

After spending quite a while in the game, a sense of irritation started bubbling inside me. After a while, I managed to understand what was bothering me - and it was no less than total absence of logic behind crafting and repair system in the game. There are many mods that tackle the subject, some better, some worse, but frankly most of them are somewhat disappointing. Fixing a minigun in midst of heavy incoming fire by magically fusing it with another minigun, or applying some scrap metal over it - Ew. EEEWWWW!!! Besides, there's something awfully wrong with the idea of mint-condition hi-tech weaponry just lying around some 200 years after the Apocalypse. Last time I saw a 40-year old weapon NOT being sealed in controlled environment, it was a rusty piece of what was once metal. Not to mention that regular ammunition rarely retains proper quality for longer than 5-10 years, even when stored properly and not under radioactive rain.

 

I thought about it long and hard, and came up with the basic principles of what I consider to be a substantial contribution to the gameplay immersion - the non-existing-yet D.I.Y. mod.

 

The basic concept is this:

1) Ranged weapons are hard to come by. Good-quality ranged weapons are rarity. Hi-tech weapons (lasers and plasma) are almost as rare as uniques. I realize this may turn the beginning of the game into a hack-and-slasher, but maybe it's for the best - I mean, who's using the unarmed and melee skills? Maybe this will put some weight on those too.

2) Nothing can be repaired in mid-combat. The very idea is quite absurd.

3) Nothing can be repaired without tools and materials. Fusing rifles together may produce a blob of metal, but NOT a better rifle.

4) Materials can either be crafted from (appropriate) junk or extracted from dismantled equipment (for example, there's no reason one couldn't use metal plating from an old pistol to patch a hole in metal armor, and there's definitely no reason not to be able to make the said metal plating from scrap metal if you have the means).

5) Weapons do not degrade as fast as in vanilla (with the exception of knives perhaps, they do get dull rather fast).

6) Weapons can be upgraded and modified.

 

 

Having outlined that, I proceeded to learn how to make the mod itself, and got very lost and confused. Having vast experience in programming, the mod structure concept and logic eluded me completely, and still does. All I managed is to create more junk items to fix the equipment with, but that's about as far as I could get. Creating schematics, scripting the workbench to dismantle things, creating additional "workbenches" such as metal smelter or metal casting machine (whatever the proper name is) - that's way beyond my skills and understanding.

 

That's why I'm here, wiring this post in hope of finding someone willing to share the skill (I learn fast under supervision :biggrin: ) and creativity to materialize this idea.

[jaysus]

1.

remove the rilfes and so on from the levelled lists you dont want them in and also those npcs that carry them in their inventory

 

repair n crafting

youll need to make a workbench like script with extremely large menus which contain many pages... to give you an idea: a rifle with 4 addon possibilities has about 500 lines of script... now think about it and imagine how many youll need to include all ingame items and all possible combinations of them

once done you could attach it to a hammer or a wrench... or the workbench and make the hammer and wrench dependencies to create said item (or fix em) - or use FOSE to be able to use form lists for that which might reduce the amount of lines by needed 20-70% but brings in new problems

 

5.

just increase the health of items or change the degradation global

[IgusK]

1.

remove the rilfes and so on from the levelled lists you dont want them in and also those npcs that carry them in their inventory

 

repair n crafting

youll need to make a workbench like script with extremely large menus which contain many pages... to give you an idea: a rifle with 4 addon possibilities has about 500 lines of script... now think about it and imagine how many youll need to include all ingame items and all possible combinations of them

once done you could attach it to a hammer or a wrench... or the workbench and make the hammer and wrench dependencies to create said item (or fix em) - or use FOSE to be able to use form lists for that which might reduce the amount of lines by needed 20-70% but brings in new problems

 

5.

just increase the health of items or change the degradation global

 

:)

If I knew how to do even half of what you wrote (the other half I simply didn't understand :) ) I would be posting on the mod downloads and not mod requests...

 

Now I never said it was a 10-minutes-in-making task, I do realize it's a s***load of tedious writing and I'm more than willing to do it, but I simply don't know how to. The modding tutorials I've read so far proved to be as effective as BB gun against a concrete wall... got a thick skull on this one, sorta speak.

 

I do, however, learn fast under live guidance.

[jaysus]

http://geck.bethsoft.com/index.php/Main_Page

 

might help abit

[ManOfGah]

for the weapon upgrades, you might want to check out Weapon Mod Kits on the fallout 3 nexus. Even if you want to change some things, you could always use it as a base.

[necKros]

You are pointing some interesting things. But things where people usually differ. For example, I find that the repair system is correctly implemented. Complexity is not always quality, and it often breaks the fun factor. I melt two rifles because is a synthesized way to say that I've broke them down to pieces and took the best of each one. It's like stimpacks. If the game was realist I'd have more holes than skin.

 

I don't know... Fallout 3 is not a reality simulator. And probably it has more unrealism than the average game because of the 50s retrofuturism factor, which not only has an effect on the aesthetics, but in the world mechanics aswell. Many other things in the game are not correct or directly ridiculous from a scientific point of view, but that's the point.

 

NOW, since we are in mod land, note that the previous is just my opinion over the game, and I'm not saying this is not a good idea.

[IgusK]

You are pointing some interesting things. But things where people usually differ. For example, I find that the repair system is correctly implemented. Complexity is not always quality, and it often breaks the fun factor. I melt two rifles because is a synthesized way to say that I've broke them down to pieces and took the best of each one. It's like stimpacks. If the game was realist I'd have more holes than skin.

 

I don't know... Fallout 3 is not a reality simulator. And probably it has more unrealism than the average game because of the 50s retrofuturism factor, which not only has an effect on the aesthetics, but in the world mechanics aswell. Many other things in the game are not correct or directly ridiculous from a scientific point of view, but that's the point.

 

NOW, since we are in mod land, note that the previous is just my opinion over the game, and I'm not saying this is not a good idea.

 

:thanks:

I have to agree on the issue of "instant anywhere-anytime-I-want" repair that you pointed out here, disabling it will have a negative impact on the gameplay.

 

However, the idea of rifle-fusion :biggrin: still boils my blood. I'll have to think of an elegant way to do this.

[necKros]

And that's pretty much the only hard thing about your ideas, the other ones could be easily done modding the leveled lists.