Return to Shady Sands

[BadPenney]

not a fan of the obama poster... that would be like putting a george bush poster or a clinton poster... immersion breaking.

 

How about we change it to a picture of the 2277-era president, John Henry Eden? President of America, president... of your heart.

 

http://www.fallout3nexus.com/imageshare/images/1103832-1244229255.jpg

 

Hail to the Chief.

[Zeperoth]

Hey, your mod looks really epic. I can't wait to play it. Do you have a rough idea of when you'll be releasing it? No rush ofcourse.

[BadPenney]

Do you have a rough idea of when you'll be releasing it?

I keep saying "this month".

 

For the most part, the mod is done. I've spent a great deal of time on the physical setting of my version of East Coast Shady Sands to make it feel like a unique place, but one that still fits within the FO3 universe. I also wanted it to seem like a place where life goes on without the player, and not just an empty setting that the player passes through. So NPCs all have different routines, family arrangements and spoken dialogue (mostly done now, about 97%) and interact in unique ways with the player and with each other.

 

Sometimes all the NPCs seem to drop their AI Packages at the same time, and I'm trying to sort that out along with the rest of the debugging that is necessary. I've tried to keep my version of Fallout 3 as clean as possible while modding, so I'm not running other mods and haven't patched it for some time. That may also be part of the problem, so before I'm finished I want to download the recommended patches and fake patches that people use and see if that helps the overall stability of the mod. Sometimes it is difficult to tell which problems are caused by my own programming and which are caused by Bethesda's.

 

Right now I am doing lots of clean up of the remnants of scripts and quests and objects that were dead ends. I also made the mistake of unpacking NIFs for retextured items and linking to them like you used to have to do for Oblivion. I've had to cull those out and replace them with textureset modified vanilla NIFs, except for the few NIFs that really are unique to minimize the memory size of the final mod.

 

And I am still fleshing out the town. Spent 3 hours today stocking shelves in the Shady Sands Country Store so that it looks like a real store. Things like that can be very time consuming, and not quite as much fun as other parts of modding. Many of the finishing touches are little unrelated segments that I am trying not to overlook.

 

There are 3 main quests that are inspired, but not identical to, quests from Fallout 1. There are also 2 optional mini-quests that don't show up on your PipBoy and could be missed by the player, but will give payoffs if completed. Since I don't want people to jet through, finish the quests and leave; there are a number of easter eggs and sight gags mostly that refer to earlier Fallout games. For instance, in one interior cell that doesn't play a large role in the mod, you can find a Cat's Paw magazine.

 

The way that the player will experience the mod will differ depending on the gender of your character, especially in the final main quest. Let's just say that raiders have more on their minds than robbing and killing.

 

Also, the final quest gives the player the option to be good guy or bad guy. I'm thinking that going the evil route should ultimately cause the destruction of Shady Sands and I would like to have a follow up bink movie to go along with that option. Trouble is, although I have edited videos before, I've never made binks. So I will need to download the software to do that and get started. That may push out the release a bit, but I think that it would be a nice finishing touch for the evil route.

 

If the player is a hero and saves the day, then Shady Sands will survive and the player will be welcome to return. I'm already thinking of a follow up .esp that will give the player a chance to be a caravan guard from Shady Sands to other destinations, but that won't be in this first version. Too time consuming I think.

 

I still need to learn to use FO3edit so that I can make an .esm with this mod and hopefully make it able to withstand Bethesda's patches. I've never made a mod to work with FOMM either, so that is part of my learning curve.

 

So I can't say for certain when I will be able to upload. When it is ready, I want to make sure that it is a complete package, nice and stable, and a good solid platform for follow up quests.

[Zeperoth]

wow, what an answer. Thank you very much for the quick and elaborate reply. It sounds like your doing an extremely thorough job, and should definitely keep up the good work. I have one more question for you though, where do you plan on placing shady sands within the game world? Or will you be creating your own world and use GTS? Thanks Again.

[BadPenney]

... where do you plan on placing shady sands within the game world?

I picked a spot just a little south of Oasis that had nothing in it but rocks and scrub a monorail track and a highway overpass. There is now a broken, paved road leading north from the Montgomery County Reservoir which leads to the key locked front gate of Shady Sands. The player will be met and questioned at the gate by a guard to gain entry. I've tried to make that the only way into town. In the event that some persistent soul finds another way in, he will soon find himself a Shady Sands Faction enemy. The town is well fortified.

 

Montgomery County Reservoir is now occupied by the Khan Raider gang and additional interior cells have been added to it. The Khans are led by Gizmo in my version. He doesn't need to depend on bully boys to protect himself anymore.

 

http://www.fallout3nexus.com/imageshare/images/1103832-1244322338.jpg

[BadPenney]

 

The unhappy ending bink for evil players.

[BadPenney]

 

Happy ending bink for good karma players who save the day.

[Rockatanskiy]

All I can say is wow... This is coming along quite nicely! Most modders show updates with some pictures, but you've taken it further and shown us some awesome vids (the bad karma one was the best, imo). A video is worth a thousand pictures after all (or maybe it's worth 30 pics per second...)

 

Oh, and the Eden poster is simply legendary.

[BadPenney]

Oh, and the Eden poster is simply legendary.

I'm glad you like it. I wouldn't have made it without your input, and I like it too.

 

I like the unhappy ending best myself. It's harder to make an action-packed happy ending, though I'm fond of the brahmin tipping scene.

 

Someone else recommended adding a Caravan Guard quest like the original Fallout, so I'm working on a repeatable Caravan quest. Already have a new caravan with a female drover named Raven and a trade circuit from Canterbury Commons > Republic of Dave > Shady Sands > Paradise Falls > Bigtown and back to CC. It will take between 3 to 4 game days to complete the whole circuit. Some might find that tedious and have no patience for it, but I like the open ended quality of the idea. Thinking of splitting it into 2 half circuits with a barter skill bonus for completing the whole run. Now I need to do some more voice editing for Raven and Max.

 

That and some unexplained glitches are holding back release. While following the trade circuit, I found the Shady Sands kids running down the road near Old Olney and they aren't supposed to get more than 3000 ticks from the center of town. Either I'm inadvertently adding glitches or FO3 has some kind of voodoo programming. Maybe both.

[Rockatanskiy]

Someone else recommended adding a Caravan Guard quest like the original Fallout, so I'm working on a repeatable Caravan quest.

 

By that do you mean we get to serve as caravan guards? That's a cool idea, and something similar has been done called the Road Wardens, so check that out if you get stuck or something.