Completely open world

[candyhater]

If someone integrated the interiors of buildings into the wasteland so that all doors would open regularly into the inside of a building instead of going to a loading screen and then teleport you to the inside, it would make the game a lot more enjoyable to me. With my limited knowledge of modding, this could be accomplished by going to an interior in the editor, copying everything, and then pasting it into its spot on the wasteland. The two linked doors of the inside and outside would then be replaced with a door that actually opens, and the navmeshes would be linked. I understand that some interiors are either too big or too small for their exterior models, but I think that this can be fixed by either adjusting the layouts of interiors or the size of the exteriors. Could an experienced modder please advise me on this project?

[TGBlank]

You'd reduce the time spent on a loading screen, but you'd increase the time it'd take to load a cell on the outside:

You change cells, and instead of spending 3 seconds loading the raiders and the building, you spend 30 loading 2 buildings with raiders inside and the raiders outside.

Add complex scenarios with more enemies loading, meaning more ai's to be processed, making the game bog down incredibly. The game itself marks certain scenes as "complex" to reduce AI processing, that is, it uses dumbed down cheating ai that ignores line of sight.

So you could make it, and bog down everything, or add complex to every area, and render sneaking useless, and still bog down everything (tho less).

 

It also means more guns and armors and objects loading, which increases the amount of stuff loaded in ram. Given fallout's crappy memory handling, you'll end up with ram overflow by simply entering an area with more than one building. Those random crashes most players experience that come out of nowhere when walking around? that's the vanilla game choking with memory.

 

There's also the ai, while the ai can play nice and tidy when it's contained in an isolated area, mix it all and you get disaster.

 

 

in short, not a good idea.

[343guiltymc]

The game would become utterly unplayable on mid and low range hardware.

[TGBlank]

On high end too. Fallout isn't known for good memory handling.

[Beyonder]

You'd reduce the time spent on a loading screen, but you'd increase the time it'd take to load a cell on the outside:

You change cells, and instead of spending 3 seconds loading the raiders and the building, you spend 30 loading 2 buildings with raiders inside and the raiders outside.

Add complex scenarios with more enemies loading, meaning more ai's to be processed, making the game bog down incredibly. The game itself marks certain scenes as "complex" to reduce AI processing, that is, it uses dumbed down cheating ai that ignores line of sight.

So you could make it, and bog down everything, or add complex to every area, and render sneaking useless, and still bog down everything (tho less).

 

It also means more guns and armors and objects loading, which increases the amount of stuff loaded in ram. Given fallout's crappy memory handling, you'll end up with ram overflow by simply entering an area with more than one building. Those random crashes most players experience that come out of nowhere when walking around? that's the vanilla game choking with memory.

 

There's also the ai, while the ai can play nice and tidy when it's contained in an isolated area, mix it all and you get disaster.

 

 

in short, not a good idea.

 

Actually there is a mod like that for Oblivion(but not for the imperial city), which both at maxed settings with 4aa runs worse than Fallout 3 for, didn't make much difference and was pretty good actually, problem was that a lot of mods didn't affect it because its a different cell than the open town(they affected the town you need a loading screen to get into but not the actual open town).

[TGBlank]

Oblivion's one was different, and fairly less troublesome than what you suggest.

 

First of all, they where already labeled and made as exterior cells, second, the inhabitants inside wheren't for combat; third, each where single uncomplex level, please go and compare the amount of clutter and trash decals placed in any random fallout building with a city in ob; fourth, the homes and establishments remained separate. Fifth, navmeshes are done very differently in fo than in ob, this difference makes them much much more efficient in separate places than in a single big one; sixth, dungeons and caves where untouched, because the ai of the foes inside would become seriously messed up otherwise.

 

Also, I dont know if your memory is failing, but it was rather heavy on cheidinhal, and it was pretty much unplayable with the better cities version.

 

 

Before you suggest a partial one. The only 2 places as separate exterior cells are megaton and paradise falls. Taking into account that 99% of the time you'll arrive those places via fast travel (and still get a loading screen, now longer because you need to load the exterior as well), and that the later is pretty much a dead town, and the former haves absolutely no point of interest in the vecinity (only 1 "dungeon", next closest poi is graydich, and the next, in distance, is robco, which is already pretty damn far)... it's not a good idea.

 

 

In ob it had some minimal sense, because the cities where far more influential and interesting, and there where actually things to do in the outskirts. Let's face it, the biggest city in fallout is as interesting as a random inn on the road of oblivion.