Need Advice for this idea All TVs POWER

[M00NC0BBLER]

So I've had this idea since first playing the game. Basically I want to make all the television outside of the settlements to have power or just be switched to on. So that when I'm going through the dark interiors of places they'll be lite by their ghostly glow. I even want to give them shadow lights but the shadow lights will have to wait. Because this has been tricky to get to work as I am a very beginner at any of this.

 

I've tried basically turning them into generators. I did this by giving them the Actor Values and Editor ID of the generators. But all this did was make it to where the TVs stayed off and only generated power when I picked them up and move them when play testing. I've looked through both Actor Values and Editor ID and don't know what else could be used to get this to work. But beyond this I haven't been able to find tutorials that would help with this.

 

Just a little advice for direction would be nice.

[ChuckYufarley]

How much experience do you have with Nifskope? With the right amount of tweaking in Nifskope, a duplicate television could be made to display a test pattern or "video clip" in a loop, giving it an "always on" look. You could then implement it in the CK as a simple static object. With additional kit bashing using light beam meshes from other NIFs, or adding a BSValueNode, they could be made to cast an eerie glow that would increase the creep factor of particularly spooky cells. Taking it a step further, you could implement custom "video clip" textures using your favorite horror scenes, if that's the vibe you're shooting for.

 

Another idea is to set up trigger boxes within the TV's cell that would toggle the animation. That would make for a nice jump scare, again, if that's what you're shooting for. That would require a different configuration of the NIFs animation sequences, eliminating the loop and restoring the on/off function. You would then implement this version in the CK as an activator. You could test this method using vanilla televisions, but with the exception of the pre-war player home version, I'm pretty sure all the rest just display the test pattern when activated. However, once you got it working, you could always insert any custom television NIFs you're created.

 

One more idea would be to add a script to the television that would toggle the animation on load/unload. No jump scare, but it should turn on when it loads into a cell, off when it unloads.

Edited June 17, 2023 by ChuckYufarley

[M00NC0BBLER]

Thank you for the reply I will be looking into all of that now. Also I am a total novice when it comes to any of this.

 

In addition, my goals are just for the ambience and wanting it to not be to big so that it could be ported to xbox. But I imagine I would eventually come back and try something like a jump scare or tv shows. I'm also currently learning about scrips so that I could have it turn off during the day or be on when the player is in interiors.

Edited June 17, 2023 by M00NC0BBLER

[ChuckYufarley]

I took your idea and ran with it a little bit, just out of curiosity. I wanted to see if I could make the jump scare version I mentioned. It uses a trigger box to activate the TV animation.

 

 

I don't know if I'll end up using it for anything or not. If you're interested, I can share the assets with you for use in your project. I can also help walk you through getting it to do what you want it to.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[M00NC0BBLER]

Oh my god please. I've been trying to get this to work for so long.

 

Also looks great!

[M00NC0BBLER]

Honestly I give you full permission to make this into a mod to share. I don't have the skills or the time for all the projects I want to do.

 

I only ask you make it to cover most or all of the televisions in the game.

 

That there is a shadow and none shadow version.

 

if you want to you could add the *BEEEEEEP sound. But I think it should be very, very subtle.

 

More then anything. I want it for the ambience that it would bring my dark game.

 

I hope to share it with the xbox community as well.

 

I've had this idea for such a long time and still have no luck in putting it together. In my head I've always imagined that their being powered by some kind of Institute tech that we can't see or it could be from their teleportation tech.

 

Please give me a little credit. I hope I'm not sounding rude to a very talented individual, I'm just really excited to see this.

[ChuckYufarley]

First of all, thank you for the compliments. You are definitely NOT sounding rude. You have a good idea for bringing a bit more life to the world and for me it felt good to get the old hamster wheel spinning again.

 

Here's the deal. I find a lot of my ideas are starting to lean towards potential Starfield content and I've kind of lost my FO4 mojo. I still have a back log of models and animations I've been working on and sooner or later I need to get them bundled up and published in order to wrap up my FO4 projects. At most, I thought I'd sprinkle a few of the jump scare TVs around inside one of my current or soon to be released mods, and not devote an entire project to replacing all the televisions in game. I did that once with my original vending machine mod and replacing objects in the CK, in large numbers, can be time consuming. My idea for the jump scare versions is to NOT include that info in the mod description and let people find them organically. More of a surprise that way, if they're quietly packed into a settlement workshop mod than if I came out and said "Here's a mod with spooky TVs."

 

However, my offer still stands to help walk you through with your intended goal for the televisions. I can provide you with all the assets and I'd be happy to make them just to your liking. Also, if you have any ideas for potential "video clips" I can do all the texture work for those as well. You might be wondering why I refer to them as "video clips". It's because the televisions don't actually display normal video footage, but rather they implement a contact sheet style texture file, with all the video frames arranged in an array. For the most part the video animation works like a flip book, with each frame displayed for a split second. Kind of archaic considering there's much older games that just use actual video files.

 

One caveat involves replacing all the vanilla televisions in the game. I don't know how many there actually are, probably not as many as there are Nuka, cigarette and milk vending machines, but my guess is there are still quite a few. Using the CK to find and replace object is simple enough, but the issue lies in removing/replacing vanilla objects that are part of a cell's precombined geometry. In order to improve game performance, vanilla objects are essentially combined into one huge asset that the game can display more easily. Removing/replacing/modifying even one item that's part of a precombine breaks the entire thing, thus making the game display every object as a single, unique asset. However, in this case I do have some ideas for work arounds.

 

If this is something you want to pursue, let me know and we can come up with a game plan.

[M00NC0BBLER]

Hey yah. Growing up I always thought about what it would be like to make my own game and what I could do with it. Just always thought of the possibilities. Since getting into all this it's definitely lite the fire again. And while I can't wait to see what you and the community do with Starfield. It'll have to wait for me because of how much I love stuff like the Jetsons and atompunk in general.

 

Message me and we'll talk about how to go about this. But just so you know I'm pretty busy with lots of things as well. So communication will probably be a bit slow.