Perryman [WIP]

[Leadpipe]

Had some computer problems recently, and I'm only just back up and running. As such, I haven't made as much progress as I would have liked, but I'll try to placate anyone following this with some screenshots.

 

The one with the mannequins is a problem. I've got almost a dozen lights coming from those floodlights, but I just can't get it bright enough. I'm trying to achieve a blinding or silhouette effect there, but the way the lights seem to work is that if you look into them, they dim. Or perhaps it's that this engine doesn't treat light as emitting from a source so much as an area effect that reflects off of objects, if that makes any sense. In any case, if anyone has any ideas about how to correct this to achieve more what I'm trying, let me know.

[Warll]

I don't think the Fallout 3 engine does godrays.

[Leadpipe]

Just about done with this metro interior. Going to make a couple of adjustments tonight and finish optimizing. At last! I won't have to look at the inside of a metro station again! (At least until I get around to AI packages and dialogue, but I'll hold off on that until I've got the rest of the framework in place).

 

For today, I've got a picture of a character I'm calling Boo. He's a tribal-turned-slave-turned-freeman and he's fond of the shovel.

[SaintJames420]

if you have the pit why don't you use the red brick tunnels that they had? keeps the "metro" feel with a differnt look.

[Leadpipe]

That's a good suggestion, I only wish you'd have brought that up earlier. I read that on Saturday and spent a good deal of time trying that out. It would seem that I'm too far into this one to really make that worth the effort. I'd essentially have to start from scratch as the tilesets are almost nothing alike, there's just some really creative uses of catwalks to make the levels look and feel similar. While I'm not opposed to the notion of variety in scenery, it's not a main objective in building this.

 

I'll bear those in mind for the future, though, as there's other stuff from the Pitt that I'd like to borrow.

 

With monkeying around with that and seriously screwing up multibounds (somehow - I kept getting CTDs when I'd try to enter that cell) I didn't get very far this weekend, but I'm looking forward to finishing up optimization tonight and getting to creating a worldspace tomorrow.

 

I don't have any pictures today, sorry about that.

[Sti3ld3rby69]

Congrats in general to this entire mod. It looks absolutely astounding from what I can tell. If you want any help writing I'd be more than willing to help, starting this coming Monday (got my only vacation of the summer coming up). Haven't started school yet and my work hours got cut, so I have plenty of free time. The plot you've got going seems like it can play itself out to the Brotherhood expanding upon the results of what happens with Perryman, especially if you make the outcome favor the guilty aspect of your "trial", or whatever it is that is being achieved. Also gives me some faith in learning to use the GECK once I get my computer running again, as it seems you've been learning how to mess with it with at least some relative ease. All in all, this is a great project and I hope you can get as much involvement as possible.

 

In regards to lighting:

 

I don't know how it works in the GECK or Fallout system, but couldn't you just bake lighting/specularity into the textures for the mannequins? I saw what you were trying to achieve and how it failed, someone said Godray effect, which is incorrect, plus I believe the game does allow use for them. Actually...why not try to emit a white godray from the lights you have setup behind the mannequins? Wouldn't this create blurry vision/blindness, and possibly enough light to create a near-silouhette appearance on the dolls? Don't know how that works in practice, but it seems better than just adding more lights that make it look like one object is more affected by the rest, in dramatic measure.

 

My apologies if this is slightly convoluted, it is 3 in the morning and I can not get off of this damn site for some reason.

[Leadpipe]

Let's take this bit by bit

 

Congrats in general to this entire mod. It looks absolutely astounding from what I can tell.

 

Thank you, but don't get too excited yet. It's still mostly just ideas, intentions, and a few scribbles in a notepad. If the rest of this goes like the first part, it will likely not look anything like I started out with.

 

If you want any help writing I'd be more than willing to help,

 

I appreciate it, and though I don't mean to brush off your offer, I'm not sure at this stage what help I could accept. I don't want to get too involved in the story and dialogue until I've got the geography in place (as there seems to be a push/pull relationship between NPCs and their environment). At this stage, I don't know how long that's going to be, and I wouldn't want to ask for your help, just to string you along.

 

The plot you've got going seems like it can play itself out to the Brotherhood expanding upon the results of what happens with Perryman, especially if you make the outcome favor the guilty aspect of your "trial", or whatever it is that is being achieved.

 

Without trying to give anything away, that is something I considered. My take on the Brotherhood of Steel is largely informed by their presentation in Fallout: Tactics, which is a relationship I didn't see a whole lot of in FO3.

 

Also gives me some faith in learning to use the GECK once I get my computer running again, as it seems you've been learning how to mess with it with at least some relative ease. All in all, this is a great project and I hope you can get as much involvement as possible.

 

It's not so bad. The GECK was clearly never developed for commercial release, and if it wasn't free, I probably wouldn't have bought it. That is not to say that it's not a powerful tool, it's just a bit rough around the edges. There are loads of tutorials for the GECK specifically and many from The Elder Scrolls tools that also apply (though there are differences). It takes a bit of a cavalier attitude and the willingness to learn from hard knocks, or so I have found. I've probably had to break everything I created twice before I got it right, so patience is important as well. Lastly, I'll echo some advice that I willfully ignored: for your first foray into modding, start small. Doing what I'm doing is not advised.

 

The lighting thing is something I'll have to play with as I move along. All of the beam effects objects seem to be on a timer and will be brighten and dim throughout the day. I believe they were intended for sunbeams, or at least the ones I've been able to find.

 

After some screwing about and needing to lay down the navmesh again, I've finally moved on to attempting the worldspace. I'm not entirely sure what I'm doing there as many of the tutorials I've found aren't necessarily descriptive (seeming to subscribe to the "use the word in its definition" school of instruction). When I last left my computer, it was generating the LOD Meshes (a notion I've only got a tenuous grip on) which could take days, I'm told. Though I shouldn't expect as much, my computer is no slouch, after all.

 

In any case, it looks like I'm going to need two worldspaces for this one: one for outside the city and one for inside. With any luck, the first one will force me to get real good by the time I reach the second.

[Sti3ld3rby69]

At this stage, I don't know how long that's going to be, and I wouldn't want to ask for your help, just to string you along.

 

No problem. I've just really enjoyed this game, logged in over 100 hours, and can't get enough...but want to add so much to the world. If I ever can help, I'd love to be first in line.

 

 

 

Without trying to give anything away, that is something I considered. My take on the Brotherhood of Steel is largely informed by their presentation in Fallout: Tactics, which is a relationship I didn't see a whole lot of in FO3.

 

Very nice. Yeah you can go a number of different ways. Only other Fallout game I played was the PS2 one, which wasn't that great. Just looked up Tactics though, seems like an interesting concept and I could see how you could play off the characteristics of the Brotherhood in that vein.

 

 

In any case, it looks like I'm going to need two worldspaces for this one: one for outside the city and one for inside. With any luck, the first one will force me to get real good by the time I reach the second.

 

Yeah it doesn't seem terrible. I've been reading some tutorials even without it functional...little more difficult without the source in front of you but I can understand the adjustments needed to enable someone to work with it. What's the timeframe you're looking for in terms of completion?

[Leadpipe]

Wow! Worldspaces are another animal altogether! Well, that's overstating it a bit, but it takes a lot of time to generate landscape and so days may go by before you realize that you've placed everything under water and that the lighthouse in the distance doesn't make any sense for your purposes...

 

So, basically that's what happened to me this week. I haven't made a lot of obvious process as it seems to take three days for me to generate a worldspace of the size I'm shooting for.

 

It's kind of a bummer, because Mothership Zeta dropped this week and I haven't had a chance to get at it.

 

Slowly but surely, we're moving forward, though. Once I've got the world worldspace in place, the rest appears to be relatively simple - or, at least similar to interior cells.

 

If you're reading this, and have any experience screwing around with exterior cells and/or worldspaces, please let me know about what sorts of pitfalls I should keep an eye out for.

[Callighan]

I suggest using TESAnwynn to make a worldspace.

 

The water level is buggy. The safe thing to set the water level at 10500 and any ground higher.

If you haven't read this worldspace tutorial, it's really helpful.

 

You may want to trick the player's sense of space by placing invisble walls in the right areas. That way, you won't need to detail the worldspace too much.