[Idea]Smaller Freeside

[laclongquan]

Cells has certain limit on the amount of NPCs can walking around (or playing idle). Big cells can have even lower number than small cells. Or like, look like it has lower density of walker.

Case in point? Watch how Freeside's NPC on the street, and how New Vegas Square's NPC walking around. From my impression, New Vegas Old Square is more active, more crowded than any cell of Freeside, save for three Strip cells.

So I was thinking, maybe we can design Smaller Freeside cells inside the big vanilla cells?

[JimboUK]

I don't think there is a limit and if there is it's very high, if sandboxing NPCs aren't doing much then they need to be given something to do in the form of idle markers or furniture, that or have their energy increased, I've added large numbers of sandboxing NPCs to areas along with idle markers and furniture and they're all working normally.

Westside.

Goodsprings.

A custom interior, they take a little while to wake up in this one for obvious reasons but they get there in the end and work properly.

 

Sandboxing NPCs seem to be like Followers as in you can have as many as you like but the more you add the worse performance gets. I did an experiment with 250 followers, they worked just fine until I crossed into another cell, the game froze for several seconds before carrying on but it didn't crash, again no limit only ever decreasing performance. 

[laclongquan]

Weird~ People keep saying cell have high limit of NPC. That's the disabled form, doesnt count. We are talking about active NPC out and about doing their routine here.

In my experience, 30 is the limit for interior cells. 40 for exterior cells is pushing it. Goodsprings are limit because it include many cells around, so the NPC and creatures spread around. It feel empty YET still can lag you when you walk out of Doc house.

When I say limit, I mean the game cant spawn them properly, let alone process their AI packages or behaviors.

MORE IMPORTANTLY, with exterior cells, the more spread out you make, the less density you feel from the limited amount of NPC you having them out and about.

Old Square only have limited acreage, so their NPC make for a pretty crowded feel. But Freeside is sprawling, so we feel it's too empty, too lifeless.

 

 

[JimboUK]

All of those NPCs are active and all are running packages, sandboxing ones in this case, and this is proof that follow and combat packages work as well. Yes areas do feel empty but that's not a game limitation, it's a limitation of the hardware the game had to run on, 7th gen consoles were comically weak, I think the answer to empty cells is more NPCs within reason and many mods do this, sadly many of these mods don't give the NPCs much to do so they stand around.

[madmongo]

That 250 follower demonstration only works because they have identical models and textures. You will easily run the game out of memory if you try that with 250 unique followers.

I played around with some limits a while back on my PC. I found that around 7 or 8 followers was the max that worked well. Any more than that, and some of them would fail to go through doors or fail to teleport. It's easily fixed if you have a mod that can warp all of your companions to you, but it's still kinda annoying to have to count up your followers and see if anyone is missing every time you go through a door.

If you have more than 7 or 8 or so followers you also tend to run into traffic jams in narrow interiors. They'll do fine as long as you only travel in one direction, but if you need to reverse and go the other way they'll all end up bunched up and won't let you through (again, there are mods that can help with that).

If you're just running around outdoors though, you can have a lot more followers. I think the most I tried was around 15 to 20 or so. They were all unique, no identical textures. I didn't run into any issues at all until I went through a door.

For NPCs, a lot depends on how many lights are in the cell. I added a bunch of lights to a casino interior so that you could turn lights on and off and the game's performance went right into the dumpster with only about 15 or so NPCs.

You will also hit limits sooner if you are using high resolution textures. This causes slow loading when you go from cell to cell. The NPCs will load a lot faster if you are using lower resolution textures and set your graphics options down to lower quality. It's the old FNV dance that modders have to do. Either you can have a fancy looking game with great graphics and poor stability and all kinds of memory issues, or you can have a much poorer quality visual experience but have great stability and few memory issues.

Make sure you have the 4 GB patch and set your texture quality lower and you can have a lot more NPCs running around freeside without seeing a significant performance hit.

There aren't that many sandboxing NPCs is freeside. You've got thugs that attack, Kings that patrol, kids chasing rats, and criers that stand on the corner and do their best to be as annoying as possible. But not many sandboxers. If you want to make freeside more lively, add NPCs and add furniture markers so that they'll actually do something. The lack of freeside sandboxers in the vanilla game is due to limits on consoles. A modern PC can handle a lot more than that.

[laclongquan]

  On 5/2/2025 at 3:01 AM, madmongo said:

If you're just running around outdoors though, you can have a lot more followers. I think the most I tried was around 15 to 20 or so. They were all unique, no identical textures. I didn't run into any issues at all until I went through a door.

For NPCs, a lot depends on how many lights are in the cell. I added a bunch of lights to a casino interior so that you could turn lights on and off and the game's performance went right into the dumpster with only about 15 or so NPCs.

Expand  

Madmongo is right about all that~ The example that can prove both of these points are in Rivet City Market. the original F3 design is pretty close to NPC limit for an interior cell.

So when we play in Tale of Two Wasteland platform, and use mods to add in new unique NPC (vendors) and add more lights (like barrel of fire), damn thing run pretty close to a slug. You can try it with a TTW session, install mod TTW Rivet City Merchants Plus. That sucker add some more vendors and other static assets to that cell.

The NPC in that cell is mostly unique, the generics are Rivet City Guard. 

[JimboUK]

  On 5/2/2025 at 3:01 AM, madmongo said:

That 250 follower demonstration only works because they have identical models and textures. You will easily run the game out of memory if you try that with 250 unique followers.

I played around with some limits a while back on my PC. I found that around 7 or 8 followers was the max that worked well. Any more than that, and some of them would fail to go through doors or fail to teleport. It's easily fixed if you have a mod that can warp all of your companions to you, but it's still kinda annoying to have to count up your followers and see if anyone is missing every time you go through a door.

If you have more than 7 or 8 or so followers you also tend to run into traffic jams in narrow interiors. They'll do fine as long as you only travel in one direction, but if you need to reverse and go the other way they'll all end up bunched up and won't let you through (again, there are mods that can help with that).

If you're just running around outdoors though, you can have a lot more followers. I think the most I tried was around 15 to 20 or so. They were all unique, no identical textures. I didn't run into any issues at all until I went through a door.

For NPCs, a lot depends on how many lights are in the cell. I added a bunch of lights to a casino interior so that you could turn lights on and off and the game's performance went right into the dumpster with only about 15 or so NPCs.

You will also hit limits sooner if you are using high resolution textures. This causes slow loading when you go from cell to cell. The NPCs will load a lot faster if you are using lower resolution textures and set your graphics options down to lower quality. It's the old FNV dance that modders have to do. Either you can have a fancy looking game with great graphics and poor stability and all kinds of memory issues, or you can have a much poorer quality visual experience but have great stability and few memory issues.

Make sure you have the 4 GB patch and set your texture quality lower and you can have a lot more NPCs running around freeside without seeing a significant performance hit.

There aren't that many sandboxing NPCs is freeside. You've got thugs that attack, Kings that patrol, kids chasing rats, and criers that stand on the corner and do their best to be as annoying as possible. But not many sandboxers. If you want to make freeside more lively, add NPCs and add furniture markers so that they'll actually do something. The lack of freeside sandboxers in the vanilla game is due to limits on consoles. A modern PC can handle a lot more than that.

Expand  

I linked to that to prove that there is no actual limit to the number of NPCs you can have in a cell as suggested by the OP, and using clones was deliberately done to get around memory constraints, I mentioned it in the comments.  

[madmongo]

I think the OP was referring to a practical limit when you have different unique characters running different packages, not any sort of hard coded limit.

But you definitely did prove that there is no hard-coded limit to the number of NPCs in a cell, or if there is it is a very high number. Honestly, even though there is some stuttering going on, it ran a lot better than I expected it to. I would have expected the game engine to completely bog down after about 30 or 40 followers. I would have expected 250 followers to completely kill it. It's definitely an interesting result.