[WipZ] Back to the Future - Companion friendly Daggerhead Base

[MikeHancho64]

INTRODUCTION & PURPOSE

 

One of the first player home mods I found for Fallout 3 was cdagger's "Built for the Future" base. (http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=5217) I fell in love with it immediately and have used "Daggerhead" in some form or fashion in numerous playthrough's ever since. My guess would be that anyone who even just went inside and looked around (even if they didn't even actually "use" the base) would agree that cdagger did an INCREDIBLE job on this mod. His (or her?) creativity and taste are exceptional in my opinion. But with that being said, and as much as I love and use the place, there were a few features that I always longed for while I used the base. This project will hopefully add some of those features to cdaggers mod as well as a few others I might not even have thought of yet!

 

So, this mod will have 2 purposes:

 

1 - Provide a learning experience for yours truly and give me a little experience in modding with the GECK. This is my first attempt at anything like this. I guess the closest to this would be some custom golf courses I made with Tiger Woods '06 Course Architect but that didn't have nearly the stuff in it that this does.

 

2 - As I mentioned above, I want to add some features to this mod that I have always longed for when using it. If you use the base and would like to see something added, make any suggestions or offer feedback please by all means do so. However, please understand that I am basically doing this by "the seat of my pants" as I am having to struggle through the learning process as I go along. (see above, lol)I will try to keep a log on here of what I have done and why. Also, I will surely be asking for help in figuring out how to do things I want to be able to do, so I will try and keep those questions in this thread.

 

This project really began in earnest with a tweak to the base that I didn't even do. A person at the Bethesda Mods forum named "ravege" graciously helped me by adding the ability to bring followers/companions into and out of the base. Once I was able to bring my posse in with me and park them in the bar, I began to feel that as beautiful as the place is, it really felt sort of lifeless with so few people in it. Well, I also tried out "Sharing and Caring Companions"

(http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=2399) as well as "RR Companions Vault" (http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=3644) which adds several recruitable NPC's into the Fallout 3 world. So my first playthrough with my "follower friendly" version of Daggerhead I loaded up with 6 or 8 companions from the other mods as well as the Vanilla followers of Jericho, Clover (who is always my love slave, lol) Charon, Butch & Star Cross. Combine all those people with the 7 NPC's that cdagger created for the mod and and music playing everywhere via my newly added radio's now the place seemed much more ALIVE! So, I decided to try and see if I could actually figure out how to do some changes to the mod. So, instead of recruiting so many people to bring into the base, I decided to just create them for myself so they would always be there.

 

 

NEW AND TWEAKED FEATURES

 

Some of the features I have already added or will be adding (and why!) are as follows:

 

ADDED NPC's:

 

Doctors - Bones & Jim are both also medial supplies dealers and can heal your radiation and restore your health for a fee.

 

Engineering - Mechanics Scotty, Walter & MaryAnn can repair your gear and will sell you junk items for home made weapons.

 

Armory - Gunny Hikaru can repair your gear and has a nice assortment of weapons & ammo. He is an older Asian guy.

 

Security - Security Chiefs Tasha & Lee patrol the base on a routine schedule. I have not as of yet added in other functions for them. They also help the others out in each area they patrol.

 

Bartenders - Sunny who is one of the 3 twins Bunny, Honey & Sunny tends bar.

 

All of the new NPC's work rotating shifts with the 7 NPC's cdagger made for the base. Each will sleep for 8 hours, work for 10 hours and guzzle Whiskey in the bar until they have to stagger to bed to sleep it off! I have not yet done so, but I am tossing around the idea of adding in a lunch break at the bar for them as well just to create the illusion of more activity in the base.

 

I also set the work shifts up so that each station (Engineering, Science/Medical & the Armory) always have someone tending it nearly 24/7. Some NPC's work day shifts and others at night, so someone is either in the bar, sleeping or working at all times. It really adds a LOT of life to the place!

 

 

MAKEOVERS TO EXISTING NPC'S

 

Bartenders are now triplets: Bunny, Sunny & Honey. I added Sunny but cloned her from her sisters. They are all identical except for different hair color. My reasoning behind that decision is as follows: I did makeovers on the faces of all of the NPC's in the base except for the bar girls. I wanted to pay homage to cdagger in a small way, so I left the original NPC's named "Sergeants Honey & Bunny" intact, but removed their "Sergeant" rank. It just made more sense to have bartenders who would just be bartenders and not double as military types, so they are now just simply Bunny & Honey. Well, I had a nice chuckle with those names the first time I saw them and immediately got cdaggers sense of humor, which ironically is much like mine, lol. So as another little nod to him, I decided to make a 3rd one and have them be triplets with rhyming names ala "Huey, Dewey and Louie"! Also 3 girls could work 8 hours each day and fill up 24 hour days, lol. The way the schedules worked out, there are usually always 2 bartenders in the bar at all times so the customers get great service!

 

Another nod to cdagger is that I left the bar girls faces as he made them. Some folks didn't like how his faces came out, and I'll admit that they looked a little strange to me too. However, in my twisted mind, I envision them as older versions of androids like Harkness, but they were made long before he was. (The notes in the base say the tech was taken from a little bit of everywhere, so I figured tech from The Commonwealth was not a stretch.) And they are less evolved, and their appearance is a little "off" from their more advanced and more human looking counterparts. They are not capable of performing the highly skilled tasks that the more advanced androids perform, but are perfectly suitable for bartending. I also clothed them all in vanilla, blue pre-war dresses so they all have the same "uniform". (In my games though, I dress them in the Jill Valentine outfit included in Lings Finer Things mod)

 

QUESTION - If there is one thing I have not figured out how to do yet is to incorporate a dialog with them that gives the player the ability to "Trade Equipment" with them so each user can dress them in whatever they wish without using another mod, the console or the GECK to do so. If anyone knows how I can do this PLEASE help me out! Basically, I want to be able to talk to them and say, "Let's trade equipment" and place the clothes I want them to wear on them.

 

CHANGES/MAKEOVERS TO THE OTHER NPC'S

 

Doctors Snuggles & Cuddles - facial changes and modified work schedule.

Chief Ginger - facial changes and modified work schedule and added vendor options.

Controller Kitty - facial changes and modified work schedule.

Req. Officer Peaches - facial changes and modified work schedule.

 

A couple of thoughts about the names, lol! As I said earlier, I got a real hoot out of cdaggers names. So, as another nod to him, I decided to continue in the laughs! And the first name I think of when I hear the name "Ginger" is "MaryAnn" obviously from Gilligan’s Island. So, I named Ginger's fellow Engineering Chief Maryann, lol.

 

The second one I named was "Bones" and of course he is a doctor damnit, not a bricklayer (or modder)! This is an obvious reference to Star Trek as I have been a huge ST fan all my life. The other names all come from Star Trek too as in Gunny "Hikaru" Sulu, Chief Engineer Montgomery "Scotty" Scott, "Walter" Koenig played Pavel Chekov, and Security Chief "Tasha" Yar was from The Next Generation, lol.

 

 

ADDED MANY RADIOS, RADIOS & MORE RADIOS!!!

 

I use the GNR-More Where That Came From mod (http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=1418) and that one mod has added so much immersion and "feeling" to the game that I can't live without it now. With over 100 songs that range from downright silly, to upbeat swing style jazz numbers, to very melancholy and somber songs it adds a lot of variety. As a musician and novice songwriter, music has always been a HUGE part of my life, and music has always carried a LOT of emotion for me. It makes me "feel" certain ways at different times and for different reasons. But the bottom line is that music is a powerful force capable of stirring deep emotions for me.

 

Combine the above with the fact that I enjoy decorating in the Fallout world and the War Room in Daggerhead is one of my favorite display rooms and radios are a must have for me. And anyone who has "decorated" in Fallout 3 knows how much time it can take to get stuff to display properly, but that is 1/2 the fun in my opinion, lol. So, I like to listen to GNR while I am working on displays, but there were no radios anywhere in the base other than the CO Quarters and the Bar. So, I have added radios all over the place so when they are all turned on you will be able to listen to the radio wherever you go in the base. Some of the rooms are so dang large that I have had to add 2 or even 3 radios to help cover the "dead" spots where you cannot hear them, but since the user decides whether they are turned on or not you can tweak where you hear them as you like. And as always, I tried to be extremely tasteful in their positioning and even scale so that they "fit in" in the overall layout and they are logical and make sense where they are placed. And I believe I have accomplished that as most of them are fairly inconspicuous.

 

That is about all for now, and I will add updates as I complete them, and of course ask for lots of help figuring out stuff as I go. Hell, I didn't even know there was a hidden cell where all the vendor lockers were stashed until I stumbled upon it last night completely by accident, lol. I have a LOT to learn, but I'm doing my best.

[riker148]

Hpe you keep up the work

[MikeHancho64]

Thanks Riker, I will.

 

 

Here is a little clip of the bar:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYwHQmY1CIs

 

What ya think?

[MikeHancho64]

Here's a couple more of the bar.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lePL3Af53oE

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yudGlHN4h8s

[riker148]

Very impressive indeed keep it up!

[MikeHancho64]

UPDATES!

 

I actually got some nice chances to play around over the weekend and made some pretty good progress as follows:

REWORKED TELEPORT SYSTEM

 

You now teleport to and from the bar (moved from science/medical lab)

 

When raveage put in the teleport system for me that started this whole project, it was set up to teleport the player into the Science Lab right beside of where the original marker cdagger used in the original mod. (The original teleport system is still fully intact and unchanged) This worked fine with one or even two followers, but with more than 2 followers in your squad, there is just not enough room in that tight little area for that many people to warp into, so it really needed to be moved to a much larger and open area to accommodate multiple followers.

 

The second issue I had concerning my followers is that the player has to make a couple of really tight turns and go through an automatic door to get into and out of the lab, and the 2nd and 3rd followers in line were just having trouble getting through there and they were getting hung up on stuff or having the automatic door close on them.

 

So, I thought about it long and hard, and I eventually decided that the best place to setup the teleport marker was in the bar. This solved so many problems and in my mind really didn't create any major issues, so now when you teleport from the Wasteland you arrive in the giant open area of the bar! There is a teleport switch back to the capital wasteland as well.

 

The reason I ultimately chose that spot was that I would almost without exception park my squad in the bar while I did my own thing. So, it just made sense to warp directly into the place I wanted to make them wait. Also, as an added benefit of the "Followers relax" mod is that they seem to wander in a pretty big area. So they will come in and out of the bar, piddle around the instruction/class area, wander into the barracks, and I even found Charon all the way in Engineering and Medical, lol. And cdagger literally put idle markers everywhere, so they actually look like they are doing stuff, not just wandering around lost.

 

 

ADDED STORAGE TO BAR

 

12 - mini lockers (removed 3 full size lockers)

1 - safe under the counter

1 - toolbox

1 - first aid kit for chems (coming soon!)

 

I am definitely OCD when it comes to storage of my stuff. I have my own little personal system that I have developed over time that I like to use and keep everything nice and organized and most importantly QUICKLY sorted. And if I was going to park my squad in the bar it only made sense that I would just keep my gear there too. So, there were 3 lockers down at the far end of the bar that I removed and used the space they were in to add several "mini" lockers, a safe under the counter and I will be adding a First Aid kit as well. I currently have the containers labeled like I like to sort my stuff, but if I ever release this update I will likely leave them generic.

2 NEW NPC'S

 

Sierra - well, she really isn’t new but was not placed in the cell in the original mod. Her package had her set as a prostitute and she basically only hung around in the CO quarters. So, I decided to bring her to life and make her a hostess type NPC for the bar. Her AI Package is very basic for now as she just hangs in the bar all the time.

 

Scribe Christine - My original intent was to create a few more NPC's that would be like students attending some training in the training/classroom area and she would be their instructor. I have not yet begun working on her AI package or animations so she also just hangs in the bar. I am still undecided whether I am going to make any students or not.

 

 

SORTING SYSTEM

 

I have begun the process of adding a terminal sorting system. So far, I have a sorter for all the junk parts for custom weapons working. And for each of the parts I created a little 1/2 size mini toolbox neatly placed under the workbenches in the tool room. Also in the tool room I have a parts retriever terminal that you can use just to pull the parts stored for each custom weapon one at a time. It also sorts and stores scrap metal. Oh yeah, there is an additional terminal in the bar to sort & store your parts & scrap metal from there as well.

 

I have also started thinking about possibly including food, drink & chems in the sorting script. However, I doubt I will be adding armor, clothing or weapons to the script.

 

I'm really happy with most everything so far, and while a challenge at times to figure out, it has been a fun process so far.