My Little Anthro Ponies

[Tripp426]

Well someone's brutally honest.

[Felidae0]

Alright, sorry. That came off a little more... pointed, I suppose, than I'd like.

 

I've written a lot of dialogue for Luna, so I guess that post offended me a bit.

Edited October 4, 2014 by Felidae0

[Deleted2547005User]

How about we knock it off.

[Deleted2547005User]

I got deep into Dark Souls, and decided to hold off on working on anything until I was done with it. In my down time, I looked for critiques and criticisms about my work on the pony models and textures - and took a critical look at my own work. I came away from this experience with a lot in mind about the ponies. I was not impressed in my work, nor were the others that helped me take a look at my work. I've gotten a lot of people telling me that the models/textures are fine, never giving me any real feedback, and after a while, it made me worry, so I decided to step back and take another look. I'm an amateur at best, and my skills in this area are not great to say the least.

 

The biggest criticism I got, and have always been bothered by, that the models are just the Gmod pony models. I just take someone else's work and cut and slap it onto someone else's model. Originality is nowhere to be seen in this area, and that bothers me to no end. The mechanics of the mod are original, and I like to think that it's unique in the modding community, shifting out followers and changing perks based on who's in your party. The issues with the Gmod models are they all come textured which aren't very good, or detailed. They get the basic cartoon appearance and that's it. For this, they serve their purpose, but for Fallout, it's awful. Another criticism was that the ponies, next to humans, did not mix well. Several pointed out that the color didn't work well the texture for the body model I was using and my attempt at giving them a subtle fur texture did not work, especially when the hand and head textures were added to the mix.

 

One person pointed out that the manes and tails didn't work in fallout, but not because of the models, again, it was the textures. They are two toned at best, and for Gmod, they serve there purpose, in Fallout, they become an eyesore, as well as causing some graphical bugs. She suggested that the models were actually fine for Fallout, It keeps the original cartoon appearance, but the textures could be given more thought to them, which leads into the biggest criticism I have of my work - reality. Ponies don't belong in Fallout, not as they are. They are unrealistic. Comparing the hair from Fallout to the Manes from Gmod and you'll see that there is a big difference. They look like toothpaste squeezed onto them, or playdough being pushed out of there head and arse. Just giving them a texture of hair will improve their look greatly, giving those lumps of playdough and toothpaste the same detail as the Fallout Hair.

 

The head is creepy to some people - I did not get a positive thing for them. They keep too much of the Cartoon appearance to take seriously in Fallout. The eyes are the biggest factor in this. I saw if I made them smaller, they looked much more believable, more so if I worked the head to fit around the smaller eyes. I didn't get much negativity on the altered body texture, but I did get a few that said it could use much more work on getting them to look less jarring when transitioning between fur and skin. I did get a lot of applause for the mod's functionality and design, but a drawback of it's functionality is resource usage. It's not resource friendly. Another critique for the models were the assets, like the crowns and collars, again the textures are pretty basic, and could have more thought put to them. A final critique was the wings. Nothing but a color for a texture, but more than that, the Pegasus wing set isn't even believable with six pinions. Celestia's and Luna's were the only believable sets.

 

With all of this in mind, it's both bad and good. On one end, I have to retexture - and unwrap - everything. My texturing skills are awful compared to my modelling skills, but it's a challenge I'd like to tackle and over come. On the other end, everything I've done for the code and functionality of the mod is already done, and in a state that works best, I will never have to redo it. In fact, I could release the mod as is and it's fully playable, if not complete and not in the state I want it to be in. It's been some time since I started this topic, so I'm sure there are people no longer following this, but what are your thoughts on this? Should I release this mod in it's current state, incomplete, yet fully functional; this means the functions in this mod work as intended, but things are not finished:

 

1.) Several Ponies are not setup as followers and have no dialogue written for them, this includes Milkyway, Nyx, and Nightmare Moon.

 

2.) The ponies have no specific clothing. They are nude, and it's up to you to clothe them, not like the vanilla followers.

 

3.) They will not have follower weapons. There is a game-engine bug that breaks the quest flag on their current weapons, allowing those weapons to be switched out when changing ponies, giving ponies the weapon of another, and leaving the other pony bereft of theirs.

 

4.) Several Ponies will not be available due to lack of granted permissions. Milkyway and Sunset Shimmer are the only two at the moment.

 

5.) The pony selection screen will be weird to use. I had planned on releasing the mod's ponies in bunches, having place holder message boxes using special code until the entire list was populated. In order not to
A.) Confuse people by selecting a pony that wasn't even in the mod and not getting them, and
B.) Keep from spoiling who was in the works or was a future update. Currently, my code is setup to handle everyone even though they do not exist, so the message boxes would have one or two ponies and a next button for the next list, which is not difficult to navigate, but is completely weird.

 

6.) None of the perks have their icons yet. I plan on using granted images from popular and gifted artist in the Fandom, and if you have been following the thread, you'd have seen a few of them, two from Egophilliac.

7.) The style of the body textures for the ponies varies greatly. Applejack still has her original texture work while Nyx has the latest style. The old ones look awful compared to the new ones.

8.) The ability to switch ponies works.

9.) The perks work and change as you change pony.

10.) The follower home is connected to the world and has a map marker to get to it quickly, but for game story purposes, you have to find it in Westside before being able to travel to it. I will add a way for the player to summon a pony that they fired if they haven't been to Westside yet.

11.) The ponies dialogue works, but is not voiced.

Keep these things in mind when you think about getting the mod released in it's current state. I plan on working toward making the models look better and more believable in Fallout without losing their Cartoon origins.

[Tripp426]

Alright I'll give my thoughts on this, since I've been following both the original mod and this forum from the beginning.

1: So this means that the race is there but if they were to be put into the game via the G.E.C.K. then they would just be NPC's wandering around and unable to be spoken to?

2: That's fine. Sine the "missing head" issue has been fixed, it's easy enough to just give them any outfit from my inventory like I would with a vanilla companion. Do they all use the same body type? And if so, what body type do they use? I'm guessing Type 3 or a slightly modified version of Type 3 which is what the original race mod uses if I'm not mistaken.

 

3: This is also not an issue for me as I don't mind giving them a weapon and ammo for it like I would any other companion, then take it away along with any ammo related to it before I switch ponies.

 

4: You say at the moment, which I'm assuming that you have yet to hear back from a few people to know for sure if there are any more?

5: If it's anything like the follower mod you made long ago for the original race mod, it wasn't terribly difficult or confusing to navigate. If it has been tweaked/changed from that setup, I'm not sure of an alternative method that would be better.

 

6: So are there basically Vault Boy icons used as placeholders or do they just show up as "Error: File not found" or whatever it says? I really did like your choices for the custom icons that you showed earlier in this thread though.

 

7: I agree that the original style of the textures looks bland in comparison to your new texture work, but I was able to get used to it due to using the original race mod for so many game hours. My only issue is the occasional bug that fills any indoor area with some elongated meshes that completely obstruct my view in 3rd person, so I would have to either switch to first person view for the entire time or quit to title, then reload my save. This caused the issue to go away for awhile until it came back at a random time later on. Are there still many ponies that use the original texture work? If so that's fine, I'm just curious.

 

8&9: Alright that's cool.

 

10: I hardly ever fire a companion so this wouldn't be an issue for me. I have discovered West Side but I don't fast travel as it breaks immersion for me. So is this home empty until you fire a pony and they go there or is it where all the ponies physically wander/stand around as a kind of "holding cell" until switched out for others?

 

11: That's great about the dialogue and I'm perfectly fine with the lack of voice acting. I've played plenty of quests where there wasn't any and it didn't bother me, and I have an NCCS companion who is not voiced so it's no big deal. Besides, Willow and Niner both do enough talking to make up for it.

 

I am intrigued by the use of smaller eyes for the head models. Regarding the resource usage, I'm running a fairly beastly machine so I should have no problems there. Bottom line: I'd be alright with a release of this mod in its current state, but I'd prefer waiting some more to allow you to fix/change the things that are really bugging you about it before releasing it. Perhaps releasing the mod in its current state with updates later on would be the best of both worlds, but if I recall correctly, you have stated how you don't like releasing things in increments, so that's not really an option I guess.

[Deleted2547005User]

1. Their races and assets are in the GECK and they are placed in their respective Cells for switching. They would be removed from the plugin and mod assets in the event it is uploaded early.

2. I was given permission to use and modify the Type 6 model, and any armor/clothing based on the Type 3, 5, and 6 body format will work with it.

3. It was originally intended that the player would have to arm them, but the beta testers said this made early game playing difficult with the lack of ammo.

4. A certain Gmod author has gone completely apeshit, and is very hostile toward people. I decided I was not going to bother getting his permission, but this forces me to duplicate his work on my own if I want to have those ponies in the mod. Only Sunset Shimmer is affected by this, and will be removed from the mod in the event it is uploaded early.

5. The current pony selection menu is entirely different, separated by race and sex: Earth Pony, Unicorn, Pegasus, Alicorn(Changeling); Mare, Stallion, Filly, Colt.

6. They have no icons assigned. In the event I upload this early, they'll get the standard Pipboy Icon until I convert the art into a format the game will not flipout over.

7. I have gotten this elongated mesh bug too, and it was isolated to the ponies. I also tend to have my fingers seemingly cut off on my player model (Robert's Male). It seems the game treats 3rd party body models harshly. I think it could be related to an animation of the hands imbedded into the skeleton file. It is only a hunch, and completely unrelated to this mod.

8&9. Roger.

10. All of the ponies start off in their stables, places the player cannot physically get to. When you select one and fire them, they will go to Westside to be rehired. If you switch a pony for another, the one switched out will return to their stable. There can only be two in the Flat at any time.

11. Excellent.

[Felidae0]

So, here's what I'm curious about: does each character have unique dialogue?

 

Taking the "opening inventory" command for instance, would Ditzy say something along the lines of "Sure! Just drop whatever you want in the mailbag! ...As long as it's not bleeding." while Nightmare Moon would be insulted at the idea?

 

Or is it more like full conversation stuff, "tell me about you", quest lines, all that stuff... Just without voice acting?

 

Or, now that I think about it, both?

Edited October 6, 2014 by Felidae0

[Deleted2547005User]

The dialogue is unique to each pony. It's as characteristic to the pony as it needs to be without getting cheesy and a mimicry of the show. There is nothing beyond simple commands nor will there ever be, and if someone thinks they can do a better job, they can fell free to do so - on their own.

 

Still looking on feedback for early release of the mod.

[Felidae0]

Hm. So, I'm getting two points here.

 

1. If someone did want them to have quests, would they end up as plugins for this mod, or if someone were to give you an outline, would you program it in? Or would they have to make their own "Ponies in Fallout" mod to allow that?

 

2. Feedback? Do you have beta testers in mind, is there a download somewhere I missed, et cetera...?

 

Sorry if I seem over-interested, but I do like the idea of this mod, and I feel like I could try to assist... But if it's not wanted, even in the slightest, I'll back off. Just ask.

[WolfmasterM]

Eh I can test it if you want, gotta remove some cause im using 4gb and if i install anything else, errors, errors everywhere.... Might uninstall some of the crapy stuff i actually installed..... Some items and fails of items..... Im not meant to make mods... However, I can test things well! XD