Looking For Help Developing a Fairly Large/Complex Mod

[MorganKnives]

Hey y'all! Just call me Morgan and thank you for taking your time to read my little plan. If you just want the summary, scroll to where it says "summary" near the bottom of the page.

 

I don't know about the rest of you guys but I'm rather disappointed with how few towns there are in the wasteland, despite the fact that it seems like a surprisingly decent amount of the population seemed to survive the apocalypse. If you're playing a "good" character and don't count the tiny places like Arefu and Oasis, there isn't any major town that you can really go to west of Megaton. Even if you can go into Paradise Falls without getting shot up, there are only three settlements of decent size in the whole game!

 

Also odd is that, despite how stingy places like Megaton and Rivet City are supposed to be with things like Purified Water, you can still find it in loot all over the Wasteland. It has to come from somewhere, right?

 

The third thing I find strange is that the vast majority of the surviving population seem to have almost none of the skill necessary to survive the conditions they live in and I don't think Rivet City is pounding out RadAway for the whole waste.

 

Also, it annoyed me that everyone is so darned unfriendly. You can be a survivor, work hard and be good with a gun and still be a nice guy. Heck, one of the nicest guys I know was an assassin for the Army.

 

So, my solution is to use the construction set that Bethesda so kindly gave us and make my own city. I even have a location picked out (along the river between MDPL Mass Relay Station and the Abandoned Car Fort) and intend to name it after and (loosely) model it after the town of Harper's Ferry though that isn't set in stone.

 

Like Megaton, it will have metal walls separating it from the outside and will have its own world space. It will also have several shops, a food market that will sell the ever desirable fresh fruit (for those who can afford it of course), a lab, a small pharmaceutical building (which makes and sells all sorts of chems), a bunch of robot guards, hotel, a player house and other stuff stuff. Also, there will be a population (of humans and ghouls) of a size that actually suits a town. Let's face it, Rivet City must be inbred up the wazoo.

 

Now, that's not to say this is a utopia. First off, much of the stuff that is for sale will be fairly expensive. Second, I would like to be able to have attacks on the town. In the second case, I'd like to enable the player to choose whether to help defend the town or help the attackers by either helping them in the actual fighting and/or sabotaging the town from the inside. I'd also like to add other quests. Things like fetching supplies, helping to repair stuff, looking for items, etc.

 

SUMMARY

 

Long story short, I'm making a town and would really like help with it. I have some experience with modding from Oblivion and Fallout 3 but this is by far the largest project I've attempted thus far. Even if it's something small, I'd appreciate the help.

 

Thanks!

 

~Morgan

[mechine]

Bump

 

That sounds just like Tenpenny Tower. Only it's outside. Yeah it's west of Megaton too :P lulz :D Then also you know The Pitt Can't get much more west from Megaton than that. Alls I'm saying is Get the DLC's yeah they are worth it. Then you know also I'm kind of saying reverce engineer it.

 

Both the Pitt an Tenpenny tower sort of have events like you are talking about, where the player has to pick a side. The best way to figure out how to do that would to look at how it's already been done before, either at these locations, or even in another mod made by a player. Most times with the player made stuff you can actually get permisison to use. Which makes a new version which might be better than the first.

 

Which at the very least this way of thinking, the reverce engineering an all that, gives you an example to look at before you start creating something from scratch.

 

Like scripts, everybody is scared of them, but because there are example scripts on the geck page, one could take those examples along with player made scripts from mods, and create pretty much anything they need without actually having to know the commands to write a script or even write any part of it at all, just copy an paste, a mix, which the end result is different but what it is that you wanted to do.

 

The bulk of the workload is the footwork or foundation. Which without an example to go by would be a large time waste learning things the hard way. When having an example or taking something that's already made, then changing things around, making edits, in order to get a version which can be like a pre-beta testing ground to see what can an can not be done (learning) Because a lot of the time you'll spend so much time just getting that full version to a testing stage it's pretty likely that you're going to get distracted or drop the project.

 

An example would be to figure out how to set up your NPC's from viewing an changing the stuff which the Tenpenny Tower uses in order to do what it does. Scripts, packages, markers, Npc's, factions, all that changed around to have what you want to happen in the new worldspace, only in a test cell, which would get this part of the mod in the testing phase before the worldspace is created, just to have fun.

 

Then you get bored with that an go back to making the worldspace, which, heh, there just isn't a lot of information on. But you might could view an mess with the DLC's worldspaces, or even the downtown worldspaces, maybe find something along the lines of what you would use, heck even pardise falls has a worldspace, You could probably duplicate those, an change the names, make edits, an get a worldspace ready for testing quicker.

 

 

It's a big mod right, big project, so switch around from one thing to the next so that you don't end up doing the same thing everyday. You spend a few days Navmeshing a worldspace an see how much fun you are having, if they haven't already carted you off to the mental hospital. LOLZ

[MorganKnives]

Yeah, I know about Tenpenny but I sort of didn't know that Roy would go postal on everyone so I sorta killed him which made the others attack me so yeah... My Tenpenny Tower is empty... :sweat: Plus it's pretty out of the way being really far south on the map.

 

I hate the Pitt. Apart from being really all sorts of depressing, it just seemed bad to me. Like, no matter what you do, 99.9% of the area is exactly the same as when you began the quest. I've seriously played mods that were better. Plus, you can't bring your partners there either.

 

Yeah, I'm working on doing it one day at a time. I don't foresee anything groundbreaking (at least in the initial releases) but, if nothing else, it should be a safe place to restock, get repairs, and rest while in the west part of the map.

 

My biggest concern is creating unique behaviors in the NPCs. While I haven't done any scripting in modding, I do have some coding experience so it shouldn't be too hard.... I hope....

 

And the mean men in white coats will never find me! :ninja:

 

Anyway, thanks for the advice.