My Ideas Junkyard

[TrinXaS]

Hello There!

I present you here some of my ideas, most of them deal with different aspects of the game, such as animations, companions, weapons and many gameplay changes, but all are aiming to enhance our Mojave experience by making it more challenging and immersing. and since I'm not a modder and there's no chance to see those ideas realized, I post them here and hope that there will be some modders who could be inspired and realize them.

 

Well, here they are:

 

Companions Enhancement:

Skill Helping Companions:

I thought that it will be cool if we could use the abilities of the companions to help the courier during his journey, for example having Cass as companion will gives you bonus to Barter and Speech of course if the PC skill points are less then hers, Arcade gives the Confirmed Bachelor’s Perk, and will have the ability to heal the PC, if given the proper materials, Raul and Veronica will help at the workbench by giving additional skill points and bonus recipes.

 

Active Button for Companions:

I also thought about a system similar to the FO3 mod “Companions Share & Recruit” where the PC could ask any of his companions to hack a computer, open locks and heal him and this via a menu, I think that this system was pretty useful and it will be great if we could use him in New Vegas, but instead of using a menu we’ll have just to press a button, a kind of NPC’s activation key that will permit us to select a companion and give him specific order, for example, let’s say we bound this function to “B”, well I see Lily and I press B to select her, if I’m crouching I observe a specific NPC and repress B, Lily will then try to steal random item from him. Same thing I select Arcade I look at a computer that I cannot hack, I press B and let arcade do the job for me, I give Veronica pieces of junks I select a workbench and she goes to craft whatever items she can (the crafted item will depend of the PC’s skill points, if he’s good at guns, she’ll create gun related item), same thing with Cass which is best at crafting food, Raul will use the junks to repair the items he have in his inventory… another thing the Companions to NPCs actions depend of the PC current action, if he’s crouching they’ll try to steal the selected victim, if the PC’s weapon is drawn out they will attack. And as I said before the B button is like the E action button, so if you select a companion (in case they were many) and then press B, they will do the same action the PC would have done if pressing E such as take items, sit on couch, loot crates/corpses and open doors.

 

Esteem Point System:

I thought about an Esteem point system for companion, same as Dragon’s Age and Oblivion, I know there’s a near similar feat in NV where companions don’t trust you immediately and you have to prove your deeds by doing specific actions…but I still think this system needs some enhancements, for example Companions will judge the PC actions, so the courier will loose esteem points if he’s performing actions they disapprove, if he’s talking to them or other NPCs harshly, if they bit the dust in battle (when not Hardcore), and on the opposite side he could win points by talking what they want to hear, by doing actions they approve and by providing stimpacks and better equipment. I thought also about introducing a Hud’s Esteem Point Meter, visible only during dialogs and/or with the companion wheel, so we can check directly the repercussion of our dialog choices. The Esteem point will also permit the starting of Companion’s Quests, for example even if you fulfil all the conditions to start Arcade’s quest you’ll not be able to take the quest as long as you don’t meet his esteem point’s requirement and on the other hand you could start that quest prematurely if you have enough points, this will unlock the dialog bonus.

Things don’t stop here; the esteem points will inspire your companions so each time you reach an esteem level you unlock a bonus companion’s perk or boost their attack or DT or whatever… that way being nice with companions doesn’t serve only to get quests.

 

Companions not Slaves:

Companions are not the Courier’s slaves and because of this I think that it will be better if we could grant them a better AI behaviour, this will work in conjunction with the “Esteem Point’s System”, so don’t expect your followers to fight for you as if you were their messiah or something especially if they barely appreciate you, their courage is linked to their esteem level, if they feel that you don’t worth their life they’ll flee in the first occasion, outnumbering enemies, tougher enemies, you’re biting the dust, they’re nearly dying, you name it, and sometimes they’ll completely abandon you to your fate, so you can expect Cass returning to Mojave Outpost if she estimates that there’s no chance winning the fight, still the Courier will have the chance to recruit the deserting companions again.

The Companions will also have their own inventory that they don’t share freely with the Courier, they stock in their personal items such as their initial weapon and clothing, and if the Courier wants them he’ll have to trade with the companion just like any other merchant, needless to say that the courier will gets discounts on each esteem level.

Another thing, the companions will become monsters at looting, so after each kill they’ll rush to the fallen corpses, if it’s their kill they’ll immediately loot the corpse if yours they’ll wait a moment or loot only what you’ve left… so if they got an item you want you’ll have to buy it or steal it.

I know this will turn the once lovely and obedient companions into real bitches but this is how post apocalyptic men should be in the wastes… opportunists’ sons of bitches.

 

The Art of Pain: (wounding effect)

I thought that it will be great if we could observe traces of the battle on the Courier and NPCs body, I mean wounds and scars.

I’m always bored to see that a nearly dying character looks as healthy and clean as if he just stepped out of a shower. I personally think that in a post apocalyptic world humans should look very miserable, especially the nearly dying ones which bodies should look like rotting tomatoes.

I thought about a trick to realize these wounding effects, well the wounds should be add as apparel, I mean invisible body parts on which only the wounds could be visible, and those wounded body parts will be automatically equipped by the character as his limbs conditions decrease, of course those wound effect apparels should not appear on your pip-boy or interfere with other apparels, they should be just like the pip-boy glove.

 

Tattoos:

If the wound effect above could be realised I don’t know what’s keeping us from having the high prized Tattoos! The tattoos will use the same fake body system as the wounds but instead of getting them by receiving damages, you’ll have to find specific NPC (I thought about a Great Khan member) which will have special dialog option from where you can choose a model and apply it a specific body part, the tattooing NPC will have some basic models, but there will be schematics for other models that could be found across the Mojave, so all you’ll have to do is find them and bring them to him. Just like in Fable’s game.

The tattoos could be erased if you don’t like them, but for this you’ll need a costly chirurgical operation that only doctors using high technologies can grant you (the BoS doctor or the one in New Vegas Clinic)

 

Animations:

Skilled:

One thing I find pretty boring about the animations used in Fallout is that they’re so monotonous! Seriously I find it creepy that a character with 0 Skill at guns uses the same animations that a professional with 100 Skill, it will be very very interesting if we could track the progression of our character through his animations, so that way we could recognize a professional from the way he hold his gun, a charismatic one from his stance and an agile from his jumps and movements…the animations could serve us for body language too, it will be easier to recognize a Badass NPC.

 

Animations for Everything:

Another thing that I don’t really appreciate is the fact that in the middle of a fight I put my pip-boy, heal my self, change my clothing, eat my breakfast, and celebrate with some whisky and Nuka-Cola, then I put off my pip-boy and continue the battle. And the sad thing about that is that Fallout NV has already the drinking, eating, using chems animations so why not using them on the PC too. I mean for the sake of immersion and challenge it will be interesting to choose the animations queue from the pip-boy and then let the character plays them when the moment is right, that way each action will have its own amount of time and you’ll benefit from the effect of a food only after that the character performed its animation, so your choices will become more tactical, you’ll have to choice between continue fighting or perform the queued actions by sheathing your weapon, only chems could be applied when your weapon is drawn-out and you’re not firing… this kind of animation’s system will fit perfectly with Imp’s More Complex Needs mod where you’re vulnerable while eating.

Optional and not very important I thought about adding time and animations to crafting, so we could see our character performing the crafting animations for few seconds, the time of crafting will vary from item to another and from the number of item you’re crafting, crafting an armour will take more time than Bobby pins. In the excellent FWE mod for FO3 the same system was applied to crafting, there was a blackout scene while crafting and then you get a message that you were crafting for a certain amount of time, that was very immersing and it will be cool to have a similar feat in NV. As for food we can have the same option or just throw the ingredient, let them cook for few seconds and come back and pick them when they’re ready for use.

 

Near Death (and other States) Animations:

You must think that I’m sadist but I’d love to see suffering through NPC’s animations, I know that there are crippling animations but that’s not enough, I dying character should look like dying, he cough blood, loose consciousness, can’t walk straight … et cetera, he cannot just walk and jump like if he is as healthy as a Deathclaw. Same thing with the drying from thirst, hunger or sleep depravation characters, their vision should blur and they should loose consciousness from time to time, drunken or poisoned characters should use the drunk’s walking animations as they loose the ability to walk straight, as they puke from time to time! And when crippled or nearly dying the crouching animation will become crawling animation!

 

Weapons:

Everything is a Weapon:

I think that it will be useful and funny to use junk items such as wrench, hammer, toaster, iron, spatula, basketball… as weapon, especially in early game or when trapped somewhere with no ammo, or even if you want to change your killing method. There was a mod in FO3 which allows us to buy that kind of weapons such as the rake and the broom, but the same junk items found in game are still junks, what is ideal is to convert all the junks that could be used as weapon into …. Weapons what else! But still those junk items should be preserved as crafting parts, so we can use them to craft other items once not needed.

Some of those weapon converted will have specific abilities and here are some examples:

The Toaster, the Cooking Plat and the Iron will inflict more damage to the head and they have chance to knock the target unconscious.

The Bonesaw and Scalpel will inflict terrible limb damage with wounding possibility.

If power attacking with a Fork this last will sink into the target’s limb weakening that limb and making the target plays a critical hit animation…you can loot it from the target’s body.

Empty Bottles are single time use weapons; if you succeed hitting the head of your victim you’ll score a critical hit and cripple their head, you’ll also have chance to knock them unconscious, if you fail and hit another body part the bottle you’ll inflict insignificant damage.

The Basketball could be used as thrown weapon which could be reused, upon launching the basketball the target will stop his current action and plays a critically hit animation and you’ll have more chance to disarm your enemies or to shortly cripple their head with such a weapon.

The baseball could be used the same way as the basketball but it will not stop the target from their current action unless you hit them in the head, there’s also no chance to cripple their head but a chance to increase decrease their accuracy and increase their gun spread for a short time.

Ps: you cannot kill enemies with most of these weapons; if their health reaches the death zone they’ll simply fall unconscious and recover slowly a certain amount of their health (maybe 10%) and then awake and continue the battle … the weapons that can actually kill are the Toaster, the Iron, The Cooking Plat, the Bonesaw, the Coffee pot and the Rake, of course you should power hit with them the head of your unconscious victim.

 

Thrown when Used:

It will be great if we could convert normal weapon into throwing weapon and vice versa, that way we could fight with a spear in melee, convert a normal knife into a throwing one, same thing with the fire axe that you can send swirling… and it will be great if we could apply this to the one handed guns. This functionality should be hotkeyed, for example to “Y” if we press this key once the equipped weapon will be converted, if it is not throwing weapon and we hold the “Y” key for few seconds it will be thrown instantly after we release the key.

 

One thing that really disturbs me with thrown weapons is that they cannot be picked back, I find it quiet illogical since we could recycle drained energy cells, hulls and gauges, I know that it could be very unbalancing if we could use a tribal spear million times over, but what if we could pick up damaged spears with very low condition that inflict less damages, broken spears that we can repair with some junks.

 

Other Ideas:

Blade in the Dark:

It will be cool to have an assassination system like the one used in Assassin’s Creed or the RPG Two Worlds, this will gives us the possibility to perform spectacular assassination’s move on NPCs while sneaking behind them unnoticed. Maybe this could be possible if we use the same animation system for the mods Animated Prostitution or FNV Sexual Innuendo … of course instead of getting sex animation we get a very mean killing animation, of course not all characters could use this assassination ability, only if they got a perk or have enough skill in sneaking and melee weapon, or maybe medicine too, cause it will be very interesting to craft and use overdose’s syringes, just like in FO3 mod, Better Living Through Chems.

The assassination ability is not always effective sometime you just inflict critical damages, other times you knock the target unconscious and other unlucky times your victims could be able to escape from your grasp and that would be a disaster for your silent infiltration attempt! By the way this will depend of your luck, skill and NPCs static.

 

Death is an Alternative:

Sometimes it is just stupid to die, why we cannot just act as any other coward and simply surrender ourselves, cause sometimes putting down your weapon is not sufficient for NPCs who want you dead so by pressing the coward’s hotkey, the courier will perform a surrendering animation NPCs will stop the hostilities, come to the courier and loot him alive and then according him some seconds to leave the place or they’ll turn hostiles again! Of course not all NPCs will be that gentle some will not accept you surrendering, others will knock you unconscious and then after a blackout scene you wake up somewhere in the waste, and other will just take few things and leave you alone… (This will depend of your reputation, their and your karma, and of course your luck point)

It will be interesting to add prison system just like in the Elder Scroll’s games, so after surrendering yourself to the Powder Gangers you can wake up in their prison, in one of their locked cells, if you have enough karma or luck you could find some useful items under the bed, if not you activate the bed and wait until they come and take you to the court in order to execute you … that’s all your fate have for you so take your chance and try a desperate escape or die. The NCR as long as you’re not vilified will imprison you for a certain amount of time depending of your reputation and karma; still you can always try an escapade! As for the legion after captivating you, your hand will be tied and you’ll automatically equip the slave’s outfit, and you’ll have to follow them to their raiding camps, and from then to cottonwood and finally to the fort where you’ll serve as a gladiator in the area. During all that time you could escape at any moment, but you can’t fight and the legionaries will attack you as soon as you’re not following them or take another direction, you can untie yourself only if you succeed escaping them and become hidden or if you loot a blade weapon, still you can always pickpocket one of them. If you find the way too long you can talk to one of them and have a fast travel dialog option, and of course you can say goodbye to any fortunate encounters that you and the legion might have on the road! During you imprisonment your items will be taken from you, the NCR will return most of them after your liberation but for the powder gangers and the legion don’t except the same favour, so when you’re escaping make sure to find your belonging in specific crates or on some NPCs.

 

Another way to Loot, to dismember and to Devour:

This mod aims to change completely the way we used to loot, dismember and devour, in order to make it more logical and immersing.

First of all after killing an animal, a menu will poop if we activate its corpse, in the menu we could choose to loot or to devour, for example I just killed a Gecko, I choose devour and the Courier will plays the devouring animation a random Gecko’s body part will be dismembered, the courier automatically consumes a Gecko’s raw meat. To choose “Looting” from the menu the courier should have specific items such as a knife, a bone saw or whatever, and when this option is chosen the courier will perform special animation to look like he’s looting, then after a few second the looted corpse’s inventory will shows up containing the retrieved items such as Hides, Meats and Eggs (and other items such as eyes, teeth, hands if you want to add them), after looting these items some body parts will be amputated or the corpse will explode in gruesome fashion.

As for human NPCs, we still can loot them normally but if we’re sneaking a menu will poop and we can choose the same way as for animals, devour, dismember or loot their equipments, if we devour same thing will happen, the courier will consume human remains raw meat, and a body part will be removed, and we could consume the corpse again and again until there’s no body part’s left, if we choose to dismember will could loot mutilated legs, arm, torso, organs and maybe some items we didn’t noticed first. I think that it will be challenging and interesting if we could loot armours only after choosing the dismemberment option so that way we could pick up only apparent items with normal looting system.

Robot will have the same system; if we’re not sneaking we could take only ammo, and if we sneak activate them we could choose to salvage them (with proper items; wrench or hammer) in order to recover more scrap metals and batteries.

As for insects no need for such a system, muscles can tear them apart in a blink of an eye.

With such a mod we could feel the real meaning of surviving and scavenging, and no more of those illogically “empty corpses”.

The number of meat you could recover for an animal will depend of its strength, your survival skill and your luck. For robots this will depend of your repairing (scrap metal), science (fusion batteries & sensor modules) and energy weapon (additional ammo) skills. Humans of course will always have the same number of mutilated limbs; the ghoulish ones should just be highly irradiated.

 

********************************************************Thank you for reading ..... I hope you enjoyed some of them***********************************************

[Floatsup]

hehe, you have work cut out for you.

:tongue:

 

Good ideas

[TrinXaS]

Thanks man.

Yep I know if there will be someone who wants to makes them, he'll have a hell of a work to do, I'd like to make them myself but the time that I will take to learn how to use the GECK, how to script, and to master it! I'm sure we will be in 2281! :P

[harveeymon]

Thanks man.

Yep I know if there will be someone who wants to makes them, he'll have a hell of a work to do, I'd like to make them myself but the time that I will take to learn how to use the GECK, how to script, and to master it! I'm sure we will be in 2281! :P

sounds like a solid plan try pitching ur ideas to seasoned modders and they might like it and do it for you

Edited April 5, 2011 by harveeymon

[Rossum]

In addition to the above: I find it kind of a pain that I don't really get to share the loot with my allies.

 

I mean I'll bring Arcade along on my trips, kill a few dozen radscorpions and cazadors and legionares and such and at the end I'll have piles of armor and weapons and stuff that I'm struggling to carry. I'll load a bunch onto Arcade (and he'll complain that he's not wearing Power Armor) and we'll keep going until I reach a shop where I have to sell everything including the stuff I loaded onto Arcade.

 

But I can have Arcade head back to the Followers camp and when I see him next ten days later then he'll still be loaded down with all the junk I put on him! Shouldn't he be looking through his inventory, seeing what's junk, and selling it for caps or donating it to the Followers? Heck, my companions should all be asking me "Where's my share of the loot?" after I've wiped out five legion camps and shot down half a dozen cazadors in a day. One of the reasons I think that people complain about it being too easy to get stuff is that you can get followers who never demand a share of the stuff you get off the enemies they kill.

 

Also if I give my companion a nice gun and they like it better than their default one (that has magical companion ammo) then I think they should buy ammo for it. That way when boone is walking around with the minigun I accidentally handed to him because I killed a nightkin with it and needed someone to carry it then he won't piss away a few hundred rounds shooting at bugs and then fall back to his default varmint rifle when actual threats come up. If he likes his minigun so much then he should buy ammo for it! He should also buy himself some stimpaks if he feels the need for them.

 

 

In short: Companions should have expenses too and it would make sense if I could dump some of my heavy junk on them and in turn have them go sell it to buy stuff for themselves. Or each companion could do different things with stuff I hand them:

 

Arcade could donate a lot of the weapons and junk I give him to the followers to help out with their cause. He might be particularly interested in medicines, food, or ingrediants I give him.

 

Cass could carry a bunch of stuff and occasionally goes to a trader and sells it all to convert it into caps and booze, then she asks that we split the proceeds. I mean, if I'm going to be traveling with a former caravan owner then she should know how to sell stuff and split the proceeds with me.

 

Raul could be given weapons and armor and he'll gradually tinker on them to increase their value before reselling them.

 

Veronica would probably be interested in collecting food and supplies for the Brotherhood, maybe offering me energy weapon ammo or the like in exchange for more.

 

Lily... I guess she'd accept some stuff I give he because she thinks its a 'gift for grandma' and when she goes back to Jacobstown she tries to fit all the armor on the dead bighorners she thinks are her grandchildred (that she keeps shooting in the face because they are being naughty).

[huntsman2310a]

you know for some of the combat anims and death anims you could head over to deadly reflex and ask for help possibly? the rest of this sounds very long term but good luck

[kieranbhoy]

cool ideas man

[majinshinsa]

making your last idea of devouring animals is easy, i could do that just by editing the cannibal perk (it just checks to make sure your target is a human so its as easy as making a new one that checks if its an animal. the player could even start off with using a script)