Videos of the Wasteland gone

[tomomi1922]

 

At the moment, there is no method to allow video playing on the TV's in Fallout4 other than how Razorwire implimented it via the .DDS 'flipbook' way. There are those looking into the possibility of injecting flash files & other ways, but I heard that six months ago & since then there's been no mention of it. I've come across numerous users asking for a way to merely 'drop' any video content into the game; whilst that might be convenient, it kind of circumvents the need to learn how to actually do it yourself, which is the way for a user to become a modder themselves and to learn how the game works 'under the hood'.

I can see the appeal though, but in all honesty I'm glad that it doesn't exist as that meant that I had to learn how to do it... but that's just me.

 

Ah that's it, "flip book". That sounded very primitive and I totally gave up on the TV. But after returning to FO4 I saw quite a selection of porn video offered over Loverslab to realize there is some fun content in having a TV. I was to use this mod after I familiarize myself with Settlement Transfer and Sim Settlement (to be more involved in settlement building) and plan to create my own video, need to find something more immersive to make belief that "there are stuff to watch on TV now".

 

Also, I want to bring to your attention that .... you should consider projector. There is a projector in Vault 88 (that Vault where we meet Curie), in the class room where children receive lectures and we have a small quest to tell our adventure stories. If you walk over it, some of the TV's projected content is on you and leaving the blackboard a shadow of yourself. Very cool. I think with that, you can re-create Starlight drive-in with a projector casting movie onto that giant screen. And maybe we can just build a screen at any settlement, to have movie night. That would make a whole lot more sense and give a lot of cool role playing factor to some short looping video clip. Please look into that while you are at it.

Edited May 21, 2017 by tomomi1922

[AGreatWeight]

Also, I want to bring to your attention that .... you should consider projector. There is a projector in Vault 88 (that Vault where we meet Curie), in the class room where children receive lectures and we have a small quest to tell our adventure stories. If you walk over it, some of the TV's projected content is on you and leaving the blackboard a shadow of yourself. Very cool. I think with that, you can re-create Starlight drive-in with a projector casting movie onto that giant screen. And maybe we can just build a screen at any settlement, to have movie night. That would make a whole lot more sense and give a lot of cool role playing factor to some short looping video clip. Please look into that while you are at it.

 

The big problem with using Starlight Drive-In (and one of the reasons that I never released any content for it in VotW myself) is that because of the size of the screen, the textures have to be higher resolution or you ended up with an ugly pixelated mess; that means a much larger file size, and bear in mind that a mod for VotW that was close to the hard limit of 6 minutes and (around) 47 seconds was about 700mb. Also worth noting that the film reels for the Starlight Drive-in plugin for VotW were only around three and haft minutes in length, so this presented additional problems.

For the TV's, each frame of 'animation' was rendered at 256x256 pixels (which whilst low quality, can be explained by the Fallout universe branching off around the 50's - basically, their TV's were pretty crap) with the 'video' playing at a rate of 10fps. If you wanted 30fps videos on the TV's, you'd easily be looking at tripling the overall file size - 2.1gb for just seven minutes of video (and audio) as you'd need three times as many individual textures. This is where the system Razorwire implimented shows it's limitations, not to mention that a large portion of users likely watched his tutorial on how to make content for the TV's and decided not to as they were intimidated by what seemed like a complicated process (it really isn't, especially once you've done it a few times)

Regarding Eden Meadows Drive-In on Far Harbor; the videos playing there actually only used 4-5 textures (+ one overlay for the movie title & a short audio track) and clever use of .nifs to make it look like a movie trailer (I altered them when I made an in-game trailer for Pathos ENB) I imagine that this would be a better way of utilizing the projectors, as they always struck me as slide projectors.

Edited May 22, 2017 by AGreatWeight

[cwy4]

I was fortunate that just a few days before his mods and Youtube tutorials were removed, I was able to use his contribution to create my own film reel for the Starlight Drive-In Theater (video here). Unfortunately there were still a lot of his tutorials I hadn't seen. I was planning to create a theater screen anywhere, but now I have to be on my own. Btw, are we allowed to re-upload the mods back to Nexusmods? I saved a copy of his mod, of course. Can I upload it as is under my name? Can I make a little change and upload it as mine?

 

Edited May 23, 2017 by cwy4

[AGreatWeight]

I was fortunate that just a few days before his mods and Youtube tutorials were removed, I was able to use his contribution to create my own film reel for the Starlight Drive-In Theater (video here). Unfortunately there were still a lot of his tutorials I hadn't seen. I was planning to create a theater screen anywhere, but now I have to be on my own. Btw, are we allowed to re-upload the mods back to Nexusmods? I saved a copy of his mod, of course. Can I upload it as is under my name? Can I make a little change and upload it as mine?

 

Good choice of trailers for the Drive-In. As far as I can remember, there were five tutorials specifically regarding the process of making holotapes for VotW, a couple of smaller vids (one of which included an explanation of the difference between making the holotapes and the film reels + the alteration to the template files & how to convert the image sequence to .dds files via the batch file he provided. I think the other was an appended vid regarding the behaviour files). There were also a few tutorials regarding .nif files and how to use nifskope for other purposes, not to mention all the other content he had on his channel for different games besides Fallout.

A drive-In screen added to the settlement system would have been a good idea if VotW was still up, and more modders created content for it.

However, It's against Nexus TOS to reupload another authors mod without their consent so you wouldn't be allowed to upload it. You'd have to create the framework from scratch, Ethreon is apparently looking into it so there is still hope that other modders can continue to add content for the TV's/Drive-Ins - although as I mentioned in the previous comment, making additional content for the Drive-In's does bring it's own problems regarding video length, unless this issue could be solved. Razorwire was, at one point looking into the possibility of overhauling the framework to remove the video length restriction, but couldn't find a way to do it that worked. I think this is what contributed to the mod not being further developed; it's possible that had he succeeded, we'd be a step closer to having a TV broadcast system implimented into the game (in the same manner as the various Radio stations)

Even though he's removed his content now, he showed that it's possible to do this in Fallout and have the TV's/Drive-In's actually have a purpose & for that I'm grateful.

Edited May 23, 2017 by AGreatWeight

[tomomi1922]

I was fortunate that just a few days before his mods and Youtube tutorials were removed, I was able to use his contribution to create my own film reel for the Starlight Drive-In Theater (video here). Unfortunately there were still a lot of his tutorials I hadn't seen. I was planning to create a theater screen anywhere, but now I have to be on my own. Btw, are we allowed to re-upload the mods back to Nexusmods? I saved a copy of his mod, of course. Can I upload it as is under my name? Can I make a little change and upload it as mine?

 

That's what I always wanted in FO4 is to have a giant drive in movie theather. If you have been to one in real life, it is amazing. Modern drive-in theaters are cheaper than actual theaters (at least in California). They have a platform for your car to drive upward so you can face the screen without being blocked by the cars in the front and having to raise your neck the whole time. Using your car radio as sound delivery system means the sound is enclosed in your car and not easily disturbed by others' talking. Which also mean we don't need to observe noise discipline. Friends and I often discussed movies aloud, lol.

 

Why don't they make cars for FO4? Sigh.

[Loveblanket]

Strange and sad to see this modder leave, but I will never understand why some modders that quit just take all of their hard work down? Wouldn't it be better just to let someone else carry on the work than erase it from history? It would be like a writer deciding to become a chef and tossing all of his books in the fireplace. Such a shame. At least Videos of the Wasteland is back.

[AGreatWeight]

Strange and sad to see this modder leave, but I will never understand why some modders that quit just take all of their hard work down? Wouldn't it be better just to let someone else carry on the work than erase it from history? It would be like a writer deciding to become a chef and tossing all of his books in the fireplace. Such a shame. At least Videos of the Wasteland is back.

 

Well, Razorwire left modding back then for his own personal reasons - no explanation is necessary or needed, either for that or for choosing to remove his mods. After all, mods are a privilege, not a right.

Anyway, VotW 2.0 is now available, and TeamVotW (Razorwire*, Dertspovor06, and myself) will begin initial work on the 3.0 update soon.

 

*yes, he came back. Sometimes RL demands that modding has to take a back-seat.

[chucksteel]

AgreatWeight, I would love to see this back on Xbox, I know it's a big mod and takes a lot of the reserve for users but, people like myself who don't fill their game with tons of mods would love to have VotW back.

 

That being said I do suspect none of you want to deal with Bethesda.net and the annoying site but, if you guys would like or wouldn't mind it back on Beth I would be willing to take over Beth.net Xbox support so none of you have to bother with the site.

 

Send me a PM if you have any interest in this or want to talk about the possibilities.

 

chuck.

[AGreatWeight]

Hey Chuck, we are planning on bringing VotW back to Xbone users & will work on porting it asap. We're aware that previously, a lot of console users were in two minds to use the mod due to mod allocation space, so we've done some initial testing with reducing the texture size from 4k to 2k for the holotapes, and 8k to 4k for the film reels; whilst it means that the visual quality won't be as good as the pc version, we think we can use a 'static interference' type overlay so they don't look that bad. In doing so, we've effectively reduced the file sizes in half & think it's a fair trade-off that will hopefully mean that more users will be willing to install/use VotW on Xbone.

It also means that this time around, we'll have more holotape content for users beside just the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. & Brainwashing tapes (though I don't know if Beth.net would allow BurlyQ to be on there)

Appreciate you offering to assist, I'll let Razorwire know that you've offered to help with Beth.net & will get back to you. Thanks.

[chucksteel]

Not sure if any of you have an xbox to test on but, I do so if you even just need a tester feel free to hit me up. :thumbsup: