Third person viability mods

[TheWideMurloc]

I love playing in third person, but falloutscrolls games have never really done third person mode well. Fallout 4 was a significant step in the right direction, but it is still flawed in many ways. Two of which stand out to me the most.

 

First, flashlights:

 

Flashlights are cool...I much prefer them over the bog standard pip boy radial lamp. They have one major flaw, though...they don't work well in third person. Pointed off in a different direction than your camera, and getting completely blocked if something gets too close to your character's face. Most of this is because of where the light is attached on the player character, and the fact that its direction is tied to the direction that origin point is facing, which is not necessarily where the camera is looking, leading to the flashlight being pointed off center or sometimes even off camera, when playing in third person..

 

Several mods attempt to fix this. Changing the light's origin point, changing the character animations so that they face closer to the direction of the camera, but they never quite have a significant effect, or even sometimes the intended effect.

 

But has anyone ever tried making the Camera the light source instead of a point on the player character? Would this even be possible? If it is, it would solve so many problems with the current third person flashlights. The only issues I see with it (if its even possible) are making the player character cast shadows if you have mods that enable flashlight shadows, but there could possibly be a workaround involving making the player character not cast shadows from the flashlight, or just by not installing the mods that enable flashlight shadows. For my part, i'd gladly sacrifice flashlight shadows for some actual third person functionality.

 

 

 

Second, is power armor.

 

Specifically the lack of a seperate camera angle for using power armor in third person. For whatever reason, the f3rdPersonPowerArmorCameraAdjust variable in the .ini doesn't seem to do jack s***. This is a major problem because entering power armor when your third person camera is set up for comfortable play on foot will cause your power armor's right shoulder to completely block the center of your screen, making it impossible to aim in third person.

 

There is a mod that lets you change the third person camera angle in game without reloading or anything

 

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/18246/

 

but going into your inventory, finding the holotape, and tweaking each individual setting to be comfortable in power armor, only to have to remember your previous settings and set them all back manually when exiting your power armor is...well, I don't think anyone wants to do that. I bring this up, though, because it means that the third person camera angles CAN be altered on the fly. Is it possible to use this kind of system to set up "profiles" or something of the sort, for "on foot" and "in power armor" that can be configured seperately? Something that will swap automatically when exiting or entering power armor?

 

If either of these are possible, they would be a much welcome addition for third person players like me.

Edited January 13, 2018 by mauskal