Modding the Perfect Game

[charwo]

Hello!

 

I am new to the forum, and to Fallout 3. I am however a big fan of Fallout back from 98 or so. I recently acquired Fallout 3 on the cheap, but sadly, I have a shiny almost new computer that has a business PC graphics card. That is, I can't even so much as play Morrowind on this computer. And believe me, that is a bummer. However, when my cash flow improves, it means I can upgrade to something fairly phenomenal. Until then, I weep and I wait.

 

That and I watch. I've been looking at a lot of the Fallout 3 mods and I must say that I'm impressed. And....there's a couple of things I can see where Fallout 3 vanilla and me are not going to get along. I didn't have a problem with the dead world feel of Fallout because, come on, it's set in southern California, in a drought. Fallout 2 I didn't mind either because again, the West Coast was experiencing a drought, this one of of epic proportions. Those trees I was supposed to see as dead from the pre war? I saw living trees waiting to burst back to life when the rains came again. The East Coast however, has no excuse. So, mods will be necessary.

 

What am I looking for? More science and less Science! It's not like I want to lose the mutants, but I would like plausible deniability that Fallout respects reality instead of chucking it out the window in the name of Rule of Cool. To me realism is more important by far than theme and ambiance, FAR more. So I've found a couple of mods that I like, but not having had a chance to try them out, and many being a lot a like, here's the basics of what I'm looking for:

 

1. A Life After People mod

I mean a mod (or more) that explores what the world would look like in the wake of all out nuclear war fought with kiloton nuclear warheads. Believe it or not, the damage to Washington looks pretty accurate for low yield hits, but the dead wasteland and green sky (and green ocean if it really is tainted green) has to go. I'd like one that shows the Capital et all, being swallowed up by a nature that hiccuped when civilization destroyed itself and then began to devour the corpse. Bonus points for introducing real fauna (feral cats, horses, bears, decedents of zoo animals, wolves, real cows alongside or instead of Brahmin, alongside preferred) and a radiation free Potomac. I know Green World will do the basics, but I am wondering if there is more.

 

2. Best of (X)

I've seen a lot of mods that do a lot of the same, and it just seems a matter of choosing the best one. Looking for: Fallout Weapons pack (best at putting the guns from Fallout 1 & 2 with proper balance) Armor pack (mostly putting back the Power Armors back to Fallout 2 stat wise and an option to have Body Armor in the style of Fallout 2), real weapons pack (mostly looking for .45 Colts, M-16s, and StG-44s) and the best survivor mod (the one where you have to eat and drink and rest).

 

3. Transport mod

I have seen a 'car mod' for New Vegas, I am wondering if there is one for Fallout 3? If not, a horse or even a donkey with a cart would be good as a means to haul loot realistically. I LOVED the car in Fallout 2 for this reason.

 

4. Vault 112 mod

I know this is prissy, but if there's a mod that lets you save the people of Tranquility Lane without killing them, I'd love, LOVE to have it.

 

5. Modern Monuments mod

Is there something that put in some of the monuments that don't appear in Fallout 3? I'm speaking particularly of the WWII, FDR and Vietnam Wall, and others. Also, a slightly less kablooie White House.

 

6. Slice of Life mods

Basically, stuff that shows how life goes on in the Wasteland. Farming, people repairing old buildings and the like, maybe even factories. You know, the kind of fluff that made modding so awesome in Morrowind.

 

7. Anything Else?

I'm looking for best play through. I have heard of things like high res mods, streetlamps mods and such, but I'm not sure what they are nor if they are worth getting.

 

Anyway, I asked for a lot. I'd like feedback and stuff, but mod names alone would give me a great place to start. So thank you!

[MichikoUnknownFox]

Sadly, there's no way to make Fallout realistic at all. However, I believe many of the mods we have out now come about as close as we can get. There are mods that make the wasteland more dangerous, like those that make it so you need to actually eat, drink and sleep, mods that make it so injuries have more severe effects, and mods that make it so that ammo and medical supplies are very scarce. I actually imagine, realistically speaking, in two hundred years after the war, ammunition would be really scarce, and people would have invented new ammo presses that may be similar to how they made cartridges in the 1800's, and guns that were built with these new ammunition types in mind.

 

 

1.) From what I understand, you've never actually played the game, and therefore don't know much about the story aside from what you may be reading from mods. Dead trees are actually part of the story (not a spoiler, don't worry), and a DJ from the the major radio station, will even often talk about how you don't really see living trees anymore except in certain spot that each have stories to them as well.

 

Let's just say that the entire story of Fallout 3 is actually about water.

 

There's a lot of debate about the lore on how the world would look if it really did get hit by a nuclear disaster where nobody came about to rebuild. We don't really see this in real life, so everything is just speculation. Only few places have every been totally destroyed by war that nobody ever rebuilt on, and many of those were actually ancient civilizations, like Aztec ruins and things like that. The game's story is written in a way that it implies that barren wasteland is the only way to go. It never rains without mods, and the Potomac river, which is actually really wide in present day, is dry or only a few feet deep in most spots. Why the weather is like that isn't fully explained as far as I know, but that's just how it is.

 

Like I said, the story is about water. You can fighting the Supermutants and the Raiders and things like that, but without the water aspect, the Lone Wanderer, the hero of Fallout 3, wouldn't even have a story at all.

 

Worse still is the implied radioactivity that still exists in the wasteland. Even in the vanilla game there are scattered pockets of areas that are still really radioactive (in fact, some of them will be fatal to you if you enter), which is probably their way of saying that normal flora would have a hard time trying to survive out there in the dry radioactive wastes without some human intervention.

 

I personally think that a wasteland setting is more attractive than a green nature-took-over kind of thing, but that's just me. It may have to do with where I live. Since I live in a tropical area, a green wasteland is something I've seen out around the mountainsides where I've seen nature swallow up whole abandoned villages and whatnot. But we don't really see these dry nasty wastelands out here, so that adds to the appeal. Also, considering the story of Fallout 3, I think it makes a lot more sense than a green wasteland. But yeah, you better play the story first to know what you're talking about.

 

 

3.) There's quite a few drivable vehicles mods for Fallout 3, actually, but most of them are riddled with bugs and don't really make for a good "transport" system, let alone a realistic one. One example is the motorcycle mod, which is alright, but has too many bugs for it to be a practical option for a serious playthrough. There's also one of a Vertibird, which is similarly buggy. I guess since the game didn't give us the option by default, they didn't really develop that aspect. As opposed to the Elder Scrolls games, which have mounts by default, and therefore easier to make mods for.

 

 

4.) I can imagine making a mod like this myself, but I think the real hindrance is the voice acting. I generally don't play quests or NPC mods that don't have voice acting, and I don't like mods where the voice changes from one conversation to another. We'll either have to redo all the voices so the voices match the new dialogue, or find somebody that can copy the original voices.

 

 

6.) I'm working on one aspect of this, and a few others have done some stuff to this effect as well. My own mod will involve actual named NPCs (as opposed to generic NPCs) that have full schedules involving actually doing stuff, even if it's just aesthetics like watching an oven while they cook something, or a scavenger actually rummaging through a pile of garbage. This is something they actually had and were proud of in Oblivion (they called it "Radiant AI", and was a major marketing point in trying to sell Oblivion to gamers). While it is actually possible with Fallout's system, it was somehow not given any focus even with the vanilla NPCs. The best we get is having most of them sleep at certain hours, eat at certain hours, and that's it. In Oblivion we had people that actually visited other towns like every Tuesday, or hang out at the park to read a book in the afternoon except on Saturdays, which was when they go to chat with their friend by the marketplace. You could spend a day watching any given NPC's daily schedule, and you'll see that it actually made sense for the most part. That's sorely lacking in Fallout 3 (and Fallout New Vegas).

 

I also have in mind to try to make a more complex mod that involves NPCs slowly expanding their settlements. Each time you visit them, more stuff will be available, more NPCs move in, more houses will open up, and so on. Big Town is a prime example of such a place where that should be possible, because the actual territory of Big Town is just a small area in the middle of a lot of other houses. And there's more space around it so it's a good platform for other things to add.

 

I was also thinking of making a Brahmin farm. One that actually works and produces stuff that NPCs will try to sell to other towns.

 

There's a lot of other mods that already exist that do similar things as well.

 

 

7.) The aesthetics mods, including the high res mods and the streetlights mods are very much worth it. Very much. Once you see what they do, they can really add to the immersion factor of the game. In fact, in my opinion, even if you ignore all the other mods, like the gameplay changes and weapon packs, you can still enjoy the game way more than vanilla by just installing some things to make it more beautiful.

[bben46]

There is a bit more to replacing a video card in an inexpensive, off the shelf business computer. First, some of them don't even have a slot to accommodate the game type video card - be sure to look before dropping the cash for a new board.

 

Then, the power supplies are usually woefully inadequate for powering a decent video card. And to make it worse, many use non standard power supplies making replacing them with a decent PS either impossible or too expensive.

 

Trying to run a really good video card with a power supply that is too weak WILL destroy both the video card and the power supply. And it could damage other components as well - such as the mother board ($) and hard drive.

 

Most of those computers are also short on RAM, but that is usually inexpensive and easy to replace. The minimum ram is 2Gig, but 4 gig is much better. Unless you have a 64 bit computer (not likely) 4 Gig of ram is all it can use no matter how much you put in. Any thing over that will be wasted money.

 

If you give us the model number from the computer one of us could look it up and let you know what is and is not possible with it.

[charwo]

Actually thanks bben! But I had a friend who does computer modifications for a living look at my computer. He brought up the same issues, then looked at it. It's a dell oemact, but it's built like a regular PC. I think there might be a limit to what can be put on it, but I did some shopping around. It wasn't cheap; it was my mom's dual purpose PC/work from home system until she decided she'd rather have a laptop. She gave it to me cause my last PC was from the beginning of 2003. Now I don't remember the details exactly, but the card system is standard PC, but he gave me the power settings and after doing some shopping around, I was told at several stores that my machine could run any card that didn't require a water cooling system, and I could run Fallout 3 vanilla at like 75% of visual max if I got the right card. I just don't have the money either for the card, nor for the installation though.

[MichikoUnknownFox]

You need to find out the other specs of that machine. Fallout 3 difficulty in running on an office PC isn't just about graphics quality. In fact, like many modern games, graphics card power isn't the only thing to worry about, because even an older card like an 8600 GTS can run the game just fine, even with high def textures (!), which was what I was doing before I put together my current PC.

 

There's a lot of stuff going on especially in Gamebryo games, and they really mean it when they list the minimum system specs. Your system might be able to run the game if you're under the minimum specs, but like many threads we see here in the forums, you may end up getting a lot of headaches like sudden FPS drops, constant stuttering, and other anomalies caused by your machine not being able to process fast enough.

[charwo]

Like I said, when my friend took a look at my system, I gave him the game and said 'Can my PC run it?' He was skeptical until he started poking around and then rather astonishingly said it was more than capable as long as I had the card replaced. The thing is, this isn't a business PC per se, it's a personal PC which came preloaded with extended business software. I've had it checked out, the only thing that's a remotely an issue is the graphics card.

 

That said....given what I said I wanted, what are the mods I should be looking at?

[MichikoUnknownFox]

There's too many to actually put into a list form really. I listed a few of them down in my first response. For some of them, you can do a refined search for when you figure out what you actually want. "Best of" mods don't really exist in anybody's specifications but the guy who compiled them. The majority of the existing compilation mods for weapons focus on adding as many weapons as possible, instead of thinking about lore or things like that. There are a few exceptions, such as the Classic Fallout weapons pack. I personally think if you want only specific types of weapons to exist and at a customized frequency (for example, the StG-44 might be less common in America than the Tommy Gun), you're going to have to mod that yourself.

 

The other mods just don't exist (yet?). You're going to have to make them yourself or request somebody with the time and talent to do it. The monuments mod is interesting, but nobody has any of the resources floating around for free. And frankly, the odds of that happening now are dwindling more and more, as modder interest in Fallout 3 has gotten pretty low. Only a few of us actually still actively do anything for it, as many modders have moved on to the newer games like Fallout New Vegas or Skyrim, or completely quit modding altogether to "play" other games.

 

My final advice would be to actually get that game installed and play first. I know I'm being a hypocrite by giving this advice, because I never touched the vanilla game and had the game already modded even before Steam finished downloading the whole thing. But that's only because I already have experience with playing with unmodded and modded Gamebryo games. I already knew what the vanilla settings were, and as I played through the game, I saw little by little what other mods I wanted, and searched for or made the mods I thought I wanted to add to my game.

[charwo]

While I understand your advice for a traditional gamer, I'm picky and in large part I know there are things I want right off the bat. I had a s*** ton of mods going all at once on Morrowind and that went a long long way to making up for the lack of plot (again, being a Fallout junkie, my expectations are high). I've already seen a couple of things that I want:

 

Fellout

Green World (or Badass Wasteland Reclamation)

Ultra Realistic Wasteland Lighting

Arwen_Realism_Tweaks

EVE - Energy Visuals Enhanced

Project Beauty

 

This should give me the more of the visual flare I'm looking for. For the most part. How these work together, well, I can find out when I have the graphics card up and running. But that aside, there's still more up in the air.

 

I know there's a couple of retexture/high res redos for Fallout 3, but....not sure how they compare. And that whole slice of life stuff I wan talking about. All I need are some names to begin searching.

 

World

I want to create a world as plausibly realistic as possible. Mind you I don't mind the poisoned Potomac so much because there's a lot of reasons the water in the wasteland can be toxic without direct radiation from the blasts 200 years before. But I want the look of the Capital to be exactly as it's climate directs, which is why I like the Greenworld and maybe more the Badass Wasteland Reclamation. Thing is, I want more real world animals. Dogs, wolves, mutated feral cats, and....bears, horses, cattle, maybe zoo animals alongside the mutants. And speaking of which....

 

Mutants

As something of a Fallout purist (I hate saying that because purists of any kind as a rule suck) there seems to be WAY too many mutants in Fallout 3. In the last two games mutant creatures were not all that common, as in you had to do more than throw a stick in any given direction to find one. I don't necessarily have a problem with the number of ghouls, with the conceit that radiation alone does not a ghoul make (requiring mutagenic exposure like FEV and the bio weapons unleashed in the last years of WWIII), but Supermutants in DC? The whole concept of the Societal Preservation Program is stupid beyond belief, and nowhere is this more apparent than Vault 87. Vault 112 actually makes since as it's the madness of one and only one deranged German. That said, is there a mod that will turn off the spawning supermutants? So once I wipe out the inital batch, there's no more of them?

 

I'm mildly interested in the Marts Mutant mod, but....maybe there's something more to my liking.

 

Combat

What I like about a lot of the 'hardcore' mods is that well, combat should feel dangerous. So that's covered. Therefore...I am wondering about any of the following:

 

20th century Weapons pack (in terms of appearance and balance)

Fallout 1&2 weapons pack (ditto)

A mod that can tweak respawning enemies (namely take them down for more of a fauna desolate experience. (Ups the tension in aggregate.)

Options on a leveler scheme (there's a boatload out there, I'm hoping for input on which ones are good and which ones break the game wide open.)

 

Other things

Are there good (and thematically appropriate clothing mods)? Specifically, more and cleaner variants of pre-war outfits and maybe outfitting the Enclave with pre-war US military uniforms.

What are my options on a vehicle?

 

Thanks!

[MichikoUnknownFox]

Dogs and wolf-like creatures already exist in the vanilla game, and so do bears and cattle. They were probably lazy to put in horses because we may want to clamor for the ability to mount them. Not that having no horses in the game made us stop clamoring for that anyway.

 

Supermutants in DC is actually part of the story (especially if you have the Broken Steel DLC). The story will lead you to figuring out that very question: why are there so many supermutants in DC?

 

By default actually, with Broken Steel installed, Supermutants get less and less common except for their spawn area, so that will probably solve that problem for you. The wiki actually says they become "rare". I haven't played Broken Steel yet, so I don't know just how rare they get.

 

For leveling, I use Practice Makes Perfect. Might not be exactly what you're looking for, since you're "picky", but it's one of the most sensible leveling mods, if not THE most sensible, out there. And it's very well-written and virtually bugless. You level your skills up as you use them, and you can adjust the speed at which you level up as well. I always thought it was ridiculous that this imaginary "leveling up" that you get in vanilla, and most RPGs in general, gave you access to suddenly knowing how to pick a lock or perform surgery, when just 5 minutes ago before leveling up you had no such knowledge.

 

Not much on clothing mods. Same is true for all Bethesda games anyway, but maybe moreso for Fallout 3. The majority of "clothing" mods out are actually just skimpy stuff for girls. The few ones that are out are just retextures or other tweaks of existing clothing, like the 85 Outfits and trenchcoats mods. There is a WW2 Uniforms pack, which isn't very accurate on some of them, because they're really just retextures. You can give the American uniforms to the Enclave, but you're going to have to mod that yourself.

 

I don't recommend getting a vehicle mod. I mentioned this earlier. They're buggy and will generally ruin your experience. For this very reason, you don't see a lot of gameplay videos on YouTube of FO3 with vehicles, except for those demonstrating the various vehicle mods. And even in those, you'll easily see the bugs (with some bugs being really game-breaking, like literally breaking your character's 3D model or being unable to control your character). and would end up not really wanting to use them except for just playing around, as opposed to serious gameplay of finishing the story.

[charwo]

Hey, well it turned out that day for the video card came earlier than expected. $50 bucks out the door and I put it in myself! I'm pleased I'm not totally technologically incompetent.

 

Now, having played Fallout 3 extensively, I must say the BA Wasteland Reclamation mod is the best thing EVAR! It makes playing the game so much more fun. But that said, I've been looking for a Fellout compatible Weather mod. I downloaded the Dynamic Weather mod, only to find that horrible green sky was back. Ewww! I've been looking for one, but so far no luck. I there a way to have rain and sunny blue skies?