An independent New Vegas mod.

[TheAtmosphere]

Bump, uh the internet must suck down your end.

[darkus37]

Glad to hear the project might be picking up steam again - if you guys don't mind, here are my 2 cents:

 

1) While I liked the concept introduced by TheAtmosphere, I would suggest tweaking it a little so that the ambassador(s) come to you: if you are the ruler of New Vegas, you do not owe anyone anything - they must come to you and ask for your blessing in operating in your kingdom. Perhaps you could retrofit the penthouse into a throne room of sorts (where Mr. House's monitors are), where you can accept homage from the major factions. Side quests can be introduced in this fashion as NPC's approach you to ask for help. Like a real kingdom, there can be assassination attempts and court intrigue. There can be several ministers that offer major quests, for example, the Minister of Technology offers to take over the RepConn Rocket facility to prevent more rockets from being used to potentially target New Vegas - the quest reward would be having that section under your control and a steady increase in caps along the trade routes (sort of like the Nelson NCR quest).

 

2) There has to be an enemy - the last time I visited this thread, the main idea was using Yes Man as an antagonist, but it doesn't have to be him as there are plenty of alternatives: It could be anything from a mobster group out of Reno to a vengeful Anthony House (ghoulified or cyborg) who wants the empire his brother built. It could be a combination of several elements such as Anthony subverting Yes Man or an outside faction like the Enclave Remnants manipulating another group (i.e. Reno Mobsters) to achieve its goals.

[devinpatterson]

second thing, being, any sort of life-extension/cyberneticization of the player. Probably an android, clone, heck even ghoulification or FEV/genetic tinkering- the player won't be making the same mistake of relying on secrecy and robots to defend him/herself. This could be easily tied into an OWB questline.

 

It's an interesting idea, but seems kind of at odds to the lore....to me. I mean if House had some of that tech, I think it's likely he would have used it instead of his (comparatively crappy) pod based life extension. Whether that would be OWB brain tank's, robobrain etc, I suspect it would have been a better solution than his current/previous state. I guess he wasn't able to steal (corp espionage) or buy general atomic's brain bot tech (or it was inherently too flawed) and OWB's think tanks weren't developed until after the war (if I remember right).

 

I guess we could jury rig a reasonable explanation in. Like maybe he was hoping to restore his body (in all it's natural humanity) at a future date, so he didn't want to go the brain bot route. But even if we did, how would the life extension tech apply to the player, whose life is always on the edge (and honestly will probably be long dead before he/she has to worry about old age).

 

But maybe I'm not quite understanding where your going with that, so if I have misunderstood, run it by me again.

 

As far as the cybernetic/android angle (with immediate benefits & disadvantages), I could totally see the OWB think tanks doing something like that and relishing the research....nothing they would do (no matter how insane), would really surprise me. But I think that's much more suited to the OWB expansion.

 

 

Novac itself was raided by the Legion IIRC, in all endings, though fixing the Jason Bright rockets allowed them to save most of the townsfolk.

Finally that ghould guy who camped out in the Nightkin-infested Repconn Basement should/could be upgraded into a potential companion, he's just too much of a hardass to pass up. That part of the quest always annoys me to no end.

 

Did not know there was a tie-in between Jason & novac/legion raid, thanks for that

 

Harkin or something like that? yeah I guess he was pretty cool. If we could find a voice actor for him (which shouldn't be hard since a ghoul has pretty messed vocals) I think we could put together a companion pretty easy. Less fun if there's no audio.

[devinpatterson]

 

It's good to see that more people are getting into the idea for this mod and are willing to assist in the developement. I wish I could help out but my GECK experience only goes as far as the Vault 74 tutorial and removing a few enemy spawn points. Only thing I can offer is the occassional idea here and there.

 

Truthfully I'd rather have all vanilla assets and a great story line than flashy new assets and a crap plot. So good ideas are gold, and any help is greatly appreciated.

 

 

Will there be any plans for using Old World Blues, Lonesome Road and Honest Hearts? I left out Dead Money as it's supposed to be a one time visit to the Sierra Madre (unless you use a mod to go back there but I was never keen to return to that hellhole). I would like to see something done about the Tunnelers from the Divide as Ulysses mentioned that they would be a future threat to the Mojave.

 

IMHO I think they are too isolated, whether that's by distance (honest hearts) and both natural as well as unnatural barriers (radar fence etc) to be of any use in this mod. I suppose you could have some sort of hail mary long shot via OWB if everything went to hell in the mod. Some superweapon, if you were in danger of legion or NCR cutting short your reign, but I don't think it'd be fun to have a deus ex machina via the think tanks to pull your butt out of the fire.

 

And you can probably shoehorn in some other angles, like a tribe from honest hearts as mercs or something.....if you really stretch it, but I personally just don't think any of the dlc's will have much to contribute sotry-wise (we may need some for assets, but I hope not)

 

I am....or I should say was (hope to pick it up again, soon-ish), working on a old world blues expansion here. I believe it has some really intriguing ideas.

 

I'll try to address your other points and other posters soon, right now my buggy as h*ll connection is really annoying me..... exponentially increasing the time it takes to post a simple msg.

[TheAtmosphere]

Devilpatterson, what do you think of my extended post on the other page?

[devinpatterson]

 

Devilpatterson, what do you think of my extended post on the other page?

 

Bear with me brother, my brain functions a bit on teh slow side at the best of times. The tech just replaced the nsi's sled, so hopefully my DSL won't be constantly freak'n out.

 

 

Here is my idea, fast forward to January 2282 you wake up in the Presidential Suite in the Lucky 38 and you hear Yes Man (New Voice) over the speaker system in the Lucky 38. He calls you down to the Penthouse and this Penthouse has been accustomed to a leader, a lot has changed and Yes Man has just finished his overhaul on his coding, he tells you that as a leader, you need to impose the new law and customs throughout the wasteland,

 

I think we can fit something like this in, a bit down the road (say a week or two of time in teh game world). The reason I say that is because we actually do have a little bit of a template for what happens immediately in teh aftermath of hoover dam. These come from teh end slides (which are a bit fuzzy in my brain since I researched them months ago when I was still modding).

 

Essentially (if I remember correctly), if you didn't upgrade the securitrons to mark II's, people freak out/panic & the Mark I's have a hard time controlling the population. So it's a real mess. If you did upgrade them, they put things in order quickly and efficiently (probably violently as well). I also suspect, at this early point in time, Yesman is probably still compiling (?, developing.....no idea) his code, and is offline. So for us that means we have a big (mark I's) or small powder keg to set up along with some securitron allies. I'll go into that in more detail shortly, but basically you'll have citizens at each others throats, looting etc with the degree and number determined by whenther you upgraded the bots. It won't be a huge deal to set up, just change some factions and get some blood flowing when the player comes in. Then the player and his bot (and non-bot) companions get to help clean up the mess. A hands on approach (read a little bit of firepower) is probably the only way to deal with teh problem. But maybe we can have some long shot alternatives like a crazy hard speech 100 check to get the crowd under control in each cell.

 

Even if you'v upgraded the securitrons and the battle is quick, there will still be political damage control to tend to......since some of the more violent elements of the rioting population will have been "taken care of". That will lead to some bad blood and a bit of a tarnished start to teh players reign or stewardship (depending on his/her governing style).

 

 

He calls you down to the Penthouse and this Penthouse has been accustomed to a leader, a lot has changed and Yes Man has just finished his overhaul on his coding, he tells you that as a leader, you need to impose the new law and customs throughout the wasteland, if you finished the game with Good Karma, as you leave the Lucky 38, you are given an audience of clapping people, if you finished the game with Bad Karma, you leave and everyone just stares at you out of fear,

 

So fast forward a few days or week, when things have stabilized a bit, but before the main plot lines kick in (the calm before the storm). I think this, is probably a good time period to put your suggestion above, about Yesman.

 

But keep in mind it would depend on how we story board Yesman. Does he recompile corrupted or very assertive? If so he won't be the helpful Yesman we all know and love. So the above might not work. There is a main plot line that involves Yesman as a potentially very dangerous villian with the ability to transfer his program from securitron to securitron making him very difficult to put down. It's a few pages back.

 

Yes-Man would then radio to you that you will need to sort the Gommorrah Casino as Cachino committed suicide,

 

You may want to use the riots as the demise of Cachino instead of suicide......seems like it would fit better.

 

 

Yes-Man would then radio to you that you will need to sort the Gommorrah Casino as Cachino committed suicide, this is open to many factions, Great Khans, Boomers, etc, you can also help decide how the new casino would be run, would it be Like the Ring-A-Ding Tops or the Majestic Ultra Luxe Casino?

 

Sure I don't see any reason why the player shouldn't be able to make some "customizations" on the strip, as long as it isn't too labor intensive to us. Maybe a choice of two or three options or themes, as you suggest.

 

 

Whatever you choose, when you get back to the Lucky 38, you are given a "Nation Screen" where you can choose your title, (President/Prime Minister/Legate/Emperor/Etc) your nations status, (Republic, Democracy, Monarchy/etc) military, and maybe even a "Create-Your-Own Flag" feature. (I can already predict many crashes.

 

I think something like that (the title) is possible. We make a global var where 1 is President, 2 Prime minister etc and the speech tree will have conditions that rely on it. But that means there will be one whole set of dialog for each title, just to start off the lines with President (or whatever is your choice). So it may be a big chore (mostly copy and pasting, just changing one word). But it is possible......

 

One thing I'd like to note is that this is the independant new vegas ending, so it really only covers that end game (at least initially). At some point we or another group may make the legion ending (which would be a dark NV), NCR (In fact Darkus and I were considering a NCR ending in another thread, the link should only be a few pages back) etc, but for now we should concentrate on this ending.....it's a large enough project as it is.

 

Something similar can be done with another global var for flags. That variable will enable all of flag1 and disable all other flags. So in principal making a choice between several presets are possible, but no DIY in game drawing/painting app unfortunately.

 

 

 

Yes Man alerts you that the Ambassador of the NCR would like to see you (If you killed Crocker he would've been replaced.) You would then hop over to the NCR Embassy and the Ambassador will ask you what you will do about the NCRs presence on the Strip, you can tell him to get the hell out of Vegas, I was thinking the Mojave Empire/Republic/Nation has a different Reputation Screen added onto the Pip-Boy, and this would negatively impact the Mojaves status with the NCR, you can ask the NCR to stay in Vegas, or you can alternatively tell them you have not made a decision yet.

 

You will definitely have choice in re: to teh legion, NCR etc. Although some of the above, that you are suggesting, will actually be determined by your pre-game activities. A combination of NCR rep and whether you threw Gen Oliver off the hoover dam, will have a lot to do with determining if keeping NCR ties/neutrality are even an option. This also holds true for legion and the result of the battle with legate (the legate defeat speech option will make legion combativeness slightly less likely).

 

 

It's difficult to think of a plot as in my opinion, the player should be allowed to create their own plot, do they want to ignore the NCR for the rest of the game? Do they want to be put in a system what ol' Robert House was in? Do they want to invade Flagstaff, AZ?

 

Alas, the NCR and Legion won't leave it up to the player to make that choice. Whether it's work by NCR agents to stir up rebellion and resentment of NV or outright assassination attempts by the legion on teh players life, the super powers of the region won't just stand by and let the player call the shots. An independent New Vegas isn't the end of the couriers problems, it's just the beginning......

 

 

The thing missing with the original game is that there is no control, you don't control the Strip, you oversee it, we need to put that feature of control into the game, it's what the people love, we should be able to create weaponry, hell, we should be allowed to create NEW securitrons and robots, we should be able to repair the entire roading system of the Mojave, use the NCRCF as our prison for Vegas, the city should be unlocked. (That should be our motto, Unlock New Vegas :wink: )

 

I think, depending on how much work we want to put into it, we can accomplish customization of the strip and parts of the Mojave, Including roads, using the NCRCF (if you toss out the NCR), unlocking the city (probably using collaborative efforts from other modders that have added buildings to NV already) etc. But probably not new weapons or bots per se. If they were possible with current resources, House would have probably developed them (he's a genius in these matters, from securitrons to his work on liberty prime).

[devinpatterson]

I also think that this mod would go well with some of the restoration mods for the Strip and Freeside.

 

Yeah definitely, things like NV interiors and similar mods would be a godsend and save us a lot of time.

 

 

I would also like to see an add on for TSC Vegas and an independent Vegas but since the author Nylonathep is busy with finishing Mothership Zeta Crew (another of my favourite mods) for FO3 it will be a while before he gets back to it.

 

That one is a little tougher, I'm familiar with the theme of TSC and maybe way down the road we could incorporate/share each others mods, but at the moment this is a large project, as is. So I'd be inclined to say with our workload and Nylonathep being busy it's unlikely that we'll have a chance to work on it.

 

 

Will there be any plans for using Old World Blues, Lonesome Road and Honest Hearts?

 

We're trying to work around an internship and take a summer trip to all 5 of the big national parks in Utah. I'm going to see if I can get some assets for the community to use with honest hearts. I dont know if those will only be recordings (birds, whatever) for use ad audio markers and snapshots for textures, or if it will be other stuff. It will depend on whether my galaxy S3 can do the job, since I don't have any professional equipment. But that's probably all I'll contribute in re: to honest hearts.

 

 

I would like to see something done about the Tunnelers from the Divide as Ulysses mentioned that they would be a future threat to the Mojave.

 

There is a someone working on expanding lonesome road, I bet he'd be a better choice to ask. I'm afraid I don't remember who it was though.

 

 

[devinpatterson]

Glad to hear the project might be picking up steam again - if you guys don't mind, here are my 2 cents:

 

Of course, always welcome

 

 

1) While I liked the concept introduced by TheAtmosphere, I would suggest tweaking it a little so that the ambassador(s) come to you: if you are the ruler of New Vegas, you do not owe anyone anything - they must come to you and ask for your blessing in operating in your

 

Sounds sensible, assuming you did your best not to burn bridges with the ncr (ie speech check to back Oliver down as opposed to punting him over the dam). If you massacred the rangers and gave Oliver the heave ho over the dam, I don't think you'll see any diplomatic relations without some serious work/appeasement on the players part (or some political maneuvering, playing off the legion and ncr against each other to curry favor with you).

 

 

Perhaps you could retrofit the penthouse into a throne room of sorts (where Mr. House's monitors are), where you can accept homage from the major factions.

 

I did start work on this a bit before my hiatus. Edited the scripts to allow npc followers into the penthouse, some idle markers etc. If it's not in my profile than it's probably still on mediafire. We can probably do some themes to customize the penthouse (or leave it vanilla, but concentrate on filling in the markers, making the monitors work etc).

 

 

Side quests can be introduced in this fashion as NPC's approach you to ask for help. Like a real kingdom, there can be assassination attempts and court intrigue. There can be several ministers that offer major quests, for example, the Minister of Technology offers to take over the RepConn Rocket facility to prevent more rockets from being used to potentially target New Vegas - the quest reward would be having that section under your control and a steady increase in caps along the trade routes (sort of like the Nelson NCR quest).

 

 

 

 

Yep, sounds good. There will be a lot of work to do, so the potential for side quests will be enormous.

 

 

 

 

 

2) There has to be an enemy - the last time I visited this thread, the main idea was using Yes Man as an antagonist, but it doesn't have to be him as there are plenty of alternatives: It could be anything from a mobster group out of Reno to a vengeful Anthony House (ghoulified or cyborg) who wants the empire his brother built. It could be a combination of several elements such as Anthony subverting Yes Man or an outside faction like the Enclave Remnants manipulating another group (i.e. Reno Mobsters) to achieve its goals.

 

Yep, that's what I was referring to in re: to falling short of the mods potential (without a major plot line and antagonistic). But we'll also have a lots of little villains too. Although the player may be a bad *ss and have a robot army, in some ways s/he's still much more accessible than house. People will see opportunities in the chaos to grab power and topple authority. I definitely believe Yesman (as strongly alluded to in the end slides) should figure heavily into the plot (as well as anthony) as was outlined a few pages back. I'm mostly struggling with constructing a plausible scenario for House's survival and possible redemption before his final demise (once again, see plot a few pages back).

[devinpatterson]

So for a quick run down;

part 1 some basic baby steps. If I have a free couple of hours I'd like to put out some basics this week or next. It's modest;

Some changes to the fort and dam, like removing personal and possibly some fixtures, as well as adding securitrons.

Some travel packages to have small packs of half a dozen securitrons running back and forth between the vault and NV.

Limited changes to the strip like greater securitron presences/numbers.

Opening up the penthouse.

Basic dialog options for the securitrons to recognize your new status and simple commands. Adding them to the player faction etc. Voice files will probably be included. Isabelle and I already have some samples of my voice that she tweaked to sound in indistinguishable from the vanilla securitrons.

 

So some small basic things to get back into the swing of things. This is probably going to be a private beta just for us.

 

Part 2 will be the sh*tstorm just after the battle. It has the riots. It's a bit down the road and will probably be our first public release. I don't think it will be crazy hard to set the scene, so it shouldn't take too long, but I can't say until I fire up the geck and start messing with it.

[TheAtmosphere]

 

DSL line issues? Ah, I feel your pain, I've had the same problems for weeks.

 

If I can get an idea of who's permission we'll need for the mod, I can work on getting permission, I'd also really have to up the standard of the grammar in "Run The Lucky 38" because I'd hate to have a really well-written modification only for it to be ruined by a co-mods bad grammar, we shouldn't be reliant on too many mods, maybe have "Additional Packs" to enhance the experience of the player.

 

Also, it was mentioned a few pages back to have a separate world space to the original game, however the amount of conflicts that will happen and all the copying and pasting we'd have to do wouldn't be worth it, plus every modification ever will become incompatible but we'd need a new idea on how the wasteland will change.

 

The plot is a real game-changer, either it could be a bland plot with unrealistic and out-of-lore settings, or it could be a large plot to the size of New Vegas Bounties or the Rockwell Pursuit, or Project Brazil, for that matter.

 

http://tcrf.net/Fallout:_New_Vegas/Unused_Dialog#Post-endgame_references

 

These need to be implemented, pre-voiced lines? Wow!

 

I really think we need proper dialogue with acting, it adds to the immersion, every top-rated mod on the Nexus has voice-acting included.

 

About the modification thing, I guess you can say releasing modifications isn't my strong point, or, well, releasing and marketing certainly is, but just making mods for everyone, you dig? I usually create modifications for my specific characters...

 

Anyhow, who's actually on the team? We should have a roster, included with Steam names and email addresses, I mean, we all have Steam if we have F:NV on PC.

 

I can get add to my plot, I've been thinking of some ideas on my travels in the real world, I've been to the Mojave and Las Vegas before, and when Mr House said, "Restore New Vegas to it's former glory." Believe me, I empathize with him there, that sign needs fixing, the gates need coming down, Freeside needs to be incorporated into the strip, the buildings need repair, the grass needs watering, the thugs need killing, the streets need protecting, the businesses need to be thriving, or not, welcome to fabulous New Vegas, please, drive safely.

 

Also, I disagree with Yes Man being a antagonist, you didn't spend all that time to be outed by a Securitron. I can try to voice anyone you want me to.