[WIP] Project Extend And Change Everything (PEACE)

[antistar]

- Plastic Bowl Containers 01

 

Tupperware! You can't tell me that vintage Tupperware isn't a good fit for the kitsch 1950s aspects of Fallout. In PEACE, I changed the various soups/stews/etc that previously appeared in ceramic bowls to instead use these sealable plastic bowl containers styled after vintage Tupperware designs. I think my parents still have some containers with lids like these. (For the record I think these specific designs are from the 1970s or 80s rather than the 50s, but whatever.)

Why bother, though? Well, in PEACE, consumable items that visibly/logically come in some kind of container will return an appropriate empty container when consumed. E.g. tin cans for tinned food, glass bottles for drinks, empty syringes for Stimpaks (and other chems), etc. These empty containers break down into appropriate scrap components, and these same components are used when crafting the associated consumables. Using the Stimpak example, an empty syringe gives 1 glass and 1 steel, and in PEACE, crafting a Stimpak requires 1 glass and 1 steel too (along with its other ingredients).

When it came to food items that appeared in ceramic bowls (e.g. Iguana soup), initially I made them return ceramic bowls and adjusted their weight to fit. However this made them kind of heavy, and also meant that you'd need some ceramic on hand when cooking these dishes - for the bowls. That seemed a little inconvenient, and also really made it feel like you were trying to carry around soup in an open bowl in your backpack, so...

Sealable plastic bowl containers. There you go. These are lighter, require plastic instead of ceramic when cooking, and make a little more sense. Just a minor immersion thing, overall.

[Moldy]

I wonder if you'll lump the Stimpak Syringe with the Psycho Syringe. I ask because Psycho's delivery system is obviously more than a single chamber syringe. There are two secondary chambers attached to the sides,and wires connecting them to either end of the primary chamber,suggesting an electroshock component.

[antistar]

I think I do have Psycho returning an "empty syringe", same as the Stimpak - for the sake of simplicity, really. (You could assume that the other parts aren't worth recovering.)

 

It's similar across most of the rest of the empty containers you get from consumables; the different Nuka Cola varieties all return the same basic Nuka Cola bottle, the different foods that come in differently marked boxes all return generic small cardboard boxes, etc.

[Moldy]

So,you say that robots,specifically the Cargotron,are going to be primarily useful as cargo mules. However,what about Strong? His base Strength score is a staggering 24. Unfortunately,he may only wear very specific Super Mutant armour,which cannot be modified. Will you be addressing this,or maybe making a carrying pack for Strong to use?

 

Also,unrelated,but I had to dredge this up from the fourth page.

[antistar]

Well it's been a month since the last post, so hey; not surprising. I've been doing WARS stuff rather than PEACE stuff just recently.

 

 

I didn't think of Strong (and I guess super mutants in general) when it came to load bearing equipment though yeah; that's a good point. I'm not big on followers in these games in general - and found Strong in particular to be annoying - so it didn't really occur to me.

 

I should be able to at least hack together some kind of makeshift backpack for super mutants though. Before settling on the hand cart + suitcase/duffle bag power armour backpack for raider power armour, I experimented with shopping trolley or rubbish bin backpacks - but they were a bit too big. It might be alright on super mutants though?

 

I've made a note of it, anyway.

 

 

Oh and I imagine that robots will still be useful as fire support or whatever too - just that they should become especially useful as cargobots with PEACE. I actually also added in special "hardened" versions of the various cargo attachments for robots that require high-level perks to craft, but provide good protection too. Not the best protection available - and they do also come with a movement speed penalty - but pretty good protection.

 

 

Edit: P.S. Shut up, Strong.

Edited August 16, 2020 by antistar

[antistar]

Here's another new weapon - but this time for PEACE. Why PEACE and not WARS?

 

- Camping Hatchet 01

Well, this camping hatchet (mesh by Yogensia, textures by me) was originally designed to be a tool (in PEACE I mean), rather than a weapon. In PEACE I'll be changing the cooking station recipes to all require wood as fuel. Partially this is because I'll probably also be adding a portable "camp stove" item that can be deployed out in the field to give you a portable cooking station. Originally I was thinking of adding charcoal as fuel for custom versions of the cooking station recipes, but it seems more streamlined and consistent to just have all those recipes require wood.

I wanted a way for the player to be able to scavenge for wood out in the Wasteland (ostensibly from trees or furniture rather than mops, pencils and wooden spoons), to feed the camping stove - and also just as another way to get more wood since more will be required now generally, for cooking - so the camping hatchet was born. It didn't feel right to not be able to use it as a weapon too though, so this is how it works:

When the weapon is equipped, it adds a reusable "scavenge wood" function to the Aid section of the Pip-Boy that allows the player character to spend an hour scavenging for wood. (As in there's a short fade-to-black and the in-game time is advanced an hour.) Currently it yields 5-10 units of wood. This scavenging function only requires that a Camping Hatchet is in your inventory; it does not have to be equipped all the time. If the scavenging function is ever lost, equipping a Camping Hatchet again will add another one to the Pip-Boy.

If that sounds convoluted, it's set up this way so that the hatchet can be used as a regular weapon without it constantly throwing message-boxes in your face asking you if you want to scavenge for some wood whenever you go to pull the hatchet out or whatever.

Anyway, it's a fairly basic weapon - no weapon mods currently - but it can be found on NPCs, at vendors, in loot, etc.


Speaking of things that advance in-game time, I've also been working on a feature in PEACE that's similar to something like the Time Passes mod for Skyrim. I.e. in-game time actually advancing when you (say) build, craft or modify something - instead of conjuring whatever it is out of thin air in an instant. It's a heavy WIP at the moment, but it looks like it should be able to handle the following as things that each take different, configurable lengths of time:

- Cooking food
- Crafting chems (or anything else made at a chem station)
- Modifying armour/weapons
- Modifying robots
- Building robots
- Scrapping items
- Building settlement objects
- Scrapping settlement objects
- Repairing settlement objects

It's a relatively simple implementation in that all food recipes take the same length of time, all weapon/armour modification takes the same length of time, etc - but it looks like I should be able to have those settlement-related actions take less time the more settlers you have at that settlement. I can probably also throw your current (non-Dogmeat) companion in as an extra helper, too. ;)

I expect this will all be configurable via an MCM menu. It's also something that probably wouldn't be too hard to split off into a standalone mod (like BAM), and if I did I think I'd call it "These Things Take Time (TTTT)".

So, uh... if anyone would be interested in that, let me know, I guess.

 

 

 

In other words, I've been doing a lot of scripting lately. Bleh, scripting. It's been going better than I expected though, and I think I am learning a bit about FO4's version of Papyrus. I've been thinking wistfully about a "time passes" feature for FO4 for years, but always thought it'd be really complicated to pull off - and it kind of is, in places - but so far it's coming together.

[Mavkiel]

Scripting...can be fun. Seeing things come together. Or when it bugs out make you want to start cursing at the screen while pulling out your hair... I remember when I was making a set of scripted armor for fallout 3, that involved multiple dice rolls going off at random times to try and mimic the character going insane. (Occasionally hearing liberty prime urging you to kill comies, phantom raiders trying to kill you, stat's raising/lowering as you go from mania to depression)

 

Anyhow, its great to hear it's coming together, I can't wait to see the finished product!

[antistar]

Thanks - and yeah, that sounds like a potentially very complicated set of things to script.

 

 

The "time passes" script in PEACE is done now. It's all working exactly the way I wanted it to, though parts of it took some lateral thinking to get it there. It all took a lot of research; sifting through existing scripts to work out how to piece it all together.

 

Right now I'm working on the MCM menu for it, and for a while there I was really hitting a brick wall; it was being more intractable than any part of the actual script, even. I'd forgotten how particular JSON files are about where you put those commas. I think I was also running into trouble with formatting/syntax that looked exactly right but technically had incorrect characters in it. (The problem being that they looked identical to the correct characters.)

 

The key problem though was that there's no error reporting beyond "error loading this menu". It either works or it doesn't. The Papyrus compiler is actually really good about telling you what's wrong with your script and where, but with the MCM menu it was almost entirely trial and error. It took ages. (Especially since you have to load up the game to test every little change.)

 

I've worked it out now, though; I just need to fill out the rest of the menu.

[antistar]

The MCM menu is sorted out now (I also added a time cost slider for harvesting wood with the Camping Hatchet), and now I'm working on another scripted feature for PEACE that I've had in mind for ages: butchery.

 

The idea is that animals no longer have meat or other body parts on them when they die - or anything else, typically. No more bloatflies carrying bottle caps and junk items for some reason. Instead, you need to butcher them - but you get much more meat, organs, bones, skin, etc than in vanilla as a result.

 

It works via an extra activation prompt (like the EAT CORPSE prompt for the Cannibal perk), which only shows up if you have a bladed weapon equipped. Partially for immersion, and partially so that it's easy to not have the prompt there, should it clash with some other activation prompt. It's currently checking for the "AnimsStabWeapon" keyword, since that's on almost all the bladed weapons here that aren't axes or something.

 

Butchering has a configurable time cost, which varies based on the size of the animal, arranged into tiers. It's currently like this in my notes:

 

 

Creature Butchery Tiers (and default time costs). Asterisk indicates creature that can show up as predator/scavenger:
- Tiny (45 minutes)
--- Ant *
--- Bloatfly *
--- Bloodbug *
--- Cat
--- Hermit Crab Hatchling
--- Mirelurk Hatchling
--- Rad chicken
--- Rad rabbit
--- Rad-rat *
--- Radroach *
--- Stingwing *
- Small (2 hours)
--- Bloodworm *
--- Cave cricket *
--- Dog
--- Mole rat *
--- Mongrel *
--- Mutant Hound *
--- Wolf *
- Medium (4 hours)
--- Brahmiluff
--- Brahmin
--- Gazelle
--- Ghoul *
--- Gulper *
--- Human
--- Mirelurk *
--- Mirelurk Hunter *
--- Mirelurk King *
--- Radstag
- Large (6 hours)
--- Angler *
--- Deathclaw *
--- Fog crawler *
--- Gatorclaw *
--- Radscorpion *
--- Super Mutant
--- Yao guai *
- Huge (8 hours)
--- Hermit Crab
--- Mirelurk Queen
--- Super Mutant Behemoth

 

 

 

As mentioned there, there's also the chance that a predator/scavenger will smell blood and turn up when you finish butchering something to see what's happening (and probably attack you). There'll be a configurable chance for that, possibly with a modifier if you've got the Animal Friend and/or Wasteland Whisperer perks. Probably also different lists of potential predators based on if you're on the Island or in the Commonwealth. (Maybe one for Nuka-World too? I'm not sure about that yet.)

 

All this is working already, in a basic sense - which means the most difficult parts of the scripting are done, thankfully. Now there's just a lot of lists and perk entries and whatnot to fill out to implement it all - plus refinements to the script. (Like Survival Mode disease chances when butchering, probably lessened then negated with ranks in Animal Friend.)

 

 

With the "These Things Take Time" feature meaning that a lot more time is likely to pass for your character, avenues to get more food are important, so I'm glad this Butchery feature isn't being too difficult to implement.

 

 

Edit: Forgot to mention that I'll have Wasteland Survival 9 reduce the time cost for butchery, rather than increasing the amount of meat you find.

Edited October 25, 2020 by antistar

[Moldy]

Hey,you know how you wanted to make your mods play nice with Sim Settlements? Yeah,throw any preliminary work you've done on that out. Kinggath released Sim Settlements 2,which is a from-zero rebuild of the mod.