Create a Town Mod Idea

[OnyxAbyss]

I was thinking about this the other day at work and thought it would be pretty cool. I'm not a modder at all, so basically I just supply the main idea and I'd need a team of people to do pretty much all of the actual work.

 

Anyways, the idea is that you would be able to start your own town somewhere in the wasteland. I have a few ideas for how to get it started initially.

 

First would be if you stumble upon a small group of maybe 5-10 wastelanders wandering that are being followed by raiders/super mutants/slavers. They ask for your help to get them off their back. After taking care of the baddies, you learn the people are looking for a place to settle down/from a small town that was destroyed by whoever was stalking them. They want to start a new settlement but need someone to help protect them while rebuilding.

 

So the first part of the quest could be to scout for an area that could be used as the start of a town. Could be a couple deserted houses or something like that. Once you've found a place, you then get asked to start searching for junk that could be used to start building things like a barrier around the area.

 

After you get the basic settlement down you have the option of building onto your town. You could so quests to find supplies to make new buildings, get a water purifier running, get shops and medical facilities going etc...

 

You could also give the people caps to have them find materials and build in your absence.

 

All those people you save from random encounters could have the option to be asked to come and live in your new town. The more people you have, the more advanced your buildings and shops could get.

 

Possible buildings:

-Multiroom building for sleeping quarters

-Small houses

-Clinic

-Shop

-Brothel

 

Obviously, without a construction kit this would be impossible, or at least take an extremely long amount of time. So basically this thread is to recruit/get more ideas for when/if we do get a construction kit in the future.

[windexglow]

I'm not a modder at all, so basically I just supply the main idea and I'd need a team of people to do pretty much all of the actual work.

 

And that's the point where I knew this mod would be one of the following

(a) - Impossible without a highly skilled team with no life for several years [check]

(b) - Copy of another game [empty]

© - Something that looks good on paper, but isn't [check]

 

Guess how many check out? 2. Your idea sounds good on paper, but in reality it would require hundreds of hours of work to properly script with the free-roam idea.

 

Secondly, models. While you could use the default models, they are often limited in many ways.

 

Thirdly, very few would enjoy spending hours finding materials. Hell, not many would enjoy doing the work in your idea. Games aren't supposed to be a job on minimum wage.

[BanjoOz]

I love the idea of building your own "settlement" from a hovel to something decent. Anyone who's played (for example) the Breath of Fire games knows the fun of developing and improving your own little "town", even if it's in very limited ways. It gives you a real sense of ownership and a feeling that you're making a little corner of the world better (or in F3's case, optionally "worse"!).

 

Then again, I'd just be happy with more houses in the world!

[Omnimmotus]

This wouldn't be too terrifically hard, although voiceover is always a pain. Like Bethesda adds furniture to the houses in Oblivion and Fallout, that same method of enabling a reference could be used to enable parts of the town. Anything already built would stay put, but new things could be built onto them. This would allow for a continual expansion of the town to something big, maybe like Megaton. Unlike Megaton, however, it would likely be part of the exterior world, so there might be some framerate issues, but oh well. A sacrifice for the greater cause.

 

As for the idea, it reminds me quite a bit of Suikoden. You claim a fortress, and then go around the world collecting specific characters who have specific skills to fill various areas of your castle/fortress. Excellent game, and excellent concept proven to work in the past. I'd love to make this mod.

 

Now if you don't mind all of the NPCs being the equivalent of Megaton Settlers - no name, one line and leave it at that - than you could certainly make it so people you save can be invited to live in your town. They could fill up the common house and make the place look a little more busy. For more complex characters, it'll require a bit more work. Saving random surgeons and traders might be possible too. Likely we could pass by with the most generic responses from shopkeepers, and perhaps randomly generated names. We could consider going further than that and adding depth to the characters. That would require a great deal more work, however, and I wouldn't suggest starting with it in mind. First goal, make a town which fills with shallow characters with maybe a couple dialog options, like "Get the hell out of my town," and "Tax collector. 50 caps or you get kicked out." (And maybe options to outfit your townsfolk however you like. Per resident of course.)

 

Another option would be that the wastelanders you save to start the town already have a medic, shopkeep and barkeep. This would make the town be too effective too quickly, in my opinion. There could also be specific NPCs you need to recruit from around the world, like Suikoden. (A medic in Rivet City, a Shopkeep in Megaton, a Barkeep in such and such place, etc...) That would be a bit limited also, however. I mean hey, I personally would want to have my medic be a hot nurse. I wouldn't want to be stuck with a preset NPC.

 

The number one issue, I think, would be getting the NPCs to properly walk around the town at different stages of development. I'm not sure how flexible the mesh pathing system is. If it can be exchanged for new paths we're in good shape. Otherwise we might have to plan carefully, and have all the buildings built on already inaccessible areas. (Which would be lame.)

 

Windexglow is right that generally nobody likes the "Hey I have an idea can someone else make it for me?" approach. If this were to kick off, you'd either have to learn to pull your weight or just deal with having no say in the matter. No work, no say. As for the rest of the post, I'm guessing he hasn't done much modding for Oblivion in the past. (Quick look at his profile verifies this.) Your biggest issues are voiceover and pathing. If you say screw it to voiceover, then we're left with pathing. As for that, I don't know enough about the current system to say. But a small team of skilled modders could make this without too much difficulty, as long as they don't set the bar too high. If you're willing to learn the tricks of the CS, I can probably teach you quite a bit. (Assuming its similar to the Oblivion CS, which I see no reason why it wouldn't be.)

 

So I guess now we just wait for a CS. Or juggle ideas. Any questions about what is and isn't likely possible?

[OnyxAbyss]

And that's the point where I knew this mod would be one of the following

(a) - Impossible without a highly skilled team with no life for several years [check]

(b) - Copy of another game [empty]

© - Something that looks good on paper, but isn't [check]

 

Guess how many check out? 2. Your idea sounds good on paper, but in reality it would require hundreds of hours of work to properly script with the free-roam idea.

 

Secondly, models. While you could use the default models, they are often limited in many ways.

 

Thirdly, very few would enjoy spending hours finding materials. Hell, not many would enjoy doing the work in your idea. Games aren't supposed to be a job on minimum wage.

 

For one, I am well aware this mod would be a lot of work. Obviously it isn't something that could be thrown together on a weekend. As for hundreds of hours of work over several years? I'm not talking about building a new game here.

 

When I said I am not a modder, I meant that I've never done any scripting or added new content to games before. I have done textures in quite a few games, so in that respect I would be able to make unique looking NPC's and retexture other things to give the town a slightly different look.

 

Think of it in a more simplified way. Basically we would be adding buildings, that to start with will already have the models and textures in the game, to an unused portion of the wasteland. Scripting a few NPC paths shouldn't be all that difficult. Then you have a quest line with the required items needed placed in different places in the wasteland.

 

The hardest part I would guess is scripting it so that the reward for the quest causes buildings and such to sprout up around you.

[Guest]

I've heard a few people bring this up, and its a great idea. The problem is the sheer size of the project.

I'd love to see it happen however, and if I wasn't just starting to learn about modding I'd help out.

 

Good luck.

[jaysus]

IF a cs is ever releases lol

 

but ya the idea is nice i liked it back in solstheim to build that raven rock settlement...

 

as for the growing part... the pathing problem could be surrounded by using a quest and quest stages which load different cells similiar to the MQ cells for example or as said above disabled meshes and disabled pathes which enable and disable depending on quest stage...

but that >might< be difficult cause as i see it fallout uses 3 cells instead of 2 to create seamless transitions loadtimewise... i have no proof yet but it seems that way during gameplay

[davidlheppner]

I love this idea, it would be a lot of fun to be able to do something like this, find different people to live there, help find materials for improvement and expansion, set up trade routes, work to improve the overall tech level of the town, maybe be able to choose things like the town laws so you could customize it based on what type of character for instance if your character hates ghouls you could make it so it was against the law for ghouls to live there.

 

to Omnimmotus:

You said "it would likely be part of the exterior world, so there might be some framerate issues" what I was wondering if would it be possible to make it like Megaton in that its a seperate area so prevent the framerate issues by having a big wall so you can't see inside but make it so at certain points when you run out of room on the inside to start a project that after a certain amount of time the exterior is expanded, for instance you go to say a town manager npc that is used to input your orders and pay to have a part of the wall rebuilt to open up more space inside the town.

 

Also something that could be done to make this much easier would be to have the town in one of the abandoned vaults, you could work to clean it up, get the systems working and such, then you could have a defendable gate area outside the vault door for things like random event attacks and such maybe make it improveable like it starts out as made of scraps like megatons wall and have it so it could eventually be upgraded to a conrete wall or something like that.

[madcaddie]

This is what should happen with Bigtown after you help them against the super mutants.

[SpeedyB64]

I am a modeler and this mod is totally doable. I have modded oblivion and there are several mods that add towns. The pathing problem may be helped somewhat by having the town grow vertically (pile of train cars/buses?). Having the town expand would not be that difficult have different stages of construction and script it so that they change over time after you buy/quest them. The only complex things are the pathing and NPCs.