Storms of the Divide

[UnvalidUserName]

The Divide is probably the most hostile area in all New Vegas and it's DLCs. This is mostly because of the enemies in the Divide: the marked men, deathclaws and tunnelers are very dangerous at higher difficulties. And yet it always bugged me how there are so many dialogues, holotapes and notes across the game that talk about the Divide being continuously torn asunder by radioactive winds. Hell, you even get to see this when you first enter the divide, but they are completely absent during the DLC.

Because of this I feel like there is conceptual space for a mod that adds duststorms to the Divide not unlike those in hidden valley. If it were for me, I would make them appear every few hours on most areas except the highway. I would like for them to cause high rad per seconds and probably decrease the perception marked men but also making them heal over time.

This would seriously make the Divide feel more hostile, except is the Divide itself that is hostile now, forcing the player to seek shelter until the storm goes away unless he/she really likes to fight in the blinding dust against regenerating enemies.

Edited March 23, 2020 by UnvalidUserName

[leotheEliteMajor117]

Agree, the only thing hostile in the Divide was the once NCR and Legionnaires the divide consumed and turned ghoulish mark men. Then these alien tunnelers that came to the divide and where one moment during exploration, a small tunneler single handedly killed an adult deathclaw. Other hostiles were corrupted robots and deathclaws themselves.

 

I always thought about the divide before playing it for the first time, hearing people say that the divide has fierce "Storms" that rips your skin and "Winds" that throw dust at you and make your vision go blind makes the divide not have hostile living things but also the divide's environment after what the American-Sino Nuclear war had done. The environment being dangerous was never featured to the game, and I higly doubt someone had made a mod like this already for more immersion and thus, gives more hostility to the divide.

Edited March 24, 2020 by LabroLEO

[Mktavish]

Well I think you could just use those same Static Object Effects , the sand storm ones. That they have placed up higher , so the skies look like sand blowing.

Put them on the ground , but stack a few together offset of each other , maybe even crisscrossing a bit.

Till it looks about right. Then disable / enable them for the periodic storms , and give the marked men an actor effect of reduced perception and an over time heal. Plus one for the player to damage health , whatever else.

The thing that would be hard is to put in spots of shelter for the player. Like inside a trailer , or some other nook or cranny. But maybe a room bound to get rid of the sand , and then place a reference to do a condition check of get distance , to turn off the damage effect. Might be able to put them in a list , so you don't have to check every reference for distance.

[devinpatterson]

I think this touches on a common post apocalyptic theme of radstorms or chemstorms well before FO4. I did a search on FONV for similar terms (radiation storms, radstorms etc), but I think my google-fu skills are weak, because I didn't find anything (and I suspect we do have some weather mods like this already up). But I agree some rad sandstorms, radstorms, rad whirlwinds etc would all really add to the atmosphere. In fact I think the sandstorms is what "de-gloved" (flayed their skin off) them, so you'd think we'd see more examples of those violent weather conditions.

 

I can take a peek at the dust devil nifs and see if I can add a green glow to them as well as make them tornado sized......if that sounds a bit like what your looking for.

[Mktavish]

Ya the dustdevil / tornado effect would be a nice addition to run periodically.

But the main stay is just putting the dust storm static effects on the ground doubled / tripled up.

None of those would do damage though. Would just have to impose another effect conditionalized by them.

And probably need some timing with getsecondspassed in a script to get it right.

Which I am learning that right now with the build effects on the battle arena :ninja:

Think I got a pretty good render working though.

 

Is this something you want to add into your mod idea ? If so , I'm down for working it out .

[Mktavish]

Did some catching up since ya know I haven't played FNV much past the intro.

 

But I see a whole nother area for a battle arena west of the Canyon Wreckage location.

Following the supposed lonesome road. Start at -19x ,-8y and go out to -30x to -35ish x ?

Which the lonesome road looks to be a 45 degree or less angle upward. For where ever that computes to the Y coordinate. 0 to +5ish ? The land looks ok ... but a desert ... hence good for storms. I'm psyched already to start building marked men bases ... these legion bases are so blase' hehe

 

Is this a good map of the situation ? http://i.imgur.com/N6oqTJZ.jpg?2

[devinpatterson]

But the main stay is just putting the dust storm static effects on the ground doubled / tripled up.

IIRC Hidden Valley with the BOS had some sandstorms that concealed the bunker, I can take a look at it.

 

None of those would do damage though. Would just have to impose another effect conditionalized by them.

And probably need some timing with getsecondspassed in a script to get it right.

Yeah there are probably a lot of ways this could be done. I'd do a quest script, maybe have it update 1 a sec or less frequently (update speed will be part of the damage formula) and it can just check for (condition) worldspace and isInINterior (and probably armor too), then apply damage. Say 1/sec (more? less?). But if your in power armor or other heavy armor that could instead go to the armor's health instead of damage to the player (at a reduced rate). There might be some weather functions we can use, but they are pretty limited in number (like under a dozen IIRC).

My way has some deficiencies though; 1. If your in the husk of a building or bus etc, but still outside you'll take the same amount of damage. 2; it won't, as written, affect NPCs, but you can do a teamMate formlist, a follower check and a getDistance, then damage them if they'r close by (making the assumption they are in the storm along with the courier).

3. Other things, I probably haven't thought of.

 

If we're going that way, might also be worth working on tweaking the hardcore settings too. It seems like you'd dehydrate pretty badly in a sandstorm....or maybe not?

 

I'v always thought the divide was an interesting setting, and have even floated the idea of expanding it (fungus farms deep in the silos, rooftoop settlements or bases on top the skyscrapers connected by cables, massive tech prospecting opportunities, tech mercantilism/trade, a indoor town like rivit city in a silo, etc).

 

Really there's a lot to flesh out the divide, that could make for some interesting adventures.....this is just the tip of the ice berg.

 

[Mktavish]

 

Really there's a lot to flesh out the divide, that could make for some interesting adventures.....this is just the tip of the ice berg.

 

 

Yep lots of possibilities. But just to clarify ... I wasn't talking about actually adding anything to the DLC04 area's for your mod presently. Just a section on the main map of where the Lonesome road is suppose to be.

I just watched a Lets Play of it a little ways in , up to traversing that overpass section , what ever it was ?

Which there was no Lonesome road area I noticed for the beginning. But noticed there is some Road world spaces I think they were called in Geck. So is there some play action later in the DLC04 of being on that road ?

 

But anyways , I thought it would be a good addition adding in about the first 1/3 section of the road to the main map. For Battle Arena at least , and possibly regular play. The story motivation could be for trade routes.

[leotheEliteMajor117]

As far as I remember, Nevada Skies had implemented a feature where their are working sandstorms and radstorms, though I forgot if they were actually functional since the last time I used Nevada Skies was since 2 years ago.

 

If possible, a modder may use the work of sandstorms and radstorms of Nevada Skies and make their own version via GECK, I may not be much a modder of myself but I think that copying the script from Nevada Skies and reconfigure the scripts for the two storms above may seem a bit more easier, but I am not so sure if this would work.

Edited March 28, 2020 by LabroLEO

[Mktavish]

As far as I remember, Nevada Skies had implemented a feature where their are working sandstorms and radstorms, though I forgot if they were actually functional since the last time I used Nevada Skies was since 2 years ago.

 

If possible, a modder may use the work of sandstorms and radstorms of Nevada Skies and make their own version via GECK, I may not be much a modder of myself but I think that copying the script from Nevada Skies and reconfigure the scripts for the two storms above may seem a bit more easier, but I am not so sure if this would work.

 

If you are interested in story creation , knowing the tick of the Geck is all ya need.

Which actually is able to glean it from in game.