Progress, Part IV

Yeah, we're winding into the home stretch.

Made it through Old Olney.

Four of the five got lost coming out of the Vault 1 access tunnels. I have no idea why this happens.

It's a known issue wit the FO3 engine itself, and no one's entirely sure where in the holy fuck the game puts them.

Normally, followers lost in this way reappear the next time you fast travel or change cells.

This in mind, I took the one companion who was left, and soldiered on.

Four, five minutes real-time down the road, my game lagged (like it does, when spawning NPCs, if you play I'm sure you know the particular lag I mean). Glanced around, wondering if the game had opted to spawn a Deathclaw in my back pocket, and I see the four MIAs coming to join us at a dead run.

None the worse for wear, weapons ready, and a'rarin' t'go. Interestingly, their follow package was still dominant, and they didn't need to be issued new orders. That makes the Washington monument the last time I had to issue an order to the girls.

After clearing out the Old Olney sewers and picking up the Prototype Medic armor, we headed to Red Rock Olney, and then on to the Republic of Dave, where I narrowly managed to avoid the urge to kill everything.

From there, we were about out of northern wasteland to ravage. Fast traveled back to the VAPL-58 power station, and made for Vault 106. Took care of some wildlife, cleaned out Kaelyn's, and saved at the entrance to Vault 106.

The computer was acting up again, and it's better for my already beleaguered blood pressure if I keep the game from crashing if at all possible.

Keep telling myself I need more playtesting... to make sure it works. I've "fixed" things too many times now, only to find out that I really didn't.

Still... we're talking about almost ten hours of playtesting here. I think if a problem was going to crop up, it would have.

I've tried to break the companions on more than one occasion, and even after a jaunt through the tenth dimension, they keep right on following.

It seems the only things that will break them are the things that break Jessi and Kelsey, Tarrant's crew, and pretty much ALL followers in the game.

Good as I apparently am, I know I don't have the skills to rewrite portions of the game engine... even if such a thing didn't violate the EULA - which I'd wager it does.

I'm still going to run Vault 106, because hey, I can.

Once that's done, I'll start making the modifications to the master. The exact planned features of which will be listed in the post directly after this one.

Ugh. You know, somewhere I still have to find the time to finalize and release the version of my companions pack with the hefty set of custom textures I've modified from the Type3 set.

Much as I wanted to sign on to the 20thCW project, and help with the new weapon-changing scripting... I just don't think I can. I've got too many irons in the fire as it is, and I don't want to let the RR system suffer because I bore easily.