Nos' Tower Teaser

I've mentioned a few times in an oblique manner a secret project I've been working on.

Truth is, it's not really a secret, I'm just a dick.

I mention now and again burning out on modding Fallout 3. That's not strictly speaking true. I don't burn out on Fallout 3 itself, I burn out on trying to accommodate the whims of several dozen whiny children pertaining to the RR Companions Vault. After a week of trying to fix a bug that doesn't even exist in my game, I'm in no mood to listen to compatibility complaints from people who can't be bothered to read documentation, let alone mod themselves.

I enjoy modding, I really do. It's creation. Expression. Taking an idea from my head, and making it real - even if the "real" is only digital.

The conflict is, I enjoy modding for me. The companion system in the RR Companion Vault exists in a working form only because I needed it to work to make my girls viable. The access tunnels for Vault 1 exist because I wanted a quick and safe way to traverse the wasteland to get to Rivet City in the early game without spending hours sneaking out around super mutants and raiders.

Oftentimes, when I want to mod for me, I go back to Oblivion. Where my CM companions await me with smiles on their pretty faces, always willing to go on a cross-country adventure, or even just sit out on my favorite island in the Abacean Sea and watch the sun set.

I lamented the fact that there really are no good house mods for Fallout 3. They're all underground, and unless you like your scenery to include rock and/or steel wall paneling, you're SOL.

Tenpenny Tower has its moments... but I firmly believe all really pretty scenery should include water of some sort. Be it in the form of falls, river, or sea.

So I thought it over, and decided to put myself a house in the capital wasteland. Someplace that could be mine, where I won't have to worry about errors left from anyone else's work, where I won't have to care about anyone else's sensibilities.

I went looking. Any place high enough to have a view in the desert parts of the wasteland are hard as hell to get to. Most of the DC metro area is problematic for several reasons. I ended up wandering along the Potomac, down south where it's wide and open.

Tried building along the west bank, but the edges of the map stop me from setting the building up where I wanted it. Could go with a borderless requirement... but I wanted to avoid that, as FO3 has problems outside the playable worldspace borders.

I decided to do something a bit more supervillan-ish.

I put myself together a modified form of Tenpenny Tower, and erected it out in the middle of the river, south of the Jefferson Memorial.

I couldn't think of another mod that changes this area, and it does offer a view... insofar as there are views in the wasteland.

Now, for the promised teaser:







Lighting's not the best, as in Fallout - much as in my real life - the weather hates letting me take decent pictures.

Still, you can get a feel for it. The shots are taken from the 360 degree balcony on the top floor. The tower is set so that it rises up out of the water, with the bottom set into the dirt, and some rocks thrown around to make a passable foundation on the river bottom.

Access will be via an underground tunnel near Rivet City, as I didn't want to string a bridge out across there.

The exterior is almost done. Needs to be cluttered, but is already navmeshed and all the building parts lined up.

The interior is barely even started, and is currently planned to be made up of three levels: a basement/maintenance access level where the tunnel will lead into; a main floor/lobby with restaurant/cafeteria, pool, maybe a couple shops, a mess of guards, and quarters for all NPCs involved; and the penthouse floor, the player's suite - with four terrace access points (N,S,E,W), large well appointed bedroom, smaller pool, probably a waterfall, and full suite of amenities (infirmary, chemistry set, workbench, etc).

I can't promise it'll ever even be uploaded, depending on how it turns out. I haven't taken out a file entry yet or anything, as I hate it when people do "placeholder" files.

When and if I do upload it, I have no plans whatsoever to tie it into the RR Companions Vault in any way. This will be a totally stand-alone mod. Well, okay, maybe not totally stand alone. I think I may add Ling's Finer Things to it...

No plans to drop the RR series at the moment, but sometimes I just need to work on something that's mine.