Redecorating Headaches

...or perhaps: "Why I hate this fucking game."

I've been waffling a bit. Trying to decide what to do for my "home" in the wasteland.

I've said before, I don't like vaults. Steel lined holes in the ground. Not a fan. I like Vault 1 even less than most.

Don't get me wrong, for what it is, its technically well done, and I know ttomwv put a ton of time and effort into it... but the reality is a solid 30% of Vault 1 is totally worthless to me, and does nothing but drag on my framerate.

Worse yet, rather than being broken up into three odd cells as most vaults are, this one was done as a single mega-cell, which is not kind to the FPS on a good day.

I mentioned "Nos' Tower" once before, but I've been holding off on doing much of the interior.

Why? The fact of the matter is that I'm tied to my girls. I like them more than I dislike the vault.

Honestly, my original intent was to leave the RR Companions Vault as it is, and just call it done. Rip the companion system out, make it a standalone, and run up a plugin to tie it into my tower.

Well, NeilUK02, Elraweil, and a couple others have thoroughly fucked that plan. Neil especially. I won't rip the rug out from under the boy, just as he's getting the hang of making companions. Just wouldn't be neighborly, as they say where I grew up.

So, to keep my girls, I have to keep the RR mods going. This leaves me with two options. I can either tie the tower into the RR Companions Vault and add new sets of options to let companions be billeted in either place, or I can work on the Vault itself.

Try to de-suck it, as it were.

I spent an evening a couple days ago trying that. Results are... mixed.

Starting with my 'Redecorated' plugin as a base, I decided to be more aggressive. I completely tore out the training room, armory, and museum. Removed the collision planes and markers from the jail (until I decide what I want to put in there instead) and got rid of all the protectrons and their pods from the guard house.

Remodeled the guard house to include a lounge. Rebuilt the museum to be more efficient and less like an old store room that someone threw pedestals down in. Modified the bedroom a bit, to include more wardrobe containers. And fixed the classroom where I ripped out the doorway leading into the training room.

As you can see, things were going pretty well:




The new museum from the entry. Still holds up to twelve mannequins, and has four large glass-topped weapons cases.



Same view, but with the overheads killed.




From the opposite side of the room.




The rest of the museum, where it branches off to one side.



And of course with the overheads off.




The museum floor. Tan tile with a black and gold marble border. Laid in such a way that it looks nice, but you can clearly still tell it's a converted vault room.




A shot from the museum doorway, looking out into the hall between the vault main area and the player's bedroom. You'll notice a speaker. I added several new ones here and there, slaved to the jukebox in the player's bedroom. With it on, you can hear GNR clearly from anywhere in the bedroom, museum, or hall.




Converted lighting in the hall. I removed the normal lights, and put in banks of fluorescents. Given time, I'll likely do the same to the rest of the vault, for "high lighting" purposes.




The new player's bedroom. I've become quite fond of not just Ling's Finer Things, but also Tailor Maid. Consequently, the two dressers I had in there before did not cut it for keeping clothing and armor organized in a way that did not take ten minutes to find something. So I added several more, all specifically named for particular categories. Full outfits, tops, bottoms, jewelry & accessories, swimwear & unmentionables, armor, and power armor.

Got rid of the shelves, because they weren't really doing anything.



And of course, the new layout under my cozy lighting scheme.




Here's the new classroom. Notice the lack of door.




The guard house, as seen from the window in the entryway.


Here's where we run into the problem.



This is a shot from in front of the monitors you saw in the last screenshot. The room should continue on past the shelving, to show off table, fridge and nuka machine, coffee pot, and radio.

Walk through the blackness, and you can see it all fine. It's there. It's the same problem we had awhile back when the occlusion planes opted to move themselves into hallways.

The problem now is that... there are no occlusion planes in the way. No room bounds. No sky plane. No nothing. The GECK does not show one single thing bisecting the room like that.

I've tried a dozen times now, and can not find anything that could be doing it. I thought it might be a dirty save, keeping an old occlusion plane in place. Started a totally new game, and it's still there.

You get no help from the devs, and Zenimax helpfully took the Bethsoft forums offline for "maintenance" yesterday. No idea when or even if they're coming back up.

This is what I hate about this game. There's no rhyme or reason. No logic. Stuff just... does what the fuck it wants.

This is also why I dislike working in Vault 1. I didn't build it. For all I know, ttomwv cut the guard house off where it did because of this issue, when he didn't feel like remaking the cell. I can hardly ask, either.

So... what do I do at this point? I'm only five or six hours into changes to the cell, plus a similar amount in attempting fixes. Annoying... but a couple days' work isn't even enough that I won't write it off and throw the work away in favor of something that will operate as intended.

That said, if I do that... then what? Creating an entirely new cell and tying it to the Vault 1 entrances is a clusterfuck of epic proportions, with all the references to change. Just going back to the tower throws me back into the realm of splitting my efforts more than I want to.

The whole situation has got me pissed off to the point that I was informed last night I'm bucking another mandatory vacation if I don't relax.

Just once, you know, I'd like to make a change to Fallout 3 and have it work without embarking onto a quest for long-forgotten knowledge on the unholy rites required to make it appear correctly in game.