Tuesday, January 4, 2011

NCCS - V0.3 Uploaded

I finished off 0.3 this morning, and went ahead and uploaded it.

I had been holding off, hoping to come up with some way to not include a GREETING... but I couldn't do it. This debacle with wardminator aside; I still get two to three "bug reports" a week from people who use voices that have no greeting in the base game. There's also the issue with the NV Shojo's child voices not working right...

New Vegas is basically a mess, where voices are concerned. I really wish players would have simply learned not to use these voices; not just to keep from having to include extra dialog myself; but because a lot of the game's voices really are pretty poorly put together.

In testing, I found most of the voices that don't have greetings also don't have goodbyes. They don't have the lines that the NPC yells when the player knocks something over, or muzzles them with a weapon. I didn't test far enough to see if they have combat dialog.

Really... it's a pretty half-assed production on Bethesda's part.

There's only the one greeting at the moment. A simple "Yes?" that should be generic enough to work for the time being. Eventually, I will add some more to become a random listing of greetings, but I want to make sure the stuff works, first.

There may well not be any voicing coming, either. By the look of it, most voices in the game don't have a generic greeting. This means that they may well likely not have a generic greeting voice file, either. Beyond that, there are simply a slew of voices, now. Twelve for female adult, alone - not counting uniques. This is going to lead to a staggering number of voice files, and I'm quite frankly not inclined to go sifting through twenty or thirty thousand voice files to pick out fifty to set up for greetings.

Setting up voicing for one, lone companion is an annoyance. Doing it for an entire system that can use any voice type in the game... that's a full-time job for a couple weeks, at least - maybe longer. I hate to be a mercenary about this, but you people don't pay me. At all. So I can't say as I'm thrilled at the prospect of jumping into that workload.

I also tossed in the code to remove dead companions from the system; so they don't get teleported after you. I still can't figure out the fascination with killing off your companions... but I will confess that this was an oversight on my part, yes. An oversight which I apologize for.

I'm also more than a bit curious how you people keep getting your companions killed. Granted, it may have something to do with the combat style I use for them, but my girls don't get taken down. I put them in decent armor, and keep them supplied with stimpaks, and they thank me by kicking the holy living shit out of anyone we come across who's dumb enough to start trouble. Then again, I tend to treat my companions as I would members of a real fireteam I was in charge of. I make sure they've got medical supplies, decent armor, a good weapon, and plenty of ammunition. To the point that I'll actually take lesser equipment myself; to kit them out better. The point, boys and girls, is to be a team; and not to have several disposable people following you around. A leader looks out for his crew; be they flesh and blood or ones and zeros.

From here, I think we're nearing non-beta status. There isn't really much more to add to the system. Stability seems to be good (as good as can be, considering the sorry state of the game engine, anyway). There will likely be some expansion of dialog to include more randomized responses just to give extra personality, but aside from that and another combat style or two, I can't think of much more that the mod needs.

5 comments:

  1. Hopefully that will appease the malcontents. I left a comment in my mod's thread directing them to the update. I was actually going to do an updated version of the Shojo's as well, changing their voices, but for some reason since that last update I can't change my master file to a plugin in order to edit it. Maybe I've just been playing other games too long...

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  2. Glancing at my post again I just realized that it might have been confusing. I was referring to the last New Vegas Official Update giving me problems with FNVEdit, not the last update of NCCS.

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  3. That's why I do the TESSnip method.

    Leaves behind an editable esp file; and creates a standalone esm file to play with.

    Much easier than trying to convert back and forth with that craptastic FNVEdit.

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  4. ...which is what I prefer to do as well, but doing it that way still leaves the file header with the .esm tag and I change that with FNVEdit. No biggie though since it seems like I'm having no immediate urges to do any more New Vegas mods. Something about the game just doesn't feel the same, you know?

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  5. Yeah, I can relate.

    I never thought I'd say this, but I'm thinking that FO3 was really the pinnacle of what the engine was capable of - at least post-1.5.

    New Vegas has just taken steps back in too many areas; and they're already going into DLC mode, so I can't imagine much if any of it will be rectified.

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