Sunday, May 1, 2011

Fallout NV - Roadblocks and Frustration

As long-time readers of the modding blog here will remember, I've been toying with a "NosCo HQ" on and off for well over a year now. A house mod of my own; something made to my own specs. I've come to like Vault 1... but a steel lined hole in the ground just isn't me. Maybe I'm not as much of a redneck survivalist as I'm accused of being?

Anyway, the first draft as it were of this concept was Nos' Tower; which of course I never finished because of massive texture issues (that'll teach me to try to create my own).

I still like the idea of a tower. Yes, it's not as survivable as a bunker; but what are we? Moles? Are we politicians; running away to hide underground every time the wind blows? No! We raise an army, and defend our damned keep...

*ahem* Sorry. Going downright medieval there, wasn't I?

I always liked Tenpenny in that respect, but didn't like its lack of real windows. So, you can imagine my unfettered joy the first time I stepped into the Lucky 38 Penthouse, and looked out the windows onto the wasteland. Very cool.

It still is very cool. I was in there again this morning, around sunset game-time. After talking to House (and as an aside, they missed a golden opportunity there. Mister House could have been a sarcastic ass voiced by Hugh Laurie. Don't get me wrong, Renee did a great job, but come on...) I stepped over to the window and looked out, and was reminded how bad I wanted a penthouse cell of my own.

Now, SOP for creating such things is just to copy. Copy the world space, copy the cell; rename it all so there are no conflicts and change the interior to suit yourself. This approach is frowned upon by some "serious" modders - and a great deal of self-styled critics - but it is nonetheless the most time and effort-efficient method; especially for one's first go at a new type of cell.

Following that train of thought, the first time the idea occurred to me to have a penthouse with a view, I set about copying the worldspace. Keeeeeeee-rash.

So instead, I tried loading the cell to potentially copy it after creating a worldspace of my own.

Crash again.

Much profanity ensued, as anyone who's read my blog for more than a week will doubtless have expected. Shortly thereafter, my interest in FONV waned due mostly to unrelated issues, and the idea was shelved.

Being as I seem to be in a Vegas mood here lately, I decided to try again this morning, after taking in the view from House's suite. This, I think, can not happen again. FNV and the GECK are different versions, installed clean on a new hard drive, and I'm loading them in a different plugin.

Hoo-boy, was I wrong. I still get a crash any time I try to interact with the Lucky 38 worldspace in any way. Can't load it, can't duplicate it; nada.

This strikes me as exceedingly odd, as I broached the subject with my ever-stalwart partner Miss Herculine, once before, and she said she could load the worldspace without issue. So, apparently my GECK just hates me. Story of my life.

Just tried copying the world space to a new plugin in TESSnip. Ate so much system resources that I ended up have to hard-boot my computer to get control back. Thank the universe for Blogger's auto-saving of posts to draft status.

Am beginning to think I'm not meant to have a tower with a view.

19 comments:

  1. that's why I'm using Fry's Freehold. great view, good isolated location, and room for expansion. Spoke with Fry recently, and he's got a lot of his RL things back under control, so hopefully we'll see more stuff from him.

    Still fond of the idea of a medieval tower. Wonder if I could put Castle Anthrax into the Mojave somewhere. :D

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  2. Don't get me wrong, Fry does outstanding work; but much like Refurbished in FO3... it's just not my style.

    The Freehold was a marvel of making best use of existing game resources, and had some nice custom stuff... but it kind of had that 1960's NorCal feel to it, to me. Or Aspen, maybe.

    I like marble and stone, pillars, tapestries on the walls; rich, dark wood.

    I actually kind of like the basic Lucky 38 penthouse. It's not quite what I'd call opulent, but it's nonetheless fairly well laid out, looks decent. I was walking through it thinking how many companions it could billet if I did a little redecorating.

    Not sure what I'm going to end up doing.

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  3. oh definitely agree - not everyone's style. I'm more than pleased with it, myself.

    If I can get off my arse, rebuild the computer, I want to play with more than basic GECK hackery.

    2pac4eva7 did some nice work on his Gomorrah Penthouse mod, before he lost his temper and got banhammered for it. Pity, I use his body/armour replacer and would love to be able to track him down to see if he's still doing any FNV work available anywhere. :|

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  4. Interesting as an aside: I'm noticing more and more of us "losing cool" and getting in trouble for it.

    That aside, I do remember 2pack4eva7, now that you mention him. Wasn't he the one whose house mod was breaking all companion systems or something?

    It looked nice, yeah... but man, what a price tag.

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  5. *2pac4eva7. Sorry, not an intentional or denigrating misspelling; I guess my fingers are just used to typing "pack".

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  6. Umm, bugger. That rather sucks. I have only seen one house mode that had windows with a veiw, and that was one of the "satellite homes" in RR Refurbished (I think it was originally a seperate mod). Being that it was supposed to be located in the mountains or near the artic circle, all you saw was snow, which makes me think it was using world space based on Operation: Anchorage.

    Maybe digging up the original version of that home mod and dissecting it in the FO3 GECK might help you figure out what the problem(s) is/are.

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  7. Unfortunately, I don't think so. I can load and manipulate any other worldspace or cell fine. It just doesn't like me touching the Lucky 38. I have no idea why.

    Since you can't really see the ground from it, I could probably create a new worldspace... but I'm not sure. My PC doesn't technically have enough RAM for heightmap editing, according to Bethsoft; so I don't know what my capabilities are in that area.

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  8. yeah Nos, it was that player housing, but technically is was his partner Wardminator that accused NCCS of breaking things. Both are gone now, Ward lost interest in a "broken game" and 2pac lost his temper.

    As for where you thoughts were heading on the "losing cool" comment, and frankly agree with you.

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  9. Just to confirm that things are still working after the new patches and versions, I just fired up the GECK and loaded the Lucky 38 Penthouse cell. It still loads fine for me, and actually loaded much faster than I had expected it to.

    You mentioned that doing something with the cell with TESSnip ate up enough of your system resources to the point of locking things up; I can't help but wonder if maybe your problem with this cell and the GECK might also be hardware-related.

    I know that doesn't solve a damn thing, but it's just a theory.

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  10. @Darksong:

    Ah. I knew I remembered being pissed at someone regarding that mod; but the 2pac name didn't strike me as being the one I was pissed at. I remember now.


    @Herculine:

    Totally possible, but I'd think if it were a hardware thing, it would refuse to load other worldspaces. The Wasteland - which should be a much larger resource draw - loads fine. I was looking over McCarran earlier; seeing if there might be a cell I could copy in that air traffic control tower (there isn't). Coulda sworn there was a locked door there, prior to 1.3; but apparently no longer.

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  11. Nos - out of curiosity, what is your system's specs, short version? I can load up that cell just fine, and I'm running Intel Core Duo E8500/8gb RAM and a GTX260 vidcard. And FNV gets stuttery, which is why I'm whining about rebuilding.

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  12. You know the minimum CPU and RAM for FO3? Yeah, I'm still running those.

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  13. *shudder* ouch dude. skip a gun purchase and upgrade that bad boy. :D

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  14. Eh?

    Those words... they make sense individually... but put them in that combination and it's complete gibberish...

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  15. Also: it's an eMachine. Not upgradeable. I've tried. Must be replaced wholesale. Which means losing C:\ drive, my windows install; having to reinstall Oblivion and FO3; having to learn Windows 7; having to remove all the garbage from another factory install of said OS.

    It just ain't worth it.

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  16. ugh, ok. you're a gunsmith, not a computersmith. :D Well, you've expressed your opinion on what's required to get a new system up and running for you, and in light of my own procrastination on my system, I can't argue with you. :|

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  17. I can computersmith just fine. I just hate doing it. Two of the last three "I'll build it myself" collections of parts to turn into a system haven't worked out of the box. One was a faulty mainboard, the other was a bad CPU.

    Return policies from online retailers suck; UPS ships slow as hell, so I have next to no time to find out whether the parts work - because in nearly twenty years of building them, I've never had one fire up on the first try.

    So I buy pre-made systems now. If it doesn't work, I have a receipt and someone to bitch at.

    Only trouble is, it takes four damned hours to turn off all the facets of windows that try to protect me from myself; and uninstall all the useless bullshit "trial offers" and "helpful software" that every factory install is chock-full of anymore.

    And go to the trouble for what? An extra ten or fifteen FPS, and no guarantee that the GECK will run one whit better?

    No thanks. When this piece of shit goes Tango Uniform, I'll buy another one. Till then, I'll just soldier along with what I have.

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  18. Good enough. I've only had one component DOA out of a box, but life happens. Carry on, Soldier.

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