Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Stee-Rike!

I've been back in FO3 the last couple days. Doing live-fire testing as it were of the latest batch of revisions and improvements to my personal companions; satiating my own curiosity about just how skilled they are when taken down to singles; rather than operating in fireteam strength as they normally do. Call it a... point of personal pride. Tests have thus far been spectacularly anti-climactic, but are still on going and so will not be discussed in detail today.

No, pertinent to this post is something that's reared its ugly head before -- namely, the lack of decent housing. I still have the 'Springvale Survivalist House' made for Nos' Adventures active; and while it's certainly lore friendly... it's also certainly unspectacular and downright depressing.

I had an idea this morning; on how to make the bedroom windows on my Tower mod actually work. Sunrise, sunset, rain, shine; the river, the monuments, the shore... The view would have been spectacular.

This idea required copying the wasteland worldspace and then modifying it somewhat. While I can create and copy worldspaces in the FO3 GECK without it crashing on me, it seems that my PC just doesn't have the horsepower to copy a worldspace the size of the Wasteland. The GECK locked half or so way through.

I can't really do what I need to do copying the area piecemeal. Creating from scratch isn't an option, either -- it would take months to replicate the view, assuming I could at at all.

Am not sure what I'm going to do. May have a secondary method to achieve a similar result... but it promises to be a framerate murderer that would make Vault 1 Refurbished stand in awe. Assuming the issues inherent to the method can be overcome and it works at all, that is.

Failing that, I'm back to windowless, underground bunkers. Just about may as well whip up another Vault and be done with it. Seems to be what the engine is made for.

Edit: well, option #2 busted, as well. I had forgotten how obscenely off the interior/exterior scales are in this game. The rooms won't physically fit inside the tower meshes; the windows don't align... so much for placing the bedroom in the wasteland, inside the tower. That kills that idea. Chalk this morning up as a total loss.

21 comments:

  1. Mmmm, rumours of shiny new companion tech, I like :)

    As for the terrain, I'm not surprised by anything in this games layout since I found out that Rivet City's interior and exterior don't even face the same direction.

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  2. It is only a total loss in that you were not able to impliment your ideas for the tower. You did learn, however that you will have to tackle the project from a different direction. It is not something that is "on the bright side", nor is it neccessarily a good thing, but it is progress of a sort, albeit a small amount.

    Take a step away from the project, take a breath and come back at it a little later.

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  3. Are you trying to copy the ENTIRE wasteland? Is that even possible, regardless of one's hardware? I'm gonna take a look...

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  4. @Druuler:

    Let's take score, shall we? The custom textures don't line up right, the balcony navmesh is bugged and won't connect to form a complete ring, and it's not possible for me to make the windows work in anything resembling a practical manner.

    I'm sorry, but what part of this is salvageable in the least?


    @Herculine:

    Copying individual cells won't work, since they wouldn't be mated up right coming out the finished end.

    The idea was to copy the entire worldspace; then edit out the parts that you couldn't see from the tower. Basically it would end up leaving the river, Rivet City, the Jefferson Monument, DC Ruins east and west, and the Citadel.

    Since it's nigh impossible to mimic the terrain from scratch with the heightmap editor, that seemed the only way to get the landscape realistically portrayed.

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  5. My appologies. I was trying to be optimistic and supportive, without a proper working knowledge of what you were attempting. I'll try to avoid opening my mouth without without such knowledge in the future.

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  6. Eh. I'm not pissed at you.

    Just annoyed that ever nothing works in this damned game.

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  7. Understandable. I have to wonder if the new engine(s) for Skyrim and Doom4 will be any better.

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  8. "I have to wonder if the new engine(s) for Skyrim and Doom4 will be any better. "

    I'm not holding my breath.

    Bethsoft worships the almighty buck in DLC form -- as long as they can sell expansions, not a single shit will be given about making the engine work. Hell, if FNV is any indication, they don't even care about making the toolset work anymore.

    And Id is likely to stick with their tried-and-true "pain in the ass" method of modding; but very few people will notice, since Doom 4 will be another crappy survival horror entry.

    Also: if I get any more cynical, I'm likely to collapse into myself and form a singularity, inadvertently bringing about the end of days. I was rather hoping my hand in the apocalypse would involve a rogue AI and mechanical redheads... but I suppose destroying the human race is destroying the human race...

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  9. Readheaded rogue AI, hmmm, I wonder what Cameron would look like as a redhead?

    If memory serves me correctly (and there is no guarantee of that anymore), Id doesn't have much say in what it does with Doom anymore. They were bought out my Bethesda...

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  10. Oh? Right, I think I remember Herculine mentioning that.

    Doubt any good will come of it.

    Unless Doom 4 comes on the Skyrim engine. That could have possibilities...

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  11. I'm not holding my breath in regard to Doom 4 either way. Like most re-workings of classics, whether it be movies, music or video games, I'm certain Doom 4 will have just enough elements of the gameplay of the original games to enable it to bear the name, but will likely disappoint people like me who are die-hard fans of the originals. Oh, I'm sure it will be a good enough game on its own, but comparing it to the originals will likely be like comparing Syfy's Battlestar Galactica to the original with Lorne Greene; it was okay for what it was, but it just wasn't the same.

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  12. Since Herculine brought it up...

    I don't thing the new version of BSG really was supposed to be the same as the original. I considered the new one to be more story driven. The evolved Cylons, or "Skinjobs", originally appeared in the original series, but they were in the third/last season that most people try to forget existed >.<

    I love playing Classic Doom for the sheer mindless violence of it. The mods I've recently aquired don't hurt either ;) Doom 3 expanded the story somewhat, giving it more explaination and better "immersion" with having various survivors you could interact with, even in a limited way. The inclusion of a role-playing element would have been nice though. *shrugs* That's why we mod the crap out of Fallout.

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  13. I have a theory about the new Battlestar Galactica.

    Three or four guys got together one night, smoked a bunch of pot, and played old Wing Commander games. Once that was boring, they ordered pizza and someone popped in a DVD of the original BSG.

    Then, through the haze of ganj smoke, one of the shiftless twits opined: "Duuude. We should like, totally write a new Battlestar Galactica."

    And they did. And the syphilis channel greenlighted it with the condition that it be slightly rewritten to include lots of pointless, over the top, and totally unnecessary drama -- along with the standard military vs. civilian authorities combined with male vs. female that they put in all their "original" programming.

    And then just for kicks, someone decided that they should all secretly be cylons.

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  14. Lol! That was supposed to be a secret :P

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  15. Sorry, I'm not much of a fan; and I'm still pissed at sci-fi for canceling Atlantis in favor of Stargate: Galactica.

    Though that too, is over now. I suppose they're just going to play nothing but wrestling and ghost hunters.

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  16. I'm glad I don't watch TV any more, sounds like it's gone further downhill, which is something I wouldn't have believed possible O_o

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  17. LOL... I've been telling people for months that the WWE has finally landed on the network where it belongs...

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  18. Y'know, Sci-Fi used to be a great channel. Cartoons in the morning; sci-fi, fantasy, and horror series during the day; an occasional movie. Anime on Saturday morning.

    Now? It's just those ghost-hunting douchebags and grown men in spandex panties.

    Oh, and badly written derivative copies of every major movie about to hit theaters, of course. Anyone else see "The Almighty Thor"? It looked like the guy had a hammer made of tinfoil taped to cardboard...

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  19. Perhaps not at all coincidentally, the guy that played Thor in that rip-off is a wrestler...

    I know exactly what you mean and agree wholeheartedly. When the Transformers movies were going around the theaters, syfy was showing something called "The Transmorphers". I avoided it like the plague, as I do the GhostHunters, the Mythhunters and whateverelsehunters that syfy seems to think are good ideas... all of my brother's favorite shows...

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  20. I don't mind wrestlers making movies. Hell, I was a Hulk Hogan fan way back when; and Roddy Piper's movies are so bad they're good. As well, Dwayne Johnson seems to be doing pretty well at the whole acting bit.

    I just don't see what in the holy hell wrestling has to do with science fiction. Granted the ECW is so over the top and unrealistic that it's plainly and obviously in the fiction category... but it's still a bit much.

    Then again, I also can't figure out how the people who write those made for syfy movies are still employed, so maybe I'm just further off the ball than I thought...

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