FNV v1.4

So, as noted in the last post, I finally got around to actually playing the game this morning.

I don't think I played 1.3 but for an hour or so to test some NCCS functions; so this was my first real play in quite awhile.

Ended up deleting all but one of my existing savegames. I dropped back to my "clean" save, just before using the Vit-a-matic or whatever they called it in Doc Mitchell's place.

Immediately, I noticed a difference from previous versions of the game. It seems that they've disabled most quest scripts during character generation. Normally, my companions pop right in to come find me as long as their plugin was active. They've actually appeared before it even lets me out of bed from the intro. This time they didn't though. They weren't allowed in until the generation process was complete, I had my pip-boy, and could leave the house. As soon as that happened, they made it inside.

Thankfully, character generation went without a hitch; and my plugin-placed containers were still in the house from the start.

From there, I noticed again something different. When running through the tutorial with Sunny, FPS were greatly improved. Playable, even. I remember the first time I played the game, FPS through the tutorial were prone to dropping into the 3 - 5 range, and crashes occurred about every ten minutes.

This morning, I played for about ten minutes shy of five hours, without shutting the game down. No crashes, and when I finally decided I needed a break, the game was still playable in FPS, but beginning to lag a bit.

Companion behavior throughout was quite good; bordering on exceptional. There were no hesitations to enter combat, no screwy cover behavior; accuracy was excellent, and not once did anyone freeze up at the end of a fight, or get stuck on bad navmeshing or obstacles.

Sit/stand behavior, teleporting, weapon drawing/holstering, sneaking -- all went without incident; as did weapon and armor equipping, and stimpak use. There were no incidents of mysterious, magical insta-healing either.

Encountered one bug; out north of NCRCF I spied a Bighorn stuck on some terrain, and exhibiting some pretty severe Havok behavior. Removing the poor thing's head from its neck solved that, though.

...What? It was the kind thing to do.

As well, weapon accuracy at low levels seems to have improved; though the cowboy repeater is still as inaccurate as ever. I recall reading that that had something to do with the first person model not being aligned correctly; so it's possible that this lingering issue is a side effect of the custom rifle animations I have installed. I'll have to remember to pull those and see if it improves.

Thus far, it appears everything still works correctly with most mods. I'm not far enough into the game to test my Capitalism mod yet; as even I can only play for so long in one sitting.

On the whole, I'm fairly impressed. Obsidian seems to have finally dislodged their collective heads from their asses, and made a patch that doesn't suck. Considering the play time I got in today, they may even have finally seen fit to address the memory leak that's been plaguing us since Oblivion.

I hesitate to get my hopes up too high; but on my system at least I can finally declare the game playable, by and large.

Still haven't tested NCCS itself -- since believe it or not I'm not all that fond of the system -- but since it and my personal companions run on nearly identical (if independent) scripts, I don't foresee any issues.

Out Of Touch

Finally firing up FNV this morning (yes, I'm that bored), and updating some plugins to reflect the two or three game versions it's been since I played.

Remembered at the last second that my NVSE is probably not gonna run, either; so I went to grab a new version.

Latest version? Beta 2 version 9. My Installed version? Beta 1 version 10.

Yeah, I might be a little behind the curve, these days...

Let's just hope my Capitalism mod still works. That thing was a pain in the ass to make, what with all the leveled lists I had to edit. Not looking forward to redoing that one.

Hijack!

Hello unwashed, ignorant masses of the internet!



Beautiful way to open. Would you like to throw in something about fucking all their mothers, too; just to go ahead and insult the six people not already pissed?


Shut up; you're fucking up my introduction! Anyway... Mystery-chan here...


...Mystery-chan? God, he's let you watch anime again, hasn't he...?


Yes, he has. Now shut up and let me finish. I've hijacked Nos' blogger account (the sexy fool has set Firefox to automatically log in, so it was a breeze) here to update you all on some goings-on, since Nos himself is still in mopey-bitch mode.


What, still? Is he still going on about the pen...?


No, I'm afraid it's more serious. You see, serfs-in-the-home-audience, Nos has been so quiet this last week because he hurt himself. Badly. Damaged muscles from the base of the skull, through the left side of the back, and down the left arm. For most of the week, he couldn't even hold up a glass with the left hand; and after a spectacularly failed attempt to hold a rifle on Thursday, he's been kind of emo -- and of course, there's the usual problems: sleeping no more than three hours at a time, and stupid people fucking with his mods and then complaining they don't work. So! Since he's had screenshots piling up for over a month, I thought I'd cull the herd a bit and get some up for public view!


Uh, question! Why do you have wings?


I'm a succubus. We're supposed to have wings. Neat, huh? Nos found them hiding in Apachii's Heroes store. Much better than those plastic-looking things in the Goddess store, oh yes...


...And why Mystery-chan? You have a name, Sis...


I do, and you know perfectly well my rules about it being publicly entered into this blog. Mystery-chan seemed less bad than redacting every instance where someone calls me by name.


Er, yeah... okay, I guess...


So, our intrepid anti-hero recently bored of his previous Oblivion game, since the one involving that horkew slut was mostly a test game to get Lovers all worked out. Since that was done, he got tired of populating the world with little redheads of death. Trouble was, our glorious plugin was in a... transitory state. It was midway through some texture tests, and when loaded into the new MBP-friendly game, we sort of looked like shit.


Like we'd been buried up to the neck in the sand and left; our poor heads unprotected from sunburn for days on end...


Yeah, you looked especially bad.


Bitch.


Fortunately, after more than four and a half years of practice, Nos is fairly handy at optimizing NPCs, so once he quit stalling and just did it, we were worked back into our former glory, and then some.


I still miss my proper eyes... but at least I don't have to worry about a bald spot in this game.


I miss my guns.


And I miss Marge-heavy episodes of the Simpsons that didn't suck. We've all got problems.





As you can see here, I suspect the new game may be the harbinger of the apocalypse. If it is, I say bring it on; I'm tired of observing what few social niceties I do. Also, the game designers didn't count on us being rather protective of the boy. Those poor, poor goblins...


It was really cool, though! Nos expanded his custom combat styles into Oblivion with the last version of our plugin. At one point, this Goblin made a jump-attack at Maeva; she blocked, causing him to bounce off, and then took the smelly little bastard out of the air with her claymore! I'd like to see someone else's companions pull that off.


Eh, it's just like playing pinata, except with more bleeding and screaming. Less blindfolding, too, now that I think of it. Maybe baseball would be the better analogy? Hmm...


After sodomizing the assassins with their own weapons, we bid a less-than-tearful farewell to that whiny, worthless, douche Baurus, and rampaged our way out of the sewers. I, for one, was tired of smelling human waste and tripping over Goblins too stupid to flee from my obvious greatness.


Don't forget to tell them how modest you are, too.


Hey! I'll have you know I am the most modest motherfucker in the room! I'm all about the humility. No one's better at it than I.


...I don't think that's how modesty works... uh, Mystery-Sis-chan-whatever.


Once out of the sewers, that sweet boy took us on a shopping trip through the nearby Goddess store.


He had to! He forgot to put regular clothes in our inventories, so once MCS with its auto-dress-changing feature was activated, we were all walking around town naked!


It was five thirty in the morning. It's not like anyone saw us...


I didn't mind so much. It was a little breezy, but I don't mind showing off the goods now and then. Plus, we did find skirts and shoes in those crates around the marketplace.


Walking around in public topless is almost as bad as naked! I am not walking around showing off any goods. You guys are total pervs.


You say that as though it's supposed to bother me...


Don't look at me. I don't have a sense of shame to begin with. We actually ended up having to make a second trip through, after Natasha complained that Nos dressed her like a whore.


It was one of those cleavage-dress things! I didn't want to walk around with the tops of my boobs hanging out for all to see!


They're called evening gowns, and that was a rather nice one. Floor length red velvet with gold trim... it was quite stylish.


Then why didn't you wear it, and give me the button-up shirt and skirt?


Red's not really my color for dresses. I'm more a fan of the old standby black. While we were in there again, Maeva opted to swap her black dress for another one, because apparently she is the anti-Natasha and prefers to walk around with partial tits hanging out.


Hey, I look good in a Cheongsam, and I figure if you've got it, flaunt it...





So you can see here where Natasha got her new black dress with a higher neckline. Once that was done, we needed armor:





Hey, I thought you didn't like walking around with skin showing?


What? Shorts are okay. It's not like I was wearing a steel thong like someone.


You're just jealous you don't have these wondrous legs and ass to show off.


He even sprang for eye protection. Though of course I take my wings off for fighting. They tend to get in the way. You know, it's a little sad, though; I mean, enough Septims were spent on our outfits and accessories to just about fully outfit the pirate base. Though, of course, even that wasn't enough, and the modding continued...





This guy is the first creature companion Nos has ever made, for any game. He was a little hesitant about publicly showing it, since it might run the risk of reigniting the calls for a creature framework for RR and NCCS -- but I made the decision for him. Make no mistake, this pooch is male, too -- he was created with Alienslof's Hellhound mesh and texture, and we all know what kinds of meshes she does. Nos was going to name him 'Spot', but I punched him, so he decided on Ysgithr...


Gesundheit.


That joke wasn't funny the first time you made it, and it's not funny now. Then, he got to messing around with MBP some more:





I don't see the appeal, myself. I know he was just seeing if he could replicate some of the more impressive screenshots posted in various forums over the years, but really... why anyone would see that as an improvement over the perfectly pallid beauty that is me... er, us, I will never understand.


No accounting for taste?


I think most people just don't have any taste. But because I'm so nice, here, have another of the glory that is me; without that harsh lighting in effect:





What, not going to close the hijack by striking some more poses for the people? I'm sure we could find a pole for you to work...


You want poses, huh? Fine!





Freshen your drink, Ma'am?


...Why do you have a waitress' outfit? ...Why did you have it handy in the first place...? What's been going on after I go to bed...?


Now don't go besmirching my character, or...





...Mahou Shojo Mystery-chan will punish you in the name of love and peace!


Oh, wow! That's really cute, Sis!


...God? I know we haven't been on the best of terms over the years, what with me torching that abbey and all... but if you're out there and listening? Please, please let someone have dropped a tab of acid into my wine glass earlier. Otherwise, I am seeing quite possibly the most wrong shit in the history of the world.


Don't be that way, Oni-sama! Now, where's that disc with the Sailor Moon theme on it...


Wow. You made a demon run away and hide...


That big drama queen. I happen to have a lovely singing voice.


Yeah I know... but I think it was more the soul-scarring mental image of one of the most sadistic people in the world dressed as a magical girl, singing that theme in an apparently-sincere manner. I've been around you my whole life and to be honest it still kinda creeps me out.


Yeah, sure. I'm out of screenshots to post anyway. Think I'll go find Nos and see if I can talk him into watching some more Kampfer with me.


Oh great, just what you need in your life: more anime...