Interesting

Since playing FNV again, I've ended up thinking again about the need for a proper complex for housing myself and my companions.

To that end, I loaded up the NVGECK again this morning; in order to see if the new versions of engine and construction set would allow me to load the 'Lucky38 World' to copy and replicate the rooms with views.

It crashed, again. To be fair, I was expecting this, and so barely looked away from my DVD when the program shit itself and returned to the desktop.

Thinking on why the NVGECK would load other cells fine -- even inordinately large worldspaces like the wasteland -- but not anything to do with the Lucky38's replicated wasteland, the thought occurred to me that it might be a graphical issue; something in the worldspace that my video card or DX environ didn't care for.

I switched off all non-essential objects in the viewer: sound markers, collision planes, occlusion planes, trees, grass -- everything but lights and normal markers.

Tried loading the worldspace again, and this time was rewarded with it loading normally. I return to my DVD.

About ten minutes later, I glance back to the GECK, and see that the items-to-be-loaded counts haven't dropped by even one. I look closer, and see that Windows' "working" cursor has stopped moving. Great; the numbers aren't going down because it locked the system up. Another fine Bethsoft job, I see.

Ctrl+Alt+Del wouldn't bring up the windows manager either -- it was a legitimate hard lock.

Based on the symptoms, and the fact that Herculine can load the Lucky38 world for editing where I can't, I'm now inclined to believe the issue isn't so much that the GECK itself is crashing on the one world and no others -- I think it's a resource issue. There's something in that worldspace that's such a resource whore that it's more than the entire wasteland's system drain; it's just flat more than my little PC here can handle rendering.

What is it? Your guess is as good as mine. The wasteland copy is supposed to be empty; and only stretch as far as you can see from the windows. That said, as anyone who's modded a Gamebryo title before can tell you, "supposed to be" rarely coincides with "is".

So, this pretty much puts the kibosh on my tower in FNV. I'm back to working with standard interiors; and that being the case I'm far more likely to go underground than above -- maybe create some Bond-villain-esque underwater complex in Lake Mead or some such.

All that said, I have something I want to ask you guys. Bearing in mind that "underwater" does not have to equal Lake Mead (I can just as easily claim it's an underground aquifer as I did with the Vault 1 Remodel) where would you want to see player housing?

As I was playing through this new game, the thought occurred to me that if I did place the complex at the lake, I wouldn't be able to access it until at least level six; often closer to ten, for the simple fact that Obsidian railroaded us so hard that you can't go straight to the lake from Goodsprings. Short of installing some lame-o teleporting device or transport service, there's no way to go direct without it being tantamount to suicide. You pretty much have to take the long way south and around past Nipton.

While I realize that Goodsprings -- much like Springvale in FO3 -- is far and away overcrowded with house mods because it's the starting location, I'm nonetheless wondering if somewhere nearer there wouldn't be better for earlier access.

At the same time, though, easy(er) access to New Vegas and its surrounding areas would also be nice, since there's fuckall for merchants and amenities in the Goodsprings area.

With so much free space north of the Strip, it would be pretty easy to pull a Resident Evil, and claim that the NosCo Evil Corporate Headquarters are secreted beneath some farmhouse and fields.

Of course, there is also the lake. It would be equally easy to say the scavenger's platform is chained out there in the middle as a cover to keep anyone from noticing an observation bubble from the underground complex.

Decisions, decisions.

Although as I'm playing a more survival-oriented character in this game (and hardcore mode), I keep thinking it would be nice to have a hydroponic garden in the complex, as well as a water purifier of some sort.