AI Progress

Is coming along, albeit slowly.

Since being left in charge, I have effectively been given free reign to do whatever in the holy hell I please with the RR mod.

Consequently, one of the first things I did was strip out about fifty lines of nonsense in the companionscript.

The warp system, death checks, moving dead companions away (they're essential, okay? they don't freaking die) and about six commands that forced a new AI package on the poor companions anywhere from once every few minutes to once every few seconds, depending on what you're doing.

My theory, was that the AI was getting confoosled, as we all do when there are four people yelling in our ear at once.

Solution? Lower the amount of data being shoved down the AI's throat.

'Lo and behold, tell it from the mountaintops! It seems to actually be working. Not perfect yet, but I've gotten in three separate play sessions now, each in excess of three hours apiece, without having to re-issue a follow command. Not once.

Still get an occasional stoppage. The difference now is that the girls sort themselves out, and start following again on their own. The worst I have to do is tap 'wait' and give them an hour.

Usually, all I do is keep right the hell on walkin' - after a few minutes they get their shit together and catch up. Must have separation anxiety.

Health system is apparently a tish buggier than I thought. All is working well, here. The companion occasionally gets interrupted and the behavior overridden, but on the whole it seems to be working. Even when the heal player behavior doesn't fire, the companions still keep themselves uncrippled and healthy, which was the big point of the endeavor.

In an effort to un-fuck the system for the few people having troubleses, I've changed the code slightly; resetting the three separate checks to each fire based on a different variable. That way, if one ends up mis-set, the other two still work. Have tested, and it still seems to work fine, so I really need to upload the new Experimental plugin, and see if it helps people.

Failing that, I can pull the variable checks altogether, but that will result in one companion starting dialog with the player while they're talking to another companion already. Wouldn't break anything... but it could easily get confusing. Plus, only one companion should really break combat to heal the player, while the remainder continues providing cover.

I dunno. All I can do is keep banging away, right?

Updates

Updated my companions pack, the alternate guards plugin, and Vault 1 bedroom redecorated this morning.

Companions and guards have gotten a compatibility fix, to stop conflicts with beautification mods, and the redecoration update is just what I've got done at the moment. Decided to upload what I had, since I really need to turn my full modding attention towards the main RR Companions Vault.

Found out last night that apparently there isn't a readme for the mod. Got to looking, to smite someone for asking stupid questions... and found that the file labeled readme is nothing but a changelog stretching back to 1.0.

Joy. This means I've got to write one. On top of that, the companion system still needs work, the prisoner system is buggy as fuck, the sorters don't work right for some folks... and I stupidly signed on to YET ANOTHER mod project this morning.

I will apparently never learn.

...It's a cool project, though. Puts T/C Encores into the wasteland. I ran up versions of the little weapon in everything from .22lr up to 7.92mmJS.

Trying to convince the original author to do a new version of the mod with a can on it, to go through and add suppressed variants of all the pistols.

On My Own...

"Hi Nos,
I've been thinkink a lot lateley about fo3. While I do love the game. I've decided not to reinstall it. I seem to have my pc working ok, but I think I'll move on and get something new to play. I'm giving you permission to do whatever you like with the rr mod. If you want to keep it moving along."

Fuck. Looks like ttomwv has decided FO3 isn't his bag anymore.

I can't blame him. I fight burnout on a constant basis, and have on more than one occasion had to fight down the urge to delete it all and slink back into the shadows.

Still, it puts me in a bit of a shitty position. There are large sections of the RR Companion Vault that I had nothing to do with. The prisoner system and sorters, especially. I don't know how they work, I don't use them.

I can't debug or improve them at the moment... and being as I don't use or like either system, it's doubtful I'll bother to learn how.

He suggested that I try to pull in help from someone new.

I'm leery. ttomwv and I worked well together. We didn't have a long history by any means, but it was one totally free of drama or personal conflict.

That is an exceedingly rare thing in life; on the internet especially.

I'm going to put the word out, see if anyone else wants to sign on... but if responses in the past to community outreach are any indication, this will be a total flop.

I'm not going to abandon the mod. There are still places I want it to go, companions I want to see.

Horrible attacks I want to enact upon the vault... *cough* Did I say that one out loud...?

Anyway, the worst this means for the moment is a slowdown. I'm not going to abandon my other mods by any stretch, so the RR Companion Vault will just have to queue up with the rest and wait its turn, I suppose.

The Universe Conspires...

...against me.

Just settled into scripting. Working on the Companion AI...

...and the fucking power goes out. Was only out about a half hour... but I lost all the work I had done on the new experimental plugin.

Fortunately - as evidenced by the fact I am posting this - my PC didn't fry from a surge, so I do not need to embark upon a bloodbath.

Still annoying.

Vault 1 Redecoration Project, v2 WIP

So, I know some of you aren't thrilled with the new pictures I hung up in the vault.

Well, to tell you the truth, neither am I.

It breaks up the gray... but seems too teenage.

So, as part of the next version, I took them down.

It isn't ready for upload by a long shot... but I wanted to post up some initial shots and show off what I've got thus far, I think it's a serious improvement.



You can see here the new bedroom under the reduced - or as I call it: non-blinding - lighting. Black and white marble tile, marble pillars. Added some ceiling tiles, and raised the vault lighting emplacements so that they sit below flush.

The walls are going to get a workover too, I just haven't decided which textures to use.




Here, I kicked the lighting back up to show off detail better. Got rid of the ammo cans, and set the lockers into the walls, to increase floor space. Added a second Enclave locker. I liked the ammo cans... but they seemed a tad redundant, now that the Vault 1 supply system is in place. May as well store ammo in the guard house communal container, or in the armory.




This is the back wall of the museum. I removed all the weapon display cases, and added new ones set into the wall. The top ones can be a bit tricky to put weapons into, but it worked fine for me.

You'll also notice I redid the wall. Most of the others will get a similar treatment. Some just don't fit right, and will have to stay Vault walls.




Here's the new marble tile that's going to cover the museum floor. You can see I've got some serious clipping and alignment issues yet to deal with.

That part takes forever, and is annoying, to boot.

Driven Up the Wall

Right fucking up it, I tell you!

Can Nvidia not put out working fucking drivers anymore?

Shit. Installed 190.38 a few months ago, to ostensibly "improve performance" with FO3.

It doesn't.

Not only does it not, but every other time I restarted the computer, Nvidia's invasive, pain in the ass of a control panel helpfully reset my desktop resolution to 800x600 and randomly reordered my icons.

Tonight, after FO3 wouldn't start because the driver had b0rked AGAIN, I had enough and updated to 191.07

Now I can't play FO3 for more than ten minutes before my framerate drops from a low-but-playable 25 to one frame every third second.

The shit's unplayable.

Going to try one set of "fixes" someone posted in a forum, and then I'm rolling the fuck back to 186.18

Nos' RR Companions v1.2 LIVE!

That's right, I got around to uploading it.

Still isn't done. I have some more dialog to implement, animations to add, and voices to mess with.

Still, it's a step in the right direction.

At some point, I have GOT to rewrite my blog post on the mod, since it's months out of date, now.

http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=8090