Fallout 4 total conversion mod.

[Seattleite]

A few quick things on gun mods:

 

1. All automatic weapons will be select-fire if at all possible. Fire modes can be changed with a bound key. Semi-auto is slower than full auto, but recoil is reduced. Full auto is fast, but recoil is increased. Damage, accuracy and range are not directly affected. Remember to fire in short bursts, and with a little skill you can use a fully automatic weapon up to a pretty good range.

 

2. There NOT be alternate ammunition types in-game. There will be some weapons that fire silver bullets, but all weapons that share their ammunition type do as well.

 

3. Receivers affect weapon rate of fire in rifles and magazine size in pistols. Heavy pistol receivers hold more ammunition but are heavier, lighter pistol receivers hold less ammunition but are lighter. Rifle receivers are either faster with more recoil or slower with less recoil.

 

4. Barrels are extremely important. Longer barrels slightly reduce recoil and slightly increase damage, range and sighted accuracy. Shorter barrels significantly reduce weight and increase hip-fire accuracy.

 

5. Stocks increase weight and reduce hip-fire accuracy, but reduce recoil and improve sighted accuracy.

 

6. Muzzle breaks reduce recoil, but also reduce accuracy. Bayonets improve melee damage, but make the weapon heavier, and are more effective on rifles than pistols. Suppressors significantly reduce noise and recoil while increasing sighted accuracy, but also reduce damage, range and hip-fire accuracy while making the weapon heavier, and for rifles the benefits are smaller and penalties greater. (Note: The increase in sighted accuracy is because the muzzle blast is no longer half blinding you every time you fire.)

 

Also, quick note about the dog:

Your starting dog, in case you hadn't guessed, is an android. That's why it inflicts no damage, and also why it's so durable, and also why it manages to come back to you each time it dies Fo3 Dogmeat style. Not spoiling the story behind that.

 

Also, quick question. A few of these enemies are supposed to be intimidating. I would like to know how I did on that, just so far. Specifically on the reanimates (especially the risen, which every enemy left dead will turn into if you don't take the time to destroy them), undead (especially the death lords, which are actual vampire gods), the celestials of various grades (especially the guardians and sentinels, which are actual celestial gods), the various robots (especially the avenger), wendigos (both varieties), demons (the black-eyes and manager are only meant to be creepy, but if I failed at that there's no point), regulators and raiders.

Edited December 12, 2015 by Guest (see edit history)

[Seattleite]

Now for another easy addition, difficulties work totally differently, having no direct effect on combat. Instead, difficulties affect other systems, and most of their impact is long-term, rather than short-term.

 

Very easy: Limbs can heal on their own, infection does not exist, disease effects do not exist. Settlement attacks never occur.

 

Easy: Limbs cannot heal when crippled without surgery or healing items, infection sets in if a limb is damaged especially badly, disease effects are minor. Settlement attacks occur at 20% of max rate.

 

Normal: Limbs cannot heal when crippled without surgery or healing items, infection sets in if a limb is damaged especially badly, disease effects can be significant. Settlement attacks occur at 40% of max rate.

 

Hard: Limbs cannot heal when crippled without surgery or healing items, infection sets in if a limb is crippled, disease effects can be serious. Settlement attacks occur at 60% of max rate.

 

Very hard: Limbs cannot heal when crippled without surgery, infection sets in if a limb is crippled and necrosis sets in if it is damaged badly enough, disease effects can be life-threatening. Settlement attacks occur at 80% of max rate.

 

Survival: Limbs cannot heal when crippled without surgery and can be injured so badly they cannot be healed at all, infection sets in if a limb is crippled and necrosis sets in if it is permanently crippled, disease effects can be life-threatening or incurable. Settlement attacks occur at maximum rate. This is the difficulty the mod was built for.

Edited December 22, 2015 by Guest (see edit history)

[BTGBullseye]

Ok, I do take issue with locking content behind difficulty ratings... It just comes across as a 'dick move' for forcing people to be 'hardcore players' instead of casual gamers to play the game. All content should be accessible to all players. (I've seen this before, it's a great way to make people not play your game or mod, and for every reviewer to be very against it)

[Alyxx Thorne]

I agree. There should at least be a way to customize the difficulty and choose what you want included or not.

[Seattleite]

The reason it's locked behind survival difficulty (I really do hope to change that name... I think I probably can) is because said content only exists once your second character dies, because said content is dealing directly with said character's death, and since they can't die on lower difficulties there isn't really any point going there otherwise. I suppose you could find a way to go in there anyway, but to what end? Some of it I can see you wanting to do anyway and it's still accessible, but the death-related quest areas just don't have any point otherwise and there's no conceivable reason why you'd go there, or be let in if you did.

 

And actually, some of it would be physically impossible to access if both characters are alive, the only way to get there is to have your second character die and attempt to switch to them. That scene is as much an easter egg as anything else, but it's trippy and comedic. (Involving pitch-black waiting rooms, taking numbers, filling out a questionnaire, going through an interview, possibly going back to the waiting room and taking another number, and eventually being sent to your destination after having the gears of bureaucracy grind on you for an intentionally overly long period of time, only to be sent to another waiting room until it's your turn to depart. If you don't access this scene, it's assumed it all happened off-camera and your second character's destination is selected automatically, though you also miss out on the experience.)

[BTGBullseye]

You could have a scripted event that kills off the other kid... Scripts can do that. (and you could have it just as some stupidly obviously lethal thing that kills them, and only that stupidly obviously lethal thing, maybe a turbine engine or something)

[Seattleite]

I generally oppose scripted deaths. Look, I'll just remove character mortality from the difficulties and have characters be mortal all the time. That should remove the issue.

[BTGBullseye]

If it's only the kid characters, that seems ok. (losing all your settlers because of one attack on 'easy' is never fun)

[Seattleite]

You can lose them, but it's highly unlikely they would all be lost in one attack as your settlers are usually fairly capable and the attacks are fairly weak. Actually, an attack killing *anybody* is a rarity. But if it's a concern, I can also scale settlement attacks to difficulty. They'll still be mortal, but the attacks will be less frequent for each difficulty down. I don't expect it'll have much impact on anything, though. It's not like these are organized assaults with military force. Usually, the "attacks" are done by monsters or animals that just kinda wandered in, and aren't really there to attack people so much as eat some livestock or raid the trash.

[BTGBullseye]

It'd be nice to have the scaling attacks though. I know that the defaults for F4 are remarkably stronger than the difficulty level would suggest at any difficulty below 'hard'.

[Seattleite]

And the attacks in this mod will be substantially weaker, largely as a difference between the settings. For instance, you may return from a trip and find a bear rummaging through your dumpster. (I've actually done that once in real life, in almost the same area as this mod.) Which is quite a lot less than finding a half dozen people with guns, you know?

[BTGBullseye]

Are you gonna make the animals realistic then? (fire a warning shot at the bear, and the bear runs away)

[Seattleite]

As realistic as is possible within the engine.

[BTGBullseye]

Shouldn't be hard to make them run away... It would just be using part of the Animal Whisperer perk, and making it run away instead of just be docile.

[Seattleite]

Animal whisperer is triggered by pointing the gun, not firing it. The main issue is you have to fire the gun, preferably in the direction of the bear, without hitting it. (Actually shooting a bear doesn't scare it, it pisses it off.) It may or may not be a problem to make that register, but I've been intending to try.

 

But then, making a lot of noise to scare off a bear could draw something else more dangerous. Assuming the bears in this setting haven't built up a habit of running *towards* gunfire like Kodiak bears. Which might make sense, if they come to associate gunfire with dead things laying around to eat, which is what's happened with Kodiak bears.

[BTGBullseye]

The game already has threat association for bullet impacts in proximity... You can see it rather clearly with suppressed weapons when you miss. I suppose you could just use the same AI as the Radstag for it. (runs away unless you hit it)

[Seattleite]

Settlements day. It's time for notes on the main in-game settlements. There's seven of note. These are Everett, Marysville, Lake Stevens, Lynnwood, Bellevue, Seattle. Each of these is controlled by a different in-game faction. Respectively, the US military, The Presence Cult, Angels, Celestials, Death Lords and Demons. As all of these are active enemies of one another.

 

Everett:

Everett is a large, relatively intact settlement and the most security-minded state in the region, on account of having enemies every direction but west. Everett is surrounded by a three metre fence topped with concertina wire, and its individual districts are separated by two-metre fences (thankfully sans the wire), with a massive police presence in the city at all times. The city's population stands at 100,000 (canonically, though it's only about 1,000 in-game), yet its police department boasts an absolutely unreasonable and counter-productive 5,000 members, surpassed only by its military population of 10,000. Such large police and military populations simply aren't viable in the long run, revealing the short-sightedness of its leaders.

 

Culturally, Everett is a hole. (Though for different reasons than the real city.) It's a paranoid town, perpetually convinced enemies are coming for them at every moment, and everybody they don't know is a spy or a collaborator. The police are violent and panicky cowards, even by police standards, with a kill record barely acceptable under martial law, and the few police that try to actually protect and serve are reviled by the rest of the community as "naive", with the claim that actually trying to do their job is somehow putting other officers' lives in danger. (Which is bullshit.) The entire harbour and airport districts are under strict military control, zealously guarded by soldiers with orders to summarily execute intruders. Even the player's childhood isn't a shield from suspicion here, and living in this town is only marginally safer than living in a cabin in the wilderness. At least in that cabin, they won't have to risk being ventilated by twitchy, gun-toting cowards just to get a carton of milk.

 

Marysville:

Marysville is largely abandoned, with the few people that still live there being reclusive and suspicious of outsiders. Especially since they can somehow peg you as being from Everett the moment you talk to them, as if it's something in the way you talk. Their business owners will barely trade with you, selling at a massively inflated price and refusing to buy anything. Their local militia will confront you frequently, searching and interrogating you for no reason other than you being an outsider, and they won't hesitate to shoot you down, even though you're a child. And the few people who do speak to you are hated by the others, called "sympathisers", and any of them that help you will be executed as "collaborators" if you become an enemy of the militia.

 

The reason for their paranoia may be hard to gather, but it'll become clear if you befriend one of those "sympathisers" or do a little espionage on your own. (Or if the militia decides to execute you.) These people are insane. They believe that the US Government is controlled by the Illuminati, and that everybody coming up from Everett is an Illuminist spy. Never mind that the Illuminati doesn't, you know, EXIST. They also suspect everybody from Lake Stevens of being a Templar, everybody from Seattle of being a Satanist. And of course, they are wrong on all counts.

 

They believe only they truly understand their god's will, that their leader is in direct communication with the lord, and that the other organizations claiming to carry out this same god's will (the angels in Lake Stevens and the demons in Seattle) are misinterpreting his word. Their goal is to bring their God physically into this world, which they don't understand doesn't make sense. (I would suggest not asking them why their god would need their help, unless you happen to feel your little body needs better ventilation.)

 

Lake Stevens:

Lake Stevens is barely a city, in truth just two towns and a bunch of shitty corporate housing developments combining their powers Captain Planet style in order to pretend they deserve a city's budget. That's hardly relevant now that they're under Angel control, but the angels saw no reason to change the name, as it's not like honesty is the Church's forte anyway. The town's entire adult male population counts as a standing army, every one of them able to be plucked from their home and sent out to do battle on a moment's notice.

 

Lake Stevens is clearly on the losing side of this war, having thrown itself ineffectually into the meat grinder since it came under Angel control in 2032. In that time, its population dropped from 30,000 to 12,000 due to a combination of extreme zeal and complete incompetence on the part of their leadership. But at least there's some hope for them, in that if stupidity ever becomes a resource, they'll be unstoppable.

 

Culturally, the town is exhausted. Tens of thousands of deaths in battle and thousands of executions on the home front have left them feeling hopeless and defeated, despite them being legally required not to show it. There have been multiple attempted coups, but the angels are too powerful and the conspirators too few for them to succeed. Of all the settlements in the region, this one is likely the worst for you to visit, especially if you're a girl, as they will get Old Testament on you in a hurry. But if you'd like to take the occasional long-range rifle shot at an angel, that'd certainly be appreciated.

 

Lynnwood:

Lynnwood is the primary settlement and main drop zone for the Celestials. Despite being primarily a military base, Lynnwood retains a strong emphasis on education, with the college remaining open and being the only truly functional facility of higher education in the region. However, half of the college has been shut down and converted into a Research & Development facility for the Celestials' robotics division, where they developed their made to order consumer androids. (And if you think the rest of the college didn't suddenly get a lot of robotics courses added to its curriculum, you're fooling yourself.)

 

Lynnwood is weaker militarily than Everett, Seattle or Bellevue, though stronger than Marysville or Lake Stevens by a fair measure. It owes its military strength almost entirely to technology and magic, with only the Raiders being more technologically advanced and only the Death Lords possessing stronger magic, and neither of them are present in large enough numbers or in a good enough position to be a threat to the Celestials in Lynnwood. Despite this and their frequent clashes with Everett and Seattle, they appear to be mostly using their military defensively and taking a "hearts and minds" approach to their actual conquest, focusing on improving public opinion of them in order to win popular support. Whether it's working or not is up to interpretation.

 

Bellevue:

Bellevue's population can be counted a number of ways. If you only count the living, the city's population is about 5,000. If you count the living and the undead, about 30,000. If you count the living, the undead, and animated corpses, about 200,000. Despite being so close to Seattle, and actively fighting it at all hours, Bellevue is going fairly strong and defending its position admirably.

 

Bellevue also features a college, which has been taken over by the death lords and remade into the Bellevue Occult Institute, a special night school for vampires, offering education primarily on the occult. Attached is the Bellevue Officer Candidate School. These two facilities work closely together, as vampire officers need a considerable amount of occult education.

 

Bellevue is very strong militarily, and manages to both resist one demonic offensive after another and launch offensives of its own, but even so Seattle is still much stronger and would demolish them if it didn't have to also fight Everett and Lynnwood. Strangely, though, they have decided to destroy all bridges leading to Mercer Island instead of taking it over, and most of their attacks seem to be aiming to acquire as much ordinance as possible, which they them immediately proceed to fire on the island. The only other things their military does is prevent people from reaching Mercer Island, and of course defend Bellevue itself. Nobody quite knows what there is on Mercer Island that they're so afraid of, but the massive beacon of light in the middle probably has something to do with it. And hopefully nobody will ever find out what, exactly, that light really is. (You want an endgame, BTG? How about you find out what the hell's going on down there.)

 

Seattle:

Seattle is the largest city on the map, taking up most of the map's southern border. With a population of nearly 600,000 in the city proper, the city's sheer population makes it the militarily strongest in the region. The fact that it's run by demons doesn't hurt either, but it still mostly comes down to the fact that there's more people in Seattle than all the other cities on the map combined. (The game doesn't even feature all of Seattle, and it still has more NPCs in it than the entire rest of the map combined.)

 

Culturally, Seattle is obsessed with sports. This is a tragedy, as before the takeover it had so much more to offer, and all of it was thrown aside for the most idiotic pastimes humanity has ever conceived. Every night is sports night in Seattle now. Monday they go out to the ball game, Tuesday they play basketball, Wednesday is hockey day, Thursday they play lacrosse, Friday's the day for association football (that they insist on calling soccer for reasons known only to them), Saturday they're at the races and Sunday they play american football. It must be exhausting for all the people who really don't like sports, and excruciating for those smart enough to hate them.

 

It's not hard to see what's really going on there, though, as no matter what day it is, the main event will really consist of about three hours of commercials, only occasionally interrupted by actual sport. The entire purpose of the demons forcing such a focus on sports was just to make money, and it never had anything to do with the spirit of the games, whatever that bullshit is actually supposed to mean.

 

Outside of this, there isn't anything left, as all other facets of Seattle's culture were destroyed to make room for sports and consumerism. (At least you know they'll trade with you.) It was already heading that way for a long time, but the demons finished off any hope that this trend would reverse itself. The only other institutions of any prestige in the eyes of the demons are the armed forces, and since so few can compete in sports, that's the avenue most of Seattle's glory seekers take. And since Seattle is so strong militarily, it's turned into one big bullet magnet. If an offensive is launched, it's either on Everett or them. And the threat isn't always external, as their own citizens shoot up the place on almost a daily basis.

 

And that's it. That's all of the settlements in-game, and most of the factions. Next post will either be on the few factions not included in this, or it'll be on extra-planar locations you can visit in-game (only two of which will be in upon release, the rest added later).

[Selfsurprise]

You'll have to forgive me for my ignorance, because I don't know anything about modding other than what I've learnt through Gaming channelers like AlChestbreach and whatnot. Is a total conversion mod like the game replacer mods Dust or Obscurum Pandemic for FNV?

 

Now I've got that embarrassing n00b question out of the way, your ideas really piqued my interest. I'm curious to know more about this setting and its futuro-magical phenomena - I take it that your world isn't exactly related to the Fallout universe or its lore. I particularly enjoyed reading the list of enemies and the models you propose to use for them. I'm one of those heretical nutcases that actually prefers Fallout 4 over the previous installments, so unlike some who have replied to your thread I'm supportive of a total conversion mod for the engine. The only vague bugbear with Fallout 4 I can think of is how limited dialogue mechanics will work for homebrewed quest mods, it was the one aspect of the game that I felt was an unfortunate departure for the franchise. I read your intro script both and I approve of the unsettling weirdness of it, but couldn't help wondering how on earth you would go about programming all the props and actions.

I guess all I can say is good luck, and I hope you keep updating the thread with anything new you come up with. I'd love to discuss this some more with you!

 

EDIT: Anything featuring The Jersey Devil and "extra-planar locations you can visit" can't be bad, in my book.

[Seattleite]

You'll have to forgive me for my ignorance, because I don't know anything about modding other than what I've learnt through Gaming channelers like AlChestbreach and whatnot. Is a total conversion mod like the game replacer mods Dust or Obscurum Pandemic for FNV?

 

Yes. The examples I would have pointed to were Nehrim for Oblivion, Day Z for Arma II, and Counter Strike and Team Fortress for Half-Life, but yours work just as well.

 

Now I've got that embarrassing n00b question out of the way, your ideas really piqued my interest. I'm curious to know more about this setting and its futuro-magical phenomena - I take it that your world isn't exactly related to the Fallout universe or its lore.

 

It's not even in the same genre, really.

 

I particularly enjoyed reading the list of enemies and the models you propose to use for them.

 

Well, that's not even close to all the enemies I'd *like* to include. That's just the ones I'm pretty sure I can get one way or another. There's more I'd love to include, and know for a fact that I won't be able to until much later, at best. (There's some awesome things in this setting, that I'd love to show outside of pen and paper.)

 

And I mean, one of the big ones is the thing that's supposed to be on Mercer Island. I never mentioned it before because I wasn't sure I could work it in, and honestly I'm still not sure, but it does at least have a simple model. Animation might be a slight issue, though. (Because only its textures change, its model actually doesn't have any moving parts.)

 

I'm one of those heretical nutcases that actually prefers Fallout 4 over the previous installments, so unlike some who have replied to your thread I'm supportive of a total conversion mod for the engine.

 

Well, there's a few problems with using Fallout 4 you have to be aware of. The first one is that it basically just came out, so I'll have to wait for at least *some* of the DLC to be released, and the release of more content is going to drastically change what I can and can't do here. The second one is Fallout 4's atrocious armour system, though this mod is noticeably less combat-oriented than the original game, so hopefully it won't be *too* big of an issue.

 

Thankfully, though, Fallout 4 makes a lot of things easier, and even more possible to begin with. One tiny example is that it's a lot easier to include enemies that fall right out of the sky. It was impossible to make enemies not take falling damage in 3 or New Vegas, but here I can set them to not take falling damage and just spawn them high up. Hell, the game even has a great landing animation for them, and I don't even need to program them to use it because it's the default.

 

The only vague bugbear with Fallout 4 I can think of is how limited dialogue mechanics will work for homebrewed quest mods, it was the one aspect of the game that I felt was an unfortunate departure for the franchise.

 

I don't actually think that'll be a problem. I mean, it sucks that I'll be limited to providing only four responses at once, but that isn't a deal breaker. Though the voiced protagonist won't be a problem, because this mod just won't have one. Unfortunately... That might just be because none of the content will be voiced, at least for some time. That's something that will have to wait until the game is released and people volunteer.

 

I read your intro script both and I approve of the unsettling weirdness of it, but couldn't help wondering how on earth you would go about programming all the props and actions.

 

Programming all the props and actions is the easy part, actually. At least as the intro is written here. None of it is any different from any other total conversion mod ever made for a Bethesda game. That said, there's been some changes to the intro that I've failed to record, and I'll copy them over real quick, probably before you read this.

 

I guess all I can say is good luck, and I hope you keep updating the thread with anything new you come up with. I'd love to discuss this some more with you!

 

I appreciate the sentiment.

 

EDIT: Anything featuring The Jersey Devil and "extra-planar locations you can visit" can't be bad, in my book.

 

Well, here might be a pair of small disappointments, then. The first being that the Jersey Devil won't be in for quite some time (the same can be said for a lot of enemies, actually), and the second being that there will only be two extra-planer locations available at first, one of which is used entirely for an easter egg and the other is still pretty small.

[BTGBullseye]

The 4 dialog options issue might not be an issue at all once the GECK is out... Also, if you need a voice actor, I can do some vocalizations. (don't know how good they'll be, but I can at least make it sound like I'm conversing with someone instead reciting lines from a script in monotone)