5461

This news totally kicks ass.

5462

I’d like to see this too, but are total conversions or huge side areas like this popular in the Bethesda or open world RPGs? It seems like all the mods in Oblivion were about making the default randomized content better. I know POOP included a few cool quests, but I didn’t even bother with them. Do people not care enough to build that kind of stuff like they do for FPS games or a Neverwinter Nights game?

I want them to take this engine and do some cool post-apocalypse Fallouty stuff, but I’m worried it’s just going to be a hundred mods to make the plates and forks look nicer. That’s not necessarily a bad thing because the content Bethesda has created is pretty good to wander around in, but I want more! Or rather, I want modders to use the engine to build more nuclear wasteland stories and stuff in general, not just “more” Fallout 3.

5463

i’m not sure Tim. it would be kind of difficult to do something big without some sort of map editor.

5464

This basically means that I’m going to have to eventually buy Fallout 3 for the PC as well, which was my plan all along.

More than anything else I’m looking forward to people coming up with new dialog trees for the original game. I bet fans can make an enhanced Fallout 3 with much deeper dialog choices than are in the game right now. Including, hopefully, unique dialog for when you play a stupid character with low intelligence.

5465

“its ok, honey. this time i’ll speak a little slower…” :)

5466

If your intelligence is 1 all speech should just be gibberish. That’ll teach you to not pump the single most important stat!

5467

That’s what the G.E.C.K. is, isn’t it? The TES:CS but for Fallout? I don’t know about Oblivion, but in Morrowind it was totally possible to add an additional island off the coast of the main game’s island, and there was nothing other than the designer’s time preventing that island from being as big and detailed as the main island, because the grid stretches infinitely in all directions (in Oblivion, there are removable barriers preventing you from exploring the infinite wasteland that lies beyond the mountains, and in Morrowind, fish/boredom will kill you if you swim too far).

5468

hmm, i think someone with more experience with modding oblivion will have to fill us in

5469

I modded Morrowind extensively (for personal use, nothing published), and the sets are the same (with the exception of graphics and the added physics engine), and I guarantee you that it is possible to add locations. If someone had the time and will, they could make any location they can imagine provided the resources within the editor allow it (and if not you can always make your own objects and textures, although this is considerably harder than just adding a city).

It will be quite easy to change the level cap, add or edit perks (I’m basing this assumption on how easy it was to add and edit astral signs and powers in Elder Scrolls, maybe we’ll even get the script effect to play with, not that anyone actually fully understands Bethesda’s script), change the amount of experience needed to level up, and change even the basic properties of skills (the magnitude of their effect, the difference in effect from one level to another) when this comes out. I can’t wait.

5470

My question is why don’t people build new areas more often with Bethesda games, or why isn’t it more popular like the latest FPS total conversion or NWN module? Seems to just be how it works with the Bethesda games, I guess. People like to tweak the open world but the mod community doesn’t seem as excited about building new ones.

5471

thats what i was wondering about. has anyone build any new areas for oblivion, or just tweaked the main game?

5472

The short answer is that it’s a huge (can’t emphasize this enough) pain in the ass to even build a small town, let alone an entire new area. Most of the people who went ahead and built new areas just built themselves a little private island with a castle and some NPC servants (it’s what I did). Oh, and doors that teleport all over the map, can’t forget those. :)

It takes Bethesda years to construct their world, and they have teams of people working on models, plot, and landscapes. Plus they get paid. It’s just a better usage of a modder’s time to improve the game they made than to make a whole new area that probably wouldn’t be as much fun as the original area. Why reinvent the wheel when you can make the current wheel run faster and more aesthetically pleasing? Not to mention the fact that while you are building a whole new area other modders are focusing on making the original even better, making your new area even less desirable in comparison.

That said, some modders do add extra areas, but they are pretty small and usually still located on the mainland (I recall some sort of castle or fort siege mod for morrowind or oblivion…).

5473

Continuing to be devil’s advocate: FPS games have large mod teams, not to mention some freeware/opensource games. Will any big groups emerge for Fallout 3? That reminds me that it seems like all the stuff I’m familiar with in Oblivion and Morrowind were created by one or two people per mod. Is it merely scene culture for this particular type of game, or maybe just lack of demand?

5474

Annndddd, I’m excited all over again.

I really want to fiddle with the creator.

I think it will be possible to create some awesome stuff using existing assets.

5475

I can’t really say what will happen with FO3, but it’s probably a safe bet that it will be no different than what happened with Oblivion and Morrowind. Like I said, I only modded for myself and friends, so I have no insight into the minds of the actually good/large-scale modders as to why they never built new content, I can just offer my experience that it was way easier to add items, powers, and locations to the existing game than to add more landsmass and populate it with interesting things.

5476

I would for someone to develop a quest which lets you establish and develop a wasteland settlement.

Been one of my longest-running gaming desires.

5477
  1. Yeah this is what I imagined the answer would be, that it’s be fairly difficult to actually physically change the world, like adding a new building, rather than modify an existing one.( say opening a door in one of the buildings in the metro area that leads to a new interior instead of building an entirely new Tenpenny Tower)
5478

It’s not really that hard to slap down a building, the hard part is designing the inside (which you’d have to do a lot for a town).

5479

Oddly, I’m not all that excited about DLC. I didn’t get any of the Oblivion ones, and never bought any DLC for any other game that had any, as of yet. I didn’t even play the free ME DLC for the PC when it arrived. I think it’s a matter of it needing to be a huge difference in terms of expansion of the world before I’m interested. That “expansion” is usually in the form of adding new features to the game that have an effect on the entire game and adds substantially more gameplay. I don’t see that in DLC, yet. I’m going to be a fan of the big expansion a year down the road over little bits and pieces here and there for a while, I think.

Still, I think it’s great that they are working on giving players something new to keep their game fresh for a while longer, even if I don’t join in.

5480

I’m going to keep suggesting a Terminator: Future Shock total conversion until someone with far more time and talent than myself decides to take it up.