In my own play testing, I rarely have had any problems with jumping or melee attacks . . . in fact, the current settings feel just about right. But I tend to keep my Encumbrance below 70% . . . and I never hold the button down for long enough to get more than one Strain penalty per whack.

I guess I really need to hear from others about this. If this is indeed a problem for many, I'll reduce my jumping and melee Stain penalties.

You should be fine then. If you do ever want to start a new game, you can use the http://amito.freehostia.com/Fallout/FO-mods01.htm#facegen to import your character's face. I use it all the time, and it works great.

To Everyone: Thanks for all the great feedback! It appears that my medical supplies are spawning in the amounts that intended. They are supposed to be somewhat scarce as loot, but the merchants and doctors should generally have some for sale.


You nailed it! I'm often getting complaints that my mod is too hard . . . from users who just don't understand what my Realism Tweaks is all about. If you don't want the Wasteland to be a very harsh place, or if you're not willing to change your button-bashing-FPS-game-play, then you really shouldn't be using my tweaks.
Bleeding is slow on purpose, otherwise you would have to stop for medical treatment after every bullet wound . . . which would be a micromanagement nightmare. My approach, using Levels of injuries, and Stages, allows you to pretty much ignore minor wounds during combat. But once your minor wounds become moderate wounds, you need to start thinking about survival (as in, do you have enough bandages to patch yourself up?). Plus I tried to balance this across all 10 Armor Levels, so bleeding is going to be a bit slow to progress when you're wearing better armor . . . but it progresses pretty fast when you're wearing low AR armor.


I'll see what I can do . . . Infections were one of the last types of injuries I added, so they didn't get all that much play testing . . . I may have the time rate a bit high.

Sleeping seems a bit buggy from what I can tell now. Seems I get stuck at or around the 4 hours sleep need mark. If I try to sleep with 5 or 6 hours needed, it seems to do one of two things.

1) Sleep for 2 hours then wakes up and says I can't sleep with less than 4 hours needed. (which my needs still say 4 hours needed).

2) Doesn't sleep at all and changes my sleep need to 2 or 3 and says I can't sleep.

Also, anyone figured out RAD Sickness yet? I ran into this nasty sickness after eating while having too high of a RAD count I guess. Problem is, I can't seem to get rid of it. Seems my sickness level simply is staying at the same amount and I can't eat or drink. I can't find a way to cure the sickness, and time doesn't seem to be healing it on its own.

[quote name='thedudeabides' date='14 October 2010 - 04:14 PM' timestamp='1287087279' post='16483878']
I just updated ART from 4.8 to 5.0.1 and started a new character, and so far medical supplies have been fine, since the doctor in Megaton sells enough to keep me going (though it does put a sizable dent in my money supply, which is a good thing for balance). I needed quite a lot of antibiotics in the beginning, maybe because I kept getting bitten by dogs, and because infections spread quickly. Overall, I like the changes a lot, much more than I liked Real Injuries and Primary Needs. This is much simpler and straightforward, but has actually has more impact on the game. A few minor quibbles: I liked it when alcohol had benefits (+1 str, +1 cha), and it doesn't make sense to me that hard alcohol would reduce thirst (if anything, it should increase thirst). I also don't understand the logic behind red meat reducing blood loss.[/quote]
You only need antibiotics if you are not keeping your wounds below Level 2 and it takes an infection about one game hour to cause an infected wound, which is the only time you need to use antibiotics. I'll likely be slowing down the rate of infection in v.5.1.
As povuholo surmised, I needed to keep alcohol useful, and didn't have the time to do a lot with it in this first release. I'll likely keep beer as a minor thirst quencher, and probably wine. I'm hoping to make some changes to alcohol in v.5.1.

As far as red meat reducing blood loss, here's my logic (along with a short biology lesson): Red blood cells contain hemoglobin, which is a protein that helps retain oxygen in your blood. Hemoglobin requires lots of iron, which we get from eating food (along with all the other nutrients that our bodies need to make our red blood cells). And one of the best sources for iron is Read Meat. Eat enough red meat . . . and you regenerate red blood cells at the optimum rate.

[quote]Unfortunately, I'm now having problems with strain. First, as povuholo said, holding down buttons or accidentally pressing twice can have pretty drastic consequences. Second, and more importantly, when I collapse from jumping, my character does not get up. I've waited until strain goes back down to zero, but nothing happens, so I have to load an old save. It's easily reproducible by just holding down the spacebar for a few seconds. If I'm not pressing the spacebar and collapse from strain while running, then my character gets up fine.[/quote]
You don't don't need to hold the space bar down more than just briefly to jump or do a melee attack. The problem happens when you get the 100% Strain fatigue penalty, when your fatigue is already low.

[/quote] Also a quick question. Have you been using MMM5 or MMM6 in your balances? It feels like I'm being detected by enemies much more easily when out in the wasteland during the day (I'm using MMM6). When running from house to house in Arefu (level 2 character with ~20 sneak), I had a Mirelurk see me from the river below, and run all the way up into town to attack me. However, I'm not sure if this is due to changes in your mod or Martigen's, or if it's just bad luck on my part.
[/quote]
Yes, I'm using MMM 6.1. Are you using my MMM patch?

My game is almost up. I installed Arwen's Realism Tweaks, MMM, EVE and Dynamic Weather and now I wonder If I should use Fallout Unofficial Patch.. I heard a lot of troubles comes from it. Someone know if it's safe to use with ART and MMM?

EDIT: I have GOTY.

You can only sleep a maximum of 9 hours, no matter how high your Sleep Need is, and you cannot sleep longer than what your Sleep Need i, and your Sleep Need has to be a minimum of 4, before you can sleep at all.
If you set that you want to sleep 10 hours, my sleep script will wake you up after 9 hours (if your sleep need was higher than 8).
If your Sleep Need was 6, it would wake you up after 6 hours, even if you set it higher than 6.
But there's noting in my script that would wake you up, after only 6 hours, if your sleep need was greater than 6.
The only other restriction is if you have a bleeding wound . . . then you cannot sleep at all.
Are you sure that you are not using another mod that affects sleep (such as Rude Awakening)?

There is nothing in my mod that would account for an increase in Power Cells . . . my Hard-Core module decreases ammo loot . . . it doesn't increase it.


See what I posted above. Make sure that you are not using any other mod that affects sleep. I tested my Sleep Script a LOT and it works fine for me, so I really don't understand why others are having problems with sleep.


Digestion Level & Rad Sickness: Whenever your Digestion Level is 1 or higher, and your Rad Damage is 100 or greater, your Rad Sickness Level will slowly increase. The higher your current Rad damage, the faster your Rad Sickness rate, and if it reaches Level 5, you will develop Radiation Sickness. You cannot eat or drink when you have Radiation Sickness, so keep your Rad Damage low (take RadAway) and keep an eye on your Rad Sickness Level. You treat Radiation Sickness by treating your Rad Damage (get them below 100), and by not eating or drinking anything while you have Radiation Sickness. Once your Rad damage is below 100, it will begin to decrease.


I am not using the Unofficial patch . . . it made my game very unstable and greatly increased the CDTs. I'm currently using Error Correction, but I just found out that it is no longer available at FO3Nexus.

Everyone: there's a LOT more information on my Med-Tec module in thehttp://amito.freehostia.com/Fallout/FO-mods04.htm#Med-Tec of my Fallout 3 Journal.

Sleep is definitely bugged for me, similar to other peoples' descriptions. I needed 8 hours of sleep, so I tried to sleep in one of the beds in Springvale elementary. When I selected "8 hours", the counter started counting down by 2's (8... 6... 4... instead of 8... 7... 6...), stopped at 4, and I woke up 2 hours later still needing three hours of sleep. I loaded and tried again and the same thing happened. Some weird arithmetic going on there.


This makes some sense, though it would occur over the course of days, rather than anything immediate. Similarly, fresh fruit would probably help with infection over time, due to vitamin C's immune-boosting effects. But of course there's no way this is going to be a realistic simulation of injury, so game balance is definitely more important.


This is accurate, there were just a few aggravating moments early on when I was trying to flee combat, and held the spacebar too long. I'm getting used to just tapping it now.


Yes, I am using the patch. And things definitely seem a lot different in 5.0.1 as far as detection goes. I entered Springvale elementary with a level 2 character and 21 sneak, and raiders were immediately (with my character in a crouch and not moving) put on alert, and started walking in my general direction with weapons drawn. If I took two or three steps while sneaking, every nearby raider charged me. After I fired a few silenced 10mm shots, all raiders from both floors (and even the dog behind locked doors upstairs) charged me. It took me quite a number of tries to win this fight, which I was finally able to do using an alternate entrance and a few well-timed (and lucky) grenade throws. This experience is a lot different from when I was using ART 4.8, which felt more balanced and fun in terms of sneak and detection settings. Did you make major changes to this? I may have had slightly higher sneak skill when I did Spingvale elementary with version 4.8.

I increase the detection distance in v.5.0 . . . but ONLY when you are in an exterior cells. The interior sneak code is exactly the same as it was in v.4.9.

But there were some changes to stealth in v.4.9, in the addition of detection events: Your PipBoy Light will now make you very visible; and other player actions (such as jumping and opening doors) will now alert your enemies. Drawing or swinging a weapon may also alert nearby enemies. My Med-Tec module also expands this a bit: if you cough, yawn, or even if your stomach growls . . . any nearby enemies will likely 'hear' you.

I'll look into my sleep script some more, but it is pretty difficult to fix something that seems to be working perfectly for me.

It is impossible to simulate wounds and healing in a realistic manner, at least in a way that would be at all fun to play. I mean, who wants to have to wait months for a broken leg to heal? So, for the sake of gameplay, and balance, You do not get severe wounds instantly from bullets (outside of being killed by a head shot), infections happen faster, and blood cells regen faster. Trying to balance all this is really, really difficult.

Another idea that came to mind. The med-tec scanner inventory object that must be manually activated to trigger the healing menu, could it be hotkeyed to appear by holding M for three seconds? Like how you can move the strain meter by holding Z, only now with the healing menu popping up.

If that's a relatively easy thing to implement it would be convenient.

I haven't tried sleeping yet so I don't know if there are issues or not, I guess I'll find out at some point.


I've been playing for 81 hours (and with 100 different ART releases) on this character and I'm still going strong.

Simulating them in a realistic manner would not only be impossible, it'd be rather pointless. Conclusion of that project would be simple to determine: Players would die. Bottom line is that one guy (or girl!) would have to be insane to go against a countryside full of super mutants and armed slavers/raiders/etc on his own and hope to live through the hail of bullets that would be flying his (or her!) way. That's why it's so difficult to find the balance. You're not trying to make it realistic and you're not trying to make it over the top fantastic. (If I understand your goals correctly) You're trying to make it "feel" real, create a suspension of disbelief. THAT takes skill, talent, and a lot of hard work. Bravo to you for doing it wonderfully thus far Arwen!

Question:

When I was using RI and Primary Needs it came with a backpack set included (I believe it was based off of Blackwolfs Backpacks). With the Med-tech mod I of course no longer have these backpacks. I'm considering installing a backpack mod to make up for this, but I'm curious: Will you be including any backpacks, campfires, and/or bedrolls in your future releases?

You understand my goals perfectly . . . and Thanks! It has taken a LOT of hard work to get this far . . . and I've been relying more on my intuition as to what 'feels' right, rather than any real skill.

I will be adding backpacks . . . I just haven't had a chance to work on that part yet. And I'd like to add some sort of cooking option, but both will probably have to wait for a bit. Right now I'm concentrating mostly on adding support for MMM (which is now done) and GOTY, and fixing any bugs and balance issues that show up in the first release.

Regarding sleep: I was experiencing problems with my character too. Note that this character was already level 2 and out of the vault before I cleansaved and then added all four modules of the Tweaks. When I slept, the countdown would jump around at non regular intervals (8, 7, 5, etc.) and even once it went something like 8, 6, -2. However, after playing for a while, it seemed to sort itself out and started working normally. At this point I was broke and infected and pretty hopeless. So I decided to start over again from my cleansave.

I remembered reading something in this thread about how the time and sleep might have to "catch up," so instead of diving right into the game, I loaded up on food and drink and spent some time waiting and sleeping for a couple of days. For the first day or so the countdown was goofy, but by the end of the third day the countdown was going down one hour at a time, as you would expect. From that point on I no longer had any problems with sleep or waiting. Not sure if this will help you guys, but if you're desperate, it may be worth it to just wait/sleep for a few days.

EDIT: Just for more clarification: Waiting works fine - it gives the regular countdown. Sleeping will go down until I have a 4-hour need, then will stop. Often the countdown skips straight to this point. For example, if I have a 7 hour sleep need and try to sleep at midnight for 7 hours, the countdown will go immediately from 7 to 4, then I'll wake up, and the time will be 4am.

Is there any chance that you'd release a fwe-style mega-mod of your mods bundled along with everything else you'd consider stable and recommendable...?

At this point, with NV right around the corner, you probably wouldnt have to worry about keeping it all up to date either.

What I find nice about mods like FWE, is that even though I might only be interested in half of the features, that single package saves hours and hours of downloading and installing all those seperate mods.

Maybe it'd be too much work, but I just think your mod deserves the wider audience it might get from such an effort!

It's not much extra work to download those mods separately (Especially since the mods she recommends are all linked to on http://amito.freehostia.com/Fallout/FO-mods.htm), and then you can make sure you only get the features you're interested in.

Hi Arwen. I looked at your sleep script to see why it wasn't working for me, and I found a few reasons. After deleting the conditional "if ArwenSleepNeed < 4", I am able to sleep without waking up at four hours. Also deleting the following conditional ("elseif GetPCSleepHours > ArwenSleepNeed || GetPCSleepHours > 8") made it so the sleep counter decreased one hour at a time instead of two. And finally, changing "set ArwenSleepNeed to ArwenSleepNeed - 1" to "set ArwenSleepNeed to ArwenSleepNeed - 1.5" fixed the arithmetic errors, since half of the hours slept were being undone by line 90 in ArwenHealthQuestScript.

This unfortunately removes some of the restrictions on sleeping, but it makes things playable for me, so I thought I'd let you know.


EDIT: I wanted to quickly add that I hadn't realized how complicated this Med-Tec module is until I looked through those scripts. Thanks for all the work you put into it, it is very impressive!

I was just working on my Sleep script and I think my conditions were throwing things off when certain sleep times were entered. I also found an error that was increasing your sleep need even while you slept.
I haven't had a chance to check this yet in the game, but my edits should fix the quirks (I hope).

Edit (due to cross post):
thedudeabides, Thanks. Yes, I found that error and fixed it as well. What was happening was that if you needed 8 hours of sleep, and then slept for 8 hours. your Sleep Need would be reduced by 8 hours, in menu mode; but then when you exited the sleep menu, your Sleep Need would be increased by 0.5 hours for every hour you slept, since game time has passed this amount while you were in the sleep menu.

Thanks for your edited comment as well! This module pushed my scripting abilities to the max (and a bit beyond . . . hence my above scripting errors). I could not have made this module even a few months ago, since I had not learn enough yet about scripting . . . fortunately I'm a pretty fast learner. Look out FONV.

I just reckoned I'd post some of my personal reflections on this fantastic mod. I've mentioned before that I first tried the mod about 8 months ago, and all I was looking for at the time was something to slow down experience gain. Reading particularly about Arwen's tweaks to the SPECIAL system and to skill point gain in general, I knew I had to try it. And I've loved it.

So in other words, what really sold me on the mod was her Hard-Core module. I put FO3 on the shelf for a little while and played through Dragon Age plus the expansion and DLCs. Returning to FO3 after that (starting a new game) Arwen had added strain to her Encumbrance module, and I found that I did not enjoy that. Basically, I think my conclusion is that what I was looking for was added challenge, more complex character development, and a more ominous world environment, but NOT necessarilly added "realism" outside those specific factors. So I've turned off the Encumbrance module, and I don't plan on using Med-Tec, because eating and sleeping and wound treatment doesn't seem like something that I want to add to my personal gameplay experience.

As such, the modular nature of this mod is fantastic for people who, like myself, end up learning more about what we really want in the process of experimenting with what Arwen has provided. For me, I can't imagine FO3 getting much better than it is now, with the basic realism mod and the Hard-Core mod (and a few other minor mods like stimpack healing over time and weighted ammo).

One final, technical note that others are probably already aware of. I updated my mods last night to the latest release. However, in my particular save-game, my character had his PIP-light on, setting his stealth to 0. Apparently, updating the mod in that status will lock your stealth score at 0, so make sure that your PIP-light is off when you update your esps.

Thanks Arwen!

You're most welcome Nona. I'm glad that you are enjoying my Realism Tweaks. I've tried really hard to make my mod as configurable as possible (but with keeping the esps to a minimum), because not everyone wants all my Realism Tweaks in their game. So it is good to hear that my modular set up (along with my in-game options menu) seems to be working for you.

I actually have the PipBoy warning as part of my Install/update instructions (but not everyone reads my ReadMe):
"4.) Also make sure your PipBoy Light is OFF (or you'll mess up your sneak skills)."

=====================================

To every who is using my Med-Tec module:

I just did some extensive play testing with my latest Sleep Quest script edits and it appears that all the problems have been fixed. You should no longer get woken up prematurely.

All the same restrictions still apply:
1.) your Sleep Need has to be at least 4
2.) you cannot sleep longer than your Sleep Need
3.) and you can never sleep more than 9 hours.

I'll put my current beta version of my Med-Tec module on FO3Nexus shortly, as an optional download.
The Beta fixes my sleep by; adds Water2 to Ice Cold Nuka-Cola (reduces Water Need by 8); and reduces rate of infections.

It may take me a few more hours, as I'm currently trying to fix one other problem.

Edited: I'm also feeling that my burn injuries are a bit too harsh, due to my Realism Core's increased burn effects . . . what do others think?

I just uploaded an update to my Med-Tec module (version 5.1 Beta), that corrects the sleeping bug and rebalances a few things:

1.) Fixes my Sleep Quest script. You should no longer get woken up prematurely.
(Your Sleep Need still has to be at least 4; you cannot sleep longer than your Sleep Need; and you can never sleep more than 9 hours.)
2.) Adds Water2 to Ice Cold Nuka-Cola [reduces Water Need by 8.]
3.) Reduces rate of infections.
4.) Reduces Burn damage. V.5.0 was a bit too harsh, when my Realism Core module's increased burn effects were factored in.

Installation: Just replace the older Arwen_Med-Tec.esp with this new one.

http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=7565

Edited [10/17]:
New beta up (v.5.1a had a bug that would not let you wait when your Sleep Need was less than 4):
Version 5.1-b Beta update of my Med-Tec module, that corrects the sleeping bug, and the waiting bug, and rebalances a few things.

I got the updated esp. Sleep appeared to work fine, but now it won't let me wait. My sleep need is 3, and if I try to wait, the message pops up saying that I'm not sleepy enough to take a nap.

Geez, some people are never happy.

That's because sleep and wait both use the same menu (menumode1012), but I can fix it.
Thanks for letting me know about the Wait issue.

A new beta is now available.

Thanks Arwen!

Arwen, I appreciate all of your talent and hard work. This mod gets Fallout 3 one step closer to an RPG. Is there a way to get your mod to work with Alternate Start Roleplayers http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=1784? I've tried several times but I can't get your realism core to start. If you aren't familiar with ASR, your character starts in a shack near Girdershade. There is a computer to assign special points and to choose a profession(tag skills). After exiting the shack a message appears saying that the escape quest has finished, not sure if the escape quest was ever started though. I have loaded your mod before starting a new game, before using the computer, before and after exiting the shack but I never get a message or inventory token for your realism core. Encumbrance and Med_Tec seams to start O.K. though. Any ideas? I can use the console if need be.

On the topic of R.P.G. , you knew there was a request coming. Do you think it would be possible to see the numbers that the engine rolls? I would like to know exactly why I fail or succeed. Yes, I am a sneaky crit stacking sniper. What I am thinking of is the window that is in The Temple of Elemental Evil. It would show your dice role and all the positive and negative modifers.

Thanks

Edit: I think I've puzzled it out. Start a new game, wake up, use the console "setstage CG04 12".

I think you'll end up with 5 more SPECIAL points than normal with ART (that is, you get exactly the vanilla amount) if you use Alternate Start, so keep that in mind.