Down Under

Hello. I've been wanting to build a house/lair for myself in FO3 for a while now, and I'm finally getting around to it. I'm rather fond of the house I made for Oblivion (http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=13944) and want to put my creative energies to work in the Fallout setting.

I've been planning this out for a while, and finally got around to starting to build the house. The original idea was to create something reminiscent of "V's" lair from the V for Vendetta movie . . . in other words, take an old subway hall and fill it with an eclectic mix of historical stuff. However, I got frustrated working with the metro tile sets, and have switched over to the Rivet City tile set, which has a lot more flexibility. I'm still aiming to retain that eclectic pre-war assortment of stuff though, since it fits in sooo nicely with the Fallout context.

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~okiley/Fallout/downunder_plan.jpg

This lair, tentatively named "Down Under" will include a http://www-personal.umich.edu/~okiley/Fallout/downunder_main_room.jpg (ignore the furnishings), with a catwalk surrounding about half of the wall space. This living space will include a kitchen, dinning, and general living room type space. Organized around this main living space will be:

• Master bedroom with attached bath
  
• Barracks area to sleep 5-6, also with an attached bath
  
• Armory room
  
• Medical bay
  
• Lab / workshop
  
• Entrance "ready room"

While the house is on the large side of things (for me at least), I'm striving to keep the layout very compact and accessible with the rooms right up next to each other rather than sprawling all over the place. In otherwords, while there are a fair number of rooms, I want it to have a cozy + well designed feel.

The Quest

I don't want to say too much about it, but I have a quest idea all planned out for how the player will come to own the house. It will involve a bit of history, significant moral choices (with an impact on karma), and some different outcomes.

The general idea is that you pick up a distress signal to help locate the house (I know, that isn't too original). When you arrive, all you'll see is a heavy (locked) door set in the side of a cliff as well as a terminal. The door can't be opened. Accessing the terminal, you begin to interface with house's programming routine. It explains that it's low on power (or has broken fuses or some such thing), and can't open the outer doors unless you can gather up repair materials and fix it yourself.

Once you do "fix" the door, the program decides it trusts you enough to let you inside . . . but only to the first entry room. From here, you begin another conversation with the program via a terminal. It again requests that you perform some "errands" for it before being granted access to the remainder of the facility. In the course of your errands, you begin to suspect that this "program" isn't quite as it seems. You'll have some tough choices to make on how to proceed.

I'll leave it at that for now


UPDATE: March 28, 2010

Just an update to you let you all know how Down Under is coming along. I reconfigured the layout to make it smaller and more compact. Otherwise, here's the status of where I am with things regarding the physical constriction of the house:

Layout: 100%
Portals: 100%
Big Clutter: 90%
Lighting: 95%
Small Clutter: 10%
Navmesh: 0%
Exterior Entrance: 0%

I haven't started the quest potion of the mod yet, and there will probably be a fair amount of work with that too.

Now, onto more pictures!

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~okiley/Fallout/Downunder-RevisionPlan.jpg
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~okiley/Fallout/0DU_1_entry.jpg
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~okiley/Fallout/0DU_2_medical.jpg
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~okiley/Fallout/0DU_3_armory.jpg
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~okiley/Fallout/0DU_4_mainroom.jpg
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~okiley/Fallout/0DU_5_kitchen.jpg
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~okiley/Fallout/0DU_6_living.jpg
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~okiley/Fallout/0DU_7_master.jpg
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~okiley/Fallout/0DU_8_barracks.jpg

That's all for now!

I does seem a little big to be called "cozy" but throwing in a morally ambiguous quest line has me sold!

I guess what I was trying to say is that there is a good amount of square footage, but the layout is about as compact as you can make it, and I'll have a lot of stuff added that make each area fairly "cozy" as opposed to feeling like a huge wide open area. We'll see!

Looks interesting

Wow, I totally remember that mod you created for Oblivion! That was about 2 years ago that I downloaded that mod and checked it out

I really like the idea you are working with here. I am really impressed with the fact that we have to work for the house, and the whole house isn't available right away. I look forward to reading any progress!

Thanks for the encouragement!

See the top post for a status update and some new in-game pictures of how it's progressing.

Enjoy!

Hey, it's looking really good! Not too neat and tidy...a little cramped and cluttered, even with all that space. Has a definite post-apocalyptic vibe. Lighting is great too. Looks like the place is low on power, hence dim lighting.

Looking GREAT! The last couple of dwelling mods i've been using for fallout 3 seem to keep being abandoned by their authors :/ so i'm on the hunt for a new one!

Are you going to be adding sorters?

Thanks for the feedback! I got the exterior connection made and most of the navmeshing done yesterday, so progress is being made!

Regarding sorter's, I hadn't intended on adding them, as I prefer to keep things simple for a house mod. Plus, the sorters can lead to various incompatibility issues in my experience. It's something to keep in mind, and maybe I'll look into that more when the other work is done.

Hmm maybe I'll need to pull out the GECK and try and steal a sorter from another mod and splice it into yours :/

Love the new pictures. It really looks like you have put a lot of thought into where things should go. It is coming together nicely and I still can't wait to explore this when it is released

Hello all . . . just a few quick things:

1) I'm mostly done with all the physical construction now (Navmeshing is all done, ugh) and just have some final cluttering and such to do. However, I have a question. IIs it correct that navmeshes still don't work correctly when in an .esp file (as opposed to a .esm)? Does this apply to edited existing navmeshes, all navmeshes or what? Is there anything wrong with distributing a housemod as a .esm to get around potential nav mesh problems (as opposed to telling people to run masterupdate).

2) Well, I still have the whole quest to assemble. However, while I'm looking forward to that, the quest will be a little involved and not everyone will want to go through an entire quest to see if they like the house or not. Is there any interest in releasing a "non-quest" version of the housemod that has some very minimal steps to go through in order to get into the house? This could be ready for testing much earlier of course if people want to take a look around

Anyway, that's all!

1) I wish I was the one with the info on that whole navmesh/esm/esp info for you, but sadly I don't. Hopefully someone can shed some light on it. I think they turn it into an esm, do the navmesh, then turn it back into an .esp. Anyways, I wouldn't mind if the mod was an .esm file.

2) I don't mind going threw a whole big quest for a home. Pictures say a thousand words. You can tell a lot from pictures on the download page or from WIPz threads if you want a home or not. I always have a saying in my mind with mods "no pic-y, no clicky", so if there are no pictures, then I am not interested (unless the mod is like a script or other such thing where you can't show pictures). I feel that I would prefer a home with a quest (cause I can't do quests) and feel attached to the home even more if I worked for it. The same goes for just testing a mod. I don't mind having to go threw things over and over again.