Yep. I would. Maybe we'll get lucky and they'll include a location or two in some future DLC (like say New Reno or The Den or The Hub or something like that; not all mind you, just say one..for nostalgia's sake).

I'd like to see either Vault City or NCR/Shady Sands - we've got plenty of post-apocalyptic areas already, I want to see some post-post-apocalyptic areas.

One of the most, if not THE most, serious attempts to recreate an older game using its sequel's newer and much more powerful engine would have to be:

http://www.blackmesasource.com/ 'is a Half-Life 2 total conversion remaking Valve Software's award-winning PC game, Half-Life '.

These guys are good, real good. Check out their website to get an understanding of the magnitude of a project like the one discussed in this thread. I believe the Black Mesa guys been at it for about 6 years or so by now. I think the time, and dedication, necessary to pull off something like this, is far, far beyond what most people can imagine. Even in their wildest modding dreams. Do I believe the Fallout community too have the skill and tools to pull off a similar thing but in the Fallout universe? Absolutely! Do I believe it will ever happen...not in my lifetime. It's just a too big of a project. Recreate a full game, step by step, from scratch. I'd love to see it happen though. So anyone here who can see themselves as a part of this project now, and tomorrow, and next week and month, and next year, and more than likely still be at it in 5-10 years from...I salute you. God Speed!

... wonder if Shakespeare had an opinion for pretend ones as well...

Reno..
In a DLC for this game..

I'de be crying..

It'll cost 6 million dollars!

Thanks for reminding me. Now I'll be eagerly anticipating this for another few years until I forget about it again. :facepalm:

LOL Sorry about that. I know the feeling well. Happens to me too all the time. I forget about the whole thing for a while then come across something about it and I get all excited again. I am sure we will play it one day though. They been at it for way too long now to quit.

The reason why the black mesa project is taking so long is because they are making everything almost from scratch where as most of the creatures in fallout 1 and 2 are actually in the game. Moreover we have most of the tools needed to make whole new countries (Tamriel rebuilt) because its easier to work with then the crappy tool valve gave them. all that would need doing is

>Model for the master and original clothing, the alien and few other things
>voice actors (there are forum fulls of them who probably have been fancy to fallout at one time or another)
>Creating the actual location and quests
>Adding the old fast travel system to the game.

towns weren't that big too. at least most weren't... I bet a few modders have made a city with more content then a city in the original game had...

Tears of joy on my end, always loved New Reno...that is, if they keep the New Reno charm, in other words, hokers, pormstars and drug dealers.

You're going to need many more models than that. The Master's Cathedral, the Brotherhood of Steel tileset, the original Vault entrances, Shady Sands' buildings (Including the monument in the centre of town), Mariposa Base's tileset, the original Mutants models, the original centaurs, The Hub, Junktown's and Necropolis buildings, etc.

That is, unless you want the remake to look like Fallout 3 and New Vegas by using the same building assets.

Voice actors, good luck. Good voice actors are sparse. Especially if you want them to have as much depth as the originals for Aradesh, Tandy, Lou, the Master or the Overseer.
The originals have much, much more dialogue than the new titles...making your mod size huge with all the dialogue lines.

Creating the location is not a problem if you have the models. As you said, the locations are very small. But then, you have to program the schedule for every NPC.

Dialogue wise, again, good luck. The dialogue tree with the GECK and the originals doesn't work the same. Where as, in the originals it works more like a real dialogue between 2 persons, while in the new titles there's always a "let's talk about this" subject leading to sub-topics.

All in all, good luck!
By the way, I'm simply posting this to let you know how much of tremendous work it would be, not to deter you from doing it.

Oh and by the way, Hammer's scripting software is much much stronger then the GECK's.

Also need some new models for Shady Sands, as there are no post-war non-crappy construction buildings in either FO3 or NV. Same with Vault City if you do F2, though someone else already made a pack of models that could work for that. For F2 you'd also need Horrigan's super-mutant-in-power-armor model and San Fran could use some new models, too.



Only if you want to voice your characters. Certainly not needed for a first-go and could be added on after initial release.



This is probably the most difficult part.



I've got a pretty good idea how to do that, though it wouldn't be exactly the same as the old fast travel system (you couldn't go to undiscovered locations, for example).



This is definitely true. Someone made a Shady Sands+Junktown mod for F3 a while ago, had pretty much all the content from both Shady Sands and Junktown in it all mixed together into one 'Shady Sands' town. There are something like six NPCs in Shady Sands that have actual dialogue, and most of it is pretty simplistic. Very few quests, too, especially compared to F:NV.

If you weren't creating new assets for anything, I bet you could make a half-decent Shady Sands+Vault 13+Vault 15+Raiders+RadScorp Cave in just a month of dedicated work, though that might depend on how difficult the dialogue editor is to work with and how you define 'half-decent'.



EDIT:



F2, maybe. F1: Heck no. It's got a tiny amount of (badly written) dialogue in a lot of places. The characters who are voiced tend to have pretty decent dialogue, but it's still not more than F:NV does (though probably more than F3).

Alright so it is possible to do it in a years time is it not? if the modder who would work on this had like 6 people doing there own thing?

I've been around the mod scene for a while now, and I've seen a lot of these projects. None of them have been completed, most have been cancelled early, others have failed close to completion. Total conversions almost never work out. If you want to give it a shot, go ahead, I won't stop you. But I'm just being realistic, this would take an enormous amount of work, skills in 3D modelling, scripting, level design (Though having another game to base that off makes it slightly easier), dialogue writing (Again, if you want to copy it straight from FO1 or 2, much quicker) and then there's the newer features that people expect these days, NPC schedules being one of them.

This wouldn't be very difficult to do if you had someone skilled at making models, and fairly extensive knowledge of the GECK. It'd be ridiculusly time consuming, but not really that difficult. Voice actors aren't as sparce as you may think, you just need to know where to find them. Some people on these boards do voice acting and it seems people think only they would be interested in doing voice work for a mod. There are tons of voice actors out there, tons of talented people with a passions for acting, if you look up the "voice acting alliance" or similar sites, I'm sure it's not going to be that difficult to find people with good equipment who know what they're doing to do voicwwork for you.

Being a fan of both the old games, and the new games, I would absolutely LOVE to get in on the set-design for a mod undertaking this kind of a leap. I've spent literally hundreds of hours in the original and re-designed Vault 13 regions. I have taken over the Gunrunners' factory in the Boneyard. I have scoured every inch of the Master's Cathedral. I know the world like the back of my hand... and I can say whole-heartedly that it would be AMAZING to get to BUILD... and then PLAY it... through the eyes of my Vault-Dweller.


There are, of course, a great many more resources which would be needed than are being described here. For one, the 'Overseer's Chair' setup from Fallout 3 and New Vegas is ENTIRELY unacceptable. I want the minigun-mounted raising and lowering pedestal I got to know and love. And with the advent of activators and statics, I'm sure we could even make it a FUNCTIONAL command chair/desk.


There is the matter of the post-war adobe structures, as stated before. There are plenty of models we could use to replicate the 'wooden' shacks and what-have-you... but there are plenty more we would need to have. Assuming such a mod could acquire a skilled modeler, I think at least a handful of these issues could be completely remedied within a rather short amount of time. I have seen FAR more impressive feats done in a matter of months.


Scripting would be much easier than it was in Fallout 1 or 2, what with the new games having a language which is not only easier to work with... but has had utilities amended to it in order to make it even MORE powerful. If there was anything that needed doing in Fallout 1 or 2 via script... it would be done with INFINITELY greater ease in a total conversion of the Fallout 3 or New Vegas games.


World Design is an issue which would need to be addressed. While the first Fallout games did not have much emphasis on EXPLORING the wasteland, instead relying upon trusty set pieces... I think one of the greatest STRENGTHS of the new style of gameplay is that it rewards the explorer. So rather than removing such elements from the game, I would actually implore upon such a team to EMBRACE these changes... and instead utilize artistic license to 'populate' the wasteland surrounding the classic 'set piece' locations.

Much of it would be wilderness occupied by very little more than radioactive creatures and the debris of society. The West Coast was utterly bombarded, after all.

However, if you actually 'do' get pulled into a random encounter during the 'travel' portions of the game... you see that there ARE the ruins of cities, complete with cars and streets and light-posts and doors and mailboxes and corpses between the locations you visit. This doesn't translate well into Fallout 3/New Vegas style gameplay. I experienced it once with the GTS... and loathed it.

Those who wish to explore will be disappointed in the minimal detail put into the locations you get 'pulled' into. Those who enjoy such mechanics will largely grow tired of experiencing the same four battlefields again and again, which is what would likely happen.

Why, then, bother at all? Why not simply construct the world with such places built right into it... using as accurate a rendering of the classic Fallout map as possible... with VAST tracts of desert landscape rife with possible random spawns between? Some of these smaller areas could even have inhabitants and people whom, entirely outside the realm of the original games, proved INTERESTING or USEFUL in some way.

It is, after all, a re-imagining of the game as much as it is a 're-make'. Why should we ignore the few improvements Bethesda and Obsidian have brought to the table in order to 'mimic' an older game? Should not the focus of such a project be the accurate capture and representation of the STORY, the PLOT, and the WORLD in a way which both makes the player say not only"Yeah! This is just like I remember it!" but "Holy ****! You couldn't ever have done THAT in Fallout 1! Awesome!"


There are lots of folks who say it won't ever happen. They might be right.

But I, for one, would LOVE to see it happen. Hell, if I thought it ever might look possible, or that a team would work together to do it, I'll be damn sure to get myself put on the list for creating locations and dungeons and the like.


I could go on and on and on, now.

I think I'll cut myself off here before I go getting any ideas.

Exactly, why remake an old game to the letter when you can embrace the new way Fallout games work and make a tribute that mixes the old and the new together? I like the sound of that. Let's face it, while the originals were great back in their day, Fallout has come a long way from a technical standpoint, and from a gameplay standpoint (In my opinion). Embracing that and taking some liberties with the wastes outside the cities we know sounds like the perfect way to handle it.

I love to hear you say that! This is exactly the kind of mentality I would love to see!

In Fallout 1 and 2, there was SO much unused space! You could explore the MAP, sure... but most of it was completely worthless and empty! Exploration in the original games was more for the purpose of getting random encounters than it was the hopes of finding something interesting out there north of Vault 15! Why not put some things there? Why not faithfully recreate the map, but then take the artistic license we are given as modders and fans... and make some of those meaningless 'blips' on the map have more use?

I count TONS of cities on the classic Fallout map. TONS of them! You can see them! Most of them are probably ruins... but it's only BEEN 80 years or so since the war! Those places are largely RIPE for scavenging and picking apart! They're probably FLOODED with people desperately hurting for food and water and the like... or the homes of UNIQUE gangs of raiders and the like...

There's just so much potential for MORE!


That being said, what WAS done would have to be done well. I wouldn't want anyone to take too much license with the actual plot. The sole exception would, of course, being allow me to actually GET dipped in FEV and join the Master... >.>

Also, I would hate it if the game just ENDED after completing the Main Quest again.

They fixed that in Fallout 2 -and- Fallout 3. It was done for a reason.


That being said... everything else plot-related should stand. But more side quests, more locations, more awesome scenery with more flavor-material to enjoy for old and new fallout fans alike?

It would be pretty amazing. Just imagining it makes me wish someone would seriously consider doing it.

Because it would be infinitely more difficult if you were to do that rather than remake it closer to the originals in those aspects. Also, Fallout 1 and 2 both cover extremely large areas - together pretty much the entire West Coast of the US. At the scale of Fallout 3, that'd be something like a million times more game-world than F3 or F:NV.

This is true, too... but see... I have this thought in my head.

GTS used a system which made it possible to 'travel' from one REGION in the world to another (though, sadly, nobody seemed to use this for much more than a couple of half-hearted attempts). You could not only travel around the ENTIRETY of the United States... but actually other countries entirely. The method is not one which I would want to duplicate for such a conversion mod... but it did inspire me to think of ways in which one could implement multiple worldspaces in order to limit the unwieldy size of the game world otherwise.

I am certain that some kind of a system could be designed... but it would take some significant amount of testing and experimentation to get it right.

In the meanwhile, small teams of designers would be responsible for populating their own sections of the 'grid' with a landscape. This would allow for the teams which would eventually become responsible for designing the classic locations to do so, by following as closely as is possible the 'general' design of the classic maps. It would be time consuming, yes. But in the end, the -entire- mod would be time consuming.

To waste your time in creating everything else, only to balk at the need for making -improvements- where you can, would result in nothing more than a mediocre mod in which the elements feel forced... or worse... lazy. If someone were to make the classic map-travel system not svck... I would say 'Oh, well that's alright then'! But what would happen is you would get a copy/pasted version of the SAME landscape, with a few changes here or there, supposed to be TEN or FIFTEEN "random" locations?

Why bother? Why bother at all, then? It would be a waste of time to do poorly what the original game did well-enough

A while back I started to work on a personal mod for Fallout 3 that attempted to recreate the Los Angeles Demonstration Vault as it would look before the war along with a quest to go along with it. The quest would have been a Guardian of Forever type of quest where the Lone Wanderer would have been sent back in time a few hours before LA was nuked to clean out the Vault and inadvertently somehow set in motion events that happened in the earlier game. Got caught up with other stuff and never finished it, but I had the complete layout largely finished and the Overseer's room decorated. I could post it if people would like to see it. Anyway, as much as I would like to see this done, it would be too much effort for most teams. Like others have said, maybe a small location mod could be made and eventually expanded. Start small and work from there....

Looking back, I guess I was too ambitious. I had plans for a character have a unique comment for every piece of clothing and weapon in the game (even stuff that wasn't present in the world) which was spoken depending on what you had equipped when you spoke to him.

Holy S lol I remember that, man that was my biggest peeve with the old FO's





Helllllllll yea

Will it happen, most likely not........I hate being realistic





bigcrazewolf

Because it probably wouldn't be seen as being done 'poorly' (as I said, I have a pretty decent idea of how to go about doing it at least half-well, though without the cool Indiana Jones style visible map movement or being able to go to unknown locations). More importantly, because it's the only realistic way to actually get it down in any sort of reasonable time-span. You're suggesting doing a hell of a lot more work on the random locations than the important ones, and that's just not realistic for a small team of part-time non-professional developers who are not being paid.

Going into a mod like this with expectations too high (like yours) will just mean that nothing of interest will ever be released. If you make your expectations and goals realistic, limit yourself to what you can actually accomplish - then you might be able to justify actually spending time on a mod like this.

Might want to listen to your own advice there. If the history of modding has taught us anything, it's that these projects NEVER finish. Baldur's Gate for Dragon Age, Morrowind for Oblivion, even Fallout for Fallout 3. This whole thing is a pipe dream. The only group to ever come even remotely close is Half Life for Half Life 2. They have been at it for 6 years, and all they've got to show for it is a noticeably incomplete video of the first level. And that's using Half Life 2, an engine which already had a vast amount of models, sound effects, gameplay mechanics, AI and scripting needed for the remake.

What your're suggesting is basically what Obsidian just did when they made New Vegas and they did it with a 6 (possibly even 7) figure production cost, a full professional studio and a couple of years and the end result was still pretty rough around the edge, but you think a couple of amateurs can do it for free in their spare time? Hey, it's not impossible, I'll look forward to playing it in 2062.

The problem with the mentality you're describing, Langy, is that it is the wrong one to take... not that it isn't the one most folks WOULD take. It is -because- of this attitude that you have described that the likelihood of any such mod ever coming to be would be quite slim, if not outrightly nil. The vast majority of folks will underestimate what it is they can accomplish... while the minority who believe that great things could be done with dedication and patience would be outweighed and unheard.

(Don't get me wrong, though... if your idea could be done... or even improved upon so as to be something enjoyable... I certainly wouldn't say it was bad. I'm just saying that, with the environment as vast as it used to be... it would be a shame to DISMISS making it explorable entirely, based upon the fears of how long it would take. There is an enormous amount of potential here. Potential which I would love to see finally realized.)

Anyhow, I won't say you're right or wrong. I think it is a design decision which ought to be made once there has actually been some serious debate put into it. Of course, there is no such team currently undertaking such a project, so therefore such a debate is not likely to happen. Unless, of course, things change between now and the next post after mine.


Rather than waiting, here it is:


I've worked myself into a fervor, now, imagining what could be done... thinking about how things could be changed, and how they could be made to mimic the original games which I so loved. The end result is the overwhelming urge for me to simply drop everything and get to work on it. Of course, try as I might, there is no way I could... alone... turn this into anything more than a number of disconnected locations with very little more than terminals and rubble to interact with. I know my limitations, and I know them well.

I am not a modeler.

I am not a scripter.

I am not the NPC guy, for the most part. I am excellent at character design... as well as story development... but when these things are actually implemented into the game... I am not the guy you want to be doing that. I can feed him all the lines, and even voice act if I ever get a replacement microphone, but I am not this guy from a game development stance.

What I am, is a fairly decent manager (I have experience working with and leading groups of employees, as well as directing a fair number of larger school projects and the like during my education days)... and a pretty solid level designer. I still have issues understanding the new Dialogue system.. but if someone knowledgeable comes on and wants to help me learn... I'll learn to do that too.

I also know that there's a line you have to skirt... between ambition... and sanity.

If you try to push too far across that line, you wind up on the other side. But if you draw a second line way off base with ambition... and you say 'this is how far we go'... then what you end up with is something that people will immediately call out for lacking ambition.

I don't believe in the 'Go big, or go home' philosophy much... but I do believe that anything worth doing is worth taking the time to do right, and my father didn't raise me to look opportunities in the face and say 'no thanks'. Most importantly, I know that you can't count your chickens before the eggs hatch... so trying to determine what is or is not possible before anyone even attempts to reason out an outline that isn't anything more solid than wishful thinking is entirely selling oneself short.


That is why I've decided that I not only -want- to do this... but that I will... but it's going to take every brain we can get... and it's going to need a helluva lot more leadership than I am able to provide. The trick is that, the more you see these topics come up, the more you start to get to thinking that it's never going to happen. That it's impossible. That nothing ever comes of a project like this. But when you think like that, you never take the first step. Getting the ball moving is the hardest part of any project. Not only do you have to overcome the challenges of inertia... but then, on top of it, you have to be willing to take the first step.

I'm hoping that I won't be alone in taking it.

I have no illusions.

Work will be slow, arduous, and brutally unforgiving. I have heard STORIES about the nightmare that is Worldspace creation.

I have heard even worse from the friends I have in the Game Design industry, and the amount of time they have had to spend backtracking to fix a problem they created ten saves ago.

This project would be essentially THAT job... only without the benefit of a paycheck.


All that aside... I don't really have much hope. I've seen as many of these kinds of things come and go as the rest of you.

Most die here. At the concept phase.

I suppose we'll see what happens.

Actually... the projected release is in 2077.

I hope you'll be pleased with our finished work.