Hey guys I thought it might be cool for modders and developers to speculate on how the engine has changed from Skyrim that has allowed these new features. As we know they have been added into an existing engine with an upgrade.

Please don't use this thread to bash the engine or trash talk about Fallout 4. This is purely for getting our heads together in preparation for the (hopeful) GECK release.

I'll kick things off.

Crafting

As we know in Skyrim you create a recipe object and assign what base objects can be used to make it. I think they've moved to an "ingredients" system whereby these misc items have either ingredient fields or keywords such as "Screws" or "Adhesive", and the crafting mechanic now uses those fields or keywords to decide what can be crafted, rather than base objects. This allows the freedom we've seen in a fairly straight-forward way.

It opens up a lot of possibilities for mod created items, as long as they to have these fields filled or keywords added so the game knows what's in them.

Anybody got anything else?

I think what they added , like the house building is simply what some modders Did already with skyrim , but brought to the next level ...

Its awesome that they get inspiration from modders.

And from Minecraft, apparently. I'm sure the power structure thing is fairly simplified, but having to connect to power sources is pretty awesome.

One obious thing to mod in is a way to build the concrete slabs to build houses on.

Look like you can also plant plants everywhere now, an mod feature back to morrowind I made one for Skyrim, using an hoe to make dirt piles.

New housing modules should be easy enough, mostly modify the existing templates, same with new weapon mods. the hard part might be the layered armor system.

This adds an lots of options.

Probably there will be limited areas where u can build settlements .... Because I doubt they implemented any terraforming options ...

Yea they said in the video they have a load of places this can be done. I'm guessing the giveaway will be wherever those Workbenches for construction are, and the identifiable "foundations" like you see in the video.

I'm now wondering if LOD will update in real time now. Those buildings we build will hopefully have LOD and if so, that means buildings we hand place in the GECK may not need LOD generating. Possibly.

As i predicted an mod to create the foundation and workbench where you want them.

One thing I miss critically is an container part of workbench who is used as part of your inventory.

"restoring" stuff has been prominently mentioned, so i figure we'll have destruction stages for, like, houses and chairs and such.

about the ingame building, i'm wondering, how was the housebuilding stuff done in hearthfire (don't have it), was that some type of placing triggers thing or how?

might be deconstruction's tied to certain building types maybe?

like, you can't dismantle a skyscraqer, but any wooden house or something along that lines

What disappointed me a little bit ... Nothing big , but still ... Is that whole buildings disappeared in a click when recycling parts .... I would have exoected some animation and some time to dismantle the object.... The bigger the longer .... The instant click and disapoear seems a bit off...

I wonder how they built the Pre-War scene in such a way that the exterior and interior seem seamless...

Slightly off-topic, I'm also intrigued just how much we can actually explore out-of-bounds in the Pre-War scene. Bethesda almost always puts a lot of detail out of the explorable areas (except Fallout 3 at some points in the border regions).

For Hearthfire, everything you could possibly build was "there", but disabled; and whatever you built from the workbenches just enabled that object. You couldn't choose where to place anything, just what to build. What we've seen of F4's system is much more dynamic.

The armor and weapon customization blew me away. Segmented armor pieces would be easy enough to fathom; since Fallout 3 the games have always had dozens of extra equipment "slots" that modders could take advantage of, like for earrings, backpacks, or belt-mounted lanterns. I imagine we'll be able to choose our base apparel, like Pre-War clothes or a Vault Jumpsuit, and then choose what we wear over it. Not sure about heavier apparel like Preston Garvey's duster, though.

No idea what the weapon customization means for leveled lists, though. It would be freaking amazing if raiders and other enemies actually had randomly generated weapons, like a leveled list for the stock/barrel/scope etc that generates their own guns.

im pretty sure that'll be some type of "mode" you'll have to enter first.

can't imagine they just let you run around dissolve buildings...

"hey mr behemoth, got a nice view from up that skyscraqer?" *dissolve*

ah ok, i see

yeah, with onscreen parts menues and stuff, not as easy to mod as enabling parents :_)

really can't wait to see what these parts look like in geck

why, got a getting fragged by a squirrel grenade bouncer wish?

I'm wondering how they will handle the exterior navmesh around barricades, ramps and other new stuff players place in their building areas. Will the ramps be navmeshed so you can park guards there and such. If so, how do they do it? Maybe the navmesh is somehow built into the objects you place? That would certainly be something new.

That's probably a very small closed area which allows for it, but to be honest it's likely just that one house that has it in that scene.

You'll notice it is still open when the player goes back, so I think we'll see a lot more ruined houses that don't have loading screens.

Probably the crafting works with a keyword system rather than a direct editorID call.Also,i think that pathfinding now works in a different way.That or the nav mesh can now be dynamically regenerated in game to allow change in the layout of the layer settlements.

This was actually a FO3 mod called http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout3/mods/7070/?, very very similar and the mod was/is excellent so I have high hopes for the FO4 official Bethesda version of it.

I suspect the author now works for Beth, or at least should.

You could build anywhere with Settler's though, not the case here for 'reasons'.

I agree, I made an farm everywhere mod for Skyrim, it worked by using an special farming hoe to dig up an piece of dirt who was then used as an activator to plant.

Digging was don with three power attacks after each other and this spawned the dirt you then activated the dirt as container to add the ingredient to grow.

As an joke you could plant eggs who spawned an nest who would then produce eggs as the nests was technically plants

I liked the digging part as it felt natural, something similar like using an sledgehammer or chainsaw to tearing down structures would make sense. More so as I get the feeling we can steal houses. You might also not want to bring back all the stuff you got from breaking down stuff so you might want to leave an pile of rubble.

Do not see why this should be very hard to mod in.

I do think however that enabliang time passing while dismanteling large structures can be inplemented with a simple edit to the script(or scripts if more are used).

I feel like the base building is an extension of what they attempted with Hearthfire.

Like, the inspiration for Radiant AI in Oblivion were scripted scenarios in Morrowind where NPCs would go out and do things, like Fargoth in Seyda Neen sneaking around to hide his ring; that got extended into a framework for letting NPCs perform their own daily routine regardless of what the player's doing. Then Skyrim added Radiant Story, which was based off of the more heavily scripted random encounters introduced by Fallout 3. This looks like a "Radiant" version of Hearthfire. They probably limited the base-building to certain sites to make sure that we wouldn't have any weird issues from building in an odd location, and because the game might not be able to handle it if a player decides to add buildings everywhere.

I am curious how they'll handle the navmesh and pathfinding, though.

Then you was tearing down the house you got information about the content, this probably work much like crafting in Skyrim but the other way around, If you break down your own items you get the base parts back excluding some loss perhaps. We saw in the weapon moding part that you could combine various junk into an scope, would then make sense you could break the scope down to get parts. perhaps your crafting skills let you use more parts?

Todd said dynamic this and dynamic that a lot.I think that the nav-mesh might be dynamically generated in game by the "new" engine.