OK, I think it's time now for my very own WIP Thread. The mod I am working on is called

"Friendly New Neighbors"

It is a story driven quest mod. The basic idea is to open up some formerly closed buildings, add new NPCs which are interwoven in the original quests of Fallout 3 (only dialogue on new npcs, no original quest changes) and add a much more visible form of slavery to the wastes.

The player has the choice to become a slaver or to destroy a new slavery organization, which is much more dangerous to the people of the Wasteland than our good old Eulogy.

Is the path of a slaver chosen you can learn this business from the scratch. You see the origins and original functions of the slave collar. How slaves react to their horrible fate and how to manage and survive this dangerous business.

If you chose the path of the hero you can meet many new interesting people in the wastes and find out about their fascinating back stories.

I?m working on this mod for 4 months now and it grows bigger, on a daily basis. At first it was intended as a small little addition (i hated the original function of the Mesmertron, it was to easy in my opinion) and now the mod has become a really big monster to manage. That is the reason why i will publish it in parts (three are planned in the moment).

The concept, most of the interiors, navmeshes, back story and 2/3 of the main scripting of part one is done, I am working in the moment on the dialogue, character outfits and optical presentation. Voice acting is the last thing that will be added (maybe per community effort, cause i?m not a native speaker and my english is terrible).

I made a little teaser which shows the back story of the "main character" of the mod.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVKPnHuH9ng

The video shows a little bit of the functional content of the mod, no real characters and no new locations. It is a little appetizer not more. I make another Video when the first part is done, to show a little bit more of the mod.

Amazing, loved the video, this is a real example of someone who works hard. Instead of just putting up an idea and demanding help, he has worked on this for three months and has progress to show for it. BTW the video was hilarious and heartwarming, loved the black and white touch. You have my full support with anything you need. If you need any small work done, as in small jobs of retexturing, remodeling, or just some basic GECK work feel free to message me. I don't know much about quests or scripting, I wish I could help in those fields, but if you need any weapons/armor work done I'll be glad to help you (it's my specialty).

This looks fantastic. I can't wait! I wish you the best of luck on this project.

Decided to check out the link in your sig. Sounds like a very interesting mod. Cool voice on the video by the way.

Thanks for the warm welcome everyone. I?ve spent yesterday the whole day on the dialogue of one of my most short living characters ( i dont want to spoil to much) but i think it was worthwhile.

@ Lucien 834: Thanks for your offer. In the moment there arent any new weapons (this is not to 100% correct, there is a special slaver batton, but im not sure if i should give it a new texture) and armours. But am i allowed to use your black merc grunt outfit for paul (one of my characters) for his better days?

@ LFox: It?s my original voice and i don?t like it, when i hear it on video . But i did much video work in the past and adapted to it.

Now back to work.

sure, you can use it

also just wanted to let you know, the mods I have released are nothing compared to those that I have done for myself personally, so I do know alot about GECK just not much in the ways of quests and scripting

anyways once more, I wish you the best of luck, and anything you need you can ask me

:goodjob:

@Lucien834: Thanks for the permission. Paul will surley use it .

Its time for a little progress report.

At first a little explanation why it took 4 months to show someting of my work and little look behind the curtains. In the beginning i had no idea how the Geck worked, i never played Oblivion before. I had the idea of a good story which would fit perfectly to the wastes, but i knew this would take very hard scripting work. So i put my story aside and learned to script the functions that i needed for the story. Now i have made a system where you could enslave everyone in the wastes and use them as your tools, learn them things, care for them, monitor them and also set them free with their new abilities. I thought the hardest work is done. Then i made most of the new the actors and the locations (this was the easiest to achieve). And in the moment I?m working out the quest, with playtesting an balancing for me it is harder work then the scripting.

I playtested the last few days the beginning of the quest and realized it was pretty difficult. Here a few pictures from the start of the quest:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sesom_07/3484346176/
The story begins with a strange message on your Pip-Boy.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sesom_07/3483531993/
And if there werent enough troubles in that moment, shortly after that, you are encountered by a desperate Raider.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sesom_07/3484346638/
Pawlak at work

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sesom_07/3483532197/
Meet General Atomics latest invention in controlling and motivation of working human labour.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sesom_07/3484346406/
Did you know there was another Wellington at Tenpennys?

Sorry, no new locations yet, i?m still cluttering .

It was hard to survive not for me the player, but very hard for the guys i should protect in the quest. I dont wanted to change the stats of the NPCs because there are also original NPCs involved at later stages. So i thought pretty long for a solution and found one.
The conclusion is a little mod that comes very handy with "Friendly New Neighbours" and because it was so easy made (took one day to script) i choose to make a player version too.

It?s time for camping!

http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=6003

This little mod i made is only some camping gear for the player. It could be handy with the settler and is also a little cheat mod in this form. In "Friendly New Neighbours" is the bed not useable for the player, its originaly ment for your wards (companion is the wrong word here).

But now back to work. Paul (a npc of my mod) is calling!

Nice screenshots i'm impressed you decided to make such a huge mod when you came to the game with no knowledge of how things work. I like the pic on your pipboy getting hacked very ingenious idea for bringing up the quest.

Wow, just wow. Looks great at the mo, keep up the good work!

Its time for a little progress report:

Scripting:
I reworked the last few days the control mechanism for the Slave?s completly. With this new method it is now much more easier for me to establish new commands for them.

Quest:
The balancing for the 1st act of part one is done. Only two more to go.... This particular balancing was done for my personal gaming needs. I surley need help with alpha and beta testers for real world balancing. I prefer to play fallout 3 in vanilla Normal and Hard mode. I think end of next week are most of the quest parts ready and i make a call for alpha testers.

Voice Acting and Effects:
The 1st Act is ready mostly voice acted by my myself. I think to chance this, because it gets a little to obvious that here is only one person speaking. Act 2 and 3 are in progress.

Locations:
I made most of the planned slavearena for Part II to test this horrible Patch 1.5. In the moment there are no problems with "Friendly New Neighbours" but we will see. If i get problems maybe i make an esm file.

Objects:
The new camping gear comes handy when i am travelling with my slaves . But i have a little request. Is there somebody who can help me to make a new object (NIF File and esp). Its an whistle. I have a free mesh of an whistle (low poly) and someother material to make the object, but im horrible at 3D work and texturing. It takes a lot of time which i want to use for the quest.

Thats it for the moment. My progress was a little slow the last few days. The scripting was the first priority because all other planned parts of this mod depend on this work. I cant change it later. If i do the player could loose the savegames by installing a new chapter.

Its time for testing! No not me! I hope i know every little piece thats in my mod .

I am looking now for Alpha Testers for "Act 1" of "Part One" (oh good i am complicated today) from "Friendly New Neighbours".

Its not realy a Alpha it is (hopefully) fully working and 95% are voice acted. Actual playtime i think 1/2 an hour for skilled players.

I call it an Alpha because it is only the first Act and i am not sure if my basic idea for telling the story works this way. I am willing to change a lot of things if it helps the storytelling.

If you sign in as an alpha tester I need you to answer a few simple questions about the outcome of your playthrough after the first play. It is !!! essential !!! to answer these questions after the !!!! first play !!!!! through.

My plan is to have multiple solutions and endings for this mod and i need to know which one were found at first sight by different people.

Bug reports and spelling corrections are clearly also very welcomed!

Warning! If you sign in as an Alpha tester youve got horrible spoiled about a few suprises in this mod. This is the horrible fate of testing.

I know its a bad timing in the moment with "Broken Steel" on its way! But maybe there are a few people which are interested. The mod is tested and developed with Patch 1.5 and should also be compatible with other Patch Versions. No DLC content is used. I am not sure about the compatibility with other mods. I use a few locations of the original game in the moment, there should be no big problem. All slavery related mods are critical in the moment (The Collector, Buying Slaves, ...). When the first part is ready, i make a update to be compatible.


Details for the Downlaod are given per Personal Message. I dont want to spoil this thing to early it was and is to much work. Sorry for beeing so secretive.

I think i am ready for the upload in the next two or three days. I need to do so some cleaning work for this special version, because there are already assets from part 2 and three in my personal esp file.

It is time for some progress report or better non progress report. Patch 1.5 and Broken Steel are not very friendly to new neighbors. I got in the same mess as every other modder.

I have only a few non persistant references in the quest section of my mod (its mostly scriptwork) and i had to give up a specific location because it is used in Broken Steel (bye, bye Jury Street). These were the minor problems and quickly solved.

By playing Broken Steel i recognized after a few hours that my slaves lost their packages randomly. At first i thought of a bug in my enslaving system and began hunting. I made quick tests at the release of patch 1.5 and thought at this point my Token system is 1.5 compatible.

I was wrong! Unintentionally i used a glitch in the game engime to deliver new packages to my slaves. The effect was strange it worked perfectly in the beginning, but after a hour or two playing, i was unable to enslave major NPCs (persistant references). That was something i didnt expected. I looked everywhere an couldnt find a bug. It took me a whole day to figure out what was wrong.

The conclusion is: Back to the drawing board and the use of a simpler version of my system. I dont think that the Patch 1.5 is broken (like many other) it works perfectly and correct to keep the game world stable and use less system resources. But it is now much harder work for the modder to get the desired effect.

Sorry, I need a little more time to implement all the necessary functions for Part One with the new package delivery. This one works with 1.5 perfectly. I think it take one or two more days. Then i can begin with the public Alpha test.

I am back and with good news! Sorry that it took longer then i thought. There were some real life issues (Do we realy have to work for living? ) and it was harder to make my token system 1.5 compatible.

But now it is available for testers! The first Alpha of "Friendly New Neighbours Part One". I am still looking for testers!

Hiya Sesom,

Welcome to the Forums, if you haven't been given a welcome yet,lol You have a great mod idea and your vid is fantastic,
the mod sounds exciting as well. You look like you have lots of talents!.

Good Luck with this

Cheers

CJ

Hi there!

I gave your mod a play through, the only things I found were just spelling errors:

- In the Pipboy message:
-- "try's" should be "tries"
-- "you are near an" should be "you are near a"
- "termnal" should be "terminal" (in a note)
- Search for Paul's friend (quest objective)

Otherwise, I think everything worked okay. The Pipboy message displayed, Paul showed up, I got the quest objectives, and all the dialogue seemed to work. (I assume that "Find dike" is the start of the next quest objective that hasn't been implemented yet, right? If not, then the quest ends before I had a chance to look for him.)

I really liked the way that the dialogue for GAW-4(? the robot) was set up, mixing the new dialogue with the old; made the combat dialogue not seem out of place as bad, and the reasons for the mix is even included too. Nice one. The story is pretty good too, even if it did end early (because its an alpha, which is understandable). There is one problem I had with it though, and that is: why are we looking for dike? I mean, the quest is interesting, but then we read a terminal, and vaguely something about dike, and then we're told we need to find him. But I didn't understand why. What's the player's motivation at that point?

Thanks for testing! This quest has three ways to complete (two are implemented in the moment) a middle, a short and a long way. You took the short one thats why i asked the questions (see PM). I want that the quest make different outcomes for the player according to his decisions.

You are correct the alpha stops with the search for dike in the moment. Minor Spoiler: He is the guy who betrayed Paul and Donald. I thought the motivation to fight slavery (kill dike), to know more about the black collar or to become a slaver and look for the guy with practice would be enough. I think about it. Thanks for the Feedback. There is a suprise in the Alpha mod implemented for testing. Read the Spoiler section of the readme.

The alpha test showed me a few things i made definitly to hard to understand and a few little bugs. Thanks to all testers you are a great help. Today i am bughunting and look over my horrible spelling in the mod.

I made a new video to show how slavery works in Friendly New Neighbours. It is written from the perspective of a player who choose to become a slaver in my mod. Have fun with it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ai22HJrEINs

This is looking out to be rather promising, and I am looking forward to the future releases you have planned. Although I am enthusiastic towards this mod I am unable to do any testing, however, I do wish you good luck.

Some progress report:
I changed after the first alpha test the quest structure and the dialogue so it is now easier to get the story. I know i have tendency to hide important things. Thats now all cleared up in the first Act.

I am now in the middle of Act II and made maybe the most memorable scene of this mod. Its heavy i am still shivering! I dont want to spoil it! Sorry! Be prepared for hard moral decisions. Slavery is a dirty business.

One important thing: I include several ways to solve the story and it isnt necersary to play it linear (thats the reason why it take so long to make this thing). My concept is that every player can get an different outcome depending on his/her actions.

I think i take a little break from Act II now and begin with Act III which is much more humorous.

Thanks again for the friendly welcome and feedback.

This mod just looks better and better every time I check in on it!

Thanks i am working hard on it. The last few days i nearly completed Act II (should be ready this weekend, then it is time for a new alpha test). I had encredible fun to make the part were !!! Spoiler: !!! . At first i thought that i use the same principle as Bethseda in the Vault 87 scene. To make it as dramatic as possible.
Then i tried my own basic principles for NPCs on the player and it worked (i am still excited about this engine and the posibilities)! Its not cinematic at all but it fits in perfectly. Fast, dirty, sudden and with hard consequences.

Looks awesome, man. If you need any help with concepts, characters, dialogue, or even some voice acting, I could always help. I'm trying to leech onto others and help them with their own monster projects before I start modding on my own, so it'd be a mutual relationship!

Concept and characters are all done for the first act. The dialogue is a little bit critical because i develop it in playing the actual mod to get the right flow. I know the story i want to tell and the premise and goals of all of my NPCs, so it is easy to know how the react in the given situations.
I need help with proofreading, because english is not my main language and yes voice acting is also needed. But i have to warn most of the characters in part one can survive the events and are then needed for Part II and III.
This tiny little mod idea has realy developed in a big monster.
I also need help with playtesting the alpha versions to get the balance right. I think i am not the typical player (more story orientated, fight has a lower ranck).

This mod looks so awesome... I have a question though... can you still do it if you've already finished the game or do you have to start over? (I eliminated Paradise Falls )

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No its nice to have Paradise Falls around (Easy Caps , easier than in my own selling system ) but you dont need it.


I am pretty sure you have much fun with my mod when it is ready

Some progress report: I decieded today to complete one of the three main branches for the next Alpha. While playtesting the first time this possible outcome (1st, 2nd and 3rd act of the short, so called "good" solution) of FNN Part 1 and was surprised, realy suprised.

In the first part of FNN i use only a few new locations. I didnt placed tons of raiders or supermutants. I played only with with the principles of the game designing this mod, but i didnt changed any of the basic parameters.

While playing it felt fresh, new and i struggled to survive. I had a realy hard fight at the end (which i didnt planned but fits in perfectly) and ended up with the feeling that the wasteland is a harsh and horrible place. I saw the game from the perspective of a common wastelander and not the superhero from vault 101. I am definitly on the right track.

The pure "evil" way to solve the story in the first part is surely easier, but be warned it has a price.

I am still bughunting and expanding so sorry no date for the next alpha. It is a complex thingie because all elements of the story need another. But i promise to work this whole weekend on the quest. Watch this place for updates.