Kind of like that "Black Mesa" Half Life 1 recreation. I think that if done correctly, this could be really cool, but would it be against any rules or is it just infeasible? I realize that it would take quite a long time and tons of work, but if possible, I, and I'm sure many, many others would love to see or even be a part of this.

It would be against Bethesda's rules regarding other games.

I'd go to No Mutants Allowed forum and ask. They would be the most likely to want this and also the most likely to troll and flame any attempt that didn't measure up to their insanely impossible standards.

It's only using the actual resources from games IIRC, so a recreation from scratch is okay if not encouraged.

But it'd take the better part of forever, and would be a bit pointless as the original Fallouts were designed to fit into their engine, not the Fallout 3 one. The best way to experience them is in the Fallout 1/2 engine; the best use of the F3 engine is to experience content designed to be delivered through it.

I think that if people can enjoy a SMB remake on the Doom engine people can enjoy a Fallout 1/2 remake on the Fallout 3 engine. I realize it would be a completely new and different experience from the first games, but I think people would like it nonetheless.

And it wouldn't take forever- many weapons and items from the old games have already been ported to Fallout 3, so as long as I (and/or anyone else who would work on the mod with me) could get permission from the authors of those mods, we would really only be doing some mostly minor modling. The hardest part would be new (or rather old) NPCs and creatures, probably, and many of them have also been ported to Fallout 3.

You're massively underestimating the time required to make + clutter cells and worldspace, set up dialogue and quests, set up packages, testing the world and particularly navmeshing. The content meshes aren't really the limiting factor. Tamriel Rebuilt, for example, has pretty much most of the meshes it needs- it's got plenty of barebones villages done, but not very many actual quests, not much fleshing out done.

This is not least in part because meshing is fun but ancillary work is not- I'm speaking from experience, I was on a Morrowind TC (name best left unsaid) for a while with all the resources we could ever need meshwise, and after 3-4 months I'd gotten the AI packages done for all the villages, and just gave up. I pity the poor bugger they've got doing the AI for Vivec.

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/980097-f3m-a-total-conversion-mod-to-the-original-fallout

I have no idea if it's still being worked on at all. There have been no updates on their site in a few months.

I think the part that would take the longest would be making the world maps and quests.

Talkie beat me by about an hour posting that, oh well. The world is a really big place, even if it doesn't seems so in the game.

Most people who demand those things underestimate the effort that is necessary. That's why these projects are generally doomed, normal people who don't earn their money with creating games won't be able to spend the 100K+ working hours necessary to undertake this.

The game world would be FAR too large to create. We are talking about a territory larger than a hundred Capital Wastelands.

That's not even the problem, you could just create separated cells and replace the travel map with fast travel. The cities alone would be hell of a lot of work.

It could be done, but it would be an ongoing project. It would need to be somebody's baby. From what I can tell, nobody with the right amount of know-how (or the right drive to learn as they go) has picked up on it.

I do not think it's as hard a project as people are thinking it is. It doesn't have to start out perfect in every respect. It just has to be started, and be meaningful, and be moving forward.

There is no rules issue as long as the modder is not snatching actual assets out of Fallout 2 etc, like, I donno, re-sampling the sounds or trying to import the sprites (sounds like more trouble than it's worth anyway).

Is that where Morroblivion ran into issues? I never did hear about that project until after it was shut down by Bethesda, so my information on it is sparse, but I thought it used strictly Oblivion and custom resources, not anything from Morrowind.

You've rather missed the entire purpose of Morroblivion. In order to get around the problems of meshes and the sheer time it takes to make/clutter cells and worldspace, Morroblivion automatically converted all the meshes and .esms from Morrowind and expansions into Oblivion format. The direct reuse of meshes and .esm assets was the sticking point. That said, almost all the Morrowind resources have already been duplicated in one mod or other (e.g. Phitt's Sheogorad Isles) so I assume the sticking point is still that making the quests takes the better part of forever.

Also, Morroblivion wasn't shut down (not that anything on the internet can be), Beth just wanted it taken off the forums and sites that are strongly associated with them (e.g. Nexus).

true. however there is one caveat to that. Most of those assets are more or less faithful reproductions of the assets used in MW, but just bigger polycounts and bigger textures> which doesnt equate to bettter, nor "nextgen". If the assets were actually created in a nextgen workflow, and to a high standard, then most would have to be redone completely. And it would take a lot longer. really a lot longer. It takes something like several days to do a single nextgen weapon for a professional working full time. saying that, there are several good MW recreations I admire. For most would be McMuffin's daedric armor. just ask him how long he spent on it!
Not sure I have a point except modded assets are not created equal. imo there would still be the bulk of work to be done to recreate MW assets to a nextgen standard.