Good. I like that; I wasn't very clear in what I was trying to say before as I had very little time to write what I did earlier. I am in transit from Europe back home again to the West Coast. You seem to be all over the story part that you can draw from for a companion in your mod and that is great. and an essential part, IMO, to a good experience for the player. Companions can be pretty much whatever you can imagine (within the confines of what you can do of course) and are best, IMO, if they adhere to that clear vision you have of them from the outset. It sounds like you have that, and just need to do the mechanical part of it, which won't be hard for you at all, given what you've done already.

Oops gotta run for another connection. I hope that makes sense.

Just a little heads up for those interested. I've been sitting on an 'Alpha' version of Hightown for several months now. I didn't release it thus far as I had nearly come to the conclusion that Hightown just wasn't going to be feasible. Mainly there are major performance issues with the mod, stemming from two factors. Firstly the town itself is very complex and taxes even good machines considerably. Secondly there are 40 unique NPCs in the town at any moment. I have realised that this is extremely tough on the engine and will cause severe performance issues.

Neither of these issues can really be resolved without pretty much re-imagining the whole of Hightown. I am not so keen to do that, considering all the work that went into it so far. So I have been sitting on the mod in a rough, but near complete state for several months now. I have finally worked up the energy to package it up and release it for anyone who is still interested.

I may continue work on it, but whether I do or not really depends on how serious the issues I have mentioned are for other people. There are a few secondary issues as well, mostly related to the Navmesh, that have made the entire design of Hightown fall into question. Nevertheless, I am releasing this Alpha in an 'as is' state. Enjoy it for what it is, and don't expect a smooth experience. If you do notice big bugs, it wouldn't hurt to report them, but I can't promise that I will provide support or fix them.

Here is a final tally of what is included in the mod:

* 19 residences/businesses in 19 separate cells
* 40 unique residents with dialogues, conversations, and histories
* 120+ customized objects using new and re-purposed vanilla textures
* One very large, very complex, mostly logical town superstructure
* A quest for gaining entry to the town with multiple solutions
* Numerous mini-quests that effect the appearance and make up of the town

This mod is still incomplete. So far, this is a breakdown of what has been mostly finished:

* Background story
* Buildings are complete
* Cluttering is complete
* NavMesh is complete
* NPC's have schedules, patrols, homes, combat taunts, alerts, random conversations etc.
* NPC backgrounds, stories and unique dialogues are complete
* More than 3500 lines of dialogue and conversation
* 12+ mini Quests

Aside from those what remains is a final tying up of numerous loose ends, a few quests need to be finished, and an insane amount of debugging.

There are no voiced dialogues, so you must turn your subtitles on. You should also turn down your graphics settings before entering the town or expect your pc to melt.

The mod is hosted at the moddb, and is awaiting authorization. Expect the below link to become active in a few hours.

http://www.moddb.com/mods/hightown/downloads/hightown

I'll give it a whirl and report what I find.

Looks cool.

Updated first post with link to download the Alpha.

If anyone uses it, I'd love bug reports of any kind.

I finally found this town, but everyone was aggressive to me immediately. I'm not sure if it is because Fawkes set off mines below the town, or if it was because I had Fawkes with me and the town wanted to attack him, or vice-versa.

They are aggressive towards anyone who wanders around near the base of the town. They have shoot to kill orders, for obvious reasons (one Fatman on one of the towns pillars would bring it all down...). There are alternate routes into the town, not from directly below. Approaching from those routes will not trigger the guards.