I was thinking of a mod that expanded the playable area, while increasing performance....

and I'll probably need volunteers as I am with out much time...

if you decrease ALL the meshes to 50% of their size, AND refitted the world map (so everything isn't gigantically twice the size) you would have a work around that makes the world 200% the original size, while doubling the load zone (if you don't change it) allowing for people to decrease that for performance.

I am all about wandering and random encounters, so this would be the mod for me, but like I said i have little time about time right now, maybe after it's release I might find more time...

1. What ideas does this inspire.
2. Would you write the mod?
3. Would you go out of your way to team up with other people who say they will write this mod... and actually write this mod! :foodndrink:

:)

:rolleyes: is all I have to say. hopes though that your Idea catches wind.

i wish i could help, but i am not good with the geck

If you decrease all the meshes by 50%:
you will have to reposition every single one of them, plus all contact/collision/environment zones.Also, they will not match the land, which would have to be re-rendered, repainted, LOD regenerated, etc...; you will have to redo all the navigation meshes in each cell and outside world...

Even so, there wouldn't be much increase in performance, because the number or polygons and textures that have to be rendered remain the same.

How exactly do you mean "decrease ALL the meshes to 50% of their size" ?
The size (in game) bares no relation to the size on the disk... So there is no performance change at all (unless it has to do with the screen area for updating each mesh?).
Reducing size on the disc means reducing the quality of the meshes themselves... that effectively means doing everything over from scratch if you want them to still work with everything else. I would assume that this kind of reduction would mean art & animation changes for each mesh that was tinkered with.

**edit:
Do you mean reducing the scale of everything in the game to afford more land for things to occupy? (like say... reducing a town and everything in it, so that two different towns can fit in the same general area)... That's... I. I don't think that will work as expected.

So do you have any Geck/programming experience yourself or are you just the idea guy?

If you mean reducing the meshes by 50% in scale, then that's insane, and would over NO performance boost, and yes, as has been stated, would require rebuilding nearly all the terrain, as well as repositioning and resizing all triggers, effect boxes, lights, decals, etc.

If you mean reducing the polycount and texture resolution by 50% that is still an insane amount of work, but more possible, and that would increase performance, but I see no reason for all that work when you could simply make a train, Vertibird, boat, mineshaft, etc take the player to a a new world space, like Point Lookout or the Pitt. That would be the way to add massive new areas, not some crazy endeavor that would take months before you even got to creating new mod content.

Sorry to be blunt, but that's the reality of the situation.

The reality of virtual reality. :chaos:

are you smoking crack bro?

Okay, shortly put. This will be a gigantic amount of work, I very much doubt it'll ever see the light of day. It's a creative idea, but not one that's feasible to accomplish in a reasonable amount of time. There is also the problem of re-sizing the player, which I noticed you didn't account for.

Reducing item size would mean twice as many items in exterior cells as you'd get more smaller pieces into a cell.

Which would decrease performance potentially.

Unless I missed something.

How about we wait for the game to launch before we improve it?

This...



And this.

That pretty much sums it up.

yes i should of been more clear, you would also have to reduce the polygons by 50%. The performance boost comes in reducing what cells are loaded on the screen, if you don't change that, you would see "twice" as far. Decreasing that to a more realistic level, would provide some performance boost. So you would also have to put in a custom .ini file. Also I didn''t mention reducing the players size.... first I didn't think it needed mentioning, but that might cause a problem... I don't think the geck can do that.....but I am a man of work-arounds I'll probably figure something out...

and yes as you can see, it's a lot of work, I did say volunteers (plural)...but like I said, I love to wander the desert, I like the bleak emptiness, and random encounters... if you don't like this mod, then it has more to say about what you like in a game, and less about the idea...

and to answer another question, I do have some experience in the geck, I have more experience on other edititng tools, but I know the geck enough to know what it can/can't do, for the geck I have made personal mods, tons of editing other peoples mods and I helped on a mod (that can not be named) but that fell apart for lack of leadership and I was getting sued at the time

but I am a little surprised at some of these comments.... way to hate bros!!! :thumbsdown:

Modding is one of the funnest things you can do with a game.... at least I am trying to come up with original ideas....

you have forgotten about modding... one of the funnest things to do to a game.... I can't wait to play this game because of WHO made it... but I also can't wait to mod this game because of WHO made it.... just because you don't feel compelled to dream of a mod, doesn't mean someone else can't....

I'm not hating, I just have game development experience, and wanted to point out some flawed considerations.

I love modding and wandering a huge desert or environment as well, but there are different ways of doing things like that. Hard ways and easier ways. The specifics of your idea are a very hard way to achieve the result you are looking for. It's the difference between changing a lightbulb by rotating the bulb or by rotating the house.

Personally I agree with the others about waiting until we see exactly what we have. If you still want to make a mod that increases the area to explore, you're better off accomplishing it by loading a new world space, like what Bethesda did to add Point Lookout to the game.

but what if I wanted the EXACT GAME that obsidian made, but bleaker more desolate. It's going to be a great game, they are very creative with story lines... I don't think my custom story line would compare. Increasing the size would allow less to happen is a certain space... creating a bleaker experience, with out making it different... If I wanted a whole new world.. I would make one... trust me I've thought of that, have one written out, and was waiting for Fallout New Vegas to come out to make it...
I understand how much of a job this would be.... which is why I said volunteers... plural....

So you want to sort of - increase the empty wasteland space between settlements? I understand that. But unless the CS has been radically changed, you are going to have to pretty much change and reposition everything in the ENTIRE game. No one's told you this is impossible, because it isn't, it is just that far less ambitious mods have never seen the light of day, and this mod of yours involves work on the scale of a total conversion. If you want to pursue your idea, I wish you the best of luck, but you'll find it near impossible to get volunteers unless they see substantial progress has already been made.

Exactly white rabbit, thank you for your insight
which brings me right back around... I am short on time, and really just wanted the idea out there...
***metaphor danger zone***
sometimes the smallest fleck of pollen will travel the world, on a variety of animals before landing and grow into a large forest
***metaphor danger zone ended***

someone might pick it up, or a coder will take the easy route and write a conversion exe that will auto change (i've seen it on other games) and it will probably be some kids school project... hehehehe.....

I don't think you understand the amount of work involved in what you are asking. It would be basically creating a new game,

.. if you want the exact game but bleaker and more desolate, just go to your .ini file and remove the set in-game borders and wonder around, and maybe even copy and paste some of the vanilla locations outside the borders of the vanilla game, which certainly will be easier than re-doing everything in the game 50% smaller to have the illusion of a bigger map. That would give you a much bigger bigger map, with greater distance between places.

i do...




but his is exactly what I wanted....more ideas!!!!
thank you system shock!!

copy and paste, then delete the some of the duplicates, so there is only one location each?!? now where getting somewhere!