I am wondering how difficult it will be, just as a concept, to tie in fallout 3 (DC Area) to a portal in FOV...

They are using the same engine, so really it would just take some modifications to the code to ultimately work...perhaps eliminate the startup quest and change the "dad convo" a bit in FO3...not sure...but it doesn't sound impossible
I wonder how much we would have to beg to have this functionality pre-installed (might even move a few sales from fallout 3 for people whom never bought it but want to check it out).

Anyhow, good idea? Easy enough to do by just some mods or is this where the developers have to get involved?

No.

consider the many tweaks they made to gameplay in New Vegas I don′t think that would work.

From a technical standpoint it will likely be very difficult and time consuming. Especially if you want to actually rebalance stuff to the NV standard (ie damage threshold, weapons repair kits, etc etc).

From a legal perspective, it'll never happen because Beth's stance is that you can't use assets from one Beth game in another.

Problem is, Fallout 3 has models that Fallout New Vegas doesn't. These models belong only to the Fallout 3 license and if a modder wants to do it, he can't. No assets from any game or Bethesda's can be used in any mod.

That's not all, you have many items and possibly script functions that have been changed.

Simply put, it can't work because of technical and licensing reasons.

Well crap...so if its going to be done, it needs to be a mod then and it will be a pain in the [censored] mod at that.

Still, given the resources of FO3, I am sure there will be plenty of crossovers in mods...would be nice to start off with advanced mods verses by scratch

Beth has a history of clamping down on mods that use assets from their other games too. Morroblivion, for instance, had to totally redo all the textures rather than use the morrowind ones because of a cease and desist order.

The only mods we'll see carried over from FO3 are the ones that have usermade content of some sort. Nothing with FO3 content that isn't also in NV.

plus ultimatly it sounds like just a way of being lazy not wanting to close one game to boot up the other and play.

It would be great if they allowed you to do it if they could make sure you already had the files from Fallout 3, but I do not know how that would work technically or practically.

no...No...NO...NO!......NO!!...NOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It wont work due to different game engine, legal reasons, compatability, and its just not a good idea.

You can use fan made creations as long as they are completely custom. Other than that it is not allowed to use assets from other games. Period.

As the Fo3/New Vegas cross over point of the topic has been thoroughly addressed (i.e. it'll never happen), a few points about the mods:

1. As Spiderpig said, mods with 100% custom content can be ported from Fo3 to New Vegas without problems. I suspect alot of the immersion mods will find this easy, as many of the game settings and scripting language will stay the same. There will be some new stuff and modified stuff to account for, but all in all it should be an easier transition than it was from TES to Fo3.

2. We know that some of the Fo3 assets got included into New Vegas, likely with new FormIDs. Some of us have mods that have some custom/some Fo3 content, and it is our intention to convert our existing mods to New Vegas by swapping-out the Fo3 content with New Vegas content or more custom content, thus obeying the policy of transferring of assets.

My impression is that something will be done with the NV-GECK to make Fo3 assets Not Quite Compatible with the Fo3-GECK, otherwise it would be too-easy for modders to port content across without limits. Hard to say what that will be, and how much of a difference there will really be until game day.

We'll see!

Miax

That's correct.