I have had a kind of passing thought that keeps passing through my head. Does anyone know the Mountain Shack mod for Oblivion, where you fix everything up before you can really live in the house? Something a bit like that.

I may or may not work on this, but I still want to pass it out to be thought on and maybe get a "rival" to compete with. The thought essentially revolves around a roleplayer's dream - building your own house from scratch. Literally. Take for instance some of the ruined Springvale houses. There are two ruined houses upon this little bluff, and one of them is really nothing but a shell. No junk inside it or anything, just a bit of posts and ruined walls. The mod might take place there, building in that spot (though, I think I'd rather pick somewhere a bit more remote).

So the player rolls on down the hill to a special mod added car. It being a container, he (I'm going from my character, being male) cracks it open and pulls out a couple "Sheet Metal" (doing this a couple times until he as enough). Back to the house, a small button/activator on one of the posts is activated by the player, taking the sheet metal out of the player's inventory and it appears on the wall, already in place and ready to roll.

The whole house features that concept - the player goes scavenging for goods and builds his house bit by bit. Using FWE's camp gear he could camp there, until the walls are built and roof is up. Then, adding a door, the player gets access to an actual interior (so that nasties don't come and get ya!) and the mod is taken further, with furniture and suchlike, including a possible guest appearance by a later-to-vanish salesman who sells you a generator that provides electricity.

It's only a thought. But it's very doable and with a simplistic "unmarked quest" style approach it might give a prospective homeowner a few game hours of enjoyment.

It's a good idea - and the "stronghold" quests for Morrowind would provide a good basis for the script.

Not sure if I'll take you up on this, but I'll definitely bear it in mind (if nobody else beats me to it).

Sounds pretty cool! I think another thing that could be fun, is if there are kind of slots in the house, like each wall, where you can set up something to your tastes, so if you're a guns guy, you could just have shelves of ammo or gun racks on the one wall, and trophies on another, or if you're a scientist player you can scavenge for terminals and whatnot to set up on a wall.

working on something like that... old style family bomb shelter not a fallout shelter. Got to get stuff to repair it to be functional. Lots of planning and scripting (as well as altering items to work the way I want them to)

It's a great idea, but as you said Springvale isn't the greatest location. I hope someone works on this.

I'm thinking of going simplistic. I've been piddling in the GECK, and reading on the GECK site about how to make a quest. I want to call it Homestead, for some odd reason.

Anyways, moving on - having a sort of hand-holding quest to build the house in phases would probably have the best effect. The whole building affair would revolve around a special toolbox on site. You activate the toolbox to start the Homestead quest (it would give you a choice, so as to not bung up your quest list if you have no interest in building the house) and then get started on the floor. Once that's done, quest update and on to the walls. Done with that, quest moves forward and so do you. You've got a roof, walls, floor, and then you start on a quest to find a "sturdy door".

Finding the door moves the quest onward and you get to go inside the actual house interior. (which should mirror the exterior before you added the door, for realism) Then, the original toolbox disappears. Another toolbox appears inside next to the door. I have this thought about branching the quest out into three or so branches - Guns, Scav, or Brains. Guns would be the questing to fix the house up mercenary style. Scav, scavenger style and Brains would be working for scientific type furniture. (names were improvised as I typed that, not permanent)

Now, all of this is still speculation. The place I want to put the house (if I do this) would be near Big Town, near that ruined farm.

If such a thing is created I might have to download it. I for the first time on PC am using the Megaton house. Normally however I create my own in the GECK.

Well, after finding two suitable locations my GECK goes wonky. When I try to save, my GECK goes unresponsive, gives me error messages in empty cells, and all sorts of irritating goodness.

I'm going to keep fiddling with it until I get it to work, but until then I can only hope someone else is inspired and takes up the torch.

IDEA: knw the script in RTS that when you scroll over a ruined house it lets you rebuild it? Maybe something like that, tells you what all you need to rebuild it, you harvest it from "garbage piles" (Maybe make the various piles across the wasteland lootable for materials?) then find nails hammers ETC and get building. If this takes off I want to build me a mansion. Id also make certain items pickupable and repairable, or atleast buyable from a merchant. Beds, dressers, cabinets, stoves, shelves. Then make those items placable by the player, locked into place by a terminal to remove those stupid things where when you want to sleep you see "take" the bed and get furious. Maybe even fences to surround your property?
:tops:

My idea was a bit more linear, with forks in the "quest" line. You make a decision after building the exterior about how you wish to decorate your house, and the quest jumps to the chosen quest line and you proceed business as usual.

Smokindan made a nifty little furniture store with beds and some containers and things like that. It's really handy if you like to decorate your own homes or just want a portable chest to go with your FWE camp gear or whatever you use. It's not as diverse in choice as Imperial Furniture (the mod it's based off of) but it works pretty damn well for what it is.

I think a "fortress" option could be thrown in there, maybe instead of scav, where you have to also look for stuff to build a perimeter and beef up the walls, etc., for looks.

I don't know, as far as that goes. I'm still having issues with my GECK not working right. Until I get that sorted out, I can only make speculations and post ideas in hopes someone else is deciding to make one.

My GECK was working fine, the day before. But let me decide to make a slightly complex mod instead of a house modification...

I like this idea. Here's an idea of how it could go:

Find the house itself. Only real question here is how you find it in the first place. I'm a big fan of the convention of placing a new NPC in Megaton who has some reason to send you there. (Still a big fan of this convention, even if my Megaton is getting pretty crowded.)

The house has "slots," all of which show an item name when you crosshair over them: Wooden door, Sorting shelves, Sheet metal... and some of them are really enticing, like: Super Weapon rack, or Purified Water dispenser.

Then, you hand-place the corresponding items throughout the wasteland, the better items being in higher-difficulty places. The items' names have to correspond exactly to the slot names. And all the items, no matter how big, would have to be inventoriable.

Hand-holding: The trick is how to discover where the items are. Is it a treasure map? But, why would somebody hide such stuff all over the wasteland? Is it NPC-directed?

• Arrive at the house as per quest-giver instructions.
  
• When discovering the mysterious house slots (by looking at things), a note appears in your inventory, reading: Hmmm, this wouldn't be a half-bad place to live if it were fixed up a little. Some sheet metal would cover that hole in the wall.
  
• When returning to the NPC in Megaton, a new dialogue appears: Do you know where a guy could find some sheet metal?

From here on out, it gets trickier to direct the action. How do you choose which is the second item to go after? How does the player figure out where to go for that second item. If the second, third, and fourth item-missions come as a result of adding the previous item, the quest will quickly get to feeling like a fetch-and-carry. I would start to get annoyed that I couldn't just get the whole list at once. On the other hand, if I get the whole list at once, I have a sprawling mess of a multi-part quest taking up my pip-boy screen. Perhaps not the worst thing. But might be better if the item-missions arose more organically.

Anyway, you can see this idea has got my brain juices flowing. Best of luck with your project!

gothemasticator

I like the customization Ashven. I am reinstalling Fallout 3 now. I will think about something. We need new locations! With new quests! That have significance. The storyline must be inviting and lore-friendly! We should be able to laugh and be sincerely impressed! The wasteland needs a mod like this. I liike fallout 3 much. Ty Ashven, but I will probably click together something of my own. I will give you credit when I decide to release it.

I really should spend the time to read others topics from now on. So much golden ideas I never knew about.

I have done something like this....
it allows you to rebuild one of the houses in spring field.
Right now its only the first one because I just started working on it about a week ago.

In a bundle

It lets you replace the openings in a spring field house with metal planks.
It is in the exterior meaning, you can walk in and out without reloading.

It is going to be a module to my Apocalyptic - A Harsher Wasteland
It wont require you to install my Apocalyptic - A Harsher Wasteland its just going to be say
Apocalyptic - Spring Field Living Module.esp

Its a simple concept that requires the player to build there own house that they have to decorate.

downfall, it does not add anything to the houses. its just a quick place to call home you have to decorate using one of the numerous portable mods out there.

should be release middle of next month.

I think its a Great idea, and reminds me alot of the Weapon Mod Kits (WMK) mod in which you can build your own weapons - which is a Very popular mod. Being able to fix up a house, build it, add things to it and repair it when bad things happen, would add more things to do and build-up with, adds a way to get rid of cash and even add new quests for rare items that could be added (like a Telescope or something).

Two thumbs up, good luck with it!!

Miax

I have it - and Diernayr's my savior!


I think I know how to do this in probably the most companion un-friendly way possible. I got the idea after digging through my mods, and seeing Diernayr's massive list of (awesome!) portable gear. And then I drooled buckets - his Portable House - Small mod! You can put it anywhere, but it's a full sized Megaton style house. I had this little bitty flash of inspiration, too. I popped it in the GECK and move the sofa a nudge and tried to save - lo and behold, it saved! I can mod again!

Now, here's my plan. The play will be able to scavenge and build his own house, practically wherever he/she wants. Using Diernayr's house as a base (the readme gives the all-clear signal) I'll do this in a more interesting way. When you buy the blue prints from Moira like normal, you find your location. You put the blueprint down...like normal. Then, you shoot it, like normal - but unlike normal you now have requirements. You need sheet metal - and a door.

Blah, blah blah, blah blah blah. A while later, the player's house is built, but the interior is empty. The player, as it stands has two choices - use their own mod that allows them to furnish a house (like Smokindan's furniture mod) or take part in what might be a fun "miniquest" for the aspiring homeowner. Scavenging furniture! The player then will be more or less led around the wastes looking for special furniture. He might visit the Robco facility for a workbench, then steal the couch in front of the Megaton Common house (something I've always wanted to do), and so on. There will be little markers on the floor of the house, allowing the player to put things in pre-planned areas (that sounds bad, but let me explain). The sofa could really only go in one spot, but in "Living room storage - Spot 1" the player could put either an easier to find filing cabinet, or harder to find ruined vault locker (or something to that extent).

Anyways, I'm going to work on this mod, now. But these are the ideas floating around my head right now. What may or may not come to fruition is debatable right now. Here's to Diernayr, his mods, and the miracle that let me save again!

with the furniture you could have three different ways to get the same part like going out and finding it in the wastes (probaly the hardest way since itll be in hostile territory, but wont cost caps and gives good karma), buy it from a vendor (either a speical mod vendor or just moria from megaton or the chick from tenpenny tower if megaton is destroyed, costs caps but doesnt effect karma), or just to steal it from a friendly town (like megaton, tenpenny tower, or rivet city, costs no caps but gives negative karma and a chance to make the towns people hostile).

Karma will not play any part whatsoever in my mod. I'm not a good person by finding some shelves, or a bad one by scavenging a refrigerator. Doesn't make sense to me. I kind of figured that scavenging the stuff would probably be a mixture of guesswork (you could find school-type lockers in Springvale Elementary, or a refrigerator in Super Duper Mart) or literally buying some of the nicer stuff from merchants, by adding the placeholder items to Vendor lists (so you might be able to buy a generator from Moira, or something completely different).

I'm still in the planning phase. Considering just making one "outcome" for the look of the house, and focusing on making the furniture scavenging the true customization that would be allowed by this mod. In reality, the beauty of that thought is that I could use a modified Portable Shack script - you can place the house as many times as you want so you can position it well, but once you "lock in" the house is stuck where it is. (I stopped using the house because I could move it so much)

Ideas are still welcome, but please...do think them out a bit. I don't want some epic quest ideas thrown up, because I'm now leaning away from a quest approach and more to a common sense/detective work approach.

I like this!

Do you think it would be possible to have a few different looks of the house itself? So that when you place the general "house blueprints" you have a choice between different "base materials". Metal sheets would give you a metal house, wooden planks would give you a wooden house, I'm not sure if there are other materials available, cloth? Which would give you a tent instead of a house, it would be the easiest home to build. Cloth and wooden supports - While the metal house might require both lots of metal sheets as well as some wooden supports, making it a bit more difficult to complete.

Now make it possible to build wherever you want and however many you want, and maybe you'd end up with a small tent as your first home, and then move on to a wooden house as you find more material around the world?

I know this is not exactly simple, but I love the idea of being able to build little outposts here and there, having different requirements for different houses would also force you to choose between one sturdy metal house or several flimsier tents.


Anyway, I see that more than one modder has taken on this challenge, let's see if anyone of you is able to fulfill my wishes

I wouldn't do a tent type house - people would want that to be portable, and Coleen has done a brilliant job of a portable tent mod. But different types of houses is definitely in my plans. The player might be able to buy four or five blueprints, each a different style of house (I might do retextures, now that I know how to modify textures in NIFScope). Then, if the player so chooses he could make a "compound" type place, where he built a little village with all the houses. But once they are in place, I plan to make then permanent - once it's done, it's done. No packups. It defeats the purpose of the mod, in my opinion.

So the player could have a little "town" to himself if he has the patience to build it (and resources). Now, about resources. I have a thought, and it seems like it makes a bit more sense. Instead of finding "Sheet Metal" and "Wooden Posts" the player would be able to find certain objects and receive a generic "Building Materials" object. A heavy, universal object. Of course, that wouldn't apply to furniture, but it would suffice well for the building of the house and stuff like fencing and such, eh?


I hope that when all this is said and done, a whole new genre of house modding is complete - the Do It Yourself housing projects. My mod might take a while because I have to learn a lot of things. I'm a decorator by modding trade (I specialize in cluttering houses) but I've dabbled in texturing before. Now, I might have to learn some things like mesh editing and some slightly advanced scripting to make this happen.

This thread is still about ideas. I'll open up a WIP thread when I get towards a point where I feel comfortable with what I have done. I hope people will continue to discuss their ideas about "Doing it Yourself" type mods. Not just limited to housing, either. Feel free to chuck anything you feel like, in here. I continuously get ideas from reading this thead, and I hope other people do too.

:EDIT: Okay, peoples, I'm going to play with Diernayr's house and get it to be "constructable" and release that and see if people liked how I did it. It will be portable, though I'm going to find some way to nerf the hell out of it, and make you want to leave it where the hell it is. Like the inventory placeholder weighing two hundred units, or something.

If the portable (which means lack of companion friendlyness) doesn't go over well, I'll make a buildable ranch near Canterbury Commons. It's near trade routs and some exploration spots, so as not to be boring, and players could pretend to be cattle ranchers (I might add a way to buy/sell/slaughter brahmin, which is just a thought). Just updating for anyone that gives a damn.