I honestly doubt anyone remembers the last thread I made about Do It Yourself, where I was looking for ideas as to how to accomplish a mod where the player builds their house from the ground up. That, and I couldn't find the old thread. So I'm making a new one, this time as a definite project. But I still need input! Badly do I need input.

After discovering some nifty things about SCOLs and a couple new scripting tricks, I'm almost ready to say that I can do this. In fact, I know I can, but I still need to learn a thing or two. First off, I need to learn how to make a message box. That probably seems simple to y'all who are used to doing it, but it's something that's stumped me for a while. My location is also chosen - and yes, while it is technically Springvale I like to think I chose a lesser-used spot. (I plan to call the final mod "Do It Yourself - Never Too Far From Home" as a reference as to how close to Vault 101 it is.) The spot in particular is a destroyed house, on the upper ridge, the smaller one. You'll know what I mean, when you get there and notice for yourself how flat the ground is there, even in the vanilla game.

Now, as for building the house, that's the easy part. My main realism/balance problem is where the player is going to get their materials. My plans revolve around a toolbox method, as in I'm going to use the toolboxes as the "Interactor" for the player to work with. Which really means that it pops up a message box, checks whether conditions are met or not, and the proceeds or doesn't with the next stage. But as I said, the materials bug me. I thought about just enabling piles of whatever it is I need (for example, when it comes time to build the walls, a pile of lumber can be scavenged from a nearby house or two, but the piles only appear when that stage is set) when I need them. But that just seems...cop out-ish. Unless y'all like that idea, of course.

But my input needs right now are how I'm going to introduce the materials I need. Oh, and - should I make time pass when the player assembles each stage? I would think yes, so that you don't build an entire house in a single day (for anyone that tried my OB mod, Odd Jobs, that kind of time passage).

Okay, after a few days of getting irritated with my work, I'm going to restart the mod, and go for a much more simple approach. Instead of building a four-wall and front porch home (figure of speech, but not too far from my own sentiments) I'm going to have the player cobble together a small camp, based around a good ole fashioned camper. Find your camper, push it to your spot, build some small ramshackle walls, get a bed, workbench, and a fridge (the container's I'll "give" to the player, instead of searching for five or six footlockers). My main design flaw I see, is that I'd like to have the actual "house" part a real interior, but I'm not exactly sure how I could do that with a camper. I guess I'll just figure it out as I go.

I don't but it sounds like an interesting idea!


You use the http://geck.gamesas.com/index.php/ShowMessage script command. I think FOSE has some expansions on what sort of values can be written. There is an options menu tutorial further down.


You could purchase the materials it from a merchant? As an alternative, you could take a look at http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=7070 where it is possible to fell trees.


I would like that, but each stage should not take too long - some of us are using mods where we require food, drink and sleep.


You could let the player buy the containers, bed and so on from a merchant?


How about using a premade cell containing only architecture and link the door to one of those cells? It would require placing a door on the camper, if it is not there already.

Well, I've already got cells made for the interiors, it's just aggrivating that there is no vanilla door to fit on the camper. I've already combined up my camper model so it's just one object, that I can reference and all that. The ShowMessage part is easier than it appeared, but the tutorial about making a large menu is above and beyond my needs and understanding. A simpler show a message and then have two buttons script is more of what I need. I'll just have to read over them again and see if I can't gleam some more information from it.

Aside from learning how to make the messageboxes, everything else I've got in the bag. My quest is going to be linear and simple. None of the things like piles of wood will appear, until you need them. I've decided that some articles of furniture are going to have dual purposes, as well. For example, the camper will have a standard dirty sofa in it that you can sit on. But when you enter sneak mode and then activate it, it'll throw up a rest menu**. I'm also going to keep all of the added material in the Springvale/immediate Springvale area. Don't need to have the player running the world over looking for a dime-a-dozen sofa. A nice side effect of that is I don't have to add quest markers for finding the materials, because it should be common sense.

Once I figure out the message boxes it'll be pretty straightforward from there.




**An incredibly simple way to make a portable bed/show a rest menu wherever you want is simply to make a persistent bed inside of a placeholder cell. Then all you need to do is run the line MyBedRef.activate Player or something like that and it'll pop up the rest menu as if the bed was in front of the player.

Wait, I had a thought - and I think you're absolutely right Zumbs. Why make the player search for all the small stuff when I can easily have Moira sell it to the player? And that would allow the player to have all of the features or just the ones they want.

I know how to make a merchant sell things, but I have a couple questions. First off (and I'm assuming I can get all this from the vanilla house furnishing scripts) I just make a few misc items, and have Moira cell them to the player. Do initially disabled containers offer their goods for merchants to sell? If not that would be an easy way to keep Moira from selling you furniture to a house you haven't built yet. Second, can I make the items remove themselves from the inventory? Because those vanilla notes got annoying to deal with.

Is it possible to scale doors?


That is a pretty neat trick!


I'm not sure how vendors interact with disabled containers. I would assume that the contents of the containers would not be accessable. An alternative (with slightly more work) would be to let the container start empty and then add the furniture to the container at the appropriate stage. At a later stage, the furniture could be removed from the container and it could be disabled. You could also take a look at the scripts for adding themes to Moira?

Making the camper have an actual interior cell was the easy part. I'm mostly concerned with dissecting the Message box scripts.

Adding the items to the container is pretty much the same thing, and a lot easier to do as well. Good idea. Just make a container for her cell, make her sell the goods in it, and then just add items to it as needed. :EDIT: I don't even need a new container, I can just add the items to her standard one. :facepalm:

Thus far the plan is to drag up a (custom) camper from a nearby area, build walls, and then buy your furnishings from Moira. (Probably just go with a single, catch-all item for about 1500 caps instead of doing a whole bunch of small purchases. Makes more sense to me). After buying the furnishings, the DIY main quest is officially over, and you can proceed to live in it. Then, as a "side quest" digging a cellar/bunker and buying gear for it (workbench, lab, infirmary, etc) using the same means as buying standard furnishings. Just a little extra for those who want it, anyways. I'm considering a spew of mini-quests, which would be unmarked, but prove useful to the player.

A good example of the mini-quests would be finding an old windmill that the player could use to tap old water pipes to bring water to a container. Or finding a generator so as to get nightlights, or that kind of thing. Of course, the kicker is they'd be kind of sand-box, in that the player gets them as they find them, adding a little extra depth.


And as far as making time pass, I'm iffy about it. The method I used for Odd Jobs in Oblivion had a tendency to make NPC AI packages go a little wonky. And I really don't know another method of making time pass (well, I can make the player sleep, I think, but that would be odd. Resting up while dragging back salvage?) so I'm considering just warping the player back to camp, with the new feature installed.

:EDIT:

I think I got it! Instead of being like Oblivion, it's just like the reference thing! You just write the messages down inside a form that pretty much just stores the messages neatly for you. Then you just call the message from the script and you don't have to worry about editing the boxes from the script. That's actually a bit simpler than the older method, it was just different enough that it had me stumped. It's exactly like calling a remote container, when I think about it.

The mod moves forward!

:EDIT2:

Okay, here's basically what I need, right?

I want to start by saying that I am lazy tonight and didn't read the entire post, so I am sorry for this. A few things did jump out at me that I would like to comment on though, if you don't mind

I love the whole do it yourself concept!

I was really excited when I read that you were going to add items to a merchant so that we may buy what we want in our home (Camper). I want to mention that you should make your own container instead of adding to theirs so that your mod will less likely conflict with another mod that makes changes to the same container. I think I read that you were thinking of the one in Megaton, but if you do that, you may want to think about any people that blew it up, they wouldn't be able to use your mod.

I was kinda disappointed when you said you were just going to put all the items into a bulk purchase. It made me think that we really aren't doing it our self anymore. I wouldn't mind spending the money for each piece of furniture cause I felt that I could have my camper with the items that I wanted, not what was already picked out for me. I had in the back of my head the http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=9679 mod that we could now purchase the items from a merchant instead of getting them for free. That would be a dream come true

Anyways, don't listen to me I just wanted to point a few things out, I am sure what ever you come up with, will be fantastic!

That's really the kind of input I wanted, there. I'll be glad to do individual items ("Fridge now? Well, I also need the water tank. I can barely afford the tank....maybe I should get the fridge.") if that's what you want. I would like to point out that the house is actually the camper. (Which, will probably be obtained free from a nearby hard-to-get-to area. It's unique as far as campers go, though.)

I'm going to make a (seperate) test ESP in a few minutes to test the ShowMessage Script I've got up there, to see if I've actually got it down where I can use it. If that works, DIY moves forward, and I start writing down ideas about the next one.

Thus far, though, here's a list of Features the house will have, after the Main quest, Side quest, and all the miniquests are done. (Items may be removed or added later.)

MQ
The actual house and walls.
The "Main" furnitures (storage, fridge, a couple ammo crates, some lockers, the Bed/sofa, radio, stove, outhouse)

SQ
The cellar/bunker.
Workbench, MFI kit, MFL kit (buyables, not findables)
Some specifically labelled containers for weapons and ammo.

Unlabeled Quests
Windmill (draws water through pre-war water pipes) Enables a sink, as well. Water will dirty/irradiated.
Generator (powers light system, for dark nights)
(Considering a Brahmin pen. Don't know what exact use it could be for, but...considering it. If I find some way of having the player get an advantage ((getting/selling brahmin products?)) I'll be more interested in it.)

:EDIT:

I have most definitely got a working MessageBox script now. It's amazing how much simpler this is compared to the old way, too. Just took a little getting used to. This is brilliant, actually. Anyways, here's a copy of the script for anyone who needs to look one over/wants to see what I got.

Nice idea! An expansion could be to track down a water purification system to improve the quality to "good", or even a water chip to make pure water.


An alternative could be to require the usage of batteries The generator may also require some sort of fuel - fuel usage could be dependent on how well the player make the repairs (Repair skill FTW).


Once per day, a Brahmin could generate Brahmin Milk? You could slaughter it for Brahmin skin and meat. The skin could be used to make Brahmin clothes and/or Leather Armor. It would also need food - or maybe you could hire a (robotic?) milking maid to look after it? You may also want to take a look at http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=12180 for inspiration? Disclaimer: I have never used it, just found it on nexus.

I'll definitely look at that mod. I wouldn't force the player to feed the brahmin (as one could assume the brahmin picks around local grass) but I would like to give a bonus (double output) for feeding the poor beast. Maybe I could even get it to be a beast of burden for the player, which would really make it more important for the player. I can look into it, anyways. The brahmin would be expensive, though, to justify its usefulness to the player. Around a thousand caps would do well, I'd think. I'd make it essential, so the player wouldn't need buy another (well, maybe another that doesn't carry stuff) . No promises, though. But it would be neat for some players to do a little husbandry on the side. I'd definitely need help on the scripting for feeding it, though. Instead of actual feeding, maybe just buy a feeder and that in itself will double output. Just musing, really.

I do indeed have a working message box script. As it stands, I've basically got the little trailer itself, where you find it and drag it back. It's rather neat, because it works pretty much the way I envisioned it. You find the old trailer, and the script disables it, enables the version at camp (and it's warp door) and puts the player standing in front of it. I like it simple, too. All of the stuff will work like that, as well. The nice thing is that I only have to make the quest enable each next stage. Which is wicked nice - I don't have to keep track of a lot. When the player walks into the shell of the burned out house, the quest fires up (I think this is a nice spot to set up residence...) and you go from there. You won't find anything from my mod before you get the quest. Just like it should be.


It's falling into place rather nicely, is the bottom line. It's mostly assembly that I've got to do now. I don't have an estimated release date (as my available time varies constantly) but it shouldn't be very far into the future.

Sounding better and better all the time I loved reading about if you had enough money to buy the fridge or the water tank. That is realistic to me where we have to think about how much money we have, what we really need, and what we can afford at the time.

A mod that uses the Brahmin milk idea (from a milk pasteurize machine, not the Brahmin itself ) is http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=6338. I would prefer to get the milk from the Brahmin, but I don't even know if it is possible. Maybe you could get some idea or inspiration from it. I also agree that it should be expensive.

Sounds great so far! Keep up the excellent ideas and work!

Okay, I've looked into Arkhiel's mod, and the way he does it is through dialogue. I can't figure out for the life of me, though, how he resets the brahmin every day so you can milk them again. He adds a token object to them when you milk the brahmin, and if the (geez, I'm just going to say cow from now on. Brahmin takes a lot more time to spell.) cow has the token you can't milk them again. I'm wondering if I can't do that through script, with a global variable.

Even then, though, I still don't know how to reset the CanMilk variable. If someone would kindly help out with that, I'd very much appreciate it. One neat thing his method made me think of, is that his mod requires you to have a milk bottle before you can milk the cow. Makes sense, and gives the vanilla junk items a purpose. Not terrible.

I'm not looking for a script, but if someone could just explain how I could do that, it would help out a lot.