Post Apocalyptic Dreams http://padreams.posterous.com Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas Modding posterous.com Tue, 05 Mar 2013 18:09:00 -0800 Back in the saddle http://padreams.posterous.com/back-in-the-saddle http://padreams.posterous.com/back-in-the-saddle

Well, par for the course, life got in the way and I stopped playing Fallout for a while. Well, I am back, doubly invigorated because somebody released an inferior mod doing some of what my mod does. Anyhow, the download link on the right now has the FurtherNeeds mod as a master so that I could release an ESP for TTW. It's nice seeing my mod working in the Fallout 3 environments too. I'll have to backport the mod to work with FO3 soon as well. 

It also fixes a nasty bug where I wasn't completely undressing the PC when they "go". I now cycle through every available slot that NVSE provides for me and in a loop redress them when we're done. I'll post the code later if anybody is interested. It uses a form list to store what was removed so that I can easily redress the player when they're done.

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Tue, 10 Apr 2012 01:21:00 -0700 HUD Revamp http://padreams.posterous.com/hud-revamp http://padreams.posterous.com/hud-revamp

The HUD has been revamped. I also bubbled up the food, water and sleep meters. This looks significantly better with DarN's UI but also works with a stock UI. It looks like this

Stock UI

DarNified UI

Getting it to work with the FOMOD installer is a not exactly working with an installed DarNified UI at the moment. To make it go, install it using the FOMOD. Select Darnified UI instead of Vanilla. Say No when asked to overwrite the hud_main_menu.xml file.

After it installs, go into the <GameDir>\Data\Menus\Main directory and modify the hud_main_menu.xml file. Add the following line...

<include src="FurtherNeeds.xml"/>

...just before the final </menu> closing tag. Doing this will enable the nicer, smaller font, HUD UI.

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Mon, 09 Apr 2012 00:43:00 -0700 Water bottle usage solved http://padreams.posterous.com/water-bottle-usage-solved http://padreams.posterous.com/water-bottle-usage-solved

So using water bottles from the inventory are now scriptable. There was a bit of a workaround required but I got it up and running. Could really use some more beta testers about now. The download is on the right hand side of this page. There is a known issue if you have DarN's UI installed via a FOMOD. Do not override the hud_main_menu file as this is modified automatically.

I know there are several small bugs remaining, and I would definitely like to get some feedback on rates of hygiene and waste increase and their effects on the game. Please comment or send me an email.

Thanks

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Tue, 03 Apr 2012 01:11:00 -0700 Getting closer to a Nexus release http://padreams.posterous.com/getting-closer-to-a-nexus-release http://padreams.posterous.com/getting-closer-to-a-nexus-release

I'm slowly but surely making my way through my internal bug fixes. Tonights progress includes:

Fixes
  • Using purified water, dirty water or irradiated water yields you an empty whiskey bottle that can be refilled using a normal water source
  • Hallway water fountains are no longer outdoor water sources (i.e. big water)
  • If the water source is better than your bottled water, your dirty or irradiated water will be emptied and refilled with the better water. e.g. At dirty water your irradiated water will become dirty water. At pure water your dirty and irradiated water become pure water
  • Some more stability checks
New Bugs
  • (Unconfirmed) The check to see if you are bottling water from a bottle of water is no longer in place. Can't be checked currently because it's difficult to determine whether or not a bottle of water was used from the inventory slot
  • Water fountain (indoor ones) continuously play sound when used for drinking. Need to figure out why. Otherwise works as intended.

 

As a side note, I think I understand why my menu from inventory water isn't working. It dawned on me tonight as I fixed a bug that you cannot activate a base object as retrieved from something like WaterPurified.GetBaseObject. Only instances of an object can be activated (it seems). This means that I may have a fix if I can figure out how to create an activatable instance of the various water types from an inventory base object type.

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Mon, 02 Apr 2012 19:00:00 -0700 Meebo Chat Widget http://padreams.posterous.com/meebo-chat-widget http://padreams.posterous.com/meebo-chat-widget

On the right hand side I've added a Meebo chat widget. Meebo is a universal instant messenger client in a web browser. One of the cool things it can do is the widget you see on the right. If I am online, you can chat with me directly. If I am away or sleeping, you can still type in messages and when I next log on, I'll be able to see what you had to say.  It's a slick way to keep in contact and allows direct contact with me when I'm online.

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Fri, 30 Mar 2012 12:32:00 -0700 Next Fallout Mods http://padreams.posterous.com/next-fallout-mods http://padreams.posterous.com/next-fallout-mods

Since I'm at work and can't actually work on my mod I was daydreaming about future Fallout mods while my server restarts. I was thinking of a mini-series that hooks into the Start New Game button from the main menu.

It would present you with the option to continue on and play a normal New Vegas game or allow you to start a (or one of) my mini series. These would take place outside the normal mapped area of Fallout New Vegas.

Concept

  1. The first idea I had was you start off outside of a broken vehicle with no weapons (one of the models from Fallout 3 that seemed to be lying around everywhere but this one is not completely broken). It finally ran out of gas. You alongside a road, broken like most but navigable. 
    • The player then needs to head off and figure out what to do next. I was thinking of having a house with one or more psychopathic serial killers. The player if she heads there will be invited in, basically normal raiders but with conversation and a hidden motive.  

      One of the things I hate about the NPCs in Fallout is that they are very one dimensional when found in the wastes. Usually anybody you see is hell bent on killing you without even getting to know you first.

    • Other things that could happen might be the player finds an old gas station nearby, but it seems deserted. As she looks around for fuel she sees a child running away (maybe to the house of serial killers).

    • Or perhaps she comes into a town where people basically push her away but if she takes something or tries to persuade them to accept her it goes bad. She wakes up underground in a locked room or something. She finds a way out and then needs to escape the city itself, etc. etc. etc. 

Got any other ideas? Sound off

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Thu, 29 Mar 2012 00:42:00 -0700 WOOOHOOO! http://padreams.posterous.com/wooohooo http://padreams.posterous.com/wooohooo

Success! Finally figured out a way to script the outdoor water sources. Turns out when I finally resigned myself to creating a bunch of Actor Effects and Base Effects, I took a closer look at the Water Types. It seems every water type (at least every one I could see the usages for) is used outdoors by default.

This means, and even though I must do more testing, that I can assume all those sources are big water sources (meaning I can use the hard mode of my mod). I was also able to show a message menu and get a response when activating a non object based water type.

This is pretty big. I need to make sure it doesn't affect things like bottled water that will need their own object script but so far so good. The best part is I only had to duplicate the 6 Actor Effects, their 3 Base Effects and the 3 scripts attached to those Base Effects (so far).

Signing off, but finally on a good notel.  Андрей you can expect another update very soon. Probably tomorrow some time. This one will include support for

  • Bathtubs
  • Water Valves, Water Pipes, Etc...
  • Outdoor Water Sources (Lakes, Wells, etc...)

If I am really productive you may also see updates for

  • Easy, Moderate and Hard modes
  • Water bottles
  • Filling other bottles like empty whiskey bottles, empty sasparilla bottles, etc...

This was the major breakthrough I needed to get this mod moving. I don't know how many nights I spent trying to find a way to script something through an Effect script as though it were an Object script.

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Wed, 28 Mar 2012 01:22:00 -0700 Sigh.... http://padreams.posterous.com/sigh http://padreams.posterous.com/sigh

Well after spending two full nights trying to see if there was any way around going full out to handle the outdoor drinking water (lakes, ponds, etc...) there just doesn't seem to be a way. I will have to create roughly 150+ objects. If any of the Water Type objects reflect anything that deals with indoor water usage or object water usage then I'll be in trouble.

I've sent out some emails to the NVSE guys for help. So far, nothing. I tried building the source code for NVSE and it seems to build successfully but if I change it in any way it fails to load the game. Also there seems to be some important code missing (the code to build the nvse_editor_1_4.dll file). Without this code, even if I could add new commands to the scripting language I would be unable to add it to a mod. Even assuming I could, the NVSE guys would have to approve my changes and add the code to the trunk or only I would be able to use it. For that to happen they'd have to respond to me first.

So I'm gonna try the brute force method. Failing that, I don't think I'll be able to make the mod changes I want to make in order to make this mod more usable. I'll still be able to do some of what I want, but not everything.

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Mon, 26 Mar 2012 12:52:00 -0700 Sorry for any delays out there... http://padreams.posterous.com/sorry-for-any-delays-out-there http://padreams.posterous.com/sorry-for-any-delays-out-there

I took the last two weeks off as I was recovering from a small surgery I had. Now that I'm feeling better I'll be jumping back into this. I found out recently that Skyrim uses a completely different (and seemingly more capable) scripting engine than all the previous titles. Interested in looking into this and I'll probably spawn off a new blog for future Skyrim mods, but I want to finish at least one mod first.

I actually have another uncompleted mod for Fallout 3 as well. That mod was an alternate start mod for added replayability. It allowed you to have a different past and start in a different part of the capital wasteland.

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Mon, 12 Mar 2012 01:03:00 -0700 How to solve the water usage quandry... http://padreams.posterous.com/how-to-solve-the-water-usage-quandry http://padreams.posterous.com/how-to-solve-the-water-usage-quandry

So as the few followers I have (I know of only one; feel free to post guys) knows, one of the things I am struggling to provide a good solution to is the mod's ability to allow you to choose how to use and consume water. There are three real choices I'd like to make available.

  1. Bottling the water
  2. Drinking the water
  3. Bathing with the water

The menu options I want to present will allow the user to use water in the game with the mod in various combinations of these three ways.

[Easy Mode]
The easy mode would be to do all three with any given source of water. This would allow the user to fill any available water bottles (as long as that water didn't come from an existing bottled solution).

[Average Mode]
The average or medium difficulty mode is the recommended one. It basically states that with any given source of water any one of the above three solutions will work (given that you're not filling all your bottles from a bottle; I may eventually allow filling a bottle from a bottle for completeness sake but aside from that it will be initially not allowed).

[Hard Mode]
Finally there is hard mode; this mode allows you to do 1 and 2 from all sources that make sense but only allows bathing from larger sources of water (such as lakes, bathtubs, etc...). This option will likely be cut unless I come up with a fairly clever solution to the problem that large bodies of water are not really something I can script. I have a potential roundabout solution but it likely doesn't provide enough granularity to make a lot of sense. 

The Trouble
The trouble with everything stems from the lack of scriptability of water from several sources. There are also issues with determining what source of water was even used. Some examples, I could say if the player is swimming then lower the hygiene penalty for simply swimming in water. The problem is that I have no access or reference to the type of water the player is swimming in so I have no idea how to script the hygiene monitors or recovery rates. This means you can swim in dirty radiated water and come out clean as a whistle as though you were using the Ultra Lux baths.

Another big issue is that you can drink from a pond or clear stream (pure water) but I can't attach a script directly to that action so, again, I have no idea what type of water the player is drinking from nor how to script even the option to offer the menu to allow the player a way to choose options 1, 2 or 3 above.

The Problems
Currently when drinking water a spell effect is added to the player to heal and sate H20 needs for hardcore mode. These get applied through Actor Effects (AE) linked to a particular water type. Each AE has a list of Base Effects (BEs) that affect the player. To each of the water AEs I've created and attached a BE that affects the new Hygiene attribute. Examples of the BEs normally attached to water are Damage Rads (for irradiated water), Restore Dehydration, Restore Health, etc... One frustrating experience I had when developing the hygiene BEs was that a very applicable attribute of BEs, magnitude, doesn't work on newly created scriptable BEs as there is no way to determine the magnitude from the script.

The flow is

Water -> Actor Effect -> Base Effect -> Script.

When I first started writing the mod I created 3 BEs to handle the hygiene penalty restoration, 20 BEs to handle hygiene penalty allocation, 20 BEs to handle waste penalty allocation and 43 associated scripts; one per BE. You may be asking me why do I need 20 BEs to handle allocation of these two new attributes? Rember the mangintude problem I described above? Yeah I have a ton of BEs with names like IncreaseHygiene5, IncreaseHygiene10, etc... I did 5 point allocation BEs from 5 to 100. One for each attribute where I could have had only one per attribute if the damn magnitude problem was fixed. 

That alone is staggering and it's not yet enough, nor does it include the other scripts I have in place to do things like monitor the hygiene and variables to track the rest of the mod values and modifications.

Loss of Granularity
The first loss of granularity with water happens in the first chain link. The water type is unknown as they all use one of about 5 different types of AEs. This means the granularity I have is down to the 6 levels of AEs (pure, rads, good, average, bad, terrible). From this point, I can almost hard code the AE type in the BE scripts and have the water use quest (see below) act accordingly.   

The second loss of granularity is in the 3 BEs I have handling the hygiene penalty resotration. 6->3 is, again, a 50% loss in granularity. I may end up having to write/copy the 3 BEs into 6; one per AE.

While limiting to the granularity of the AE types may seem to be sufficient, I lose one major component in the conversion from Water to AE. I now no longer know if the water source was a large body of water, a bathtub or a cup of water. This prevents me from allowing the players to play in Hard Mode. 

My first thought was to copy all 6 AEs and create "big water" versions of them. In order to make this work I had to also duplicate the 3 BEs I have from things like RestoreHygiene1 to RestoreHygieneBigWater1. This means that if I want to have a 1:1 solution from AE to BE I now not only need to move to 6 BEs for restoring hygiene but 12. This may work, but it creates some mod incompatibilities described in more detail below.

If Bethesda, Obsidian or the NVSE/FOSE team would provide a way to determine the water type source that invoked the original AE effect I could do so much more. But enough of the pining, lets start solving the problem.

Water Type Mapping
I counted around 78 distinct water types without about half of those not being used in Fallout New Vegas (many of which look like hold overs from Fallout 3 with names like MegatonBombWater and WaterTypeRivetcitySubmerged). 

If I created a 1:1 mapping for Water Type -> Actor Effects, I could essentially restore the bridge and loss of granularity. It would also require me to create a restore hygiene base effect for each actor effect. This would work for most of the problems I have and I could delete the existing 6 BEs I have (3 for water and 3 for "big water") as I would be able to tailor the restoration of hygiene to the specific water type. 

This is great, right? I mean what's a little monotony in exchange for a better user experience, right? It may be, but it does introduce a new issue. First of all, I have now made the mod incompatible with any other mod that directly modifies the 6 Actor Effects Bethesda provided. Now, that may already be the case if another mod wants to modify the base effects of existing water types. I don't know if they merge or overwrite. I suspect they do the later which would make the mods incompatible. 

If I stick to the original list of AEs, it would only conflict with mods that directly modify the AE's BEs. If you have ideas on an alternate solution to this, please let me know. I'm all ears.

Water Use Quest
So another issue with the whole BE/AE bits are that you cannot invoke a message box UI menu for the user from within an Actor Effect or Base Effect script. "But wait!" you cry, "there are already water bottling mods with menus when using the water!" 

I thought it would be easy to. On close inspection of those mods it's clear that they only affect objects that provide you with water, not lakes and statics or other furniture items like outhouses. My solution to this problem, I think (as I haven't coded it yet), is to create a Water Use quest that runs in the background. When I want to invoke a menu from the base effect (or anywhere else), what I do is set a flag on the Water Use (WU) quest to show the menu and likely a few other context values to let the quest know which menu and what types of options to provide

This way, even with items, I can simply say Set FurtherNeedsWaterUse.WaterType to 1 (I have to make a numeric mapping since we can't have string variables) followed by setting a reference if I have one and any other context variables I can think of. When those are set I saySet FurtherNeedsWaterUse.Process to 1. This would queue the quest script, which is always looping, to show the message box (menu) and begin the process. 

Closing Thoughts
This is a lot to read and process. If you have ideas or alternate solutions, please let me know. As I make some more progress I'll write more. Sorry Андрей, no updates yet.

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Mon, 05 Mar 2012 00:38:00 -0800 FOMODs: The Good, Bad and the Ugly http://padreams.posterous.com/fomods-the-good-bad-and-the-ugly http://padreams.posterous.com/fomods-the-good-bad-and-the-ugly

FOMODs are, depending on the description, either normal mod archives with a fomod directory or the contents of a fomod directory or both. The point of them, originally, was to provide custom installs for mods created for use with Fallout 3 and FOMM, the FallOut Mod Manager.

These are great in theory and even the API, see more on this later, is fairly easy* to use. It does a lot of things such as being able to very easily find and modify a value within the .ini files as well as to copy select files in based on values you provide to the user to choose. 

They require the ability to program in C# a little bit. Very basic fomods could likely be coded by those who don't know how to program coupled with a little luck and several forums' references. Being a programmer myself (albeit mostly in non .NET languages) I wasn't really fazed by the task of writing something in C#. The thing that bothered me was the lack of consistent documentation on how to make this all happen.

This is further more compounded by the fact that some fomod scripting techniques don't work for NMM where they do for FOMM. Remember that the NMM, or Nexus Mod Mananger, is still relatively new and needs some updating to fully and truly replace the wonder of FOMM, the Fallout Mod Manager.

The biggest draw to using the NMM is that you can one-click download and register mods from the website directly into your NMM. Another compounding issue with writing FOMODs that work with the NMM is that most FOMOD example code out there directly reflects Fallout 3 and commands that check versions of the script extenders like FOSE are not well documented for their New Vegas counterparts, a.k.a. NVSE.

Despite all this and a little plagiarism I was finally able to modify Breeze's New Vegas Males' FOMOD script to do what I needed it to for my Further Needs. The reason this is needed for my mod is to enable the correct HUD denoting the Waste and Hygiene monitors on the screen. The locations for these monitors varies if you're using the DarNified UI or the vanilla stock UI. Since I vastly prefer the former but can't expect everybody to be using it as well I must also support the later. 

One addition I'd like to add to my FOMOD script is the ability to extract the main hud file out of the BSA. I'll have to solve this issue before shipping since I am not sure that I'm free to inculde it in my mod given it's part of the files that come with the game (even though other mods do this already). I think I've figured this out... will write a new post once I've verified my technique.

That's all for now. I'll post some screen shots of the FOMOD installer form later.

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Thu, 01 Mar 2012 01:44:00 -0800 Grinding through the bugs http://padreams.posterous.com/grinding-through-the-bugs http://padreams.posterous.com/grinding-through-the-bugs

Slowly but surely making some headway through the bugs I've been able to find since returning to this project. I think at some point soon I'll break away from bug squashing and implement the FOMOD component. 

The FOMOD is required by the Nexus Mod Manager or the older Fallout Mod Manager tools to install the mod itself. Once this portion is done, I can give the mod to a few people so they can test it and report back any bugs they find. 

Tonight I did some testing around the water bottling menu options and water usage menu options in relation to hygiene and water storage. People need to use water with this mod in order to reduce their negative hygiene ratings. Both hygiene and waste monitors have five levels of effects; six if you count 0 (or completely clean and waste free).

For every 200 points worth of hygiene or waste increase, a level of penalty is incurred. Relieving oneself in public for example would increase the negative hygiene rating (given you're going outside and without any toilets nearby) but would decrease your waste level.

If your waste level is higher than 500, for example, relieving oneself outside is a nastier business and incurs a higher penalty to your hygiene than if your waste level were lower. Time to perform the deed is also depdendent upon waste level.

One bug that was squashed was when going outside instead of with a toilet, levels could reach in excess of 1000 which put the whole hygiene monitor and other scripts in an undefined state. Also, I added some extra logic in place so the script can recover if it has saved values that would put the system in one of these undefined states.

One feature I'm trying to support is the inability to clean oneself using small water sources if hard mode is selected for the mod. The mod supports three levels of difficulty (right now) when trying to reduce negative hygiene. Level one, easy mode, means that water acts normally when used *and* also reduces negative hygiene. Level two, medium mode, means that water can only be used for one or the other. Level three would mean that only large outdoor or bathtub sources of water can be used to reduce negative hygiene. 

This later mode may have to go. We'll have to see. It also conflicts with some of the bottling prefs I wanted to support. Anyhow, time to sleep. 

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Mon, 27 Feb 2012 01:02:00 -0800 Weekend Status Update http://padreams.posterous.com/weekend-status-update http://padreams.posterous.com/weekend-status-update

I spent most of the weekend working on an unrelated project (getting an Amithlon system up and running). However I did manage to get some work in towards my Further Needs post. As stated in my previous post; I removed the Comfort stat from the HUD and all referencing scripts. I also spent some time getting the system working again. 

One of the things you must do (well things you should do anyhow) when writing a mod is removing all the other cool mods that you have installed. Paring everything down to a vanillla system that others might be playing with so you can accurately provide them with a compatible and crash free experience.

On my list of things that I need to finish (that I've not yet done) is further integrate the bottled water experience. Many other mods have a bottled water type setup, but I wanted to make sure that it works with my new hygiene system. 

I also learned about the Mod Configuration Menu system. I'm going to try and integrate with that as well because it looks slick. It won't be required, but will be an optional add on. 

Thats all for now. 

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Sat, 25 Feb 2012 01:49:00 -0800 Ditching comfort... http://padreams.posterous.com/ditching-comfort http://padreams.posterous.com/ditching-comfort

Originally my mod was going to track three separate values; Waste, Hygiene and Comfort. I've decied to drop Comfort. This field really is a combination of the first two. If I restore it later on, it will have different meaning and context. For now, however, it goes the way side.

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Wed, 22 Feb 2012 11:02:00 -0800 Further Needs Mod Update http://padreams.posterous.com/further-needs-mod-update http://padreams.posterous.com/further-needs-mod-update

I received an email from PRHMro calling me out on my non-release. My father got sick and passed away last year and in all that I basically stopped working on the mod. I recently have started to get the bug to work on it again. Most of the mechanics are done. If someone would like to alpha test some bits for me I'd be happy to update my non-publicly viewable nexus page for it and get it going.


Things that work

  • Eating and drinking various different types of food and drink will increase the need "to go". 
  • If you ignore the need to go, after a certain period you will strip and go on your own. If this is in the middle of combat, too bad. You will be prone for a semi-random amount of time based on how long you waited and how badly you needed to go
  • Cleanliness meters also work. Using a clean restroom only marginally increases your dirty value, but dirty restrooms or waiting until your forced to go cause major increases in this unclean meter. 
  • Using sinks will cause you to reduce your unclean value
  • Various stages of uncleanliness invoke penalties to your various social skills and attributes
  • Needing to go also invokes some penalties to attributes and skills
  • UI placement of meters in the HUD (for DarnUI and for vanilla UI; could use some slight tweaking)
  • Stripping of clothing and animations to sit on seat toilets

Things that are unfinished

  • Male use of urinals (don't have the necessary animation skills to pull this off); currently they have to sit just like the ladies
  • The ability to strip only the lower part of the players clothing
  • Players will not be nude when sitting on the toilets unless they have a nude skin installed (or until I integrate support with some other skins to swap in/out at the time of usage)
  • Further storyline integration; I want people to not talk to you as much when you're filthy causing the player to go out of their way to get clean. I'd also like vendors to charge more in such cases
  • NMM install script with options
  • Ensuring that 

Things I don't plan on doing

  • Animation actually showing the players producing waste. There is no need for this and would show a level of focus on the part I am not interested in focusing on. Besides, I don't have the animation skill to do this

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Tue, 15 Mar 2011 13:18:00 -0700 Further Needs Early Release http://padreams.posterous.com/further-needs-early-release-coming-soon http://padreams.posterous.com/further-needs-early-release-coming-soon

So the mod now enforces the player to strip and go if the player's waste level ever reaches maximum. I think, to add an element of surprise, it will have a chance of happening at any point with a higher chance of it happening with each progressive level. This will add an element of surprise. The length of time is greater the higher your waste level.

Once this is hammered out, I need to write a customer FOMOD install script so that it will display the levels on the HUD. I'll follow suit and have it detect other HUD modifications the same way as the primary needs hud FOMOD script works (i.e. detecting DarnUI and what not). I suspect I'll have comfort-less version that people can test up on the nexus by the end of next week.

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Fri, 04 Mar 2011 13:18:00 -0800 Been a while since my last post... http://padreams.posterous.com/been-a-while-since-my-last-post http://padreams.posterous.com/been-a-while-since-my-last-post

Given it's been over a week since my last post I felt you all deserved a look-see as to what was going on. I have almost completed the implementation of being able to "go" anywhere in the wild. For now the player strips and squats; and, no you're not going to see any excrement animations. That's not the point of the mod. The stripping only happens to mark the helplessness of the player in such situations.

Going, when in the wild, incurs a much higher hygiene penalty than going in a restroom. I have some timing issues currently that I am trying to work out and since the player doesn't use an item or piece of furniture the scripts are different than they are when using a toilet. I have also been having some back and forth with the authors of NVSE.

Mostly the delays have been caused by midterms in a Korean class I am taking. I hope to be back into the full swing of things soon. I plan to release the first 2/3 of the mod in a playable form sometime soonish. The final third is the harder part and involves refinements on realism integration and the game mechanics of the comfort stat. That latter part being the hardest by far.

As usual, please comment or get in touch with me if you have any questions, requests or ideas.

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Fri, 25 Feb 2011 00:03:00 -0800 Basic Menu Options in Place http://padreams.posterous.com/basic-menu-options-in-place http://padreams.posterous.com/basic-menu-options-in-place

If only Arwen would respond to one of my emails. I followed the example set by her. I really do have modder's envy of this girl. I'm very impressed with her work and she's inspired me to do more. Anyhow; I have the basic menu options in place. I followed Arwen's examples and used a menu token and menu item. Currently I have two menu settings in place. One for how to bottle water and another for how water is used in regards to hygiene. Here's how it looks (so far)

Screenshot30
Screenshot33
Screenshot31
Screenshot34


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Thu, 24 Feb 2011 00:35:00 -0800 Level tracking http://padreams.posterous.com/level-tracking http://padreams.posterous.com/level-tracking

I created some new scripts, base effects and modified existing actor effects so that the other scripts can track the various hygiene and waste poisoning levels. What this lets me do is to make it take varying degrees of time to perform duties such as using the toilet or cleaning up. The next thing on my list that I've been avoiding is menu scripting. It's not so bad but it takes a bit of time to layout since I haven't done it in a while.

The menus I see creating next are

  • Fill, empty and refill bottles with various types of water; i.e. allowing the upgrade of dirty water to pure water for all existing filled bottles if a cleaner source of water is found.
  • Modify all water sources such that when used a menu option will be presented that allows the user to choose whether to consume the water or use it to improve the players hygiene (i.e. clean up).

An even more arduous task is to create the user preferences item as mentioned before. This item will function very similarly to Arwen's prefs items. It allows the user to configure the mod. This needs to happen but shouldn't be too hard once I get my hands dirty with the first set of menus I have planned. Apologize for the lack of updates as I had Korean finals at school this week outside of work which is already busy.

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Mon, 21 Feb 2011 00:47:00 -0800 Waste poisoning http://padreams.posterous.com/waste-poisoning http://padreams.posterous.com/waste-poisoning

Until I have a better name for it, waste poisoning is what happens when you neglect to use the facilities for extended periods of time. It starts off by simply lowering your agility. Subesequent levels lower your ability to perform physical skills such as using guns, fighting, etc... Finally the highest levels, in addition to progressively lowering skills and agility, also lower your overall charisma. Currently that is all that happens but I intend to do one of a couple of things:

  1. Lower the waste level by one or two categories but instantly raise hygiene penalties to their highest level (i.e. you couldn't find a toilet, guess what happens)
  2. Increase the hygiene increments over time significantly
  3. Make the player strip down no matter where they are to squat and relieve themselves. This will be very inconvenient if it happens during battle given the player loses controls during this time frame.

I may come up with something else to add to this or replace it but for now I am play testing the changes. 

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