Here is one example:
Look at this GECK screenshot.
http://content.glidesociety.com/image.aspx?id=6a72c8f9-d9d5-49a1-ad6b-9039ff405950
The rectangular red blocks are collision markers. You can't go through them. The location is Quarry Junction. Sloan is under the light green circle to the left.

Look at this in-game screenshot.
http://content.glidesociety.com/image.aspx?id=51f2fbae-aa10-4754-9638-205b3c54bced
There is no reason why the character cannot go any further given the terrain, other than make the player go into the quarry through 2 designated entry points.




If that were the case, this wouldn't be a sandbox game, and invisible walls would be placed alongside all roads so the player would be constrained to flat surfaces
It is not an engine restriction. Companions make it just fine on the terrain in the example above, and they still disappear even in places where the collision walls are not a factor.

They are annoying but I can stand them. I'd rather they work on getting rid of as many bugs as they can before they deal with the Invisible Walls.

There are zones on the map, which are just plain unclimbable (the mountains/cliffs between New Vegas/Freeside/West Side and the Jacobstown road come to mind). Those I can deal with. However, there are invisible walls thrown in on top of random, totally climbable hills, often ones that don't have anything really important going on around them. Just random hills in the Wastes. That is something that frustrates me. I realize you want to optimize the game, and sometimes that forces a player around, but couldn't they just make the hill really unclimbable or something, rather than have an invisible wall?

Anyway, it's not a big deal for me, and I really don't care. If I run into an invisible wall, I test it by running along it until I find the first break in it (if it exists), or just follow the ringed invisible wall around and figure out short of climbing the hill/mountain, what is the shortest route between my target destinations.

But they were confined to the edges of the map, where you would expect to find them. I could still climb Gnoll Mountain or Dive Rock withoout being thwarted by invisible walls. Ever tried mountain climbing in the Mojave? It's not fun at all.

Whenever I run into an invisable barrier I start yelling at my TV and my neighbors complain... It BY FAR is the worst idea to be added to Fallout

Yeah, the first time I ran into an invisible wall in NV was when I was climbing a mountain, I was one jump away from getting over the lowest part of the mountain and though *awsome I just saved myself like 10minutes of walking; then bam theres an invisable wall preventing me from making that one last jump to make it over the mountain..... I was frustrated to say the least. I don't go mountain climbing anymore...

I think invisible walls are far better than the alternative: turning New Vegas into a maze of canyons. People complain about "linear game play" now; with cliffs instead of invisible walls the game would look completely like a maze.

Plus, these walls are also used to reduce cheesing. Complete freedom of movement would result in total "kill everything from a place the monsters can't get to" type of boring game play. What fun! :snoring:

And what if I'm not traveling with followers?

Besides, it doesn't seem to be doing much to help, and really, if you're going to use that kind of logic to justify artifically limiting the player's freedom, you might as well remove jumping while you're at it, since they might allow you to get places NPCs can't follow you to.



Of course, had they never put them in the first place, they wouldn't have had to deal with them. Those invisible walls wouldn't be there unless someone put them there...

I don't like the invisible walls either, I mean, I could accept them if they were just on the border, usually I give up on trying to go further if the game prevents me from doing so, provided it's the border of the map, but in New Vegas, they're not just limited to the borders surrouding the map, in fact, most of those have actual physical barriers placed around them. And while removing the invisible barriers around the map would likely allow players to get over said borders, in some places, I'm generally content not to try since I know there's nothing worth seeing beyond the borders anyway. What bothers me is when they are used within the map, like when a rock I should clearly be able to climb over has an invisible barrier over it to keep me from doing so. I guess thw idea was to try to force players down a predefined path. Well, it's an open world sandbox, it's not SUPPOSED to go out of its way to force the player down a predefined path. Now obviously, there are places where the player's freedom of movement will be limited, like in buildings, where the player can obviously only move where there are accessable passages, but in that case, it's a reasonable limitation placed on the player by the environment, and I'm fine with it. What bothers me is when there are places where I should be able to go, but can't due to artificial limitations. If Obsidian really must limit the player's movement in such a way, they should at least make sure the ways you can't go are blocked by physical barriers that could concievably impede your progress there



The game already has a lot of canyons, it's just that even when you should be able to get over them, the game won't let you.

And who ever said the alternative had to be that? Obsidian could also do what Bethesda does in the Elder Scrolls and Fallout 3 and NOT try to force the player down a linear path at every turn. It's not like there's any law saying that we're not allowed to *gasp* have non-linear gameplay in our sandboxes.



If it makes the game boring, then why would you do it? It's like complaining that you can use the difficulty slider to make the game easier even though you don't actually need to use it. Just because something is possible in the game doesn't mean there's some mysterious force compelling you to do it.

And that wouldn't be a problem if the AI wasn't terrible and could get to everywhere the player can get to.

Downloaded the wall be gone mod. Thank You.

The only invisible walls I've come across prevented me from cheesing my way through Quarry Junction.

One of my in-game hobbies is trying to get to places on hills and such that I am supposedly not meant to, and in the process I have found a large number of invisible walls. Some are rather annoying, since I can clearly jump over the small rock obstacle in front of me, while others make eminent sense since the nearby location really isn't supposed to be approached that way.

For example: it is entirely possible, albeit rather difficult and time-consuming, to approach Jacobstown from the surrounding hills, however that's not a good idea since the place is fenced off except for the lone entrance via the road. There are also some locations that have quest-related trigger boxes, and being able to bypass the trigger would really mess things up; fortunately, in most of these cases there is plenty of rubble blocking attempts at nonstandard access.

As I am on a PC I can, and do, use the 'tcl' command to go poking around in areas that are usually 'off limits', and I can assure everyone that they really aren't missing anything by not being able to scale every single rock face or heap of concrete fragments, since there is absolutely nothing up there.

I will admit that the invisible walls surrounding Quarry Junction really annoyed me when I first encountered them, since it was clear my character could have made the jump that was being blocked and gotten on top of the rock wall in order to snipe the Deathclaws. However, after actually fighting my way through the place and abusing every incline and ledge I could in order to keep them from reaching me, I am actually glad the walls are there since otherwise clearing the place would have been a cakewalk instead of the tense mobile battle that developed on and around the heavy machinery in the quarry.

In the case of the REPCONN Testing Site, I also used 'tcl' to get up to the dome area after a similarly annoying blockage of a clearly feasible jump, however it turned out that that structures up there cannot be entered so there was no real reason to be up there in the first place. I do wish they had just made the rocks a bit taller, as that would have had the same effect while not being annoying. On the whole, though, I don't mind the invisible walls since I know there's no reason to be in most of the areas behind them, and the areas there is a reason to go to have other ways of being reached.

A thousand times this! :trophy:

... so, in other words, you are ok with being forced to play one way and being led around, rather than "sandboxing"..

If by "sandboxing" you mean "shooting fish in a barrel" then yes! :gun:

i killed like 20 cazadores trying to use the mountains to get over the mountain at jacobs town and using most of my stims and sassperila bottles to climb it and hit an invisible wall :banghead: :banghead:

No. By "sandboxing" I mean an open field where I can go anywhere without hitting invisible walls that made me go one way, and one way only, taking away my options to go where I want to go and play the game the way I want to play it... you know, like an RPG... rather than making me go on a defined path, in a sort of al fresco dungeon, as if I was playing a console FPS ... oh.. wait....

double post

You do realize that these "invisible walls" are there, in part, to prevent "fish in a barrel" scenarios, right?

Yes, you said that twice. And I''ll iterate, the game is supposed to be a role playing game: if a player wants to "shoot at fish in a barrel", he should have that option. If the player wants to go running into a deathclaw pack wearing only underwear and wielding a kitchen knife, he should be able to do that too.

I play with the invisible walls remover mod. If there are fish in a barrel situations, and there very well may be, I haven’t found one in a few dozen hours of playing.

The only side-effect I am finding is: what seems perfectly reasonable terrain for the player to cross (a steep incline, but not too steep, for example), messes up the companion’s path finding occasionally, and unable to follow you, they will take a strange and round about way to reach you.

It has become eminently clear that some folks here think that 'not being able to scale every last hillock' somehow equates to 'linear, pre-defined path from which one may never vary', and that is simply NOT true.

Rather, it means 'you, the player, are free to go wherever you wish save for those locations where we, the developers, have deemed it necessary, for game-play reasons, to forcibly re-route your travels around these specific areas'. My previously-mentioned attempt to arrange a 'Deathclaws-in-a-barrel' scenario at Quarry Junction just happens to be one of those that was deemed necessary to prevent so that clearing the quarry meant you actually had to (*GASP*) enter the quarry in the first place.

In many cases, the invisible walls mean that you need to go around instead of taking a direct route to a particular location, however there is almost always more than one way to reach said location even though the direct approach has been forcibly blocked. That is hardly 'a single, pre-defined path one must follow', unless one considers 'all routes save the shortest possible way' to be one path, which is ludicrous on the face of it.

Climbing onto the quarry from one side HARDLY qualifies as "scaling every last hill".

But you are not free to go wherever you wish, nor free to play the game the way you want to play the game, are you?. The only "game-play" reasons I can see, particularly with the quarry's invisible walls, is to make the game more and more feel like a console FPS.


Not to mention,why in the world they had to put in-game invisible walls? It would've taken the same amount of time to put landscape meshes around the quarry. That at least wouldn't stop the player on his tracks trying to figure out why he can't walk that way when the path seemed clear. All this talk about realism, and hardcoe mode forcing you to "eat", "sleep", and "drink water" for realism's sake... "well, son, here and some invisible walls for you. How's that for "realism" in a sandbox game?"