http://www.finhosting.fi/~fallout/downloads/NVStripOpen.zip


Video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XtO2QuHAVA


Screenshot of game world like this - - The Strip at night - -

http://www.finhosting.fi/~fallout/screenshots/StripAtNight.jpg



Screenshot of what the GECK render window with Navmesh loaded looks like:

http://www.finhosting.fi/~fallout/screenshots/GECK-StripOpen.jpg


This is intended as a modders resource and/or a demonstration sort of mod. It has a version of NV's strip which has had the obstructions and doors between the areas removed, making one large area. Also, the holes in the navmesh which made way for the obstructions have been repaired.

You can either load this mod just to get a look at what the area looks like as one segment, or, use it as a base for your own mod. If used as-is in a live game, I do not know how well it will work. It may be harmless, or it could do something stupid over time, I couldn't tell you.

When The Strip is one large world area, it's a pretty neat effect. However, joining the areas like this made it cause a lot more video and CPU use, in particular when you first zone in. Your game may even freeze up for a short bit after you enter. When that happens to me, I just wait for a short bit, and then my PC recovers and I get sort-of okay performance in the area.

In the unmodded, divided-up version of this area, the street is divided into several sub-areas, and it appears that NPCs are moved by script from area to
area, basically following the player. The script which moves the NPCs lives on the doors which the player activates as he moves from area to area.
In this modders resource/demo form of this mod, the scripting to move the NPCs is not being activated because the doors have been moved below
the landscape. So, the front part of the strip has NPCs and the last sections are almost empty.

This mod can serve as a modders resource in that someone could finish the work of re-implementing the NPCs back into the areas of the strip, more or less as they appeared in the multi-section version. This re-implementation probably means adding duplicates of the existing NPCs and integrating them. It's not that I can't personally do this, but I think someone else who has more of a drive for this mod could do so and we'd all be just as happy in the end.

In this effort, three things I will point out:

1) This mod is an .esm. If you are creating a mod which uses this, you do not do this by editing the .esm. Instead, you make an .esp of your own, and have
both FalloutNV.esm and this .esm as masters. You will want to locate your GECKCustom.ini file and find the line which says "bAllowMultipleMasterLoads=0"
and change that 0 to a 1. This file may be located in a directory like: C:\Documents and Settings\Username\My Documents\My Games\FalloutNV\ .

2) VStripGateScript - this script is the one which sits on the doors which are intended to be between the various areas. The code contains clues as to what was meant to go on in the various areas.

3) VStripSS00BRandomizerTrigger - This trigger was more or less toward the middle of the Strip. I've moved it closer to the entrance, but as it sits now is probably not the best and final way to get this code to run upon the player entering the area.


The parts of this which should not be changed as part of a further mod are: the navmesh changes and the way I've moved the obstructions beneath the landscape instead of deleting them. These changes were done in a way that helps decrease or eliminate savegame bugs and similar. Also, I've moved almost none of the triggers, point being that they are used for quests and similar. I would expect a number of the quests in the area to still work correctly because their triggers are still where they should be.

So, whatever you use this for is up to you, it is at least interesting to see.

Thanks to: all the ppl in the Bethesda > The G.E.C.K. (Fallout: New Vegas) forum who were participating in the thread where we discussed what was up with
this world area. That original link was: http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1141096-proof-that-the-strip-wasnt-always-in-three-sections/

Usage - - - its a modders resource, do whatever.

-- Tarrant, Nov. 15 2010

I have a video of it which I'll put up on youtube shortly.

Oooo, loving the mod, the strip actually feels like a strip....one problem....uhm, npcs wont load for the other cells =/. Like the ones in vault 21 and Tops...

I love the way it looks too....

and on that note I never said it was playable =p . I've never even tried entering the buildings. But I feel certain that whatever's broken should be repairable by whoever wants to see it all be right.

hmm the girl in the Vault is there, and tops looks normal in my game, hmm ... ???

Oh, i meant the outside =P. NPCS for me did not spawn. Inside the buildings were good.

Right. The reason there aren't NPCs in the outside portion is more or less explained by the wall of text in the main post.

Fail is me. T_T

TL:DR?

Man.

Looking at the way the strip looks at night, with those barriers removed...

Whoever was making the area and then realized that it was going to have to be split up, if that is how it went down - - - they must have been disappointed and stuff - - because the open one looks so damn nice. The closed-up one isn't a piece of [censored] or anything but, its.. not the same??? The single-area one just has, well, a different presence.

they probably had to nerf it to make it run on the consoles. im just getting depressed now about TES 5 since they have said they are making it for current gen consoles.

there was an open cities mod for oblivion which essentially did the same thing. i think they put doors in the city and then had the npcs travel from the origina cells to the new cells. the doors were invisible and not seen by the player. perhaps that could be done here.

Wouldn't be surprised.... but my PC did choke and gag the first time I went through that Strip door eh ...



Ah, I had no idea. History repeats itself, it seems.

They probably nerfed it because of general performance issues. They want this to run on as many pc's as possible. I was definitely bummed because in an early video from Obsidian of the strip, you could see the whole area and there appeared to be no walls at all. When I got there and saw the walls/dividers, that was a downer. The thing for me is, each cell in Vegas seems smaller than Megaton as a whole in FO3. It also looks like a hack job imho and I feel that this should have been more open like it was intended.

Yeahs...

well now you can download the mod I guess. And somebody WILL put the NPCs in where they belong. If seriously nobody does, I'll revisit it sometime and do it.

Great Job Tarrant! :goodjob: The strip looks fabulous all broken out like this.



I would not be worried yet about TES 5 (if that is indeed the next title), as Todd Howard said they are making a totally new engine for the next title that is more optimized for open world RPGs. With the dominance of consoles in the gaming world now, I'm sure they will have that hardware as the target architecture. I would not be so worried about the performance, the Gamebroyo engine is what has troubles and is dated now. The new engine may work quite well!

Isn't the new engine an updated/upgraded version of GB? I don't think they coded it from the ground up.

We have absolutely No idea what it is made of, there is nothing anywhere on it yet. As usual, Bethesda keeps secrets tighter than the CIA.

Even if it is a new/updated GB engine, we still have no idea how Good that will be. This will be the first real RPG open-world engine upgrade since Oblivion, and given how successful that engine was I would keep the faith IMHO.

Man the strip looks nice all open like this! I think this is a big visual deal. :fallout:

No, they've specifically said that it's a modified version of Gamebyro.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2010-08-16-todd-howard-working-on-two-new-games

The FO3/NV engine, although it looked a bit outdated. performed very well IMO. Looked better than OB, better scalability and performed better overall especially since the gameworld is huge. I hope they continue in that line instead of having another version that slows down just about everything on release.

Ok, I'll stop the OT now XD

All the kudos goes to the people who designed that beautiful area. All I did was part the curtains so we could get to see it as, perhaps, it was meant to be.

Actually no, he doesn't specifically say that. I checked both this article and the full length. He says that they are developing it on "existing platforms", and that its a huge technology leap from the last game. But he does Not specifically mention Gamebroyo as part of that "existing technology". Its an assumption At Best at this point.



Wonderfully said. I cannot agree more, the strip in its fullness has a bigger impact on me then the chunky version.

Curious, would it be difficult to patch the street when the walls once were to make it look clean/new? I might play with this in the GECK, but I no nothing of NavMesh-ing.

One other question. I couldn't tell clearly in the video if the LOD walls are still there and fade when you get close. It kinda looks like you can see from end to end, but it may be an illusion. I will have to take a closer look when I get home...

Thanks you for this.

Mahalo,
Nemesis.

Re-read the part I quoted, specifically the bit about how it's derived from the Fallout 3 engine. That makes it a modified Gamebyro engine.

Really sounds like a must have. I hope whomever goes about re-integrating the npcs take a moment to give them all unique names. Choosing the new names would in fact be fairly easy. Use something like http://www.behindthename.com/random/ Personally I was toying around with greek/roman/jewish/english/russian/etc mix. Makes for some unique names.

I didn't notice the street looking overly destroyed where the walls were? I had not noticed anything that looked completely wrong, but I have not looked so closely. if you think it looks broken you could try messing with it, its just statics.

The LOD is jus as fine as ever. It's all one world space, in both the normal game and in this. The dividing-up was just a bunch of walls and collision objects and vision-blocking things.

The navmesh is best left as I put it. I've been careful to make as few changes as I felt I could get away with. It is possible to edit a navmesh like this and have it start to malfunction in-game for no good reason, and when that happens, it really svcks. So if uall like the fact that the navmesh works, don't break it =p

the big issue isnt so much that its gamebryo. if they replaced enough of the engine, lets say 99% of it, gamebryo probably could be made into a good engine. the big problem is that they are designing the game to work on existing consoles.......which means the game is going to be slightly better than oblivion. short draw distances, low res textures, nerfed physics etc. assuming that TES comes out in 2012 that means we will have a game that looks like oblivion which was 4 years ago until the next TES game in 2017 or 2018 or even later. we are going to have a game that looks and feels like an 06 or 07 game all the way into 2018. by that time i will be able to run TES 5 on a netbook. my only hope is that they design the game around PCs first and then have settings strip stuff away so that it fits on the consoles. that hasnt been the case with bethesda or many other developers so i dont see that happening..........its just depressing.

a good comparison is between cryengine 3 vs cryengine 2. yeah they got it to work on the consoles.........they also nerfed physics, reduced shadows and dramatically shortened the draw distances and the setting is in a city-scape which is much easier to render than a natural landscape with foliage. i have faith in crytech that at least they have shown some commitment to the PC community in the past as far as engines are concerned so im hoping that they are taking the "start with PC first and strip away approach". i dont have that faith in other developers.

Will you be working on adding NPC's? I love the atmosphere now, it just needs to get it's life back.