Fallout New Vegas

About this mod

An ambitious take at remaking the classic Fallout using the New Vegas engine and gameplay.

Requirements
Permissions and credits
Fallout is an open world role-playing video game developed and published by Interplay Entertainment in 1997. The game has a post-apocalyptic and retro-futuristic setting, in the aftermath of a global nuclear war in an alternate history timeline mid-22nd century. The protagonist of Fallout is an inhabitant of one of the long-term shelters known as Vaults who is tasked to find the Water Chip to save other dwellers from water shortage.

Fallout is considered to be the spiritual successor to the 1988 role-playing video game Wasteland. It was initially intended to use Steve Jackson Games' system GURPS, but Interplay eventually used an internally developed system SPECIAL. The game was critically acclaimed and inspired a number of sequels and spin-off games, known collectively as the Fallout series.

The classic Fallout game, in my humble opinion, was a classic that everybody should feel inclined to try at least once, if gaming is something that appeals to your heart. Unfortunately, with the ever growing time-gap between now and then, as well as the release of newer and more modern titles in the series, including the ever so hype Fallout 4 this Fall, it's come to my attention that less and less people are finding themselves willing to play through the classic that I love so dearly. Of course, this is of no fault of their own! The game has not aged well, and suffers from what a lot of games at the era where also afflicted with; confusing, and often unclear, methods of progressing through the game, as well as rather challenging and unforgiving gameplay. This is all beside the fact, that the game has trouble running on Windows 7 and other modern Operating Systems. This is why I have taken it upon myself to remake the game we all know and love, to provide a more casual-friendly and clear cut experience for those who find themselves unable to be immersed in the older games.

This, as well as the my youtube channel, is where I will be documenting my progression through the remake. This is also where I will be uploading any and all files, when my progress leaves the Alpha phase and becomes ready to go for players too use.

I apologize ahead of time for slow progress, or low quality screenshots and/or videos. I'm working with a rather dated laptop that doesn't exactly run quite as smoothly as it used too, and am currently unemployed and looking for work. Until I get any calls back, upgrading my machine is out of the picture.

July 5th, 2015
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After working for somewhere between 8 - 10 hours, I've gotten a rough layout for weapons, armors, ammunition, consumables, and resistances. Below is a rough video displaying what I have done at the moment with the items. Please excuse the poor framerate and audio quality - as I've mentioned, I'm not exactly working with a super computer here. Admittedly, I'm also quite new to video editing. Also note, that the Test Dummies in the cell with me are much much stronger than most enemies you will find in the final product, and that my test character is only level one. Combat will not be decided that quickly in the game.


Weapons and ammunition
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I've added a roughly balanced version of each weapon in Fallout into the mod. At the moment, I'm simply re-using models and animations from New Vegas as a template for the weapons. While this works fine for some weapons, others will need a new model. For instance, the Crowbar is currently a Tire Iron. For the time being, it's something that will have to be dealt with, and will be fixed later. The damage, value, weight, and fire-speed for each weapon has been translated into the game based upon the individual statistics for each weapon found in Fallout. The trickiest part was fine-tuning DPS - when you translate the AP system, and how often one could use said weapon, into New Vegas you find yourself swinging a sledgehammer faster than the animation can even display; this is only one of the problems with translating a turn-based system into real time. With a little fine-tuning, I've fixed the fire speeds so that they're still fast paced, but slowed to something that can be handled easier by the game.

Armors and Resistances
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Much like the weapons, I'm currently re-using models that are already in the games files. They work quite well, but certainly leave room for work. I.e. removing the sheriff's badge from the leather jacket. That problem will be addressed later; hopefully, sooner rather than later. The original game worked on a system of resistances and thresholds as they correlate to Fire, Electric, Explosive, Plasma, Laser, and "Normal"/Physical. New Vegas already has a currently existing and working system for Fire and Energy resistance; this made implementation of Fire resistances easy. When it comes to Laser and Plasma, I found the separation of the two to be a little too specific and unnecessary. I decided to average out the resistance values for the two, and set that value as the armors Energy resistance instead. This may be subject to change later on, but I'm currently undecided. While New Vegas had Electric resistance in the game files, it had no uses in game and was incompletely implemented. After a little work with Base Effects and Actor Values, I've gotten Electric Resistance successfully implemented. Yay! Explosive resistance is completely abandoned in New Vegas, and lacks even the most basic framework for operating in the game. Until I get that worked out, and I will get it worked out, I have simply averaged the Damage and Explosive resistance of an armor, and set that value as the Damage Resistance; as well as completely lacking a framework for explosive resistance, it also lacks a frame for any kind of Threshold beyond physical Damage Threshold. Much like with others, I've averaged the Threshold ratings for each armor, and set the value as the armors Damage Threshold. I may keep it like this, but expect change in the future.

Consumables
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These where easy to implement, and they work fine... for now. Addiction rates and item effects are all tuned to the values found in Fallout.

July 6th, 2015
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First of all, before anything, I would like to give all credit for any new models or textures you'll see too Linerunner, War1982, Joe Foxx, Jonnyeah, DaiShiHUN, WeiJieSen, and Arenovalis. They're collaborative efforts produced some fine work, and without it as a resource I would be only so much further from progress.

Over the past 12-ish hours, I've made a lot of adjustments too what I have done. Weapons, ammo, and armors have all been overhauled from last update, and are working much smoother.

Weapons and ammunition
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In Fallout, there was a variety of ammunitions available - FMJ, JHP, AP, you name it. Unfortunately, a bug in the engine that was never fixed left these different ammunition types completely bland. Any stat modification a particular ammo was supposed to employ, wasn't. As a result, there would be no difference between AP and JHP. On top of that, each ammunition type lacked a standardized round. New Vegas has 9mm, then it has the 9mm AP, the 9mm HP, etc. as where in Fallout you find yourself choosing between 10mm AP and 10mm JHP... not that it made a difference. One change I introduced was adding a standardized, or "generic", round to each ammunition type. On top of that, I took the effects different ammo types where supposed to have in Fallout, and put them in here. This gives you more choices in combat without straying from what Fallout strived for.

Major changes where also made to all the weapons - in the previous update, you may have noticed the DPS values where extreme and weapons did oddly numbered amounts of damage. This has been fixed. In Fallout, a weapons damage is not static and instead works on a range. i.e. the 10mm Pistol could do anywhere from 5 - 12 damage, depending on how your character rolled against the different variables taken into account for that fight. Originally, I just set the maximum damage value for the weapon.. what I didn't count on, was that as the correlated skill increases then so does the damage to that particular item. This would make weapons end up with a damage that goes higher than it should be able too. What I've done to fix that, and make it so weapons still get close to their intended maximum as your skill increases, is that I've simply set the damage to the median value within that weapons damage range. The 10mm Pistol, for example, now does 9 base as opposed to 12. Normally, this would increase or decrease the speed of combat to something that's not desired - however, because of my additional modifications to DPS and armor, the combat has actually smoothed out better than before.

What I did to find the DPS of a weapon previously, was looked at how many bullets you could fire from the gun in a single turn, and at what AP that would cost you. This lead to extremely fast firing and swinging, and didn't make much sense. A better solution, I've found, is too instead set a base firing speed of 1 to any weapon that uses 6 AP in Fallout when using targeted aiming - this is the majority of them. For any weapon that used more or less AP than 6, I increased or decreased the firing speed on a scale of .15 per 1 AP changed from 6. This has made the speed at which your PC shoots and hits much more realistic, while still holding true to classic values.

Armors and resistances
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This is where things got a little tricky for me. To my dismay, I discovered that Electric damage is not a thing in New Vegas, much like how Electric resist wasn't until I implemented it in. Until I fix this, and I WILL fix this, it has simply been removed, and lumped into Energy resist. This left energy resist in an interesting place - because energy resist was turned into an average of the Plasma, Laser, and Electric resist values of a particular set of armor, I was getting some high numbers. What I failed to calculate in, was that DR and DT in New Vegas protect against all damage types, not just physical. This would leave anybody wearing Brotherhood Armor, Tesla Armor, or Power Armor virtually invincible to Fire or Energy damage, because of how Energy Resist and Fire resist where stacking on top on Damage Resist. Here is the new method of calculating armor values i've devised, that allows for more accurate armor ratings, that don't stray from Fallout's intentions.

DR - Much like before, I simply average out the Physical and Explosive resist of the particular piece of armor. Nothing new here.

DT - A mistake I was making previously, was averaging out the Threshold of ALL damage types for a piece of armor. This would lead to DT's much larger than intended, which would make a character with seemingly low stats an unkillable monster to all forms of damage - because there is no system for Energy threshold in the game, I now only average out Physical and Explosive for an armors DT rating. This has lowered most values to a more normal value, while raising the values of other armors that needed the love.

Energy Resist - Energy Resist was a problem because it was stacking onto DR. This would make anybody wearing Brotherhood Armor, Power Armor, or Tesla Armor seemingly invincible to energy damage, and weak as piss to physical damage. What I didn't take into account, was that DR and DT protect against all damage types. This would mean that Power Armor, with a DR of 55 and an Energy Resistance of 45, was protecting against 100% of damage that Energy weapon could dish out. DR may be capped at 85%, but this doesn't take Energy resist into account. What I instead do now, is average out Laser, Plasma, and Electric like before, but now subtracting the DR value from the ER value. This leaves you with an energy resist that still protects an armor the desired amount from Energy damage, without deviating from Fallouts stats, all the while not making anybody an invincible death machine.

Fire Resist - Fire resist is now handled just like Energy Resist, on account of it suffering from the same problem.



Because of the websites policies on placeholders for files, I will be uploading an .esm with all the data for the new weapons and armors in it. They are not implemented into the game yet, but can be console commanded in. Just a reminder, that the models and textures used are not mine, and come from the following links.

http://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/37002/?
Classic Fallout Weapons by Linerunner

http://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/36615/?
Classic Tesla Metal Armor by DaiShi

Without those files the mod, for whatever it's worth in its current state, will not operate as it should.