I've got to say, it's both surprising and really inspiring to still see new comments all these years later from people who have tried my mods and appreciate them, even today.
I've gotten a lot of questions lately, about whether I have plans for a Fallout 4 mod, especially given that my first mod, The Institute, elaborated on the Commonwealth-based Institute that now appears to be the basis of the main plot in Fallout 4. The short answer is that I would love to, but that it's hard to justify. Those who closely followed the development of Ties that Bind know how much it killed me having to constantly delay the mod's development, due to balancing it with everyday life. Since finishing the mod, I've been living off a pittance in order to remain and independent game developer, and though I now have the flexibility to commit to developing a mod full time, it's hard to justify doing so when that's time that could be spent on standalone products.
My secret hope had been that Bethesda and Valve would use Fallout 4 to take a second shot at rolling out a paid mod system - and actually do it right this time. That way, I could justify the investment of dedicating 1-2 months working 70hrs/wk at developing a quality F4 mod, worth spending a couple bucks on, which would in turn help financially support my indie game development thereafter. Bethesda has indicated, however, that given the trainwreck of their first attempt, they have not plans to try again at this time.
So you'll notice I've finally added a "donate" button to my account/mods, which will serve for me as a sort of litmus test, to gauge whether developing a new mod is really feasible. Please do not misinterpret this: I am not saying "if you want a Fallout 4 mod, you should donate now." Rather, if you choose to donate, I would hope that it's for the same reason you normally would: that you enjoyed my work, and would like a way of saying thanks in a form that helps to reimburse my development costs.
As always, thank you all for your support. I know I keep saying it, but it really is what keeps me going
After Amanda dies at Project Purity, is there any way to retrieve her body after the two week time skip? Or a place she's been burried? Or should I assume that the Brotherhood just threw her body out with the trash?
hey uhh sorry to bother you but as you seem to have achieved the amanda sacrifice part... how did you do it? amanda starts pitting out blood and dies when i enter the giftshop
Wait, there is an option for her to do the sacrifice?! She just does the coughing blood bit the moment I enter the memorial so I figured that's how she's supposed to die.
I don’t have release date, but I’m currently making a revamped version of the mod. This is one of the issues that I’m fixing. In my revamping of the mod, Amanda’s body will be found in the Citadel. I will write a quest that has you either burying her body next to her mother’s grave, cremating her, or burying her at sea next to her father (if he was buried at sea too). No release date thus far. I’m putting a lot of work into it, and I’m also including DLC compatibility.
Nope, that's the only way Amanda dies. She'll never make it to the control room, no matter what you do.
Amanda has two fates. Either she follows you during "Take it back!", where she'll always bleed out upon entering the memorial. Or, make her stay behind at the Citadel, where she'll be pissed, but this allows her to live once you've completed the main quest.
Once Broken Steel begin, you can go back for her and she'll be relieved. Although, I don't think the mod author had Broken Steel in mind with Amanda after the main quest. Instead of being by your side once you wake up, she'll still be waiting in the lab where you left her, acting like you came back to recruit her for "Take it back!", instead of being teary eyed by your sacrifice for completing our father's work.
When I revamp the mod, the option for her to die if following you to Project Purity during “Take it Back” will still be there. To have her follow you during the Broken Steel questline will be if you have her waiting at the Citadel, that way she lives. Perhaps I can even move her to the room where you wake up. Unfortunately, I don’t know what to do with her lines. I would have to get creative with the ones she has. Since I have no expertise with AI, I can’t exactly AI-generate new lines for her. And I’m pretty sure that her actress has moved on.
MadSquirrel841 - Yes you can AI generate voice lines for her. Go to elevenlabs, pay for the cheapest non-free version, and they have a voice cloning option there. They just need a minute of the person's voice in order to copy it. It should sound exactly like her if all works out. It's at worst 5 dollars per month for it, with 1 dollar for the first month, so it is pretty cheap.
Absolutely DO NOT use AI for her voice. Taking a voice actor's voice and having it say whatever you want without compensating them (the actual owner of the voice) is a real shitty, scumbag thing to do. That is a lawsuit waiting to happen if the VA finds out about it
Love this mod but I was wondering if it is possible to change her appearance? My character is African American and would love to have her sister look like her. I tried changing her in geck along with changing her race but it changes everything but the skin color. Is their a reason for this or is it something on my end? Much thanks!
I’m overhauling the mod. One of the features will include Amanda’s race being changed based on the player character’s race, much like the character’s father James. I’m guessing the mod author didn’t know how to incorporate that. I finished that feature, and I’m happy to say that the results are great. Adding a lot more things to the mod, including DLC compatibility. So, more work to do.
I'm so happy to hear that! I loved this mod. I guess I'll put off going through the DLC's for a while haha. Thank you, I hope it all goes well for you :)
Use Xedit: Open Ties that bind esp. Open Non-Player Character Open ttbAmandaChild - change RNAM-Race to AfricanAmericanChild Open ttbAmanda - change RNAM-Race to AfricanAmerican Open ttbAmandaTeen - change RNAM-Race to AfricanAmerican
That's the procedure I used to change Amanda to Asian.
Would be nice if MadSquirrel is still working on an overhaul. THis mod added a nice touch to the game, but the original mod lacked so much, starting with options to manage the behavior of Amanda. If you wanted to play a stealth oder sniper playtrough you better forgot her in PF, cause the original mod only knows Amanda as a always head on melee character ^^
iirc shes in the atrium, in the big room where the siblings get shot trying to escape. shes locked in the room in the back right corner, when you first enter the room just go right and you'll see her banging on the window and when you get closer you'll hear her yelling
If you know how eo use GECK then you might replace main mod quest script with this:
Scn ttbScriptTiesThatBind short CheckNewGame
BEGIN GameMode if CheckNewGame == 0 if (GetQuestCompleted CG04 == 1) || ((player.isInInterior == 0) && (GetQuestCompleted CG04 == 0)) Set TTBDialogue.CG04ReadyKidnap to 3 ttbAmandaRef.moveto ttbOQ01MarkerImprisoned ttbCG04RaiderLeaderRef.moveto ttbOQ01RaiderWaitRef ttbCG04RaiderLeaderRef.enable ; ttbAmandaRef.removeitem VaultSuit101 1 ttbAmandaRef.additem OutfitWasteland03 1 ttbAmandaRef.equipitem OutfitWasteland03 ttbAmandaRef.additem SlaveCollar 1 ttbAmandaRef.equipitem SlaveCollar ; ttbAmandaRef.evp setstage ttbTiesThatBind 20 endif Set CheckNewGame to 1 endif
END
This will make sure that slaver Wilk is enabled, which is missing from original script. Also, Amanda will be properly dressed. I tested it after activating quest midgame (new game not started). Also, it works if you are using alternate start mod. I have not tested it with new game, so let me know if there is a problem. The script name is, as you might see above :
ttbScriptTiesThatBind
Also, you might want to increase Amanda's base health. Currently, it is 50, which is GECK default. Gives me strong reason to believe that author simply forgot about it. For example Butdh has 175, and he is also a vault Dweller companion.
Can anyone help me the mod is just not working for some reason, I downloaded it and it just won't work Amanda doesn't show up at all even starting a new game idk what to do. any advise?
I strongly recommend the "Alternate appearance by Crudeowl" if the default face for Amanda puts you into the uncanny valley (as it did me). It's still the same features but much, much better proportioned -- the image (above) doesn't do the in-game justice.
Voice acting is cringe; besides, there seems to be accounting for making it sound like it would in the game (it's clearly a studio performance and nobody bothered to eliminate the "sterile" sound of it). Plus, austrialian actress as a daughter of Irish man? Sure. Main look just looks awful. As Chucky would put it, "Did you fall off the ugly tree and hit all the branches on the way down?". Alternative look is alright (why would you post the pic from editor rather than in-game?), but nothing to write home about. Subplot with Paradise Falls is distracting and disrupts the flow of the main plot. Unless you just let your sister be a slave forced to do God knows what, you'll have to run to slaver city and confront Supermutants and Centaurs on your way there, and of course make sure you have 1000 caps before you get there. Technically, it seemed to work fine, for about all the 2 hours I've played of it. Too bad it also managed to crash my game TWICE within that timespan (which rarely happens to, suprisingly enough) and inforced the "main menu in game" bug.
If you really need a companion mod that has some attachments to your "past" in the Vault, you're better off with Brisa/Amata mods. At least the former tends to be acknowledged by other characters.
I think it actually makes a lot of sense... when you exit the vault you see skeletons and signs demanding to be let inside. In the hundreds of years since the vaults were seals why wouldn't there be raiders or slavers waiting just outside the vault to either get inside themselves or capture and kill anyone trying to get outside?
I might even make more sense for them to capture you and throw you into a cage in paradise falls where you'll have to find someway out or perform quests to gain approval until your collar is taken off or you can find a way to escape.
I've been looking for a mod myself where the raiders hiding in the Springdale school knock you out or dart you as your walking out of the vault and you need to escape the cage in the school and sneak out or kill raiders a long the way or perhaps even sneak into the tunnels infested with ants to escape.
Honestly the school is a stones throw away from the vault and any raider worth their own salt would have a croony or subordinate waiting for the vault to open.
Let's say I'm a slaver and I'm looking for more merchandise, where would I go? To a high vantage and use some binoculars. Hey, what's this? People coming out of a vault, well it's my lucky day -- wish I had brought more slave collars though, damn it. Complaining about the opening is just...absurd.
Distracts from the main quest right at the beginning? Sure does: it's a very morally-grey Fallout thing to do. Pay 1k caps (after you figure out how to get them) or choose to be a slaver for a bit or try to go on a murder spree to rescue: very Fallout morally grey choices.
Yeah, the trek is dangerous if you go straight there but it's extreeeeemly doable, even with mods that make you more squishy and the world more dangerous -- I'm testing out mods for a new playthrough and I've done the vault -> PF too many times to count. And, frankly, it's a morally grey choice you get to make: attempt rescue and possibly die and sis is a slave forever or risk her life while you gain more equipment and skill to survive better to get her (hopefully before she gets sold or worse). Very Fallout kind of choice.
Erenoth02, if you're taken along to PF, you're NOT given a choice, and that's narratively bad (and frankly lazy story-telling, or I should say story-forcing). You can even choose not to do the main quest and play fallout (especially modded) till your eyes bleed. :)
> my main problem is that if you want Amanda to participate in the main story from the beginning, you'd need to grind the hell out of other locations in order to collect 10000 caps.
I'd counter with : "if you want Fawkes to participate in the main story from the beginning, you'd..." and the same goes for any companion mod where you don't meet them up in megaton or right outside the vault. If it's such a bother, head-canon finding the corpse of a dead roaming trader with 1k caps on them, do a player.additem for 1k caps, and buy her right then. Or mod the mod.
Given the depth of the story the mod provides, even if these quibbles about the opening had weight, they would be negligible by comparison.
1863 comments
I've gotten a lot of questions lately, about whether I have plans for a Fallout 4 mod, especially given that my first mod, The Institute, elaborated on the Commonwealth-based Institute that now appears to be the basis of the main plot in Fallout 4. The short answer is that I would love to, but that it's hard to justify. Those who closely followed the development of Ties that Bind know how much it killed me having to constantly delay the mod's development, due to balancing it with everyday life. Since finishing the mod, I've been living off a pittance in order to remain and independent game developer, and though I now have the flexibility to commit to developing a mod full time, it's hard to justify doing so when that's time that could be spent on standalone products.
My secret hope had been that Bethesda and Valve would use Fallout 4 to take a second shot at rolling out a paid mod system - and actually do it right this time. That way, I could justify the investment of dedicating 1-2 months working 70hrs/wk at developing a quality F4 mod, worth spending a couple bucks on, which would in turn help financially support my indie game development thereafter. Bethesda has indicated, however, that given the trainwreck of their first attempt, they have not plans to try again at this time.
So you'll notice I've finally added a "donate" button to my account/mods, which will serve for me as a sort of litmus test, to gauge whether developing a new mod is really feasible. Please do not misinterpret this: I am not saying "if you want a Fallout 4 mod, you should donate now." Rather, if you choose to donate, I would hope that it's for the same reason you normally would: that you enjoyed my work, and would like a way of saying thanks in a form that helps to reimburse my development costs.
As always, thank you all for your support. I know I keep saying it, but it really is what keeps me going
After Amanda dies at Project Purity, is there any way to retrieve her body after the two week time skip? Or a place she's been burried? Or should I assume that the Brotherhood just threw her body out with the trash?
Please keep in mind Tale of Two Wastelands compatibility.
Amanda has two fates. Either she follows you during "Take it back!", where she'll always bleed out upon entering the memorial. Or, make her stay behind at the Citadel, where she'll be pissed, but this allows her to live once you've completed the main quest.
Once Broken Steel begin, you can go back for her and she'll be relieved. Although, I don't think the mod author had Broken Steel in mind with Amanda after the main quest. Instead of being by your side once you wake up, she'll still be waiting in the lab where you left her, acting like you came back to recruit her for "Take it back!", instead of being teary eyed by your sacrifice for completing our father's work.
Let us know how it is coming along.
also how long has it been since you posted your post?
I guess I'll put off going through the DLC's for a while haha. Thank you, I hope it all goes well for you :)
Open Ties that bind esp.
Open Non-Player Character
Open ttbAmandaChild - change RNAM-Race to AfricanAmericanChild
Open ttbAmanda - change RNAM-Race to AfricanAmerican
Open ttbAmandaTeen - change RNAM-Race to AfricanAmerican
That's the procedure I used to change Amanda to Asian.
I know it's years later, but just in case anyone still needs this
African American Amanda Ties that Bind
Scn ttbScriptTiesThatBind
short CheckNewGame
BEGIN GameMode
if CheckNewGame == 0
if (GetQuestCompleted CG04 == 1) || ((player.isInInterior == 0) && (GetQuestCompleted CG04 == 0))
Set TTBDialogue.CG04ReadyKidnap to 3
ttbAmandaRef.moveto ttbOQ01MarkerImprisoned
ttbCG04RaiderLeaderRef.moveto ttbOQ01RaiderWaitRef
ttbCG04RaiderLeaderRef.enable
;
ttbAmandaRef.removeitem VaultSuit101 1
ttbAmandaRef.additem OutfitWasteland03 1
ttbAmandaRef.equipitem OutfitWasteland03
ttbAmandaRef.additem SlaveCollar 1
ttbAmandaRef.equipitem SlaveCollar
;
ttbAmandaRef.evp
setstage ttbTiesThatBind 20
endif
Set CheckNewGame to 1
endif
END
This will make sure that slaver Wilk is enabled, which is missing from original script. Also, Amanda will be properly dressed. I tested it after activating quest midgame (new game not started). Also, it works if you are using alternate start mod. I have not tested it with new game, so let me know if there is a problem. The script name is, as you might see above :
ttbScriptTiesThatBind
Also, you might want to increase Amanda's base health. Currently, it is 50, which is GECK default. Gives me strong reason to believe that author simply forgot about it. For example Butdh has 175, and he is also a vault Dweller companion.
Voice acting is cringe; besides, there seems to be accounting for making it sound like it would in the game (it's clearly a studio performance and nobody bothered to eliminate the "sterile" sound of it). Plus, austrialian actress as a daughter of Irish man? Sure.
Main look just looks awful. As Chucky would put it, "Did you fall off the ugly tree and hit all the branches on the way down?". Alternative look is alright (why would you post the pic from editor rather than in-game?), but nothing to write home about.
Subplot with Paradise Falls is distracting and disrupts the flow of the main plot. Unless you just let your sister be a slave forced to do God knows what, you'll have to run to slaver city and confront Supermutants and Centaurs on your way there, and of course make sure you have 1000 caps before you get there.
Technically, it seemed to work fine, for about all the 2 hours I've played of it. Too bad it also managed to crash my game TWICE within that timespan (which rarely happens to, suprisingly enough) and inforced the "main menu in game" bug.
If you really need a companion mod that has some attachments to your "past" in the Vault, you're better off with Brisa/Amata mods. At least the former tends to be acknowledged by other characters.
I might even make more sense for them to capture you and throw you into a cage in paradise falls where you'll have to find someway out or perform quests to gain approval until your collar is taken off or you can find a way to escape.
I've been looking for a mod myself where the raiders hiding in the Springdale school knock you out or dart you as your walking out of the vault and you need to escape the cage in the school and sneak out or kill raiders a long the way or perhaps even sneak into the tunnels infested with ants to escape.
Honestly the school is a stones throw away from the vault and any raider worth their own salt would have a croony or subordinate waiting for the vault to open.
Distracts from the main quest right at the beginning? Sure does: it's a very morally-grey Fallout thing to do. Pay 1k caps (after you figure out how to get them) or choose to be a slaver for a bit or try to go on a murder spree to rescue: very Fallout morally grey choices.
Yeah, the trek is dangerous if you go straight there but it's extreeeeemly doable, even with mods that make you more squishy and the world more dangerous -- I'm testing out mods for a new playthrough and I've done the vault -> PF too many times to count. And, frankly, it's a morally grey choice you get to make: attempt rescue and possibly die and sis is a slave forever or risk her life while you gain more equipment and skill to survive better to get her (hopefully before she gets sold or worse). Very Fallout kind of choice.
Erenoth02, if you're taken along to PF, you're NOT given a choice, and that's narratively bad (and frankly lazy story-telling, or I should say story-forcing). You can even choose not to do the main quest and play fallout (especially modded) till your eyes bleed. :)
> my main problem is that if you want Amanda to participate in the main story from the beginning, you'd need to grind the hell out of other locations in order to collect 10000 caps.
I'd counter with : "if you want Fawkes to participate in the main story from the beginning, you'd..." and the same goes for any companion mod where you don't meet them up in megaton or right outside the vault. If it's such a bother, head-canon finding the corpse of a dead roaming trader with 1k caps on them, do a player.additem for 1k caps, and buy her right then. Or mod the mod.
Given the depth of the story the mod provides, even if these quibbles about the opening had weight, they would be negligible by comparison.