DEVELOPMENT DIARY: NUCLEAR SAFARI
DEVELOPMENT DIARY: NUCLEAR SAFARI
It's been almost a year since Mutant Menagerie - Big Game Hunting released to the public. Now, Mutant Menagerie is back once again with the third official expansion - Nuclear Safari! Nuclear Safari aims to cover Bethesda's last major expansion for Fallout 4: Nuka-World. This article will dive in to the methodology behind the expansion's development, and give a sneak peek into what players can expect when the mod drops.
Not the most exciting or compelling trailer for Fallout 4, to be sure. It also undersells the cruel, evil, raider-centric atmosphere of the expansion - promoting the wacky and zany Nuka-Cola aesthetic instead (which was really more of a background, world-building element of the DLC). This is the misleading advertising one would expect from the Bethesda that was on the cusp of unleashing the monstrosity that is Fallout: 76. It does, however, emphasize gameplay over story - which is an accurate portrayal of the expansion when compared to Far Harbor's trailer.
Nuka-World: A Flawed Finale
Nuka-World is an interesting expansion. And by interesting, I mean highly controversial. It dumps most of the RPG elements and themes that Far Harbor received mass acclaim for, opting instead to focus on the exploration side of Fallout 4's core gameplay loop above all else. Nuka-World is all about atmosphere and unique gameplay scenarios in the form of the titular park's attractions. The DLC also doubles as an evil campaign for raider players - with most of the story content, characters, and added gameplay functionality for settlements all being locked behind the raider questline. The expansion oozes atmosphere and style, much like its predecessor Far Harbor, but the limited options for roleplaying and player choice really bog down Nuka-World's replay value.
In the end, the expansion feels a bit like an adventure game. It's a fun romp to replay at the end of each playthrough, but it isn't something the player truly wants to jump back into the minute they complete it - like Far Harbor or Point Lookout. The silver lining for Nuka-World is that it leans on a gameplay formula that - when it works - really, really works. Explore, fight, loot, then cash in. The entire expansion is Bethesda's love letter to what they got right in vanilla Fallout 4, while Far Harbor fixes what they got wrong. With all this in mind, I knew the approach I wanted to take with Nuka-World was going to have to be significantly less subtle than previous expansions.
Nuka-World was marketed as a 'Fallout Summer Vacation' of sorts - complete with an August release.
The Park: Tackling an Odd Locale
The odd thing about Nuka-World is that, unlike a lot of Bethesda's DLC expansions, this one takes place in the same area as the vanilla game. Usually, DLCs attempt to take you somewhere totally new. Nuka-World, however, takes place in Massachusetts - just a bit further inland than the base game. In fact, according to in-game lore, all of Massachusetts - even the parts we don't explore in Fallout 4 - is considered the Commonwealth. This means that we are still quite-literally in the Commonwealth during the final DLC of Fallout 4. Context clues in the worldspace and character dialog also support this, with gunners and institute super mutants both running amok in the park, and the raider characters regularly referencing the Commonwealth in conversation. Oddly enough, however, the environment is drastically different from vanilla Fallout 4's Commonwealth.
Nuka-World wears a familiar, classic Fallout mask - although the familiarities end with the visage.
Nuka-World is a desert pit surrounded by rolling hills, giving it a Classic Fallout Southwest mixed with Big Mountain vibe. Now, this is likely just due to Bethesda wanting to have a Mad Max style apocalyptic environment for their raider DLC, but I try to build my mods with some logic in relation to the ecology of the climate and region on display. A dust-bowl climate would easily explain why an isolated section of inland New England would resemble a desert, but dust-bowls are usually caused by severe droughts and/or the lack of a suitable water supply. In Nuka-World, it's water water everywhere - with more than a drop to drink. The damaged atmosphere of the planet after a nuclear holocaust may also create more extreme climate variation the farther one travels from the equator, but it still doesn't explain why the Commonwealth to the east features a lush, crisp nuclear autumn climate in comparison. So, for the expansion, I just settled on the dust-bowl climate theory despite all the rivers, lakes, puddles, and rain, and tried to roll with the punches.
The oddly barren, New Vegas-esque appearance of The Park is questionable at best, but one can't argue with the wonders it does for establishing atmosphere.
Capitalizing on Untapped Potential
As with Horrors of the Deep Fog, I began the expansion by exploring the worldspace - both in the game and in the Creation Kit. I rekindled my own old memories of exploring the park day one nearly 6 years ago, looked up various reviews, watched the old trailer a few times, and tried to figure out exactly what Nuka-World is as a whole product. The most interesting revelations came from the Creation Kit itself and the game files. Incomplete or incorrect actor templates, leveled actors with no LCHARs to template from, and entirely unimplimented creature variants. Nearly all the new creatures in Nuka-World were built entirely using morphed/edited assets from vanilla Fallout 4.
Ants, for example, are morphed radroaches, while gatorclaws and brahmiluffs are slightly edited deathclaws and brahmin, respectively. Gazelles and ghoulrillas are some of the most egregious examples - being almost identical to the source material. All of this contributes to a growing personal theory that this expansion must have been rushed. I have no concrete proof, but it certainly feels like Bethesda just shoved a bunch of game jam content into an expansion and connected it all through a loose amusement park theme. And even if this isn't the case, the fact that the DLC feels this way is a major problem.
There is a silver lining here - that Nuka-World is full of untapped potential. The Safari Adventure attraction, for example, was a fully-stocked zoo full of creatures that could've survived the war (and likely only don't appear in the DLC because Bethesda didn't have the time or budget). The classic Fallout setting atmosphere also begs for some classic or cut creatures to return, similar to ants or rad-rats. There’s also a lot of evidence in the game files that Bethesda originally wanted multiple quantum creature variants to feature in the DLC, though this obviously didn't make it to fruition.
In retrospect, the E3 reveal trailer for Nuka-World really does a much better job capturing the mean-spirited, wicked nature of the Nuka-World expansion than the full trailer. It also establishes the optimistic, kid-friendly Nuka-Cola branding in the ironic way that it is actually portrayed in the game.
The Battle Plan: Bringing it All Together
So, the idea I finally settled on for this expansion was a loaded one - even more so than Horrors of the Deep Fog. I knew I wanted to continue the themes I had been establishing in my previous work. Build a unique ecosystem using new and existing creatures, introduce world bosses, add new crafting recipes, and hide collectible crafting recipes across the world space. This was the baseline. From there, I decided I wanted to focus on three new types of creatures: classic or cut creatures from Fallout history, exotic zoo animals, and quantum creature variants. All-in-all, it's a lot, so let's go on a little safari together and break this all down, shall we?
A Dire Radtoad stalks the dusty wastes of Nuka-World in Mutant Menagerie - Nuclear Safari.
PART 1: REVIVING OLD CLASSICS
Following the Script
Nuclear Safari isn't just an expansion - it's a framework for my ultimate endgame project for Mutant Menagerie. I've mentioned numerous times that I've been working on a final, All-In-One version of Mutant Menagerie - to be released after all expansions are complete. Among things like taxidermy and creature cages, this version will, ideally, also overhaul the vanilla game's enemy encounters - big time. This is all being done through script injecting LCHARS into the vanilla game's LCHARS. For those that don't know, a LCHAR is a leveled list of Actors (NPCs) - an RNG and/or progression template, if you will. This is core to how all of Fallout 4's NPC scaling works. The best part about these templates is that you can inject one into another, creating template trees of sorts. This is a big part of how my dynamic spawns work. Using a simple script, you can inject these templates into vanilla leveled lists with no conflicts with other mods - although it could add to script bloat if you're running many script-heavy mods.
Ants lying in wait for prey alongside Radroaches thanks to a simple integration script.
Now, what does all this have to do with Nuclear Safari? Well, around the time I began experimenting with these scripts, I began exploring Nuka-World's desert world space and noticing the hidden "Classic Fallout" theme sprinkled throughout the expansion. Rad-Rats being introduced in place of giant rats, Overgrown Ants taking the place of giant ants from the previous games, the desert locale, the presence of Hubologists, and so on. It gave me the idea to bring back creatures that maybe wouldn't make sense as isolated, independent entities. Creatures that are undeniable classics or cool bits of cut content, but that occupied similar territory to existing mutants. Creatures that could, eventually, be integrated into my final Mutant Menagerie mod as integral parts of creature families - expanding on existing families of creatures in the vanilla game.
In the final release of Mutant Menagerie, new enemies will challenge you in the once-easy, well-known paths you've traveled so many times before. Nuclear Safari will pave the way for this new system.
In addition to creatures, items from Mutant Menagerie will finally appear on vanilla creatures through a similar form of scripted integration.
Welcome to the Family, Son.
The new additions to the creature roster of Fallout 4 needed to feel like they belong. Like the other Heavy Hitters from my previous mods, the creatures featured here each fill a specific niche in combat. For this Development Diary, we will be focusing on some of the Rats. In classic Fallouts, there were many types of mutant rats in the wasteland. This hierarchy started with low ranking Cave Rats and Pig Rats, eventually topping out with creatures like the Mole Rat. In Fallout 4, Mole Rats are the only remnant of this creature family, with Nuka-World's Rad-Rats also attempting to fill that high-level mole rat type enemy niche.
Pig Rats resemble a blend of mutant pigs and rats. Younger, weaker variations more closely resemble rats, while the more dangerous variations are bulkier, boarlike, and possess tusks.
In Nuclear Safari, there are many new types of Rats, from the small and agile Rad-Shrew to the massive, deadly Cave Rat. The hierarchy of rats is a reversal of classic Fallout, with tough and durable Pig Rats and the huge, powerful Cave Rats occupying the high-level end of the faction, while mole rats sit at the bottom as the entry-level threat they were in Fallout 4. The aforementioned Rad-Shrews occupy the lowest tier in the tree, acting as the Radroach or Radcoon of the Rats. Pig Rats are seen as on-par with Rad-Rats, though they occupy a role more akin to a tank. In Nuka-World, the new Rats will all run together, and Rad-Rats and Mole Rats may also spawn alongside them. This guarantees a sense of enemy variety and progression from levels 1 to 100 - as new types of Rats slowly begin appearing.
Cave Rats (left) are massive mutant vermin with huge, powerful jaws lined with razor-sharp teeth. Rad-Shrews (right) are small, grotesque, bipedal vermin that use speed and agility to make up for their weak constitution and strength.
The philosophy outlined here also extends to other new creatures premiering in Nuclear Safari, such as the Wastewolves - a werewolf or chupacabra like mutant that was originally cut from Fallout 3. They will be seen in Nuka-World running with feral dogs, wolves, and hyenas. These horrifying, bipedal monstrosities are an extremely rare mutant, comparable to creatures like the Wendigo from Horrors of the Deep Fog or the Hellcat from Big Game Hunting.
Wastewolves are quick, ruthless predators that may act alone, in packs, or run with other groups of feral dogs, wolves, or hyenas. They join the Mutant Menagerie roster as one of Nuclear Safari's premier Heavy Hitters.
PART 2: SAFARI ADVENTURE
Into the Safari Zone
Of all the attractions in Nuka-World, I think Safari Adventure is the one with the most squandered potential. Despite being a notoriously overcrowded zoo with many, many species of exotic animals before the war, the location only has one enemy type - Gatorclaws. Gatorclaws are a derivative of Deathclaws, and are far weaker and less interesting in comparison. They are the result of a cloning experiment gone awry, and the machine continues to produce them at an alarming rate. In layman's terms, this area just boils down to "shoot all the things, flip a switch, and leave."
The other zoo animals in the park really aren't that interesting either - due to Bethesda making them entirely of reused assets. Gazelles and Brahmiluffs aren't the type of "exotic" that make a player's jaw drop. They're supporting cast members at best. Ghoulrillas are neat but, like the synth gorillas they're based on, Ghoulrillas only appear in one location. And again, these are reused assets. Coming off the heels of Far Harbor, where most of the new creatures featured custom models or animations (or assets that were at least repurposed from Skyrim instead of vanilla Fallout 4), these new creatures were destined to underwhelm.
Aside from escaped zoo animals, the other, more depressing side of this squandered potential is the DNA cloning facility beneath Safari Adventure. Darren McDermot, the only survivor in the facility, fell victim to ghoulification after the Great War. He presumably utilized the facility for a very long time - perhaps hundreds of years. Since Gatorclaws can still be contained and destroyed in Safari Adventure, the doctor seems to have died not long before the Sole Survivor's arrival. McDermot used the facility both for food and basic survival, as well as for self defense. He performed multiple (the lore alludes to 3) DNA fusion experiments before he created the Gatorclaw, but no details are known about the specifics of the animals McDermot tried to fuse before the Gatorclaws.
Wild Kingdom
I knew going in that I wanted to bolster Nuka-World's atmosphere. Much of the bulk of new creatures in Nuclear Safari are escaped zoo animals. These are all creatures that can be encountered only in Nuka-World. I've gotten a lot better at rigging in OutfitStudio, and I really wanted to push myself to integrate some bigger and higher-quality creatures. So in Nuclear Safari, you'll not only encounter small, simple creatures like Parrots, but also much larger imposing beasts - like herds of irradiated Elephants.
These Parrots, licensed from Ozeuth on CGTrader, were originally designed for Fallout: Miami.
Elephants are one of the toughest beasts in the expansion. They are initially passive, however - so fighting them is your choice.
Among many other exotic animals, you'll also encounter irradiated Zebras - which graze and wander in a fashion similar to Gazelles from the original DLC, and Hyenas - which travel the wastes like packs of feral dogs or wolves. Hyenas are much faster than either, though, so you'll need to take caution when dealing with a large pack.
Zebras are Mutant Menagerie's answer to Nuka-World's Gazelles. Like Gazelles, they are passive herbivores that roam the park, grazing on what grass they can find.
The hyenas from Mutant Menagerie likely look very familiar, since they use assets from Resident Evil: Outbreak. Capcom's hyenas were also featured in the mod series FallEvil.
Lastly, I also like to include synergy between my expansions, so if you have the Backwater Beasts expansion for Mutant Menagerie, you will also encounter Poison Dart Frogs - colorful mutant frogs that wander throughout the amusement park. New enemies may also appear in Backwater Beasts after the Nuclear Safari's release - such as the Swampjaw.
Dart Frogs are brightly colored wanderers that can be found all over Nuka-World - so long as you have Backwater Beasts installed.
Meet the Swampjaw - a large mutant alligator unique to Point Lookout's bog. These beasts fill in for Deathclaws and Gatorclaws in Backwater Beasts, acting as a lore-friendly predator that roams the swamps, marshes, and bogs of the American South. I've seen some claims that Bethesda originally intended to include crocodilian mutants in the original Point Lookout, but I've yet to find any concrete evidence or primary sources that support this. Regardless, it's a cool idea, so these monsters will arrive in Backwater Beasts when Nuclear Safari releases.
Going Quantum
The last major component of the expansion are Quantum creature variants. These new creature types are a lot like the Fog-Touched from Horrors of the Deep Fog - high level, DLC exclusive variants of creatures that drop special components for crafting. But while the Fog-Touched scaled to the player’s level and were always legendary, Quantum creatures are a bit different. While Quantum mutants aren't legendary by default, they scale 25 percent higher than the player's level. This means every Quantum creature will always out-level the player, and their stats will be set approximately 25 levels above yours. The automated level scaling can get pretty nasty in Fallout 4 at higher levels, meaning that these creatures should prove a challenge even in the late game - where gameplay usually becomes its most trivial.
Most creatures from Nuka-World, and many from vanilla Fallout 4 and Mutant Menagerie, will have Quantum variants. All of these creatures will appear throughout the park at random, acting as surprise mini-bosses in very much the same vein as the Fog-Touched from Horrors of the Deep Fog.
PART 4: Implementation
Spawn Implementation
Nuka-World's world space is much larger than it seems. Much of the DLC is barren and empty, with the odd Deathclaw, Yao Guai, or Gazelle pack scattered about. While this is great for Mutant Menagerie on paper, the environment also performs poorly compared to many other locations in Fallout 4. I personally remember this DLC crashing on my XBox One far more often than Far Harbor or most parts of Fallout 4. Many cells when opened in the Creation Kit cause the performance to inconsistently hang and stutter, and my PC to chug, a lot like Boston's city ruins. While this isn't as bad as downtown, it is very noticeable. The reason for poor performance is, hands down, the lack of loading screens and instanced, separate cells for the park's attractions and the central hub. All of these locations are part of the exterior worldspace. This is the epitome of poor optimization on Bethesda's part, and it means I simply cannot go as crazy as I did in Nuka-World as I did in Far Harbor or the edges of the Commonwealth.
Nuka-World's open world is shared with the expansion's crowded and cluttered central hub area, and the Fizztop Grille player home. Additionally, almost every main attraction "dungeon" complex in the DLC - of which there are 5 - are also set in (at least partially) the exterior worldspace. This means that the exterior cells of Nuka-World are quite sensitive when it comes to maintaining performance and avoiding stutter when modding. A similar issue with the Boston ruins in vanilla Fallout 4 is why Mutant Menagerie doesn't place or add anything in the urban areas of the Commonwealth.
With all this in mind, I am implementing Mutant Menagerie with a lighter touch. While there are many spawns placed throughout the world, most of them are small groups of creatures or single actors. Much of what you will encounter here will be hand-placed scenes, like a herd of elephants by a river, rather than valleys full of randomized critters. In-between these vignette-like encounters, there will be instances of Fallout 3-style random enemy spawns to keep things interesting.
Dynamic Spawns
The Dynamic Spawns do a lot of heavy lifting to make Nuka-World feel interesting in Nuclear Safari. Since there won't be a huge number of spawns in the area, the few that do exist need to be diverse in what they offer. A big theme in Nuka-World is robots, as the park was heavily automated and featured a robot-themed attraction. In Nuclear Safari, many hostile or hybrid dynamic spawns will contain robots - but not just from Nuka-World. Regular Bots (including Robobrains), Junk Bots, and Nuka Bots all have a chance to appear in the wild in Nuka-World.
A Galactic Zone Mister Handy and a Gatorclaw go head-to-head, thanks to Mutant Menagerie's dynamic spawns. Normally, in vanilla Fallout 4, these two enemy types would never meet.
Mutants from both Mutant Menagerie and its previous expansions will appear in Nuka-World. From Radtoads to Wendigos, the gang's all here. Ambient creatures will appear near the edges of the park, while dynamic spawns for zoo animals will populate the core park. Ghoulrillas, brahmiluffs, and gazelles are all integrated into dynamic spawns as well, with both friendly and feral Ghoulrilla variants available for the player to encounter.
The dreaded Wendigo comes to Nuka-World thanks to Nuclear Safari's dynamic spawns.
Keeping the Space Unique
With all these creatures from other DLCs or the vanilla game invading Nuka-World, it's easy to see how this could cause some of the DLC's identity to melt away. Atmosphere is paramount for Nuka-World, so I needed to ensure I didn't take away from that. Many dynamic spawns prioritize Nuka-World and Nuclear Safari creatures first. The ones that do contain a wide variety of possibilities are those that are placed the most sparingly.
Additionally, only creatures that make sense for the setting are included. The location is inland Massachusetts - we are presumably no longer near the coast. There isn't much in the way of swamps, bogs, or forests either, meaning creatures that only live in those environments didn't make the cut. So while creatures like Gulpers and Wolves from Far Harbor make the cut, Radhammers, Fog Crawlers, and Anglers do not. Don't expect to see ghoul sharks or barracudas either, since all the water in Nuka-World is fresh.
PART 5: FINAL THOUGHTS
Release Date
I'm a little under halfway into this expansion's development. It will, undoubtedly, take more time than Horrors of the Deep Fog did. My best guess for a release window is August or September. If I finish early, I'll release it early. Otherwise, it'll be here when it's ready.
On Mutant Menagerie Going Forward
This will be the last big expansion for Mutant Menagerie before its ultimate release - the end is in sight... kind of. This might be bittersweet to some, but I promise this is actually something worth getting excited for. Because what comes next will be the culmination of a crazy mad science project I've poured 4 years of my life into.
The final release of Mutant Menagerie isn't just going to be a repackage. You've been given hints as to all the things I want to accomplish in this final release, but there's a LOT I've also kept under wraps. Here's a small list of some (but not all) of the things I'd like to include in the final AIO release:
- Taxidermy and Creature Cages.
- A Script-integrated overhaul of Fallout 4's creature encounters and creature factions.
- An expansion to the recipe and crafting system Mutant Menagerie has slowly been building.
- Unique 'Legendary Animals' - 1-time killable animals with unique hides and rewards (similar to RDR2).
- An in-game bestiary scattered throughout the world, adding a scavenger hunt element to the mod.
- New World Bosses for the Commonwealth.
- Unique perk rewards tied to progression in the mod, similar to New Vegas's challenges (think Lord Death perk).
- Final passes on all the neglected creatures and rigs I haven't touched in years.
- A FOMOD installer for added modularity (if it doesn't prove too difficult).
Keep in mind that this list is subject to change, but this is where we are right now in terms of planned content.
The final release, Mutant Menagerie - Ultimate Edition, will be an expansion all its own - building on everything I've been establishing in my mods over the last year. And even when the final release is out, I might still release the occasional update. After all, just because a mod is finally complete, does NOT mean it is finished. I have plenty of ideas that I may want to implement someday, even if they aren't possible right now.
Conclusion
If you made it this far, thanks for reading! I like making these little development diaries because it's fun to share design philosophies and strategies with the community. It may seem a little candid to some, but I don't really see the need for secrecy. Mods are not products, modders are not necessarily game designers, and I'm not trying to sell you something. Modding is great because anyone can do it, and that's the idea I want to get across. The recent attempts by big modding teams to put together big, AAA-like modding efforts and mimic big video game marketing strategies might seem cool and exciting, but I also feel like it can make modding feel intimidating to any would-be future modders. No hate towards any of the big mod projects out there, they're great and they deserve the credit that they get, but that's not really what modding is - or should be - to most of us.
These diaries are a reminder that I am just some guy. Just a regular dude who designed this whole thing in a bedroom, alone, while living paycheck-to-paycheck and struggling through community college. I had no prior game design or modding experience aside from messing around with Halo: Custom Edition back in the late 2000s and early 2010s. The best part about modding to me is that it's an outlet for people like us to create and express ourselves in a way that directly interacts with our favorite video game franchises. I'm still just some guy, but I was able to do something that positively impacted thousands of fellow Fallout lovers, and for that I'm grateful.
I hope some of you would-be modders take the plunge - be it now or maybe when Starfield drops - and see what you can do. Find your niche, fix something that's broken, or create something totally new. I was 22 when I started this adventure. As of writing this, I recently turned 26. I've learned and changed so much, and you will too if you pick up the hobby. No matter the hiccups and setbacks, it's always worth it in the end to build something you're passionate about. So, if you're on the fence, let this be your sign to give it a go! Thanks for supporting Mutant Menagerie, this community's continued kindness means the world.
See you when Nuclear Safari drops. Book your wasteland vacation now!
- Justin, AKA Delicon20
