A note from the author: I am not interested in any more comments to the effect of "I didn't like this story. This mod sucks." Please do not message me something pithy about how the project "had promise" but "should have a big add-on". This is the mod I wanted to make. I know it has flaws and have tried to fix a few of them with updates. Some of them are simply a part of it.
My first mod, Honest Hearts Reborn, was a passion project that emerged from my love of the Honest Hearts characters and my desire to give them a full story. I spent hundreds of hours on creating NPCs, conversations, quests, and some scripted encounters. With Penn's Woods, I challenged myself to make a mod within 2 weeks with a small worldspace and a limited number of NPCs. It ended up taking me about 4 weeks of work, spread over a period of a few months. It was a small experiment, and I have put it on the nexus simply because I hope that some people can enjoy it.
On a thematic level, I wanted to tell a story that fit the beauty and mystery of the Fallout universe and the Fallout 4 engine, particularly one that explored the effects of a single human life. The God of the Forest is at the center of that for me, and so it's a story that doesn't have a lot of violence, and in which the player does more observing than making extremely important decisions. Given more time I might have added more player choices and a few more fights, but I do not currently have time. Also, I am happy with what I made.
If you are going to criticize, please do so intelligently, and provide suggestions. I will make changes based on helpful suggestions and am deeply appreciative of the people who have pointed out bugs and helped me improve my work. In addition, I have clarified the mod description to make clear that it is a short mod more about atmosphere than complexity in response to some people's feeling that they were cheated. I will be deleting any purely negative comments at my own discretion.
Thanks, James
NOTE: If anyone has anyone experience with the GECK, I am trying to figure out how to create LOD for the static objects in the mod - trees, houses, etc. So far I can't get it to generate. Let me know if you guys find anything!
Update Log:
UPDATE: There is a small ESP update. Download the main file and then the update - this fixes several misplaced trees and (hopefully) all of the faction problems. Enemies should now attack if their friends are attacked in all factions.
UPDATE: A larger update has taken place, streamlining quest objectives, getting rid of the hole people kept falling into, and a few other small fixes. Enjoy!
UPDATE: I've reverted to the first ESP update, because in the newer one conversations were no longer available with main NPCs.
Just wanted to give a heads-up in the fact that Doc Mendel can be killed, and thus prevent players from accessing the content of this mod. I know most people don't go around purposefully mauling custom NPCs, but when I aimed at his head I expected him to sit on the ground, not have his skull shatter in that ever-amusing fashion and slump back in his chair.
This looks like the type of quest mod I'd be very interested in, but apparently this doesn't work with Extended Dialogue Interface (XDI) and has some dirty deletes of roofs. I'm hoping to see a patch for this someday.
I've talked to Doctor Mendel, but I'm only getting the same 4 dialogue options and can't progress the story. (The "Ill come back when ready", "I want to help", "How would that happen", and "What do you want to learn from it" dialogues.) Did I miss something? How do I fix this?
Sadly the only thing that would talk to me in this mod was the old protectron in the shack. The mutants were mute- mute-ants even? The slavers wouldn't talk and didn't attack initially as I went into their settlement but then suddenly turned hostile. I think there was a human slave in a cage on a boat that started the shooting but I could be wrong. Given that I had prepped for a long range recce patrol the shooting was brief and pretty one sided, even playing in survival difficulty, companion Heather Casden and my chac' hammered the slavers. RE survival difficulty- I don't recall seeing any cooking facilities in the mod.
While it was nice to see some green, this mod seems broken. I used LOOT to optimise my load order after installing and before playing. On the positive side though, the Doctors narrative was a nice change, even though it was all told by 2 holotapes and the terminal notes. Was the 'Welcome' holotape supposed to do anything? Thanks for your efforts but it is far too broken to endorse.
Edit- I assumed that when I travelled back to the commonwealth this mods main quest would complete even though I was unable to (optional) 'give the seeds' to the mute-ants. It didn't so I was stuck with a live dead quest. Uninstalled, hoping that doesn't come back to bite me later...
Feedback: I couldn’t get the Mutants to talk to me even with subtitles on. Also when I approached the boat with the captured Mutant in it the Mutant became aggressive and then all the Pitt Slavers also became aggressive to me. I reloaded to previous slave and this time I killed the captured Mutant I could see from a distance through the porthole using kill in the console, with him dead I could walk all over the boat without the Pitt Slavers becoming aggressive. The basement hatch marker it stays there and nothing progressed even after I listened to the tape2 and read the entries in the nursery. That may be because I couldn't progress the talk to Mutants quest.
I thank you for your efforts and hope you can resolve the problems. This could be good, I like how it’s progressing.
This mod makes an edit to the "Sniper Shack" east of Somerville Place. For some reason, it deletes the roof on the shack, which leaves every object up there floating in mid-air. I'm wondering if that was intentional, or if it was safe to revert the edit. Specifically, it's FormID REFR:00230892, ShackMidRoof01Hole01 in cell POIJS036 cell 0000E71E
Edit, digging further in xEdit, it looks like it deletes every instance of ShackMidRoof01Hole01 in several cells all over the Commonwealth. I'm wondering why the hell that is. There doesn't seem to be any reason for deleting every instance of that one type of roof, especially since this mod is supposed to take place in a new worldspace.
160 comments
My first mod, Honest Hearts Reborn, was a passion project that emerged from my love of the Honest Hearts characters and my desire to give them a full story. I spent hundreds of hours on creating NPCs, conversations, quests, and some scripted encounters. With Penn's Woods, I challenged myself to make a mod within 2 weeks with a small worldspace and a limited number of NPCs. It ended up taking me about 4 weeks of work, spread over a period of a few months. It was a small experiment, and I have put it on the nexus simply because I hope that some people can enjoy it.
On a thematic level, I wanted to tell a story that fit the beauty and mystery of the Fallout universe and the Fallout 4 engine, particularly one that explored the effects of a single human life. The God of the Forest is at the center of that for me, and so it's a story that doesn't have a lot of violence, and in which the player does more observing than making extremely important decisions. Given more time I might have added more player choices and a few more fights, but I do not currently have time. Also, I am happy with what I made.
If you are going to criticize, please do so intelligently, and provide suggestions. I will make changes based on helpful suggestions and am deeply appreciative of the people who have pointed out bugs and helped me improve my work. In addition, I have clarified the mod description to make clear that it is a short mod more about atmosphere than complexity in response to some people's feeling that they were cheated. I will be deleting any purely negative comments at my own discretion.
Thanks,
James
NOTE: If anyone has anyone experience with the GECK, I am trying to figure out how to create LOD for the static objects in the mod - trees, houses, etc. So far I can't get it to generate. Let me know if you guys find anything!
Update Log:
UPDATE: There is a small ESP update. Download the main file and then the update - this fixes several misplaced trees and (hopefully) all of the faction problems. Enemies should now attack if their friends are attacked in all factions.
UPDATE: A larger update has taken place, streamlining quest objectives, getting rid of the hole people kept falling into, and a few other small fixes. Enjoy!
UPDATE: I've reverted to the first ESP update, because in the newer one conversations were no longer available with main NPCs.
https://imgur.com/a/FuiAqfM
A patch would be great.
Thanks.
Wherever you are in life now, at least that's something.
While it was nice to see some green, this mod seems broken. I used LOOT to optimise my load order after installing and before playing. On the positive side though, the Doctors narrative was a nice change, even though it was all told by 2 holotapes and the terminal notes. Was the 'Welcome' holotape supposed to do anything? Thanks for your efforts but it is far too broken to endorse.
Edit- I assumed that when I travelled back to the commonwealth this mods main quest would complete even though I was unable to (optional) 'give the seeds' to the mute-ants. It didn't so I was stuck with a live dead quest. Uninstalled, hoping that doesn't come back to bite me later...
I couldn’t get the Mutants to talk to me even with subtitles on.
Also when I approached the boat with the captured Mutant in it the Mutant became aggressive and then all the Pitt Slavers also became aggressive to me. I reloaded to previous slave and this time I killed the captured Mutant I could see from a distance through the porthole using kill in the console, with him dead I could walk all over the boat without the Pitt Slavers becoming aggressive.
The basement hatch marker it stays there and nothing progressed even after I listened to the tape2 and read the entries in the nursery. That may be because I couldn't progress the talk to Mutants quest.
I thank you for your efforts and hope you can resolve the problems. This could be good, I like how it’s progressing.
Edit: Not, now the mutants are talking, but Ford is voiceless. So a half-fix :P
Forget it. Until that bug is fixed, the mod is broken. Uninstalling.
Edit, digging further in xEdit, it looks like it deletes every instance of ShackMidRoof01Hole01 in several cells all over the Commonwealth. I'm wondering why the hell that is. There doesn't seem to be any reason for deleting every instance of that one type of roof, especially since this mod is supposed to take place in a new worldspace.