Some more advice and notes for fellow modders and people wanting to use this mod...
Imagine everything in the game is sitting in a database. Each row represents an object and each column represents a piece of information about the object. What a plugin does holds is a set of changes which are to be applied to the original database file. Desolation deletes every NPC so the best way to think about the plugin is that it contains a long list of changes. When these changes are applied to the original database the rows containing NPC data are removed.
Treat Desolation as an overhaul mod and as such any mod (including DLC and Creation Club) which refers to one of the NPCs listed in Desolation will cause an issue. For example any mod that adds new areas and new NPCs without using an NPC or script from the base game will work perfectly fine. Any mod which uses an NPC from the base game will run into issues. The reason for this is because any mod loaded before Desolation which uses an NPC will make it's own changes and then Desolation will delete the NPC after the changes are made. Any mod loaded after Desolation will be looking for NPC data that no longer exists.
One of the biggest drawbacks to Desolation is that scripts and non-human characters remain. If you trigger a script regarding a specific NPC, you'll have problems. These could be triggered by walking into a collision box or it could be a passive quest in the background. This means all the scripts required to start a new game run into problems because NPCs like the Vault-Tec representative or your spouse simply no longer exist.
It also means any mod loaded before Desolation which uses a specific NPC in a script will cause the script to break after starting the game. At the time the script is loaded, the NPC exists and the game assumes there are no errors in the script; after Desolation deletes the NPC the script will attempt to use an NPC which it believes still exists and therefore crash.
I've enjoyed Desolation for a while now it's a great base world to let mod authors do whatever they want so I'm considering building upon this idea while keeping Desolation as a requirement. Gutting it some more to make it stable, however, this will not be as simple as creating optional files to toggle specific features. I'll see what I can do.
An alternative and easy way to explore the world without using this mod would be to simply use the console command "tcai" to disable all combat from AI (human and non-human), or "tai" to disable all AI behaviour.
Great notes! And exactly what I have found as well.
I've been off and on working on expansions/reworks or rebuilds of the concept from desolation for quite some time, and my current build for it is a pretty decent set piece containing ghouls in exterior locations as well as dogmeat fully functioning, HOWEVER, invisible synth attacks still occur even in my fresh rebuilds. I have had zero luck in finding out what *exactly* causes that to occur, even in the FROST discord I wasn't able to get anyone to answer me clearly, despite it being an issue in early FROST builds. (I guess the newer devs either dont remember it or never encountered it since FROSTPLUS?)
Anyway, I come back here from time to time hoping that someone in the community might drop an epiphany in the comments, or heck, even upload a patch or some sort of expansion themselves. I've never heard from this mod author myself however and while I have *mostly* functional rebuilds of this concept I still consider Desolation to be the "main file", as it is where I learned from to build my mods, so I dont want to upload something without the author here giving permission to do so.
Hopefully this concept isnt forgotten. I'm honestly surprised with the talent in this community no one has quite built on this in a more complete way.
A couple notes, hopefully helpful to other curious modders -
1. Test this mod with every other mod you load individually. Any mod that adds or edits NPCs should be tested. Each one, depending on its method of implementation, acts differently in conjuction with this mod.
(NPCs travel works pretty good. Settlers of the Commonwealth works pretty good. No issues noticed with Tales from the Commonwealth. Settler mods work too, this mod seems to work just fine with any beacon generated or summoned settlers, such as from Settlers Calling or Cheat Terminal).
2. Even with nothing but DLC and UOFO4P installed, I get an "invisible synth" bug with, what I believe to be, are scripted NPC spawns (such as quest related NPCs like the ghouls at Cambridge PD), this bug happens with other mods that replace/remove NPCs as well...(Earlier Frost versions even) I havent figured out how to 100% avoid them yet, HOWEVER, if you use Zombie Walkers and replace synths 100% is selected, ZW can replace these invisible synths so long as they are hostile to you. ;)
3. Ive tried to delete Dogmeat from NONPCS.esp (desolation's plugin file), using FO4Edit, but to no avail. However, using other dog follower mods works fine.
**EDIT: I have been working off this mod as a base for the last few months. I have a fully working DogMeat! :) It was a pain. I'm trying to test re-enabling other specific NPCs as well. Ghouls mostly. Get a good ole "I am Legend" vibes. If I can get a fully functioning version working, and with the mod author's permission here, of course, I may upload it to Nexus. Lots more work to be done though!
INSTALL ADVICE: Start your game with an alt start mod, and spawn into an interior cell with no vanilla NPCs AFTER the intro sequence. I use ALT Start Live Another Life, and load into the Sanctuary Root Cellar. DONT go outside yet. Save, close the game. Load Desolation onto that save. Save the game again, and then STILL DONT GO OUTSIDE. RELOAD! And boom. Mod working. The reason for this is Desolation seems to, even if loading last, seems to get overwritten by Unofficial Patch and DLC NPC Data.
Hi I would highly appreciate it if you would be so kind to give me a bit more support as to where and when to place the mod. I've tried to follow your guide but I have 0 hours in Fall out 4 so I might just lack the basic knowledge as to what "AFTER the intro sequence" is, let alone the location you're talking about. I've tried to save/reload in the starting bathroom AND I tried it after I traveled with the Another Life mod, but I still get enemies so I must be doing something wrong somehow.
Let me try to break down your questions and answer each.
When I say "AFTER the intro sequence" I mean after the prologue, which is the games introductory cutscenes/character creation. This includes PreWar Sanctuary and Vault 101 scenes. Many Alt Start mods consider exiting the vault to be the "End" of the prologue. Which makes sense as that is when the world is officially open to you.
As I stated above I recommend using the mod "live another life", as it is the most widely supported and cleanly developed alternate start mod IMO. That mod allows you to, after character creation, select a spawn point to suit your character. It comes with many options, but one of the first options on the list is the Sanctuary Root Cellar, an interior location near the vanilla game start location.
You typically want to load into an interior cell any time you start a new game to do any mod testing or set up, because the way the game handles cells and resets can cause bugs to occur if you accidentally load a mod that edits the cell your character loads into.
This is probably a LOT for a new modder, but, I promise, it makes sense lol
YOUR issue might be due to your load order. Desolation, when loaded, needs to be ABSOLUTELY LAST (or as far down as you can possibly force it) in your load order. Alt start mods like Live Another Life also like to be loaded last, so you may have to set a specific rule in LOOT (or the plugins tab if you use Vortex) to force Desolation to load AFTER LAL and any other mods that LOOT is sorting below it.
I hope that helps, even if it is far far too late.
Hope this gets a response, not sure why but my game crashes immediately with this mod active. I got it to work for a little while, however it crashed at some point during gameplay and now it wont make it to main menu.
I wanted to try Fall Out 4 so badly but It's all a bit too creepy for me so I was hoping to just traverse the world and build (and I found some storm mods that looked like a nice addition when having no enemies) and this mods seems amazing for that purpose.. so I tried to do everything in the guide WastelandWynne wrote out, but I think I am lacking knowledge of the tutorial/basegame to be able to know when and where I had to follow the tips from WastelandWynne as to how to place this mod for it to work.
"INSTALL ADVICE: Start your game with an alt start mod, and spawn into an interior cell with no vanilla NPCs AFTER the intro sequence. I use ALT Start Live Another Life, and load into the Sanctuary Root Cellar. DONT go outside yet. Save, close the game. Load Desolation onto that save. Save the game again, and then STILL DONT GO OUTSIDE. RELOAD! And boom. Mod working. The reason for this is Desolation seems to, even if loading last, seems to get overwritten by Unofficial Patch and DLC NPC Data. "
Ive installed that Another Life mod, and that one is working fine, but I have no idea what the Sanctuary Root cellar is they are talking about or how I get there without going outside, or what the complete intro sequence is to begin with (I've tried to teleport to things with the cheat terminal but think Im just missing some basic knowledge of the game to understand what I gotta do when), but after I travelled with that Another Life Mod and I saved/reloaded like they adviced it still doesn't work so I have to be doing something wrong.. if anyone could give me a bit more info I would highly appreciate it!!
I've been looking for a mod that removes base game NPCs so that I can replace the lack of them with modded NPCs - such as M's Abominations or Zombie Dogs, etc. I've used SKK Fallout 4-76 before but that actively deleted any human-like NPC via a repeated script every time you changed location - so that didn't work. Does this actively delete s#*! like that or does it delete everything in one go so that I can repopulate the world with only modded npcs?
In short, yes, this mod simply deletes all base game NPCs, humans and monsters alike. Including Corpses! But see my post after yours regarding repopulating the world. Ive been trying the same thing, with mixed results. Some mods that repopulate play nice with this mod, others absolutely do not.
I am using it as a clean slate, then followed it up in the load order with Commonwealth Critters, Night of the Creeps, M's Abominations and a few others to add in some things to shoot. Oh, and I threw in a custom follower to give me someone to "carry my burdens".... Finally, Fallout is playing like the Gamma World I wanted (sort of). Can't say thanks enough!
I would love to try out a version of this with only the raiders and gunners removed (maybe other factions too, but i haven't fully played the game yet so I don't know who else there is). The BOS could still be in it. Basically, I want to throw in some heavy radiation and nightmarish weather mods and make it seem like its next to impossible for human beings to survive anywhere. Which would leave ghouls, mutants, synths, etc to take over the wastes. BOS could still be there because they have the tech to survive and the wandering vendors because they are willing to brave the wastes in order to get supplies and such for the home settlements. But not raiders or gunners hanging out doing whatever it is they do all day when I'm not killing them.
51 comments
Imagine everything in the game is sitting in a database. Each row represents an object and each column represents a piece of information about the object. What a plugin does holds is a set of changes which are to be applied to the original database file. Desolation deletes every NPC so the best way to think about the plugin is that it contains a long list of changes. When these changes are applied to the original database the rows containing NPC data are removed.
Treat Desolation as an overhaul mod and as such any mod (including DLC and Creation Club) which refers to one of the NPCs listed in Desolation will cause an issue. For example any mod that adds new areas and new NPCs without using an NPC or script from the base game will work perfectly fine. Any mod which uses an NPC from the base game will run into issues. The reason for this is because any mod loaded before Desolation which uses an NPC will make it's own changes and then Desolation will delete the NPC after the changes are made. Any mod loaded after Desolation will be looking for NPC data that no longer exists.
One of the biggest drawbacks to Desolation is that scripts and non-human characters remain. If you trigger a script regarding a specific NPC, you'll have problems. These could be triggered by walking into a collision box or it could be a passive quest in the background. This means all the scripts required to start a new game run into problems because NPCs like the Vault-Tec representative or your spouse simply no longer exist.
It also means any mod loaded before Desolation which uses a specific NPC in a script will cause the script to break after starting the game. At the time the script is loaded, the NPC exists and the game assumes there are no errors in the script; after Desolation deletes the NPC the script will attempt to use an NPC which it believes still exists and therefore crash.
I've enjoyed Desolation for a while now it's a great base world to let mod authors do whatever they want so I'm considering building upon this idea while keeping Desolation as a requirement. Gutting it some more to make it stable, however, this will not be as simple as creating optional files to toggle specific features. I'll see what I can do.
An alternative and easy way to explore the world without using this mod would be to simply use the console command "tcai" to disable all combat from AI (human and non-human), or "tai" to disable all AI behaviour.
I've been off and on working on expansions/reworks or rebuilds of the concept from desolation for quite some time, and my current build for it is a pretty decent set piece containing ghouls in exterior locations as well as dogmeat fully functioning, HOWEVER, invisible synth attacks still occur even in my fresh rebuilds. I have had zero luck in finding out what *exactly* causes that to occur, even in the FROST discord I wasn't able to get anyone to answer me clearly, despite it being an issue in early FROST builds. (I guess the newer devs either dont remember it or never encountered it since FROSTPLUS?)
Anyway, I come back here from time to time hoping that someone in the community might drop an epiphany in the comments, or heck, even upload a patch or some sort of expansion themselves. I've never heard from this mod author myself however and while I have *mostly* functional rebuilds of this concept I still consider Desolation to be the "main file", as it is where I learned from to build my mods, so I dont want to upload something without the author here giving permission to do so.
Hopefully this concept isnt forgotten. I'm honestly surprised with the talent in this community no one has quite built on this in a more complete way.
1. Test this mod with every other mod you load individually. Any mod that adds or edits NPCs should be tested. Each one, depending on its method of implementation, acts differently in conjuction with this mod.
(NPCs travel works pretty good. Settlers of the Commonwealth works pretty good. No issues noticed with Tales from the Commonwealth. Settler mods work too, this mod seems to work just fine with any beacon generated or summoned settlers, such as from Settlers Calling or Cheat Terminal).
2. Even with nothing but DLC and UOFO4P installed, I get an "invisible synth" bug with, what I believe to be, are scripted NPC spawns (such as quest related NPCs like the ghouls at Cambridge PD), this bug happens with other mods that replace/remove NPCs as well...(Earlier Frost versions even) I havent figured out how to 100% avoid them yet, HOWEVER, if you use Zombie Walkers and replace synths 100% is selected, ZW can replace these invisible synths so long as they are hostile to you. ;)
3. Ive tried to delete Dogmeat from NONPCS.esp (desolation's plugin file), using FO4Edit, but to no avail. However, using other dog follower mods works fine.
**EDIT: I have been working off this mod as a base for the last few months. I have a fully working DogMeat! :) It was a pain. I'm trying to test re-enabling other specific NPCs as well. Ghouls mostly. Get a good ole "I am Legend" vibes. If I can get a fully functioning version working, and with the mod author's permission here, of course, I may upload it to Nexus. Lots more work to be done though!
INSTALL ADVICE:
Start your game with an alt start mod, and spawn into an interior cell with no vanilla NPCs AFTER the intro sequence. I use ALT Start Live Another Life, and load into the Sanctuary Root Cellar. DONT go outside yet. Save, close the game. Load Desolation onto that save. Save the game again, and then STILL DONT GO OUTSIDE. RELOAD! And boom. Mod working. The reason for this is Desolation seems to, even if loading last, seems to get overwritten by Unofficial Patch and DLC NPC Data.
Let me try to break down your questions and answer each.
When I say "AFTER the intro sequence" I mean after the prologue, which is the games introductory cutscenes/character creation. This includes PreWar Sanctuary and Vault 101 scenes. Many Alt Start mods consider exiting the vault to be the "End" of the prologue. Which makes sense as that is when the world is officially open to you.
As I stated above I recommend using the mod "live another life", as it is the most widely supported and cleanly developed alternate start mod IMO. That mod allows you to, after character creation, select a spawn point to suit your character. It comes with many options, but one of the first options on the list is the Sanctuary Root Cellar, an interior location near the vanilla game start location.
You typically want to load into an interior cell any time you start a new game to do any mod testing or set up, because the way the game handles cells and resets can cause bugs to occur if you accidentally load a mod that edits the cell your character loads into.
This is probably a LOT for a new modder, but, I promise, it makes sense lol
YOUR issue might be due to your load order. Desolation, when loaded, needs to be ABSOLUTELY LAST (or as far down as you can possibly force it) in your load order. Alt start mods like Live Another Life also like to be loaded last, so you may have to set a specific rule in LOOT (or the plugins tab if you use Vortex) to force Desolation to load AFTER LAL and any other mods that LOOT is sorting below it.
I hope that helps, even if it is far far too late.
"INSTALL ADVICE:
Start your game with an alt start mod, and spawn into an interior cell with no vanilla NPCs AFTER the intro sequence. I use ALT Start Live Another Life, and load into the Sanctuary Root Cellar. DONT go outside yet. Save, close the game. Load Desolation onto that save. Save the game again, and then STILL DONT GO OUTSIDE. RELOAD! And boom. Mod working. The reason for this is Desolation seems to, even if loading last, seems to get overwritten by Unofficial Patch and DLC NPC Data. "
Ive installed that Another Life mod, and that one is working fine, but I have no idea what the Sanctuary Root cellar is they are talking about or how I get there without going outside, or what the complete intro sequence is to begin with (I've tried to teleport to things with the cheat terminal but think Im just missing some basic knowledge of the game to understand what I gotta do when), but after I travelled with that Another Life Mod and I saved/reloaded like they adviced it still doesn't work so I have to be doing something wrong.. if anyone could give me a bit more info I would highly appreciate it!!
Does this actively delete s#*! like that or does it delete everything in one go so that I can repopulate the world with only modded npcs?
But see my post after yours regarding repopulating the world. Ive been trying the same thing, with mixed results. Some mods that repopulate play nice with this mod, others absolutely do not.
but this is what I been looking for, thank you testing it out immediately
I am using it as a clean slate, then followed it up in the load order with Commonwealth Critters, Night of the Creeps, M's Abominations and a few others to add in some things to shoot. Oh, and I threw in a custom follower to give me someone to "carry my burdens"....
Finally, Fallout is playing like the Gamma World I wanted (sort of).
Can't say thanks enough!