IMPORTANT - IF UPDATING PLEASE READ THE UPDATING SECTION, BUT IF YOU DON'T, UNINSTALL THE PREVIOUS VERSION AND DO A CLEAN SAVE BEFORE UPDATING!

So what's this?
Following the Great War, something that was missing was entertainment that didn't involve being disembowelled by Raiders, disembowelled by Ferals, being disembowelled by Deathclaws, or your general run of the mill disembowelment.  Admittedly, this was more down to the fact there'd been a load of nuclear bombs thrown about and most of the world glowed a rather pleasant shade of green overnight, but some people saw this as merely a setback and not a reason to abandon progress entirely.

These people were the Invisible Entertainment Gnomes.  Having cornered the market in logistics (1), an offshoot disappearing to Tamriel(2), a subsidiary making suicide grenades, and generally getting up to all sorts of mischief, the next step in their global empire was entertainment and media.  The problem was, there wasn't much to develop.  Their early attempts at something called a Motion Sickness Generator failed due to the weight of two bloody great big CRT monitors strapped to the head, a few inches in front of the face, tended to cause permanent neck and eye damage(3).  That all changed when Doctor Amari ordered some of the finest Mexican marching powder for an all night session of reliving her memories of younger years(4), and the delivery was fulfilled on behalf of the Sinaloa Cartel Prime Delivery, by the Invisible Entertainment (currently doing Logistics again) Gnomes.

The delivery gnome was called Fred(5).

On entering the memory den, he saw the sweetest TVs ever.  People were sitting in their own little pods watching, seemingly quite happy.  Just then, someone walked in with the friendly synth he'd seen over in Diamond City, and curious to see what was going on, he followed them - it's not like he'd be seen unless that bloody stupid German Shepherd was about and wanted to play tuggy with his teddy again(6).  Downstairs in the basement, the stranger got in the pod, and they seemed to be doing something that was interactive.  This was tech he hadn't seen before, so rushed back to tell his superiors.

The next night, a whole troupe of Invisible Entertainment (currently doing Technical Research) Gnomes brazenly marched into Goodneighbor and The Memory Den(7) and proceeded to strip the machine down and catalogue all it's parts.  Amari, Irma and the rest of the people in the memory den watched horrified as the machine seemingly disassembled itself.  Occasionally the gnomes would need a screwdriver or something, and the sight of a screwdriver floating through the air didn't do much to help matters.  Even a priest was summoned, but couldn't perform a blessing as holy water and electricity don't mix.  After the gnomes had put the memory lounger back together, the people present swore never to talk about it again.

Back at IEG headquarters, the Invisible Entertainment (still currently doing Technical Research) Gnomes rebuilt the machine.  Lacking any form of control system for interactive content, they simply put a film on it called Teenagers from Outer Space, which was considered one of the best films ever made(8).  They discovered that due to the memory den technology, the film was instantly uploaded to their brains and despite only a few seconds having passed, they saw the entire film as if they were really watching it(9).  This was definitely a product they could sell.

They called it the Media Lounger, and renamed their company Commonwealth Media Network.

Rather than sell direct to consumers they sold to settlements.  For 1000 caps upfront the settlement received a memory lounger, which operated on a pay-per-view basis.  Settlers would pay to watch the film or program and then the profit was split between CMN and the settlement or the settlement owner.  This guaranteed income for CMN and the Media Lounger would slowly pay for itself.


Seriously?!?  More f[CENSORED] gnomes?
They're part of the game seriously.


*sigh*So what is this really?
Some of my mods in the past have been to do with VotW, and for a while I'd had a bit of an idea around the memory loungers and them playing videos.  I decided to incorporate it into an upcoming mod, so I converted a few videos to Bink, and messed about with it for a bit, and then concentrated on something else.

A couple of weeks ago a conversation started between myself and another Nexus member regarding VotW, and this reminded me of the memory lounger so I had another look at it.  Before I go any further I want to make one thing clear:

THIS IS NOT INTENDED TO REPLACE OR BE AN ALTERNATIVE TO VIDEOS OF THE WASTELAND.  The way this works is completely different to how VotW does things.  This is basically furniture that does something cool when the player sits in it or the settlers use it.  The script is nothing fancy, or at least right now, and incredibly simple, and can be rebuilt in 5 minutes flat.  It's basically a glorified chair.


OK, so how does it work?
First up download the installer which contains the ESP or ESL version, and then install it, and load game.  Go into build mode in the settlement, and have a look in Power > Miscellaneous and there will be something called Media Lounger - Teenagers from Outer Space.  Find some flat land with a bit of space (see issues) and whack it down.  Go and sit in it and after a brief pause (to let the animation of entering it play out, and so you can get comfy and your popcorn) the film will play.  If you want to leave just press T to skip.  If continuous play is selected you'll have to skip through all parts.

If you want control over the lounger, go to the chem bench, look in utility and craft the "Teenagers from Outer Space MeLo Controller".  You can choose a part to play and/or toggle continuous or part by part playing.  It will effect all loungers of the same type.  If you use non continuous play, you can exit the terminal and it will pick up at what part you left off at.  If you are using continuous play skipping will make the film think you've watched it all.

Settlers will also occasionally use the chair (put a bar nearby, as they'll group up near it) and when they do you'll get paid 1 cap(10).  For when you're not about, it generates +10 settlement income.  There's also a +10 settlement happiness bonus applied.

Something of note is that game time doesn't pass if the player uses the chair and watches the movie.  This is down to the game pausing whenever the cutscenes play (like at the start of the game with the intro video).  I did consider writing a script that bumped time forward, but then, something like an hour and a half movie, would take about 36 in game hours to watch.  If the player also skipped the video, the time would still move forward as if it had been watched totally.


Issues?
The main issue is the size of the lounger.  I can't get rid of the hose at the back, so this makes it really long.  You can use something like Place Everywhere, if you want to poke the hose through a wall or something.  If anyone knows how to remove the hose without breaking the animation could you please let me know.

The video sometimes plays twice.  This was more an issue with my dev build, and happened a few times.  The release build doesn't do it, but as I've experienced it I'm mentioning it just in case.  I think this has been fixed in 1.2, but will leave it in for now. Nope, it wasn't.  The OnActivate on certain items returns more than once (the power armor will do it up to 3 times), but I've never got it to fire constantly so sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.  I'm currently working on a workaround for this.

You can also kick the person in the chair out and use it.  I'm also working on a workaround for this.

This shouldn't conflict with anything, either, but if it does let me know in bugs.


UPDATING!!!!
If you're updating from 1.0 to 1.2, go to your settlements, delete the loungers if any, save and exit game, uninstall mod, reload game and OK missing ESL/P, save and exit game again, and now install the mod.

The scripts changed, and the lounger now looks for a quest to play the movies, and it's only active when playing the movie.  To allow me to put parts into the movie and some configuration options.  You can try, but I got an infinite black loading screen and had to ALT+F4 out, so if it doesn't work don't say I haven't warned you.


Plans?
How about a Netflix and chill?


???
Oh for the mod.

I'll be converting most of my VotW stuff to this, but I'll just add them to here rather than clutter up Nexus with them.

Over the next few days I'll also upload a little template esp with a PDF about how to put it together, if anyone wants to create their own.  It will require RAD Video Tools, which is free, but easy to use.

If any eager beavers figure it out then go for it, although I would appreciate a shout out if you release it.  If you let me know I'll also list them here and give you a link.


Is that it?
Yep.  As usual, love/hate/perform bizarre experiments on.


Footnotes
1 - Seriously these things exist.  Do you think the nuclear generator you've just built just magics itself into existence?  It's delivered by the Invisible Logistics Gnomes who take the materials as payment.
2 - They turn up in my Skyrim mods occasionally.
3 - Business for Invisible Ambulance Chasing Gnomes went through the roof due to Industrial Injury Claim Gnomes.
4 - The things she's done would make Piper blush.
5 - It's widely known a gnome is named after the first noise it makes when it's born.  Sometimes these sound like proper names.
6 - You know when Dogmeat has a mad and plays with his teddy?  He's actually playing with the Invisible Gnomes, and it looks really cute, or would do if you could see it.
7 - Whether it quite classes as brazen when you're invisible is debatable.
8 - By absolutely nobody.
9 - Am I allowed to turn an engine issue into a plot device.
10 - This was actually a debug feature to let me know a settler was using the lounger and was left in.


CREDITS
Big Horns Intro by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Artist: http://audionautix.com/