I will try to read (and respond to if needed) all comments as soon as I can, however please read the description, use common sense (I know most people don't have it but still) and show respect and decency!
I've been working on this mod off and on since 2020 (more off than on) but now I've released it I hope to finish off building I'd done that just need filling with clutter and then I can let the muse take me over and indulge in the level designing again which is my favourite part.
If people could tell me which similar mods they use so I know what to aim for with compatibility. Beantown Interiors I know about, do people still use it much? Lexington Interiors? Atomic World? Plenty 'o' exploration, this says it's been discontinued? Stumble Upon Interiors? Inside Jobs? Concord EXPANDED? Salem EXPANDED? Immersive and Extended Nahant? Immersive and Extended Lexington? moreXplore? I'm use I've missed a few. Plus the "Thuggyverse" quest mods add in a few locations so I'll be leaving those well alone. I want to get an idea of which mods people use the most so I can avoid areas touched by those mods. i.e. Concord is full of boarded up places but if every uses Concord EXPANDED then there's no point in me even adding one place there.
I will be added enemies to some of the locations, nothing too big or out of place, a few radroaches, a feral or too, maybe a madman that's pissed off you've come into his squat and are steal all his burned books.
I don't plan on adding collectable or uniques... no gnomes or new magazines, or 10mm that does 1000 damage to people with a limp if there's an "R" in the month.
I might do some hidden doors, turn the power on to access an area puzzle type things, and I do plan of some areas having notes and terminal entries to flesh them out with back story etc. Don't expect any Shakespeare though I'm not much of a writer... I might actually quote Shakespeare though.
Here are some WIP pics inc. what the exterior I've based them on is like - Pics And my YouTube playlist with some test runs of a couple of unreleased bits? - Playlist
You know what I would like to see are more interior locations in Downtown Boston. That's a criminally underused area, and shouldn't conflict with many mods.
Always curious about new locations / expanded world type mods. I've used a number of the bigger ones and some smaller ones. I play with a more minimalist harder gameplay so I found many of the locations to be too abundant with tons of free stuff. Having either less stuff or more enemies in the way of the stuff would feel better for me, personally. Love the idea of notes and whatnot to add to the story narrative. Shakespeare works for me! Haha. And any other great writers of the past
Always great to see new mods that add new exteriors and/or interiors to the map!
Since you're asking, here's a list of what I'm using during my playthroughs:
Project Apocalyptic Commonwealth (amazing, but no longer on Nexus, completely overhauls Vault 111 and Concord) Boston Emergency Services (really good, totally underrated!) Commonwealth Underground and forgotten spaces Commonwealth Express Courier Stations Rsiyo’s location pack (another favourite) Project Landwer Hunkered down Brain’s Explorer Pack Atomic world Crowded commonwealth (available through BethNet) Stumble upon interiors Inside jobs Ms.rae’s Commonwealth Interiors Shank’s interiors project Plenty o’ Exploration N.E.S.T survival bunkers Makeshift Homes Commonwealth Wilderness Overhaul Settlement shelters Minutemen Watchtowers
There's also this one to keep an eye on: A few short stories about the commonwealth
Hope this helps.
I used Lexington Interiors, South of the Sea, the Expanded Series and Beantown Interiors in the past, but not any longer.
It'll be impossible to keep your mod compatible with everything else out there. But then again, there's still plenty of buildings and doors free! Personally, I'd also avoid Concord. And perhaps areas in Downtown that are problematic for people with low-end rigs. Cambridge definitely deserves a little more love.
Thank you for sharing your work, looking forward to seeing updates!
I found PAC - was not easy to find, had to jump through a few hoops on discord but I've got it, I'll look at it soon, Ms.rae’s Commonwealth Interiors seems to have disappeared completely
got most of the others that seem so I'll be going through those too
my thinking at the moment is to completely avoid issues with very popular mods - inside jobs (as it's on xbox too), stumble upon, Atomic world, a few others that keep getting mentioned, and offer patches for any issues with less popular/old mods i.e. Beantown. Of course it's still all early days so all this could change as I gather more information and go through the mods myself
Thanks for your input, you've given me a few new ones I didn't have on my list
Hi al9984. There will always be mods covering a specific site and you can't fit in with all of them. But to your list and few other multi-site mods:-
1) Lexington Interiors was a great mod for 2016, but is too old, too unbalanced too unoptimized and breaks precombines. Sorely needs modernising. 2) Beantown Interiors sadly does too. There are at least fixes for it but they're glitchy and don't play nice with other mods - I ran a mostly vanilla 1st playthru with just Beantown on it's own and it was fun, but removing it for future more-heavily modded playthrus - it's just not worth the bother as-is. 3) Plenty 'o' exploration - same as Lexington Interiors - less loot but more broken and badly implemented. 4) Stumble Upon Interiors - Good, clean and well done - worth keeping compatible with. 5) Inside Jobs - Good, clean and well done - worth keeping compatible with. 6) Expanded series - was another old iffy one but worth keeping compatible with because there are working patches for them - eg, at OPC patches. 7) MoreXplore - also patched by OPC, def worth keeping compatible with. 8) Old Time Religion - updated, clean and patched - not sure how much of the commonwealth it touches. 9) MoreLikeVicky's Immersive Series - being updated and fixed, some by Vicky (with AtomicTEM help), all the rest by OPC patches. 10) Xander's Aid - not sure how much it touches the commonwealth, but it is a highly regarded quest & lands mod - again patched by OPC. 11) Tales from the Commonwealth - very popular & well done. Def keep your mods aligned with it. Not so much the Settlers addon which is a good idea but can cause conflicts scattered across too many places/mods. Again, these have patches by OPC. 12) Shank's Interiors Project - updated v3 compatible with Tales and Inside Jobs - prob worth keeping compatible with, I cleaned it in FO4edit though. --------------------- 13) Atomic World - a tough choice simply because it covers such a wide area - I decided against it because I didn't like some of its work (eg near Sanctuary) and it's changes are so widespread that keeping track of compatibilities is too much of a headache. 14) Thuggyverse - well made but too pulp-like & lore breaking for me. Changes are widespread. I'd still recommend it all for a Thuggy-specific playthru with any mods Thuggy states is compatible, but not to keep track of if I was making an interiors series. 15) Subway Runner - breaks more precombines and optimisations than I've had hot dinners - for subway lovers there's a partial patch (again at OPC) that doesn't break your game but it's hardly worth worrying about for tracking your compatibility with. 16) South of the Sea - the original is broken and abandoned. A new optimization effort is underway by mith77 (here) but it's a work in progress. Note its predecessor (Glowing Sea Expanded) is one of the Expanded series of mods mentioned above already patched by OPC. --------------------- Many of the above have stated compatibilities in their descriptions or addressed in stickies therein and/or by any patches like OPC's. I've left out some other mods that come to mind (like Minutemen Supply Caches and RedrocketTV's Courier Stations) as I've read of conflicts with some locations of the above mods. Some other highly rated mods like Lima Outpost, Diamond City Expanded and The Bleachers I don't know enough about yet except some quests may send you to places.
You've listed a couple I never even knew existed, and said things about certain mods that mirror my own views (not mentioning any names) and were some of the motivations for this way back when I started it.
I think I'm going to have to download all these, install them one at a time and have a wander round the areas I want to use.
of course as long as I'm not using the exact same building/doorway then only a small merging compatibility patch may be needed.
For now I'm sticking with downtown Boston, Cambridge and Hyde Park
As someone noted below, it's really when you start removing things that precombines start breaking and compatibility issues start up - if you add a door, sewer grate, etc somewhere to your new areas and that's all the editing done to the vanilla cells, that should avoid most conflicts unless another mod adds something right there too - of course that would mean most locations would be some kind of interior cell - but those can be 'disguised' to look external still.
Up to you of course how you want to build this out, but figured it would be worth a mention.
I've already decided that most (if not all) locations will be "interior cells" So far the only things in the Exterior world space I've added are various doors, and a set of steps with some railings (this is for the skyscraper I'm working on) I also set a tree to be "initially disabled" as it would otherwise be in the way of said steps and railings but only after extensively testing that doing so would not in any way break precombines.
I realise that this isn't ideal and I'd love to do some exterior stuff that replaces the whole building like some of the similar mods do but that would require remaking the precombines, which in turn would require new assets, which would make it incompatible with PlayStation and that was one of the main driving forces of doing this in the first place
al9984, you're most welcome! And I am very grateful and much look forward to your efforts! I've been researching & building for a 2nd playthru, so thought I'd list stuff I've considered these past three weeks. Another one that looks great is Zorkaz's Sewers mod - but I'm guessing it doesn't touch many (if any) building interiors - more to do with adding exterior manholes, rear cellar hatches, sewer outlets. Another of his great ideas that could become an all-time keeper for repeated playthrus is Random Inner City - but that's about randomly blocking streets with barricades & raiders each playthru, rather than touching house interiors.
Btw, if you keep expanding your mod and make it compatible with various above classics, it will eventually become a real BUMMER: Boston Unsealed and More - Mutually Explorable Ruins. [or mutally exclusive ruins]
the sewers look good, that'll have to go in my load order at some point, I was thinking of doing a sewer or 2 myself as I've recently been playing Oblivion and the Imperial sewers in that are a fun and terrifying place.
PS - The Lima mod I was referring to is officially called Lima Detachment (Lima Outpost is the old name, and on the esp). I guess it mainly adds bunkers but there's at least one house in Malden, which must be popular because a patch had to be made for Fusion City's Hookers of the Commonwealth submod (patch also works for the standalone variant called Subways of the Commonwealth) - as all use the same door.
I've downloaded all these mods, loaded up one and was in game going to each location that it adds in to see a) where it exactly it was so I wouldn't use the same place, and b) take a look around and maybe get some inspiration and pointed for my own mod, see the level of clutter, dirt etc they use.
then I realised it'll be SO much quicker and easier just to open the mods up in the creation kit, I'll be able to see exactly when each mod changes and how that way without having to walk around, type in console commands,
Forgot there's a patch on Nexus for Redrocket's courier stations with Stumble Upon Interiors. On return I see someone has since mentioned it. That just leaves, iirc, a problem for the courier station in Lexington atop a building also used by Lexington Labs. I've not mentioned the Labs mod before as I didn't want to list tons of single-site mods when you've enough multi-location ones to worry about. However, it's worth mentioning now, simply because (as the courier stations are already compatible with Inside Jobs) it means it probably is worth your taking account of RedRocket's courier stations after all. Also, the new and growing mod Hidden Interiors may well be worth keeping an eye on.
Lexington is high on my list of off limits places already mainly due to "Immersive and Extended Lexington" and a little bit "Lexington interiors"
Commonwealth Express Courier Stations and Hidden Corners are on my list of mods I'm looking through. I spend of my free time yesterday looking through Stumble upon, inside jobs, MoreXplore and Atomic World and only found one place I'd thought about doing that Inside jobs uses.
I'm going to take a bit of a break from it today and just play the game as I've not shot any gunners in a few days.
Just took a look at the locations and found that the exit point on the church dropped me between the boarded-up doorway and your added door when I exited the interior. It feels like you are going with a theme of some sort. I have Plenty 'O' Explorations installed at the moment so that may have caused the issue, but I am going to disable it and go back and see. The adding doors to areas for interior cells are a great idea, it sounds funny but when I see a door, I have to check it out.
How terribly embarrassing! It would appear that at some point in cleaning the file of all the WIP stuff for release I reset the exit point. I have now released an update with a moved exit point. Thank you from bringing this to my attention!
Not a problem. Thought better to let you know before I did the video. With all the things you have mentioned about what you are wanting to do with the expansion of this mod it has me very intrigued. As I said before, adding in doors just makes me curious even if they don't lead anywhere. Like the door that you open, and the crazy high level sentry bot comes out. Yeah, that was a surprise the first time I did that.
I just had a horribly evil thought of making a door leads to a deep dark pit with spikes at the bottom... probably best I ignore that thought though. I'm sure I've tried a mod that did that already and was not amused because I hadn't saved in awhile and it the autosave was loading through the door so I had to pop god mode on for a minute or 2.
oh god that would be crazy, yet quite satisfying. Skyrim has one of those pits with spikes and it can kill pretty fast if your low level. just a thought right. LOL
I mean, if it was the "entrance" to a dungeon and didn't kill you, I see no issue - just would suck if it did do a massive amount of damage or kill you on entering.
Or perhaps something that shocks you which then paralyzes you for a little bit and does a tiny amount of damage, but won't kill you?
Ooh, neat, tracked. Did something similar for my Oblivion install years ago (minus worrying about consoles ofc).
For places, I'd avoid Concord as both Sim Settlements and Thuggyverse play with it. For example, SS2 Chapter 2's re-population feature seems to be predominantly Concord at the moment:
The influence of your settlements will have an impact beyond their borders, encouraging people to move in and settle the otherwise uninhabitable buildings - dynamically moving into those structures over time.
Concord in particular is seeing an explosion of activity. New residents with unique backstories and quests will begin to move into the area.
Stumble Upon Interiors Inside Jobs Hidden Corners Super Duper Mart Expanded (unfortunately, seems to have been abandoned before doing more than one of them)
I've also used A Cannibal in Concord, but the loot is terribly unbalanced so I stopped using it.
I've not abandoned Super Duper Mart Expanded, it's just simmering on the back burner at the moment while I renew my skills and creative juices to return to it and really do it justice. The Glowing Sea area is 10% cluttered see here it has lighting, a lift, shelves, trolleys, cash registers, toilets and 1/2 a staff room. Needs food on shelves, dirt and grime, a radroach or 20, maybe a feral, some posters, and a smattering of radiation.
Nice to know people use it, I found out earlier that it conflicts with inside jobs as that mod uses the same doors so I'll have to address that in the next version too
As far as similar mods a lot of the older ones I wouldn't worry about being compatible with, they're out dated. I would stick to a specific area rather than all over the commonwealth just to hopefully not conflict with too much. For new locations mods I've been trying to find good ones that don't conflict with anything. So far I'm running The Sewers, Rsiyo's Location Pack, Stumble Upon Interiors with a patch for The Courier Stations by RedRocketTV, Minutemen Watchtowers and Minutemen Supply Crates, Boston Emergency Services and Brians Explorer Pack which I'm probably going to remove both BES and Brian's Explorer Pack and check for conflicts. A few quest mods add some new locations like Tales from the Commonwealth, a few of Seddon's mods like Fourville which I recommend and Sim Settlements 2 also adds new doors in.
I usually play with zombies mods. It would be nice to have some houses where my char could stay at night. Some with a bed and/or a fireplace to cook. Workbenches if it makes sense for the house. The idea is to not depend on settlements for R&R. Is it possible to have random spans in some? For lite quests, you could have some npc doing a last stand against some mobs(raiders, ghouls). Or the opposite, entrenched raiders and the good guys ask your help to go "around" and end the stalemate.
1) There are lots of unused buildings in downtown Boston which could use interiors and not many mods add anything here. 2) The same could be said for the Cambridge area across the river.
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The author has locked this comment topic for the time beingI've been working on this mod off and on since 2020 (more off than on) but now I've released it I hope to finish off building I'd done that just need filling with clutter and then I can let the muse take me over and indulge in the level designing again which is my favourite part.
If people could tell me which similar mods they use so I know what to aim for with compatibility.
Beantown Interiors I know about, do people still use it much?
Lexington Interiors?
Atomic World?
Plenty 'o' exploration, this says it's been discontinued?
Stumble Upon Interiors?
Inside Jobs?
Concord EXPANDED?
Salem EXPANDED?
Immersive and Extended Nahant?
Immersive and Extended Lexington?
moreXplore?
I'm use I've missed a few.
Plus the "Thuggyverse" quest mods add in a few locations so I'll be leaving those well alone.
I want to get an idea of which mods people use the most so I can avoid areas touched by those mods. i.e. Concord is full of boarded up places but if every uses Concord EXPANDED then there's no point in me even adding one place there.
I will be added enemies to some of the locations, nothing too big or out of place, a few radroaches, a feral or too, maybe a madman that's pissed off you've come into his squat and are steal all his burned books.
I don't plan on adding collectable or uniques... no gnomes or new magazines, or 10mm that does 1000 damage to people with a limp if there's an "R" in the month.
I might do some hidden doors, turn the power on to access an area puzzle type things, and I do plan of some areas having notes and terminal entries to flesh them out with back story etc. Don't expect any Shakespeare though I'm not much of a writer... I might actually quote Shakespeare though.
Here are some WIP pics inc. what the exterior I've based them on is like - Pics
And my YouTube playlist with some test runs of a couple of unreleased bits? - Playlist
Since you're asking, here's a list of what I'm using during my playthroughs:
Project Apocalyptic Commonwealth (amazing, but no longer on Nexus, completely overhauls Vault 111 and Concord)
Boston Emergency Services (really good, totally underrated!)
Commonwealth Underground and forgotten spaces
Commonwealth Express Courier Stations
Rsiyo’s location pack (another favourite)
Project Landwer
Hunkered down
Brain’s Explorer Pack
Atomic world
Crowded commonwealth (available through BethNet)
Stumble upon interiors
Inside jobs
Ms.rae’s Commonwealth Interiors
Shank’s interiors project
Plenty o’ Exploration
N.E.S.T survival bunkers
Makeshift Homes
Commonwealth Wilderness Overhaul
Settlement shelters
Minutemen Watchtowers
There's also this one to keep an eye on: A few short stories about the commonwealth
Hope this helps.
I used Lexington Interiors, South of the Sea, the Expanded Series and Beantown Interiors in the past, but not any longer.
It'll be impossible to keep your mod compatible with everything else out there. But then again, there's still plenty of buildings and doors free! Personally, I'd also avoid Concord. And perhaps areas in Downtown that are problematic for people with low-end rigs. Cambridge definitely deserves a little more love.
Thank you for sharing your work, looking forward to seeing updates!
Ms.rae’s Commonwealth Interiors seems to have disappeared completely
got most of the others that seem so I'll be going through those too
my thinking at the moment is to completely avoid issues with very popular mods - inside jobs (as it's on xbox too), stumble upon, Atomic world, a few others that keep getting mentioned, and offer patches for any issues with less popular/old mods i.e. Beantown. Of course it's still all early days so all this could change as I gather more information and go through the mods myself
Thanks for your input, you've given me a few new ones I didn't have on my list
1) Lexington Interiors was a great mod for 2016, but is too old, too unbalanced too unoptimized and breaks precombines. Sorely needs modernising.
2) Beantown Interiors sadly does too. There are at least fixes for it but they're glitchy and don't play nice with other mods - I ran a mostly vanilla 1st playthru with just Beantown on it's own and it was fun, but removing it for future more-heavily modded playthrus - it's just not worth the bother as-is.
3) Plenty 'o' exploration - same as Lexington Interiors - less loot but more broken and badly implemented.
4) Stumble Upon Interiors - Good, clean and well done - worth keeping compatible with.
5) Inside Jobs - Good, clean and well done - worth keeping compatible with.
6) Expanded series - was another old iffy one but worth keeping compatible with because there are working patches for them - eg, at OPC patches.
7) MoreXplore - also patched by OPC, def worth keeping compatible with.
8) Old Time Religion - updated, clean and patched - not sure how much of the commonwealth it touches.
9) MoreLikeVicky's Immersive Series - being updated and fixed, some by Vicky (with AtomicTEM help), all the rest by OPC patches.
10) Xander's Aid - not sure how much it touches the commonwealth, but it is a highly regarded quest & lands mod - again patched by OPC.
11) Tales from the Commonwealth - very popular & well done. Def keep your mods aligned with it. Not so much the Settlers addon which is a good idea but can cause conflicts scattered across too many places/mods. Again, these have patches by OPC.
12) Shank's Interiors Project - updated v3 compatible with Tales and Inside Jobs - prob worth keeping compatible with, I cleaned it in FO4edit though.
---------------------
13) Atomic World - a tough choice simply because it covers such a wide area - I decided against it because I didn't like some of its work (eg near Sanctuary) and it's changes are so widespread that keeping track of compatibilities is too much of a headache.
14) Thuggyverse - well made but too pulp-like & lore breaking for me. Changes are widespread. I'd still recommend it all for a Thuggy-specific playthru with any mods Thuggy states is compatible, but not to keep track of if I was making an interiors series.
15) Subway Runner - breaks more precombines and optimisations than I've had hot dinners - for subway lovers there's a partial patch (again at OPC) that doesn't break your game but it's hardly worth worrying about for tracking your compatibility with.
16) South of the Sea - the original is broken and abandoned. A new optimization effort is underway by mith77 (here) but it's a work in progress. Note its predecessor (Glowing Sea Expanded) is one of the Expanded series of mods mentioned above already patched by OPC.
---------------------
Many of the above have stated compatibilities in their descriptions or addressed in stickies therein and/or by any patches like OPC's. I've left out some other mods that come to mind (like Minutemen Supply Caches and RedrocketTV's Courier Stations) as I've read of conflicts with some locations of the above mods. Some other highly rated mods like Lima Outpost, Diamond City Expanded and The Bleachers I don't know enough about yet except some quests may send you to places.
You've listed a couple I never even knew existed, and said things about certain mods that mirror my own views (not mentioning any names) and were some of the motivations for this way back when I started it.
I think I'm going to have to download all these, install them one at a time and have a wander round the areas I want to use.
of course as long as I'm not using the exact same building/doorway then only a small merging compatibility patch may be needed.
For now I'm sticking with downtown Boston, Cambridge and Hyde Park
Up to you of course how you want to build this out, but figured it would be worth a mention.
So far the only things in the Exterior world space I've added are various doors, and a set of steps with some railings (this is for the skyscraper I'm working on) I also set a tree to be "initially disabled" as it would otherwise be in the way of said steps and railings but only after extensively testing that doing so would not in any way break precombines.
I realise that this isn't ideal and I'd love to do some exterior stuff that replaces the whole building like some of the similar mods do but that would require remaking the precombines, which in turn would require new assets, which would make it incompatible with PlayStation and that was one of the main driving forces of doing this in the first place
Btw, if you keep expanding your mod and make it compatible with various above classics, it will eventually become a real BUMMER:
Boston Unsealed and More - Mutually Explorable Ruins. [or mutally exclusive ruins]
I've downloaded all these mods, loaded up one and was in game going to each location that it adds in to see a) where it exactly it was so I wouldn't use the same place, and b) take a look around and maybe get some inspiration and pointed for my own mod, see the level of clutter, dirt etc they use.
then I realised it'll be SO much quicker and easier just to open the mods up in the creation kit, I'll be able to see exactly when each mod changes and how that way without having to walk around, type in console commands,
I hate Mondays!
Commonwealth Express Courier Stations and Hidden Corners are on my list of mods I'm looking through. I spend of my free time yesterday looking through Stumble upon, inside jobs, MoreXplore and Atomic World and only found one place I'd thought about doing that Inside jobs uses.
I'm going to take a bit of a break from it today and just play the game as I've not shot any gunners in a few days.
I'm sure I've tried a mod that did that already and was not amused because I hadn't saved in awhile and it the autosave was loading through the door so I had to pop god mode on for a minute or 2.
Yes it was just a thought.
Or perhaps something that shocks you which then paralyzes you for a little bit and does a tiny amount of damage, but won't kill you?
For places, I'd avoid Concord as both Sim Settlements and Thuggyverse play with it. For example, SS2 Chapter 2's re-population feature seems to be predominantly Concord at the moment:
Stumble Upon Interiors
Inside Jobs
Hidden Corners
Super Duper Mart Expanded (unfortunately, seems to have been abandoned before doing more than one of them)
I've also used A Cannibal in Concord, but the loot is terribly unbalanced so I stopped using it.
-K
-K
Is it possible to have random spans in some? For lite quests, you could have some npc doing a last stand against some mobs(raiders, ghouls). Or the opposite, entrenched raiders and the good guys ask your help to go "around" and end the stalemate.
1) There are lots of unused buildings in downtown Boston which could use interiors and not many mods add anything here.
2) The same could be said for the Cambridge area across the river.