INTRODUCTION

It's gonna be a hot time in the old town tonight.  That's right Wastelandsketeers, it's another visual landscape overhaul courtesy of your friendly neighborhood DV.  Once upon a time there was a wonderfully atmospheric little mod called Scorched Earth, by Spiffyskytrooper.  It used a handful of the game's existing blackish texture files, mostly from the Glowing Sea, to paint the whole 'Wealth in monochrome shades of grey, as well as reducing the density and abundance of grass and other flora.  As the BADLANDS project was to Dustbowl and later Desperados, the nascent germ of VULKAN was gonna be for Scorched Earth.  But then Scorched Earth vanished into the wastes, leaving a small, perverse, and voluble population of folks jonesing for a Fallout 4 with an over-the-top bleakly apocalyptic vibe.  Well comrades, now you've got plenty of pumice with which to scratch that itch, even if we are still waiting in vain for a bit of obsidian.

VULKAN depicts a Commonwealth utterly blasted by volcanic eruptions.  Long after the initial cataclysm, the Glowing Caldera continues to belch lava and poisonous vapors from deep within the earth.  The countryside lies covered in layers of ash and soot from burning forests.  Cratered pyroclasts litter the ground.  To the west, great hydrothermal vents have opened up around the old Nuka World amusement park, staining the blasted ground in thermophilic bacterial hues.  Blackened trunks and the battered remnants of human habitation remain amid the ruin.  And yet, for all the earth's destructive potency, life hangs on, tenacious as ever.  Sickly, contorted vegetation straggles in the wreckage across the 'Wealth, but in the north lush meadows flourish in the fertile, mineral-rich soil.  As they cobble together a new life from the wreckage of the old world, hardscrabble survivors tell each other that the worst has passed, that there is a chance, however slim, for a strange new world worth living in to be grown out of the ashes...




ABOUT VULKAN

VULKAN retextures the landscape and the grass to look like a volcano erupted just outside of Boston.  No, it's not especially realistic, but it is moody and evocative as all get out.  Different regions of the map have different floral assemblages and ground textures.

While it would have been cool to add heat hazards to the magma-flavored ground textures, I don't know how to do that.  You'll just have to role-play it like The Floor is Made of Lava, or come up with some genius head-canon for why everyone can walk around in the stuff without suffering anything more serious than a radiation headache.

VULKAN was designed with the vanilla game's flora setup in mind, though it looks interesting in different ways with both Dead Forest and Naked/Barren Wasteland.  Special mention to Misty Pines Overhaul, which adds plumes of Far Harbor-style fog all over the Commonwealth.  You can strip out the pine trees (or leave them in as yet more fire-blasted husks) and you've got some instant atmosphere for your wanderings.  I'm sure you can produce fascinating effects with other floral frameworks as well.

Nuka World is required.  It is now a geothermal wasteland kind of like the more messed up corners of Yellowstone or the Danakil Basin.  Props to Antony2002 for the suggestion.  Far Harbor is not required, though the general land and flora retextures carry over to The Island just fine.

For weather effects I strongly recommend  NAC.  The red-tinted firestorms are perfect for the Glowing Caldera, snowfall can be reimagined as ashfall, and the foggy, misty weathers could be seen as earthly miasmas and poisonous fumes.

VULKAN is an all-in-one operation, with a single ESL-flagged ESP containing all the textures and meshes needed to make this thing work, all wrapped up in BA2s for speedy processing.  LODs for a setup with vanilla flora are included.

Terrain LOD and Object LOD for vanilla tree placement are included.  Some people will doubtless have trouble getting them to work right, and they're gonna make noise about it in the comments.  If you are one of these people, you probably aren't actually reading this, but just for the record know that I wish you well, I hope your life is rich and satisfying, and I don't care about your LOD problems so don't bug me.

If you use a different flora setup, like any of the aforementioned mods, you'll need to generate your own bespoke LODs.  Don't fret, you can very easily generate your own LOD for whatever appalling combination of mods you happen to use by following this simple guide.  It's a snap, won't take that long, and is miles easier than doing it in Skyrim.

VULKAN is very much a labor of love made by an amateur- there are probably plenty of rough edges, odd texture glitches, and the sort of visual insubordination that's part of the DIY joy of the modding experience.  If the bugs aren't catastrophic I'm probably not gonna fix 'em for you.




PYROCLAST

In addition to the main file, an optional addon ESL-flagged ESP, PYROCLAST, is included.  This removes all living vegetation from the game-world, leaving only rocks, charred twigs, and the odd blasted grass patch that I couldn't easily obliterate.  For those of you fantasizing a hopelessly devastated region in its final days.  It's horribly bleak, but there's a beauty in the stark landscapes, especially with trees stripped out by Naked or Barren Wasteland.  Carnagefiend eat your heart out.

Activate VULKAN-PYROCLAST.esp below/with precedence over VULKAN.esp in your load order if you'd prefer this version of the 'Wealth.




INSTALLATION GUIDE

1. Download + install True Grass.  It is a hard requirement for the grass part of the mod.  Disable or delete the INI file that comes with True Grass.

2. Download + install VULKAN

3. Make sure no other mods are overwriting the VULKAN files or its ESPs, including any loose files

4. Add or modify these lines in your fallout4.ini:

[Grass]
iMinGrassSize = [pick a number between 40 and 70, lower numbers mean denser grass but lower FPS]
bAllowCreateGrass = 1
bAllowLoadGrass = 0
iMaxGrassTypesPerTexure = 15

5. Double-check to make extra sure nothing is overwriting your VULKAN files.

6. Place VULKAN.esp pretty close to the bottom of your load order so that it overwrites other landscape textures.

7. OPTIONAL: Activate the VULKAN-PYROCLAST ESP for extra-apocalyptic vibes.

8. Explore, adventure, take some pictures in-game and post them here.




FAQ

What other mods were used in the pictures?
Weather and skies are from NAC.

ENBs are Film Workshop and PRT.  Additional effects via ReShade, including the Film Workshop shader suite.

Other landscape mods listed in relevant images.

Clothing, armor, etc. are from all over the place- sources too numerous to list. 
The cool armored hazmat suit hat comes from one of the several modifications of the Prey suit CC mod.  The cool armored hazmat suit itself comes from- I don't remember where, but the stylish orange/beige coloring is my own homebrew texture mash.

Additional mods and/or DLC locations are noted in the image captions.

How bad is the FPS hit?
That depends entirely on your machine, how well you take care of it, what other dubiously optimized and haphazardly scripted mods you're using, how you've set your INIs, how obsessively you've kitted out your tac-ops Barbie supercool manly soldierman, etc.

The textures themselves are all over the place, 512 to 4K resolution.  If you use VULKAN alongside a landscape overhaul that eliminates most of the tree cover, like Desperados or Barren Wasteland, the savings in FPS there can help you justify using higher resolution ground textures than you otherwise might be inclined to try.

The lower you set iMinGrassSize, the denser the grass and the slower your performance.  The opposite is true the higher/sparser you go.  Grass is already pretty sparse in most places because, y'know, volcano.  Tinker with the setting to suit your own aesthetic and the needs of your computer.

Your mileage will almost certainly vary.

Can I install/uninstall this mid-game?
Yes.  These are just textures, which may be safely put in and taken out at any time.

Does VULKAN break precombines?
Nope, these are still just textures.

Is VULKAN compatible with X mod?
Probably, so long as the other mod isn't also an environmental retexture.  Yet again, still just textures.

What about a mod that has, like, trees and grass and stuff?
Still textures, which you will not be able to see under all those trees and grass and stuff, but yes, technically it's compatible.  You'll need to generate your own Object LOD in order to see any mod-added trees in the distance, however.

Will this be available on console?
If you make it, it will be.  Holler at me if you would like to perform the port yourself.

Will you make a lower resolution 'performance' version?
Nope.

I don't like it!  Make it how I want it!


I love the concept, but could you just change this one thing?
No.  Make your own patch or texture swap to meet your own personal aesthetic.

I love it!  But I'd like to change this one thing.  Could I release a mod that does that?
Sure!  Check in with me first, but I'll almost certainly say yes.  Just don't call it something like "Vulken IMPROVED texure FIXES" or whatever; that's kind of rude and also one of those is not a word no matter what Bethesda INIs tell you.




CREDITS

Many thanks to all of the generous modders and artists who graciously permitted me to make use of their work.  Almost all of the textures in VULKAN are heavily modified or fully original, but some are wholly or in part the result of the imagination and work of other folks.  Everyone here's given permission at one point or another for their work to be used in my mods.  It's entirely possible that in the whirlwind of compiling and publishing I've unknowingly missed someone. If you recognize your own work, please hit me up about it and I'll add your name to the credits.  If you really don't want to be a part of the VULKAN project, please consider the benefits of the Cathedral approach to modding- but if you're still adamant about non-participation I'll remove and replace the offending files. In no particular order, many thanks to:

Spiffyskytrooper
Silverfox600
T4gtr34um3r
Vurt
Pfuscher
Doodlezoid
Velanimus
Hein84
L00ping
Winedave
Rob Tuytel / Texture Haven

Remember, if you like it endorse it!

Thanks for taking VULKAN to the hotfiles, y'all!

Thanks to DSOG, GameRant, and Aroged for their writeups on the mod.


May your roads lead you to warm sands.