Fallout New Vegas

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prodlimen

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prodlimen

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About this mod

The Strip worldspace has been turned back as closer as possible to its original concept: A large, spacious, fully opened, cleaned, well-preserved, exclusive and fancy place, crowned with colorful neon lights and green areas. The whole worldspace was restored, all the hidden areas were opened, concrete walls were raised around it...

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FLVJOD-TheStrip by prodlimen


Description:

FLVJOD-The Strip (Fabulous Las Vegas, Jewel of the Desert, Section The Strip) is a mod that intends to enhance the sight, atmosphere and gameplay experience inside The Strip by attempting to turn its worldspace back as closer as possible to its early version during the development of Fallout New Vegas: A large, spacious, open and clean area, the most exclusive and fancy in the Mojave Desert. The whole worldspace was cleaned and restored, all the hidden areas were opened, all the billboard walls were replaced with concrete ones, all the vanilla resorts were reworked and completed, the LOD was regenerated, the green areas were increased and the boundaries were extended, using Strip Open plugins as a base and incorporating most of its improvements.


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Which are the features that FLVJOD-The Strip add to the gameplay?:

- The Strip worldspace is now a fully open single section without any walls hiding areas.

- All the sections in the Strip have been fully navmeshed according to the extentions and relocations that were made.

- The Billboard walls between resorts, the destroyed roads, the debris piles, the litter papers, the damaged cars, the bridge in front of Vault 21 are all gone for good.

- The Tops hotel tower model has been replaced with one that doesn’t have the chunk in the top corner.

- The Billboard walls that surround the strip have been replaced with concrete walls, and moved a little further in order to gain some space to host the Resorts backside.

- All the main resorts (Lucky 38, Gomorrah, The Tops and Ultraluxe) models were completed to resemble their courtyards and backsides. Now its possible to walk around each of them.

-The STRIPWORLDNEW worldspace LOD was regenerated; the LOD models of all the main resorts (Lucky 38, Gomorrah, The Tops and Ultraluxe) were changed to match their new High poly models. The ghost of the Billboard walls/Tops Hotel tower Chunk are gone for good.

- The Ultraluxe original annex Hotel building was restored and connected to the casino through a little bridge passage. A section of the gained area behind the Ultraluxe was claimed in order to give the Resort its very own courtyard, allowing it to have now similar dimensions and services than the other resorts (Tops/Gomorrah).
- Some grass has been added to the green ground. 4 new green areas are available now for the gamblers to go and relax/step out: one behind and another next to Gomorrah, one in the backside of the Lucky38 and one behind the Ultraluxe.

- The area behind Michael Angelo’s and Vault 21 was cleaned. The first one was relocated there, and the NCR Embassy was moved to its old location. The Ultraluxe Hotel Building was located where the NCR Embassy used to be placed.

- The Las Vegas Boulevard Station increased its size in order to cover the empty area generated by the movement of the concrete walls.

- 3 new Parking lot areas have been built: 1 in front of the Lucky38, one next to the Gomorrah and one behind Vault 21. Originally those areas should have been filled with prewar cars, but since most of them are just junk Mr. House had them removed out of the Strip.

- The Tops Lobby building was crowned with the same pink neon lights that are displayed inside; the neon musical notes have been put too outside the casino.

- Some glowmaps were put outside The Lucky 38 and Tops in order to make them look more colorful.

- The door that connects Freeside with The Strip has been replaced with Camp McCarran main gate.

- A row of Queen Palms with lights have been placed in the Street to highlight the Strip area. Some other plants have been distributed in all the green areas to enhance the atmosphere of luxury and exclusiveness.

- The Stripdoor located in Freeside that teleports you to the Strip worldspace was changed to match the new door model.

- Due to the fact the mod was built using the Strip Open plugins as a base, most of all the hardwork done by its authors is incorporated here, in the form of bug fixes and restored content.

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Notes:
- The door model that teleports the courier from Freeside to The Strip and vice versa (originally located next to the Lucky 38 and Gomorrah) has been physically moved to where the concrete wall bound is located; however, the activation marker to teleport back remains on its original place, as well as all the triggers/markers related to quests and NPC’s spawns. Therefore, you have to activate it in the air, to find it you just have to take the magazine machine dispenser in front of the Queen Palm as reference.


This had to be done to prevent possible bugs.
- No new NPC’s or additional clutter have been added to the new areas in order to keep performance high. Through feedback I’ll decide in the future if something is added there to make the gameplay more complete.


- Getting to see the embellished Strip comes with a price in performance. Rendering large open areas full of NPC’s and neon lights everywhere might cause even mid range PCs to struggle at times. Therefore, it is MANDATORY you use this mod with a 4GB address space enabler patch. Here’s where I got the chance to personally check/verify/fully understand why the early Strip iteration had to be rejected in favor of performance and inmersion. The billboard walls were the less intrusive solution to allow the engine to hide NPCS and be spared from drawing too much areas/objects at the same time. Considering all the additional pressure the new stuff had put to the engine and the resultant hit on performance, adding new Resorts/neon lights to the STRIPWORLDNEW worldspace is out of the question.

Two LOD models (Gomorrah Resort and Vault 21 sign) as well as some concrete walls weren’t recognized by the GECK during the last 2 runs of the LOD Regeneration process. This will be fixed ASAP.

The Ultraluxe glowmap is not being fully displayed, due to the change of the model. The old glowmap for the Tops old damaged Hotel tower is still being displayed. They will be fixed ASAP.

Some Road pieces seem to display a white seam depending on the ENB Shadder you’re using. This will be revised and fixed ASAP.

In order to keep the lore all the new doors in the Tops Resort, BLV station and Michael Angelo’s are locked or inaccessible. The same applies to the new main gate located at the end of the south section of the strip.

The billboard walls that surround the Strip outside in the Wasteland worldspace will remain there, same as the ones located in Freeside. They can be considered as additional protections that Mr. House raised to prevent intruders from climbing the concrete walls.

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How was New Vegas Strip modified from its original concept and why?

During Electronic Entertainment Expo 2010 (E3 2010) Bethesda presented some Fallout New Vegas footage that shown a New Vegas (Freeside and the Strip) that looked different from what we got when the game was released. The more evident difference was the fact the Strip was a clean, well-preserved and stripdoor-free area surrounded by concrete walls. However, the version we found when the game was released featured a splitted worldspace surrounded by billboard walls. What happened there and why?.

I started working in a project that aimed to enhance and expand New Vegas, Freeside and the Strip in particular. One of the planned main features was to increase the amount of resorts in both areas; however, the lack of space inside the strip led me to inquire about the worldspace design and the options available to expand it. I remembered some time ago a friend of mine told me that during the development of the game, Freeside and the strip areas were very different from the version that was released to the public. Therefore, I wanted to get detailed information about the differences and the reasons behind the modifications both areas suffered. It was very important to be able to identify the opportunities the project could have and the obstacles that I would have to come to grips with.
I started researching experts that knew about the topic. Moburma80, a talented fellow modder and author of some popular mods hosted here in Nexus, scrutinized through the game code and found a lot of information bits that he later sticked together to reveal some of the content that was cut, left incompleted or abandoned. Based on that information and with the help of other skilled modders, he looked after of restoring a part of the cut off content and created a series of mods from which Open Strip and Freeside Uncut can be emphasized. He also wrote a blog where he detailed all his findings and where other fans have contributed posting new evidences and clues.

More pieces of information were found in some youtube interviews made to Bethesda staff while promoting FNV in E3 2010, some teaser images that were posted before its release, as well as the very game BSA files. The NIF models in contrast with the footage provided during the interviews and with the worldspaces in GECK revealed some of the adjustments that were made to both areas. An additional evidence was found in two of the loading screens that feature the Lucky 38 and Ultraluxe resorts on prewar times.

According to all the collected information The Strip and Freeside were splitted in sections and some of their content was cut off or hidden because of performance issues. The game requires a lot of memory to be able to render big open areas full of NPC’s, such as the ones mentioned; the users of Strip open and Freeside Uncut mods can confirm this. Since the game was planned to be released as well for game consoles like XBOX and PS3, that at that moment were unable to handle such amount of work without experiencing constant bugs and freezing, it was required to make adjustments that could allow a decent performance. In the case of Freeside the worldspace was splitted in 3 different worldspaces linked between them: FreesideNorthWorld, FreesideFortWorld and FreesideWorld. As for the Strip, the Worldspace remained in one piece (StripNewWorld), but it was divided internally through doors that hide some spots and spared the game engine from rendering an extra load of assets and NPC’s.
The way I see it, in the case of the strip a dilapidated touch was added to the whole worldspace to make the divisions more coherent and less intrusive. It was required to hide areas and NPCs, but how?. Placing concrete walls between the resorts would have been very intrusive and would have a major impact in aesthetics. However, the billboard walls were something thiner that could create the illusion of makeshift stuff that was put there years later, while in the case of concrete walls would have suggested they were there in prewar times. Because this change affected the Strip, it was required to implement it to Freeside as well (some footage revealed Freeside was originally surrounded by concrete walls as well).

Since the reason that motivated the researching was the lack of space in the strip, below are mentioned the most important differences and adjustments between its early development version and the one released to the public:

Both Freeside and The Strip were enclosed inside a concrete wall at some point of the game development; it was replaced later with a makeshift wall made of billboards.
Freeside and The Strip were two complete worldspaces without any divisions; they were later splitted in sections and some doors were put between them.
The Strip worldspace used to be more spacious.
The four casino models were somehow cut in the rear and the access to that area was cancelled. The Ultraluxe even had an adjacent building that seemed to be where the hotel rooms were located, but it was cut off and the new model was also cut from the rear. The original model was kept in the Wasteland Worldspace though.
LVB Station building model during early development was very different to the one that appeared in the released version of the game. A piece of the new version was fully viewable and the rails were clearly spottable, but it was later hidden behind some billboard walls and the access cancelled.
Some planters and paths had another shape or were set in a different way.
The streets inside the Strip looked cleaner and well-preserved in contrast with all the dirt, debris and concrete chunks we find in Vanilla Strip.
The Tops hotel tower was originally pristine and the Lobby building used to have another circulating neon light.
Some of the original glowmaps were discarded, but kept in the game files.


The researching results provided a very useful reference for the project: if the Strip got expanded it would require a balance between aesthetics and practicality in order to be able to run the mod with a playable performance. Therefore, it was decided to keep and enhance the original Strip area and its resorts and channel any new custom content to another section in the future.
Here we have a list of the most relevant sources of information:

Moburma’s Hacks – Moburma80's personal blog Contains a lot of interesting information about Fallout New Vegas cut content.

E3 2010 Fallout New Vegas Trailer. Some scenes show footage of the early strip:


Fallout New Vegas TV Spot. Some scenes show footage of the early strip:


Fallout: New Vegas Demo - IGN Live E3 2010. Some scenes show footage of the early strip:


E3 2010 Stage Demo: Fallout - New Vegas, GameSpot's Live Stage Show. Some scenes show footage of the early strip:


Fallout New Vegas BSA files: Fallout – Meshes.BSA, Fallout – Textures.BSA. Some NIF models and textures reveal a part of the cut content.

GECK Worldspaces: FreesideNorthWorld, FreesideFortWorld, FreesideWorld and StripNewWorld

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Installation instructions:

1)Go to the The Strip Open by MoBurma - original by Schizofriendlia mod page and download version 1.4. Inside the compressed file you will find 4 files (NVStripOpen.bsa, NVStripOpen.esm, StripOpen V1-4 readme and StripOpenMain.esp) and a folder named sound. Cut/Copy ONLY the Files NVStripOpen.bsa, NVStripOpen.esm and the sound folder and drop them inside your data folder, located in the following directory:
C:/Program Files(x86)/Steam/SteamApps/common/Fallout New Vegas/Data
You don’t need the other files, so you can erase them. The plugin provided by this mod is an edited version of one of them.

2)Go to your LOD folder, located in the following directory:
C:/Program Files(x86)/Steam/SteamApps/common/Fallout New Vegas/Data
Look for a folder called LODSettings. Open it and look for a file called TheStripWorldNew.DLODSettings. If you find it make a backup first in case you want to uninstall the mod and revert the Strip back to its original look. Then erase the file.

C:/Program Files(x86)/Steam/SteamApps/common/Fallout New Vegas/Data/Meshes/landscape/lod
Look for a folder named TheStripWorldNew. If you find it make a backup first in case you want to uninstall the mod and revert the Strip back to its original look. Then erase the folder. It contains the original LOD generation of the Strip Wordlspace, I mean the files that allow the game to render certain low poly models at distance (like the Lucky 38 when you are in the other extreme of the Strip).

3) Go back to FLVJOD-The Strip mod page and download the file FLVJODTheStrip Resources. It contains all the custom models and LOD files for the Strip. Inside the compressed file you will find 3 folders (LODSettings, Meshes, Textures) and 1 file (FLVJODTheStrip Readme.docx) Cut/Copy all the folders and paste them inside your Data folder, located in the following directory:
C:/Program Files(x86)/Steam/SteamApps/common/Fallout New Vegas/Data

4) Download the file FLVJODTheStripLatestPlugin. Inside the compressed file you will find one file named 50sFFFLVJODTheStrip.esp. This file is the Strip Open edited plugin that tells the game what to modify inside the Strip and how. Cut/Copy the file and paste it inside your Data folder, located in the following directory:
C:/Program Files(x86)/Steam/SteamApps/common/Fallout New Vegas/Data


5)Open Fallout Mod Manager or Nexus Mod Manager. Locate the plugins NVStripOpen.esm and 50sFFFLVJODTheStrip.esp, put them as low as possible in your load order and activate them.

3) Run the game

It’s highly recommended to start a new game before starting to use the mod. That way bugs can be prevented and in case you want to uninstall the mod you won’t loose your progress in an already started game.

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Uninstallation instructions:

1) Go to the following directory:

C:/Program Files(x86)/Steam/SteamApps/common/Fallout New Vegas/Data
Look for a folder called LODSettings. Open it and look for a file called TheStripWorldNew.DLODSettings. Erase it. In case you made a backup of the original file, put it here.

2) Go to the following directory:
C:/Program Files(x86)/Steam/SteamApps/common/Fallout New Vegas/Data/meshes/landscape/lod
Look for a folder called TheStripWorldNew. Erase it. In case you have made a backup of the original folder put it here.
3) Go to the following directory:
C:/Program Files(x86)/Steam/SteamApps/common/Fallout New Vegas/Data/meshes
Look for a folder called 50sFFFLVJODTheStrip. Erase it.

4) Go to the following directory:
C:/Program Files(x86)/Steam/SteamApps/common/Fallout New Vegas/Data/textures
Look for a folder called 50sFFFLVJODTheStrip. Erase it.

5) Go to the following directory:
C:/Program Files(x86)/Steam/SteamApps/common/Fallout New Vegas/Data

Look for the files NVStripOpen.esm and 50sFFFLVJODTheStrip.esp. Erase them.

6) You’re done.

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Credits:

Bethesda and Obsidian for creating Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas.

Blender, PAINT.NET and GIMP development teams for creating such amazing tools.

Prodlimen for the creation of the mod, of the custom resort High Poly and Low Poly (LOD) models, the edition of the STRIPWORLDNEW worldspace in the Strip Open plugin and the regeneration of the LOD.

Moburma80, Schizofriendlia/TheQuickness, Tarrant for their outstanding work creating Strip Open mod, the base that made possible creating FLVJOD-The Strip. The link to their project is here:

The Strip Open by MoBurma - original by Schizofriendlia

Permission for using Strip Open as a base of FLVJOD-The Strip was granted by moburma80 in the comment section of the post “Cut Dead” located in his blog "Moburma's hacks" located here: “Moburma’s Hacks” ;

by Schizofriendlia/TheQuickness via PM and by Tarrant as stated in the description section of Strip Open Mod.

Dave Finch for his detailed tutorial regarding generating LOD Data for custom worldspaces, located in his website truancyfactory: truancyfactory

Ez0n3 for his detailed video tutorial regarding the creation of custom worldspaces, located here:


TrickyVein and Kuroitsune for their technical help regarding the creation of LOD.

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License/Legal:

Uploading, use and modification of any part of this mod requires my permission and the corresponding permissions of The Strip Open authors.