Have you ever wanted a flashlight in Fallout: New Vegas, rather than that smelly old Pip-Boy light? Something with style, real panache? Me, too. This mod is my take on the concept.

I had the fortune of playing the Metro series somewhat recently (I know, I know, late to the party), and one of the things which struck me immediately was the lighting- the darkness looming around the edges of your screen even with your flashlight on provided such a sense of atmosphere. It provides an entirely different experience than the full-radius Pip-Boy in Fallout. I have, to the best of my personal ability, attempted to recreate some of that atmosphere in FNV, using functionality provided in the JIP LN NVSE plugin.

• One flashlight, worn as an armor
• Leveled list integration
• Crafting recipe
• Configurable on/off key (with matching appearance)
• Lightweight
• Optional Pip-Boy light replacer
• Maybe something else, idk
  

As mentioned in the Features section, there are two ways to obtain the Flashlight. One is to find it in leveled lists - using an integration quest script, it has been added to a handful of clutter lists. Additionally, you may craft one at any workbench with 20 Repair skill, 2 Energy Cells, 1 Shot Glass, 1 Scrap Electronics, and 1 Leather Belt.

Once acquired, it equips like a normal armor piece. By default, it will be on, but holding the B key will toggle it on and off when equipped. To change the key, open the .ini file in Data/Config/RoniFlashlight/Flashlight.ini and set the Key= under [Hotkey] to the number corresponding to the key you want. The reference list has been included for the sake of ease.

Or, if using the Pip-Boy light replacer, turn on and off as normal. It will automatically use your pre-existing keybind.

FNV does not have true directional lights. This is an unavoidable consequence of the lighting engine, and it is beyond the ability of mods to simply "fix." As such, what you see here is simply the illusion of directionality, achieved by using multiple small lights in a line. This means that, yes, it does not and will not (and can not) act like a true beam of light - there will be irregularities, and it is, admittedly, a little janky. At the same time, even the vanilla Pip-Boy light behaves unnaturally, and I do not find it overly distracting for my own use, so I figure others may enjoy it, as well.

Similarly, flickering decals and strange terrain behavior in exteriors is another issue with the vanilla game. The most you can do to mitigate is install Improved Lighting Shaders (recommended).

Otherwise, the functionality is effectively detailed here, as I essentially followed this as a guide while making the mod.

F.A.Q

• Will you add battery requirements / some other feature from [insert mod here]?
  

Almost certainly not. One of my goals while making the mod was for it to be as light as possible (haha, get it? ...sorry). Battery requirements adds a whole new level of depth that needs to be implemented, and I feel the return is pretty low for the effort and complexity.

• Should I use both the replacer and the standalone together?
  

No.

• Performance impact?
  

Playing at sub-4k resolutions, there was no significant performance hit on my hardware. At 4k, in interiors with a lot of lights in a condensed area (primarily in TTW), there was infrequently a bit of a hit in specific spots - however, even without the mod, these spots already slowed down about 2/3rds as much as with the light. The rest of the time, it was fine. There's not much I can do about that.



Install with the mod manager of your choice (i.e. MO2). To uninstall, same process. If you wish to be extra super safe, unequip the flashlight and save before doing so.
A patch for ySI - Sorting Ycons can be found here, credits of monkeyonajetski.