Fallout: I want to hear your ideas and suggestions

[Ghost]

Hello all,

For a short while now I have been trying to help a friend of mine with a fan based Fallout project that is a response to Bethesda’s Fallout 3.
Though in general positively received by the magazines and sites, not all Fallout fans are so favourably about it and the changes Bethesda has done.

Next to trying to help with finding skilled people for the project my friend has also asked me to make up ideas for a storyline, factions, locations, Non Player Characters etc.
Well at first I started with an idea I thought was good but after going over it several times and comparing it to Fallout 1, Fallout 2, Tactics, Van Buren (cancelled Fallout 3) and even Bethesda’s Fallout 3 I am not so happy about it anymore.

I am also stuck with a large writer’s block trying to invent some good new stuff, and I have the unfortunate luck that I know very little to no Americana (American culture, history etc.)
I talked about it with Harrison and he suggested that I would make a topic for it here where I ask for what ideas and suggestions you have for a Fallout game.

It can be everything, from perhaps some changes in the gameplay to new factions, characters to perhaps even suggestions for storylines but please try to stay in the spirit of Fallout, so not dozens of suggestions of super factions that appear out of nowhere ready to conquer the world, or stuff that would stick more in a modern future.

[Puni/Void]

Hello all,

For a short while now I have been trying to help a friend of mine with a fan based Fallout project that is a response to Bethesda’s Fallout 3.
Though in general positively received by the magazines and sites, not all Fallout fans are so favourably about it and the changes Bethesda has done.

You are right about that, Ghost. Many fans of Fallout, myself included, are quite sceptical of the path Bethesda has chosen to walk concerning Fallout 3. But as it has been mentioned in this forum earlier, we should hope for the best. It's great that you and your friend has started out with a fan based Fallout project. Are you going to create a Fallout 2 mod?


It can be everything, from perhaps some changes in the gameplay to new factions, characters to perhaps even suggestions for storylines but please try to stay in the spirit of Fallout, so not dozens of suggestions of super factions that appear out of nowhere ready to conquer the world, or stuff that would stick more in a modern future.

I would love to help out, so I'll give you a sign if I get some ideas on paper. :thumbs:
Hopefully I can do some brainstorming during the weekend.

Will the game take place in the same areas as Fallout 1 and 2, or are you going to use other locations btw?

Good luck with the project! :smokin:

[Ghost]

Hello P G,

Great to hear from you.
Well I have to admit that regarding screenshots it looks nice, its when it comes to gameplay or the handling of the universe that I am perhaps even more skeptical than you are.

Already we have the BoS and an army of Super Mutants (rather impossible as it has been almost a century since the vats were destroyed), and now also the possible return of the Enclave (which you pretty much annihilated at the end of Fallout 2) who run their own radio station!


Are you going to create a Fallout 2 mod?

Actually my friend is working on a complete new 3D engine (think Van Buren), if possible the team would like to recreate all the Fallout graphics in 3D.
If working of course, the engine would have a moveable camera and zoom function.


Will the game take place in the same areas as Fallout 1 and 2, or are you going to use other locations btw?

We would like to use a complete new locations, to prevent screwing with existing locations, but also to show how the rest of the US has been doing since the War. :D
Of course, again the problem is that I myself don't know much Americana, so its hard to choose which region. :(
We also don't want to use regions used by other mod project.


I would love to help out, so I'll give you a sign if I get some ideas on paper.
Hopefully I can do some brainstorming during the weekend.


Hope to hear from you on it.

[Puni/Void]

Hi Ghost,

Thanks for the reply. Check your PM inbox. :)

[nightrain]

One thing that is missing from RPGs in general is a more aggressive, interactive police force. NPCs are not vigilant enough when it comes to thieving and murdering. Example from Bethesda's Morrowind game: I can kill and rob six people in the first town I go to and get away with it completely. Nobody hears the screaming and fighting. Nobody cares about the dead bodies lying on the ground. Nobody cares that the places have been broken into and robbed. There's no follow-up ever from guards or citizens.
To make the game more immersive, the NPCs should be more aggressive about coming after the main character with accusations and criminal charges. Being in trouble with the law is hilarious and exhilirating. I remember the Bounty Hunters used to chase me around in Fallout 1. In Fallout 3 there should be Bounty Hunters, aggressive cops, crooked cops, and vigilantes that won't put up with the looting and murdering we find ourselves doing. It adds to the excitement of robbing and murdering people that you have to clean up after yourself and make sure there aren't any living eye witnesses if you don't want to be hunted by the law.

[Harrison]

That is a very good point and something that developers have always had problems with. Getting the NPCs to feel believable and realistic to the player. The problem is that in creating a justice system within a game you can end up making it very hard to play and enjoy.

One that did include law enforcement is the Baldur's Game series. I remember the first time I played the original first game in the series I began by doing what you do in every other RPG, going through the belongings of everyone in the inn, and in the town. The problem was that one of the NPCs discovered missing items and I was sprung. And on fleeing to the next town some magicians were waiting for me and killed me on the spot as I entered the town. Nasty! But cool too.

Another was the Thief games. Being discovered or an NPC finding a dead body meant others were alerted to your presence. The MGS games are another example of a similar system, and many Ninja games also include similar systems.

Oh and welcome to the forum nightrain :thumbs:

[Puni/Void]

One thing that is missing from RPGs in general is a more aggressive, interactive police force. NPCs are not vigilant enough when it comes to thieving and murdering. Example from Bethesda's Morrowind game: I can kill and rob six people in the first town I go to and get away with it completely. Nobody hears the screaming and fighting. Nobody cares about the dead bodies lying on the ground. Nobody cares that the places have been broken into and robbed. There's no follow-up ever from guards or citizens.

Hi Nightrain and welcome to the Classicamiga forum. Hope you'll have a good time here! :)

As for Morrowind, I don't agree completely about the law enforcement factor. All towns, like Balmoro, Vivec, and so on, does have a form of police in the guards. These guards patrol the streets and they are fighting crime. If you try to steal someone, or maybe you decide to attack an NPC, they will respond and thereby try to arrest you. You can of course try to avoid this by using sneak mode, or attacking an NPC at a spot were no guards are around. If you get caught, you'll have to spend time in jail, which will reduce your stats.

There is also a bounty-system, and the bounty goes up and up depending on how much crime you are comitting. I believe the bounty-system is also implemented in Oblivion. Beside this, I would also like to mention that in Morrowind and Oblivion, there is is a reputation level which will influence what other characters think of you. Therefore, if you commit crime, non-criminals will be reluctant to help you out for example.

Anyway, I understand your viewpoint, and I think it would be nice with an RPG were such a system was more developed. :thumbs:

[Harrison]

That is true regarding Oblivion. If a guard spots you trying to break into a house, or you are caught trying to pick someone's pockets then the guards are instantly attacking you and throwing you in jail.

Another game with a good justice system was Frontier: Elite 2.

[Puni/Void]

Yeah, Frontier had a law-enforcement system that worked well. If you by mistake fired a cannon or launched something at a city or spacecenter, they would come for you right away.

[Demon Cleaner]

The first Elite also had that feature, a bit annoying was, when you were in a fight, and hit the space station only one time with your fire, the cops immediately swarmed out with their vipers, and you couldn't dock there anymore.

Welcome nightrain, nice to meet you.

[nightrain]

good to get some quick replies to my first post. thank you all for welcoming me here. Now I will tell you a few more ideas I have that could be used in Fallout 3, or future RPGs.
Idea 1 - 3rd Party interruptions in the dialogue screen. When you are intimidating or charming an NPC, there could be other NPCs who will potentially enter your conversation dialogue for the sake of defending another NPC or maybe to side with you. I know this could get quite confusing if multiple NPCs try to do it, but basically it would turn the dialogue screen into a turn-based chat room with multiple characters. This allows for group dynamics such as bullying, banding together, and playing people off of each other. There's a lot of dialogue in Fallout/Oblivion RPGs and I love it. It'd be nice to have more options for coercion and persuasion.

Idea 2 - Physical behavior representative of ability I think the time is long overdue for the characters in an RPG to move and fight in a manner that reflects their level of proficiency. Example: A Level 3 mage does not throw punches like Rocky Marciano, but more like somebody who has never been in a fist fight in their life. There should be different sets of sprites for different skill levels and talent. That would make leveling up physically noticeable on the battlefield, instead of just in how much damage you do. Your Level 12 Brawler can do overhead slams and baseball swings with a super sledge, while your level 3 Tech can't keep it straight enough to hit anything.

[Harrison]

That second idea is an interesting one, and something I think can only now really be explored. The problem in the past has always been a lack of storage space on both the media used to load the game and the memory inside the console or PC. These days we have more than enough storage and more than enough memory that runs nice and fast to be able to introduce more advanced variations in character modelling.

It would definitely be good to see characters physically develop more visually on screen. Many RPGs have already done this, but these elements have so far been cosmetic with you able to see the change in weapons and clothing/armour, but not any difference in actual fighting style based on their level of skill. That would be a nice cosmetic addition for sure.

Idea 1 is also an interesting idea, and one I've seen already in quite a few RPGs, all be it on quite a limited scale. In some RPGs you are taken into conversations via an overlay with 2D hand drawn representations of the characters. And these conversations can contain a variety of different characters entering and leaving the conversation as it proceeds. These have tended to be quite automated though, with you just selecting options at specific moments to change the course of the conversation, with it being a click to proceed for the rest of the interaction.

I think conversation control and handling must me one of the hardest things to perfect in a game. Get it wrong and you end up just getting bored having to sit through screen after screen of predefined text, just trying to reach the end so you can then actually do something within the game.

[Ghost]

Hello all,

Sorry that I was gone.
Regarding all those suggestions of more intelligent NPC and consequences of stealing etc. well I am all for it but I am not really the programmer, I can only relay all the ideas and suggestions to the people who will write all the script and such.

Hello nightrain,

You bring up a couple of interesting suggestions, I will relay them but as the project does not have much people now I am not sure when such features could be implemented (if at all)

One of the major problems is still that we have so little people, we need far more for such positions as;

-Writing (story/ideas)
-Graphics (ingame/art)
-Coding
-Scripting
-Map making
-Music

The whole recruiting business has been pushed on me, much to my dislike as I am not good at it, I don't have much contacts in all of this or know where to look for such people, and believe me I am trying.

The problem is, the people that have such skills are either already on a project, working professional with no interest in doing something like this after work.

I am really frustrated about this, if any of you have suggestions please give them.

[Harrison]

There are a number of places you can go to try and recruit some people into your project. Do searches for Game Fan Fiction as some of the writers of that might well be very interesting in writing scripts and story for a game. And the mod community is a great place to look for people for map making and in in game graphics modelling. Not sure where for the coding, but there are a lot of programmers forums and sites online so they should be easy to find.

[Ghost]

Hello Harrison,

I have tried to reach out to the mod community (Fallout anyway), asking for interested people to join up, but so far they respond with skepticism, thinking that this is another would be project that will disappear as quickly as it came.
Most often the few skilled people are already tied to a project or are not interested as they in real life already have their hands full.

I also signed up at the following places:

http://www.devmaster.net/
http://www.gamedev.net/

But I discovered that these are mostly places for people who are looking for paid work, working for free on a small project is not in it.


Regarding Fan Fiction, while I do not rule out that there are also some skilled people amongst this crowd, in general I find some of the work questionable (for the record, I find my own work also questionable), and its often people who walk around with the idea that they think is the "coolest".
I'd rather find some people who already have some experience with this, having made several stories and so on.

Such people could have responded on the add I made but I barely hear from them either.


In general I am very frustrated with the fact that I am basically appointed to find new people for this project, I told this friend of mine already that I stink at it as I know no contacts and am not familiar with this type of community.

I really try my best at finding people but I am simply not the right choice.
(this all really does make me angry and I feel that I am personally targetted)

[Harrison]

Have you tried any mod communities outside of just Fallout? The mod community as a whole is huge and many people like to get involved in their free time. And good mod groups can even lead to being offered jobs by developers eventually, so there is incentive for them to work on projects to show what they can do.

[Ghost]

Hello Harrison,

The problem is, I don't know any longer where to look.
I am not lazy, I am not unwilling, but as we in the Netherlands say, "I am on the end of my Latin."

The problem is, I barely have any experience with any of this, and when people are constant skeptical of you, you become very frustrated and angry.
I am already trying my best at coming up with ideas, trying to help someone else with his project, doing school work at home and maintaing a house hold at the same time, but I don't come to do anything effectively.

These days there are very little things I get real joy out of, I am not able to play any of the new games I got due to system and OS limitations, I am running behind on assignments, and I generally feel pissed at everything right now.


If any of you know of places with modelers, artists, writers, etc. please post them here, other game forums but perhaps also places were writers come together.

[Ghost]

I guess I went a little to much on the self pity tour huh?

[Sharingan]

I haven't really been keeping up with this topic, but from what I read here, it seems you might be trying a little bit too hard, trying to carry more of a burden than you can carry? It doesn't sound like a particularly healthy thing to me, especially if you have to juggle school and home life along with it.

Remember that oftentimes, the best ideas and inspiration come when you're not actually actively working on a project. I used to do a little comic art drawing when I was younger, but I never could manage to draw anything good if I just sat down with a piece of pencil and paper. It just didn't work that way.

As for a gathering place for artists and fiction writers, have you been at Elfwood (http://elfwood.lysator.liu.se/elfwood.pike)? I'm not sure if it's the right kind of folk over there, but it might be worth browsing a bit anyway, if only to get some inspiration.

[Harrison]

That is very true. Trying to force yourself to do anything creative doesn't work.

I personally find I get the most ideas and actual design done at night time and I sometimes stay up till 3 or 4am as I have ideas and can get them down. In contrast if I sit down in the daytime and try to force myself to do something new it hardly works. But once I have the initial ideas for something started that then isn't a problem, I can then work on it any time of the day or night without a problem. For me it is the initial ideas and beginnings that require just waiting for them to start.

Everyone's mind and thought processes work in a different way. It's just finding out the best way you personally find motivation and ideas.

[Ghost]

Hello Sharingan, hello Harrison,

Well there is a lot of pressure on me for coming up with locations, factions and a strong storyline. I also want to create a good Fallout concept that feels true to the earlier games and live up the expectations my friend and others have of me but after I concluded my earlier idea was rather flawed I am stuck.

[Harrison]

As I said before. Fan Fiction writers are the best route for story writing and concept ideas. There are a lot of fan fiction sites available online to visit and to post adverts asking for help or to contact writers directly.

I don't have time to search for them all now for you but if you do a search in Google for Fan Fiction you will find a lot. But here is one link that should be very useful: http://www.fanfiction.net/game/

And you could narrow your search to sci-fi or even gaming fan fiction sites. And don't just try to concentrate on Fallout alone as that will limit what you find to practically zero.

[v85rawdeal]

As mentioned earlier in the thread, Elfwood (http://elfwood.lysator.liu.se/elfwood.pike)is a great site, for both fan art and fan fiction. I can imagine there would be plenty of people there who would be able to assist in this project.

[Ghost]

Hello all,

Sorry for the grave digging but I was curious if any of you had come up with suggestions for a good 'larger than life' plot for Fallout, similar to the strength of Fallout 1's Master and the Super Mutants, and Fallout 2's Enclave.

I launched this question on the No Mutants Allowed forum but so far its all political ploys, thats great to create a background but doesn't sound interesting enough for a storyline.