Fallout: New Vegas - Fall 2010

I've almost got my cannon mod working. Just a few nitpicky things to iron out and I'm not sure where to ask. If anyone has any suggestions as to where I could get some GECK brains to pick, please let me know. And, in case anywhere here knows...

I'm trying to make a single-shot, non-explosive version of the grenade machine gun, since it looks like a cannon anyway.

I have the functionality down and I don't think it's terribly unbalancing, though I will need to learn a little more to get the ammo availability right. Right now I'm trying to get the look and feel down.

I want it to be semi-automatic but the animation doesn't seem to support that. If I uncheck automatic the animation plays very quickly but it doesn't actually fire. If I have to make it automatic I'd prefer to get the firing rate down to something like one shot per second (with an 8-round magazine). However the animation seems to play the same no matter how it fires, animating recoil for a much faster rate of fire. Anyone know how to either get it to work as a semi-automatic or somehow get a delay in the animation so it looks right?

Secondly, I want it to look and sound like the world is ending. Anyone know a weapon with a nice big muzzle flash I could use, and any recommendations for firing sounds? I tried using one of the biggest weapons in the game as the firing sound but it had a slight delay on it so no dice. Worse to worst I'll learn how to import my own sounds I guess.

LobsterMobster:

On the weapon screen, under Art & Sound, there's an option for Multiplier/Attack Multiplier. Adjusting these may give you the effect you want. You can also try changing the animation type dropdown on the same screen. There's an official forum just for New Vegas GECK questions here that generally has a good group of people offering suggestions. Right now the new GECK has several bugs ranging from mildly annoying to considerably irritating, and there's been one hotfix (Look for 'dirty fix' on the the page by Ned) leaked by a friendly dev to correct a maddening debug issue.

Thanks for the help, Puce. I posted my question on the New Vegas Nexus forums last night and so far have not received any responses. Makes me wonder if my question is really stupid or impossibly difficult. :/

I think it is really neat that you guys take the time to build mods. If I had a better PC - I would love to try them!

Something random I was thinking about last night. While I miss the random encounters with people that can be handled without a "quest" in Red Dead Redemption, overall this games feels similar and better. And by that I mean that this game feels like a Western. A better Western, between the two. If the essence of a Western is a lawless frontier where people group together to make rules, protect each other from those that break rules and right and wrong are decided often brutally and with a touch of grey then I think this game is a better version of the genre. I've played both. I didn't get far into RDR, because while I loved the scenery and the random things that would occur in the world that I could just deal with without a quest (see earlier post), overall it didn't grab me. NV has had its hooks in me from the moment I bought it.

I thought initially it was because of the fact that I love the post-apocalyptic genre of movie, films, games, etc. But it's not that. I only got 12 hours or so into FO3 before I gave up. NV, on the other hand, feels like I'm a little more in civilization, but there are so many competing groupings of people, ways they've gathered together to try and survive that the world feels a little more vibrant than FO3. I dig it for that.

I know I'm not alone in getting the western vibe. And I know it's not unintentional. The choice of location, music, themes is definitely in that direction. I was just surprised by how well this worked to the point where going back to the actual western game seems kind of pointless.

Is this still using the hacked d3d9 dll or the standard?

bighoppa wrote:

Is this still using the hacked d3d9 dll or the standard?

Never used the hacked .dll because I run multiple monitors. Must have made some changes to the standard.

Just reached Nipton...

Oh man, this game is special.

Has anyone else notice how the architecture in some places acts as a callback to Fallout 1 and 2? On the Mojave Outpost, the color palette, how the space is divided between old, destroyed cars and the building. Hell, even the buildings themselves. I don't know if I'm imagining stuff, but New Vegas sure feels to me a lot more in line with FO1 and FO2 than FO3 ever did.

And they need to make the computer play Caravan better. I love that game, but the AI can't play figure cards to save it's hide. So far it's a reliable source of income.

BTW, <3 Black Mountain Radio

So far the new patch has been working great for me; I was using the hacked .dll (the one for ATI users), and I removed it prior to installing the patch. So far it's running as smoothly as before, but now it properly shows my 5850 video card.

It's quite possibly the 'new patch placebo effect', but the audio mixing seems a lot better for me. I had frequent problems with sounds either being way too loud or way too soft periodically; 15 minutes of play has generated no crazy sound anomalies for me yet.

Another patch:

Fallout: New Vegas - Version 1.1.1
Companions now show up as waypoints on the map
Companions will always fast travel with you, unless told to wait or sent away
Fix: DLC error/save corruption
Fix: Stuttering with water effects
Fix: Severe performance issues with DirectX.
Fix: Controls temporarily disabled after reloading Cowboy Repeater while crouched
Fixed crash using the Euclid C-Finder while having the Heave Ho perk
Fix: Entering the strip after Debt Collector causes crash and autosave corruption
Fix: Using Mojave Express dropbox can cause DLC warnings
Fixed crash when buying duplicate caravan cards from a vendor in a single transaction
Crafting menu should filter valid (bright) recipes to the top of the list
Fix: Sitting down while looking down a weapon's ironsights leaves player control locked
Fix: If a companion is knocked unconscious with broken limbs they stay broken on respawn
Fix for varmint night scope effect persisting in kill cam
Fix for giving companions armor that adds STR does not increase their carry weight
Fix NPC Repair menu displays DAM as DPS
Having NPC repair service rifle with forged receiver decreases CND

Have to see if it fixes any of my performance issues.

Update: The patch has done wonders for my FPS, I'm sticking at 55-60 almost all the time, with one exception being when I pull out a weapon it drops to around 45. Went back the the place in Freeside that was causing drops to 8 FPS, and noticed no issues.

Ran into another couple of bugs. One concerning enemies that don't die, simply go unconscious. The enemy was bark scorpions, very strange.

oMonarca wrote:

Just reached Nipton...

Oh man, this game is special.

What about it specifically?

Spoiler:

This was the city where I decided I really didn't care about losing questlines. Stories were going to unfold as they were going to unfold, without my manipulation of the game. So I waited until the Legion soldiers walked away and then tossed sticks of dynamite at their feet. That was that.

I also mercy-killed everyone on a cross. Rough.

i38warhawk wrote:

Ran into another couple of bugs. One concerning enemies that don't die, simply go unconscious. The enemy was bark scorpions, very strange.

I ran into the same bug. So weird, I thought maybe the scorpion was a pivotal character in the game. But then there was another, and another, and a couple of ants, so yeah, bug Worse bit is that when they wake back up, they have full hp and all limbs restored. Guess that radiation does help. Still, it's pretty funny to see them getting up, realizing they're the Jason of radioactive bugs, crippling their legs and hightail out of there.

Don't remember for sure, but I think you get XP every time you knock them down, so "infinite xp from killing bugs" bug?

DSGamer wrote:
oMonarca wrote:

Just reached Nipton...

Oh man, this game is special.

What about it specifically?

Spoiler:

This was the city where I decided I really didn't care about losing questlines. Stories were going to unfold as they were going to unfold, without my manipulation of the game. So I waited until the Legion soldiers walked away and then tossed sticks of dynamite at their feet. That was that.

I also mercy-killed everyone on a cross. Rough.

Just got there...

Spoiler:

... and heard the Legionnaire preach about justice and what not. Let them go home, I need to know more before I start pulling triggers. Then I went around town. It was night, so the crucifixions, the effigies, the heads on pikes, they were really effective. Point taken, but who am I to judge?

Heard gunshots in the distance, went to check them out, it was Tomas and Jacklyn duking it out about Blue Star caps. Tomas won, talked to me about what happened, then I shot him down for his caps and gear. I guess the brutality of Nipton got the best of me. Met the lottery winners, 1st and 2nd place, respectively.

In a way, I felt sorry for the second place guy, but he was a total dirt bag, so I guess that evens that out. Left him to die, with no meds.

I loved the house of the paranoid man. Don't know what he means by essence, though.

FO3 had great locations where you figured out something bad happened, years ago, from before the war, but rarely I met fresh "devastation". So far NV has shown me a better picture of the toils and tribulations of a Mankind trying to come back.

oMonarca wrote:
Spoiler:

I loved the house of the paranoid man. Don't know what he means by essence, though.

Spoiler:

pretty sure it's a Dr. Strangelove reference on the general

FedoraMcQuaid wrote:
oMonarca wrote:
Spoiler:

I loved the house of the paranoid man. Don't know what he means by essence, though.

Spoiler:

pretty sure it's a Dr. Strangelove reference on the general

Don't know anything about that work Still, overall I found the scene pretty cool.

Spoiler:

Scorpion cage FTW!

oMonarca wrote:

Don't know anything about that work Still, overall I found the scene pretty cool.

Time to educate yourself then.

oMonarca wrote:

FO3 had great locations where you figured out something bad happened, years ago, from before the war, but rarely I met fresh "devastation". So far NV has shown me a better picture of the toils and tribulations of a Mankind trying to come back.

You're gonna love Vault 11.

Status update on my mod. The kind people at the Bethsoft forums told me how to change the animations but sadly the grenade machine gun is one of a very few "two-handed handle" weapons. These also include the minigun and the flamethrower. You will notice that none of those weapons have need of an animation for a single shot so I was unable to make my cannon a semi-automatic with a recoil animation as that animation does not exist. I was able to set it to a generic "AttackLeft" animation, which looks a whole lot like absolutely nothing different from not firing it, save the muzzle flare. Not quite as neat as the recoil dampener but far cooler than the thing pumping like a jackhammer only to fire a single bullet. Someone else on the Bethsoft forum told me there's a way to change the animation speed so I might play with that a bit but I've got a feeling it isn't going to do what I need. I don't need the animation to play slower, I need it to cycle on a delay.

The weapon itself is turning out nicely. I've been wandering around the sites of old slaughters pointing it at heads and making them explode. It doesn't seem to act exactly as I'd expect at close range, likely due to the position of the weapon and the point at which the projectile spawns, but that's fine. It's a giant clunky cannon and should be a little unwieldy at point blank.

If anyone wants to play with it I can provide a link to the .esp.

Now as for storyline, I caught up with an old friend last night...

Spoiler:

Benny wasn't quite as surprised to see me as I was hoping. Yes Man had a much more hilarious reaction when I insisted that I was the courier. I love that guy. I had the Black Widow perk and since I'm about 15 hours in and have never had an opportunity to use it ever before meeting Benny, I decided to go that route.

That dialog was pretty awful. My character throwing herself at Benny in the most cliched and obviously fake way possible (maybe she wants someone who will shoot her in the head? Really?) and Benny basically saying, "I know that you're full of sh*t but you have the perk so I'm not allowed to say no." Even worse was the, "ha, I fooled you!" line of dialog once we got to his room, and worse than that, the, "OK, now let's seriously have sex" line.

It took an entire magazine from my puny little silenced .22, even though I have about a 70 in guns. Of course they didn't confiscate my freaking FLYING LASER BOT, so that helped a little too. Definitely not the dramatic confrontation I was hoping for. I wanted a little dialog first. Maybe it's my own damn fault for feeling the need to make use of my perk.

I ran into a small animation bug at one of the casinos. When I entered a courtyard a prostitute named Joana immediately started speaking to me. Unfortunately, Joana smokes and the encounter seemed to trigger mid-smoking animation, which got stuck on her. Between that and the "hey, you look like you have a medical problem!" dialog options, I thought she'd had herself surgically modified to resemble a blow-up doll. Then I wandered around checking the other prostitutes to see if they also had ridiculous fish faces and found that they did not. Eventually I wandered off and when I came back I found that Joana had regained control of her facial muscles.

On another note, I took the perk that lets my character (female) seduce other female characters. Like the lesbian version of Black Widow (which I also took). Not for the sex, for the dialog options! Don't you judge me! You would think that such a thing would come in handy when talking to a prostitute who is propositioning you, and for whom there are skill checks in the dialog. You would be wrong.

How the %$@# do you deal with Deathclaws? I am trying to get into Quarry Junction (Oh My Papa quest) but these things just keep wiping me out. One grown Deathclaw can wipe my party in ten seconds flat!

rainynight65 wrote:

How the %$@# do you deal with Deathclaws? I am trying to get into Quarry Junction (Oh My Papa quest) but these things just keep wiping me out. One grown Deathclaw can wipe my party in ten seconds flat!

You run like hell. If that doesn't work, get companions who are slower than you and/or shoot the deathclaws in the legs and THEN run.

In Fallout 3 you could use a dart gun to instantly cripple its legs and make it slow enough that you could control the distance of the fight. In New Vegas, you don't get a dart gun so you need to make do with what you have: leg shots and mines. If it feels like they're way too dangerous, well, that's why they're called "deathclaws."

In Fallout 2 there's a colony of experimental super-intelligent deathclaws and you can get one to join you. He wears a little robe and everything and throws it off when the sh*t gets real. Unfortunately I had to take away Marcus's minigun because he kept blasting poor Goris to pieces.

rainynight65 wrote:

How the %$@# do you deal with Deathclaws? I am trying to get into Quarry Junction (Oh My Papa quest) but these things just keep wiping me out. One grown Deathclaw can wipe my party in ten seconds flat!

Even after you level up, deathclaws can wipe you out quickly. Now that I have the biggest gun, a couple companions, and a lot of stimpacks, I can still only take on one deathclaw at a time. To take out two I have to be extremely lucky with my first shot and every shot after that.

I agree with Lobster (and other folks have said this earlier in the thread) that it's refreshing to know you're not just some invincible god once you min/max your character. There will still be challenges, and some enemies are just that insanely tough.

LobsterMobster wrote:
Spoiler:

Benny wasn't quite as surprised to see me as I was hoping. Yes Man had a much more hilarious reaction when I insisted that I was the courier. I love that guy. I had the Black Widow perk and since I'm about 15 hours in and have never had an opportunity to use it ever before meeting Benny, I decided to go that route.

That dialog was pretty awful. My character throwing herself at Benny in the most cliched and obviously fake way possible (maybe she wants someone who will shoot her in the head? Really?) and Benny basically saying, "I know that you're full of sh*t but you have the perk so I'm not allowed to say no." Even worse was the, "ha, I fooled you!" line of dialog once we got to his room, and worse than that, the, "OK, now let's seriously have sex" line.

It took an entire magazine from my puny little silenced .22, even though I have about a 70 in guns. Of course they didn't confiscate my freaking FLYING LASER BOT, so that helped a little too. Definitely not the dramatic confrontation I was hoping for. I wanted a little dialog first. Maybe it's my own damn fault for feeling the need to make use of my perk.

Spoiler:

If you sleep with him, afterwards he falls asleep, and you have the option to kill him in his sleep. I loved doing it, just hope I don't have an STD now :-)

Montalban wrote:
rainynight65 wrote:

How the %$@# do you deal with Deathclaws? I am trying to get into Quarry Junction (Oh My Papa quest) but these things just keep wiping me out. One grown Deathclaw can wipe my party in ten seconds flat!

Even after you level up, deathclaws can wipe you out quickly. Now that I have the biggest gun, a couple companions, and a lot of stimpacks, I can still only take on one deathclaw at a time. To take out two I have to be extremely lucky with my first shot and every shot after that.

I agree with Lobster (and other folks have said this earlier in the thread) that it's refreshing to know you're not just some invincible god once you min/max your character. There will still be challenges, and some enemies are just that insanely tough.

Lay down a minefield, then use high damage weapons (like a sniper rifle, or anti-material rifle) from as far away as possible while sneaking for the sneak attack critical. The sneak critical should do some reasonable damage and hopefully the mines will finish it off.

Oh, and pray it doesn't have a friend nearby that notices.

Do Deathclaws leave a trophy behind? Does anyone collect such trophies? It would be pretty bad ass, as a side quest, or side activity, to be going through the wasteland, trying to hunt down Deathclaws.

If you can make it to the tower, up the long conveyor belts, the daddy death claw has a really difficult time finding his way up there. Other deathclaws fair better (I think one came up after me) but they get lost cause they can't find the bottom very well.

You can also snipe mommy from up there. If you leave companions on wait at bottom (they'll shoot til unconscious) and leave mines on your way up...also effective. This is for if you can make it past first few deathclaws and then are getting killed by the alpha male one and his 2-3 friends.

Also, criticals on the legs are important in terms of slowing them down, when you're sniping the first ones.

Just sellable claws and quite valuable eggs (400 value or something).

An alternative to the usual sniper + sneak, is getting some of the upper tier energy weapons with max overcharged cells, creatable at a workbench.

Veronica with power armor, can semi-tank a single adult for a little while, especially if you're close enough to stimpack her, giving you time to unleash the above.

I've also heard shotgun bean bag rounds can be used against it, knocking it down. (Haven't tested it yet)

mooosicle wrote:

Just sellable claws and quite valuable eggs (400 value or something).

The eggs do have a few uses...

oMonarca wrote:

Don't remember for sure, but I think you get XP every time you knock them down, so "infinite xp from killing bugs" bug?

Maybe, I was getting the XP sound but not the pop-up.

rainynight65 wrote:

How the %$@# do you deal with Deathclaws? I am trying to get into Quarry Junction (Oh My Papa quest) but these things just keep wiping me out. One grown Deathclaw can wipe my party in ten seconds flat!

Maybe its just my 100 Guns, but a Sniper Rifle and Boone makes killing them very easy. Might try getting on top of some of the buildings or a rock. The path scripting is pretty bad, and they can only melee. Might be considered cheating.

I can't understate the value of mines against Deathclaws. They come right at you so it's very easy to get them to blow their own legs off.

With the new patch, I can't play for longer than 30 minutes without a crash

rainynight65 wrote:

With the new patch, I can't play for longer than 30 minutes without a crash :(

Weird. My performance seems to be worse too. Framerates drop more and I had several crashes last night. Everything was pretty good for me at launch... *sigh*