development thread Yuma Wasteland- project diaries

[UndeadMartyr]

This plot bunny sort of grew and grew and grew, until 40+ hours in the GECK (and more plotting, planning, writing, researching) I feel the need to lay it all out.

Yuma was mentioned exactly once in games- Lanius, when asked where the broken howitzer at Fortification Hill came from, mentions that a trader salvaged and sold it to them.  Along with the rest of Arizona it is ostensibly under Legion control in 2281, as Caesar states he owns all of AZ, NM, and broad swathes of UT and CO.

Contemporary Yuma formed as a consequence of its crossing- one of a handful of major crossings of the lower Colorado.  Intensive irrigation works (dams and canals) mark the city, as they mark the whole river, and there are three dams in the vicinity, none as grand as Hoover but vital to the booming agriculture of Imperial Valley, Baja California, and Yuma itself.  As a border town it also hosts a fairly large military presence, and two Native American tribes, the Quecha and the Cocopah, inhabit the area.  The city is considered the sunniest place on Earth- it has massive amounts of sunshine, which along with the irrigation make it a major winter agriculture center.

So what do I see the city looking like in Fallout-world?

A trend emerging even in the real world is automation.  Certainly, by the time of the New Plague, Yuma would have probably automated its farms, dispensing with the need for migrant field hands.  That automation in turn suggests a shift in the city's sectors- robots likely need engineers, after all.  After Mexico was invaded Yuma and other border cities also likely see beefed up military presence and security measures, as well as cross-border infrastructure like railways and oil pipelines. Water is a resource like any other and Yuma might get top billing over Mexicali (though perhaps not California).  As water grows scarce, Science intervenes, expanding on existing institutions (two colleges) with a focus on agricultural sciences.  A fair number of Americans may end up trying to flee the border to escape fighting in China, much like happened with Canada during Vietnam.  And Mexican citizens may well find themselves captured by Enclave soldiers, stolen away to hidden research labs buried in the desert, where they were mutated by experimentation....  some of these escaped during the War, founding their own cadre of guerilla super mutant insurgents.

 

When the bombs fell the principal target was the river- Imperial dam was vaporized, Laguna dam destroyed, and the waters heavily irradiated.  From Yuma down through Baja and west into California the desert claimed entire cities, those that remained poisoned; many ghouls live in the Sonora Wasteland, greatly outnumbering the humans, and at least two raider gangs are ghouls.  Not even the ghouls remain in Mexicali, however.  Although Baja was largely spared any direct attack by the principled resistance of a Chinese officer, Baja did not escape the fallout from America- and Mexicali, dependent like the Imperial Valley on the Colorado, could not survive after the All-American Canal was broken by the bombs.  What remains of these settlements are buried beneath the sands, lost to time, though some fools occasionally claim to have seen them over the horizon.

A new city rose in Baja- a ghoul Venice, formed by refugees from Mexicali and Baja near the river delta.  Here they thrived, subsiding on radiation and pioneering trade routes across the Gulf of California and even beyond into the Pacific.

 

As for Yuma itself, circa 2250 the one vault in the area, Vault 48, opened at last.  Based around human cloning and genetic research and manipulation, its scientists and engineers began terraforming the Yuma Wasteland with their GECK, making contact with Fort Yuma's survivors and establishing outposts in Winterhaven and Yuma proper  "Bio-Robots"- servile human clones- and gene-modded species like domesticated giant spiders were used to build a great city.  And then the Brotherhood arrived in 2272, and destroyed almost everything.  The Vault dwellers were no soldiers, and despite their technology they were crushed.  Some then wanted to sue for peace or even voluntarily assimilate themselves into the BoS, even at the cost of destroying or turning over their most advanced technology, but instead they chose to fight on, the remaining soldiers retreating into their vault.  In the narrow confines of Vault 48, the BoS's advantages were greatly diminished, and the siege ground on for more than a year.

The Brotherhood erred by stealing the GECK from the remnants of New Yuma's Vault City, threatening the water supply of the entire region and prompting a Mexican invasion.  A great army was assembled under a liberating general, and running battles up and down the Colorado annihilated the Sonoran Chapter, killing every one of their paladins.  But Mexicans splintered, their great general fallen in the battle; lacking either a unifying enemy or a leader, the Bajans retreated back across the river, collapsing into feuding and bickering city states and tribes, increasingly vulnerable to NCR imperialism.  Vault 48 itself was destroyed in the fighting, the last remaining Vault soldiers sabotaging the reactor and sealing the door with explosives; the surviving civilians fled into the wasteland with whatever they could carry, and their great city of New Yuma- now ruined- was picked apart for salvage.  Worse would befall the Brotherhood.  In their desperation, the Yumans appealed to distant Flagstaff, a great Warlord calling himself Caesar.  Caesar had already fought the Arizona BoS, and the appeals gave him an excuse to finish the job.  Overextended and exhausted by the Colorado campaign the Sonoran Brotherhood was all but annihilated, only a handful of survivors straggling in to their new (and now final) headquarters at the Yuma Proving Ground just north of the city.  Legate Marius was dispatched to the city by Caesar with the intent of destroying the remnants of the Brotherhood and annexing Yuma into his dominions, but neither task has been finished.  Perhaps he doesn't want to finish the job- as the Second Battle of Hoover Dam subsides, a messenger arrives warning of a Centurion.  The man has come north carrying a nuclear warhead, and plans to destroy Hoover Dam.  From there, the Courier investigates.

 

This is the broad-strokes outline for Yuma specifically- Baja and Mexico are partially present (via Los Algodones at the eastern edge of the map) but if implemented will be a separate worldspace.  For now I am intent on getting Yuma proper, from the city to Laguna Falls in the north. 

[UndeadMartyr]

I just crossed the 50 hour threshold in GECK, and I think I'll need about 100-150 hours total to get to a pre-alpha release state.  I won't have much free time this coming week, unfortunately.

Terrain editing and road placing continues to be a massive timesink, but I've made a firm beachhead for Fort Yuma, starting with the train station, the road junctions right off the bridge, and the Mission and its hill, and the starting roads into the historic fort area.  I'd like to get the exterior layouts for Fort Yuma, Winterhaven, and the Yuma waterfront from the highway interchange to Cemetery Hill done this summer, ideally downtown as well.  Then I can start working on navmeshing, cluttering, NPCs, and scripting.

 

Couple musings on flora/fauna.  Bio-modification (Stellaris Gene modding being the inspiration) is something of a theme, here, to go along with the environmental and agricultural stuff.

 

Amazonian Algae: 

Discovered in the pre-war highly polluted Amazon river, this algae feeds on radiation.  Patented technology uses an extract from the algae to manufacture rad-away, and it can be harvested for this purpose- indeed, Vault 48, possessing samples, has become a major exporter, ghoul-run trade lanes traveling down the Colorado to Baja, and then on to the Pacific.  Pre-opening experiments intended to produce a biofuel from the algae largely failed, but noted that the algae became increasingly volatile as radiation exposure increased.  After opening the vault they discovered four new things: first, that the wasteland is a very different environment than the carefully controlled laboratory settings of a Vault; second, that the ghouls and super mutants who were their primary trade partners had no use for Rad-Away, but loved the algae itself for its hallucinogenic properties; third, that insects and arachnids hated the stuff (troublesome insofar as it impacted the spider farms, but useful for repelling Cazadores, a massive menace in Sonora); and fourth, that reptilian mutants- including both Death Claws and Geckos, and of course the Sonoran Firespitters(?)- were even more affected than ghouls.  Consequently, after the algae bloomed uncontrollably in the Colorado area the region became positively infested with all three forms of hostile life.  In the wasteland algae blooms can be harvested to make homebrew rad-away (or eaten like Cave Fungus), and if exposed to fire, energy weapons, or explosives will burn uncontrollably before exploding.

 

Arachnoids (?)

Giant spiders (think Mantis size, not radscorpion size) genetically modified to produce superior silk fiber in large quantities, Vault 48 maintains an entire bunker dedicated to farming these creatures, and their silk is used to make both clothes and combat armor of greatly superior quality, as well as some niche industrial uses.  Some 48ers also keep them as pets!

Mutant Arachnoid

exposure to radiation and FEV mutated some of the domesticated spiders and often made them significantly larger and far more violent (think radscorpions, but faster and with a web attack).  Despite the 48ers officially claiming that none survive in the wild, most residents know not to stick their heads into the caves or mines to the north.  A few hunters do seek out and kill these, either from hatred, fear- or greed, since their silk is even rarer and more valuable. 

Despite wild rumors to the contrary, there are no invisible giant spiders, and never will be.  No such experiments ever took place, and if they did they failed.

Fear Fowl (?"Terror Turkey" maybe, or "Fear Turkey" if I want to do an Abridged!Alucard reference; maybe leave that for Wild Wasteland):

This one is on the mutants of Baja, really.  (working title- "Transhuman Liberation Front"- inhabiting the former biological-agricultural college near Araz Junction on the border near Los Algodones).  Experiments on surviving chickens produced true monstrosities, man-eating roosters the size of centaurs.  They still can't fly, at least, but they're fast, fearless, and absolutely vicious.

 

Cazador Stalkers

As the name implies, Cazadores likely first emerged further south than the Mojave, and were named accordingly, and there are multiple variants (and the normal kind as well of course) present in the Sonora.  The Stalkers live up to their name, being true hunters- they possess a chameleon-like body capable of rendering themselves almost invisible to the naked eye.  A silver lining (apart from the algae fields acting as repellant) is that these hunt alone exclusively, and won't be found operating in packs.

Micro-Cazador Swarm

Much smaller than the normal variant, but far more numerous, operating as a ravenous swarm.  Being a tiny cloud of angry bugs they are hard to hit effectively, and despite relatively low health and no DT they have a fairly high damage resistance.  Best fought with fire.

Solar Cazadores

essentially the opposite of Stalkers, these have a highly reflective body that makes them difficult to track with the eye in the desert sun.  It also makes them far more resistant to energy weapons, though they are still more fragile overall.  Worst of all, some of them are capable of redirecting solar rays towards their prey, blinding and burning them at range.  Unlike stalkers they do tend to operate in groups.

Chameleon Gecko

like the Cazador Stalkers, Chameleon Geckos can render themselves nearly invisible.  But they also are fierce pack hunters, and ruthlessly cunning, often surrounding and ganging up on unwary predators stalking their more conspicuous cousins.

Chameleon Gecko hide can be used to make a unique leather armor variant with added bonuses to stealth.

Leaping Gecko

as the name implies these lizards can jump quite significant distances.

Bugeater Gecko

A variant of the Leaping Gecko adapted to hunt Cazadores and similar creature.  Totally immune to poison and retaining their cousins' ability to jump great heights or distances, sometimes seen snatching unwary cazadores out of the air.

Sonoran Firespitter

one of the largest and most tenacious creatures in the wasteland, the Sonoran Firespitter is a massive turtle the size of a pre-war car or even bigger.  Their shells are tough enough to withstand even deathclaw attacks, and even their hide is fairly resistant to small arms fire.  Yet they are also capable of regenerating in the sun's heat- and worst of all, as the name implies, they can spit globbing, incendiary bile at range.  They are, however, ponderously slow, and unless one is foolish enough to disturb their nest can be avoided or escaped without much difficulty.

Certain raider groups worship the beasts as living gods, and fight tenaciously to protect the turtle in their camp.

 

The Firespitter originated as a possible deathclaw variant (I've considered both a flying and invisible variant but neither seem really worthwhile) but a turtle fits better for what I was going for.  Something involving snakes (or maybe nightstalkers?) would also fit; the other thing I want is some kind of wild bird (not a chicken, maybe an owl?), since there are quite a few species in the wetlands.

[UndeadMartyr]

Bit tired today, will try to finish VC tomorrow and then resume work friday/Saturday this coming week, with a hope for alpha late summer (or by end of the year at latest).

 

I've made a discord, still pretty barebones.  The forum here doesn't really permit sharing images well, but I can circumvent that with Discord.  But after I get VC up, I want to work on the San Marcos ("Ghoul Venice") Factoria at Colorado State Park and then a new location called the Broken Tower built into the ruins of an Interstate 8 highway interchange just south of Winterhaven and north of Yuma proper.  Backstory being it was a failed/half-finished attempt at a post-war skyscraper (~10 stories) with four stories aboveground and four below-ground, and one or two upper levels wrecked by the BoS war and/or just not completed.  A major theme I want to really explore is the decay and decline of a more-or-less functional post-war civilization (very 1980s late USSR chic, with the brutalism, corruption, dysfunctional bureaucracy, and general sense of stagnation alongside nascent consumerism from foreign imports) into a post-post-post apocalyptic setting.  There will be quite a few half built or ruined/abandoned structures laying about, such as Enver Hoxha level bunker-building by a paranoid and industrialized vault dweller society.

[UndeadMartyr]

Struggling to get Version Control up, but I may have a teammate to make static models.

Loading and saving the plug in is getting very slow.  I'd like to keep going this weekend, as I finally have some free time, but getting vc and a custom mesh in are both big question marks.

[UndeadMartyr]

For now, VC is off the table.  I may revisit it later.

Today I began adding to downtown, tweaked the rails by the waterfront (and the road and highway a bit), and most importantly fenced off the water treatment plant (pre-war) and added a few buildings, which will be a dungeon crawling with cazadores and their ilk.  There are a lot of parking lots and roads to do in this area- for the two hotels, and then the roads leading over to the highway.  I'm also at something of a loss at what to do for some of the buildings here, specifically the courthouse.

[UndeadMartyr]

Done a lot across the water with Fort Yuma and its hill largely in place, the skeleton of Cemetery Hill east of the Territorial Prison, and the beginnings of a push west into the city proper and west towards the Great Canal; this is fairly close to the limits of what I want for an alpha release, with the rest of downtown and Fort Yuma, Winterhaven itself, the Radio Tower and railyard to the south, and a bit more territory east to cover the Legion side of things.  I'm struggling a bit with filling the space I'm claiming- both with the buildings themselves, as vanilla stuff doesn't quite match a lot of what I want, and more conceptually with what factions or quests will be present here.  Winterhaven and Fort Yuma are two distinct factions; the Legion a third; and a "South Side" secessionists- former Vault 48ers that broke away and are now at least partially under Legion "protection"- plus a few minor factions like the San Marcos Factoria and a raider gang in Pivot Point.  Yuma itself, between downtown and the canal, is the blank spot- the area surrounding the old town hall, the courthouse, the city hall, and so on- is a fairly big area, and I don't want to just give all of it to the Legion or South Siders.  I'm thinking I want a raider band based on the old city/county government- something involving ritualistic worship of Judges and their courts, for example, and lots of "arcane" rules-lawyerisms that make basically no sense to anyone but the practitioners.  Thematically that would work very well- the ghosts of old civilizations still haunting the present, and the absurdist discrepancy of keeping to the old legal rules and formalisms in a post-apocalyptic wasteland warms my heart.

[UndeadMartyr]

Been very busy lately in the GECK.  Ilthe boundaries of the current worldspace are getting fairly close to what I want for final release- I need to push further south and a bit east, but the bigger work is completing the city layout, and the main settlements encompassed.  I estimated at the beginning that it would take me all summer to finish the exterior cells for alpha, and I think that's still a good ballpark, but I'm also starting on a first major interior location.

Which begs the question of what Vault 48's flag looks like.  Something derivative of the Arizona state flag, I think, but perhaps with a different symbol, like a saguaro cactus flower or a Vault door or something.

[madmongo]

I like the saguaro cactus overlaid on top of an Arizona state flag.

Something else to consider: In Fallout lore, the 50 states condensed down to 13 Commonwealths (one more thing the Fallout 4 devs screwed up - calling that area "the Commonwealth" doesn't make much sense when everywhere is a Commonwealth). You can see this on the 13 star U.S. flags used in the game.

Arizona is part of the Four States Commonwealth, which is Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah.

You should be able to find a Four States Commonwealth flag image on google. Then maybe overlay a saguaro cactus over that.

Or just put a saguaro on a plain background if you'd like.

If you do a google image search on Saguaro National Park logo, you can find a lot of the logos that they have used over the years. That could give you some good ideas too.

 

[UndeadMartyr]

That's a really cool flag idea, thanks.

I feel like I'm getting pretty close to the various quest areas, but the scale sort of bothers me- once I get to the boundaries I'll either do a rough outline of the cells beyond that (mountains, rivers, the airport and a few other big buildings, maybe some roads or railroads etc).  But I also want to greatly reduce the scale beyond that point, since I'm roughly a 22x27 square grid on ~one square mile; the rough boundaries of what I want to cover will be around a 28x25 mile square.  Max worldspace size is IIRC 128x128 and Mojave is I think 60x80?  I want to stay smaller than the Mojave certainly.

I'm reluctant to mess with the GECK for fear of locking out of whatever is keeping it from bugging out over 16mb, but I also sort of want to do version control to avoid any lag or bugginess.  There are three options as I see it- backup the .exe and .ini/config files then verify and try VC, or just wait further, or have a team-mate try it out using the esp.

What would you recommend?

[madmongo]

I personally use the older GECK powerup. I looked into upgrading to the GECK extender, but decided not to do it when I learned that you basically have to disable all of the things that make the GECK extender useful in order to make it work with version control. That made it no better than what I have.

If I remember correctly, you can make the GECK extender work with version control by basically disabling everything in the ini files. I keep one set of ini files for when I am using the GECK powerup and another set of ini files for when I am using version control. You should be able to do the same thing with the GECK extender.

One thing Bethesda is really good at is shrinking things down while keeping the essence of what they are representing. The vaults are supposed to hold 1,000 people. The vaults in the games are just a tiny representation of that. The same with locations. Las Vegas is HUGE compared to what you get in FNV. This is the difficult part. You have to figure out how to condense everything you want down to a reasonable game size.

Definitely stay smaller than the Mojave, or roughly the same size at max. If you go too big, the physics engine breaks in weird ways. I think it's if you go greater than 128 cells in either the X or Y direction, maybe? I can't remember for sure off the top of my head. I always leave a few rows of unused cells around the perimeter of my worldspaces so the game always has something to render in the distance.

The same goes with interior cells. If you place an object with too big of an X, Y, or Z offset, it breaks the game's physics engine and you can end up with everything all piled up in the center of the cell.

For exterior cells, keep all landscape at a height above 14,000 or so or you can end up with floating trees when you generate LOD.

Don't use placeable water outside. Sometimes it works, sometimes it completely screws up the water height in your map. Raise or lower the water height on a cell by cell basis instead of using placeable water.