A nuclear winter with zombies and all I have is a switchblade?

I'm Back!

It has been a long time since I played Fallout 4. I sort of randomly checked my Zombie Walkers mod on nexus mods and saw several posts where people were having trouble. I glanced through many pages of them and saw things mostly related to stability/crashes and bloated save game files.

I take a sense of ownership in what I do and felt bad about this, even though I'd been away for so long. The comments didn't inspire me to take up modding again (yet) but did inspire me to play Fallout 4 again after the long absence.

Winter and Zombies

It is the winter season here in Buffalo, NY and I've always liked snow. I thought it'd be fun to mod my freshly re-installed Fallout 4 with a winter theme to play my mod in. The screenshot above is from that setup and I wanted to call out a few of the mods I used in case anyone else wants to check them out.

Winter Redone

Winter Commonwealth Pines

Project Reality Footsteps (Snow Edition)

Vivid Weathers (Winter)

Darker Nights

Vogue ENB

Maybe i'll post a full current mod list later as it includes other game changes outside of visuals also.

My Experience

I used replacements for everything 100% except humans. Added extra spawns at 25%. Enabled NPC resurrection and set it at 60 in-game minutes and allowed zombies to infect with basic infection. Settlement attacks and Sleep Interruption were also enabled.

Overall I didn't have many issues after playing a save close to 10 hours so far. The biggest thing seems to be performance related in downtown Boston where I experience a single hard crash and some delays with spawn replacements where I could hear Super Mutants talking and firing weapons before disappearing. Also, sometimes there was delay between a head-shot and the zombie dying in that area.

Some features I didn't feel compelled to turn on (alternate death) and others I never saw executed in game and didn't really miss them (zombies eating corpses). Extra spawns seem to work well, though I had a thought that it'd be nice if this were to increase on it's own over time during play. I experienced both a settlement attack on Red Rocket and sleep interruption a few times while travelling (scary with darker nights too). 

What I Learned

I remember why I enjoyed playing Fallout 4 after being away from it for so long. It really takes you away into your own sandbox world. There are some cool new mods out there that help with this immersion also.

Another thing, is that my wheels are spinning and I'm actually considering ways to improve this mod. Not promising this is going to happen, but I think this mod could benefit greatly to some modularity. Many of the nexus mods I downloaded had installers popup when using Vortex that let you pick and choose what you wanted to install. I think this would help greatly for people who only like certain aspects (eg. running with the feral ghoul overhaul only).

Some parts of my mod have been implemented since I worked on this. Several versions of death alternative mods are out there now, both standalone and as part of popular overhauls (eg. Horizon). Many point out that several spawning mods exist out there also. All of this makes me think that I can strip out some of the feature bloat and those that want those extras will still be able to include them elsewhere.

What Now?

For now I'm in the exploratory and planning phase. I'm scoping out the potential work involved with revisiting this mod and trying to decide if I want to take the plunge. Free time is not easy to come by as a father of two, but I did enjoy working on this and feel a certain responsibility to maintain it.

New Featured Mods menu that includes Zombie Walkers

Bethesda has released the 1.9 update to Fallout 4 this week that includes a new Feature mods menu at the top of the screen when viewing mods in game. It is currently out for PC and is expected to roll out to PS4 and Xbox One soon.

The exciting thing for me is that my Zombie Walkers mod was chosen as one of the 12 in the list. There are a lot of mods out there for Fallout 4 and I was a bit late to the game. I'm honored and happy to see that it will get exposure to some potential new players that may not even have known it existed.

This mod continues to be a hobby of mine and I've still got plenty of ideas I'd like to work on. I created a forum on Bethesda's site looking for feedback on some ideas I had for the future. Check it out if you are interested and any feedback is appreciated:

https://bethesda.net/community/topic/24479/relz-zombie-walkers

I have published Zombie Walkers to the Nexus mods site to hopefully expand the PC user audience as many players on PC use the Nexus Mod Manager instead of Bethesda's built-in mods menu.

http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/20485

I noticed Zombie Walkers (PS4) is getting some press lately. It was featured in an article from iDigitalTimes as #4 of "5 Of The Absolute Best Mods To Try On Sony's Console". Click the image below to see what the other 4 are.

5 Of The Absolute Best Mods To Try On Sony's Console

Zombie Walkers (PS4)

I'm happy to announce the release of a PS4 version of the Zombie Walkers mod. This has been a long time coming and even a stripped down version is better than nothing.

This version includes most of the Feral Ghoul Overhaul features (no running/sprinting, body part data updates to encourage headshots, more damage, etc.) but has no custom scripting since it is not allowed for PS4 unfortunately. This means no holotape configuration options, headshots only mode, NPC resurrection, etc.

I may add global (non-configurable) spawn replacements if there is enough demand for it.

One Major Restriction

It appears Bethesda and Sony have reached an agreement that will bring mods to the PS4 after all. However, there is one MAJOR restriction:

"Note - PS4 Mods are Plugins only. No archives are permitted." - source

Before realizing this restriction, I gleefully went to deploy Zombie Walkers to PS4 and received the following message from the Creation Kit:

PS4 does not support archives :(

What it means for Zombie Walkers

Basically this means you are not allowed to add custom scripts and can only modify assets already in the game. Therefore a direct port of Zombie Walkers is not possible. At best I could create a separate very stripped down version that resembles the first version I pushed out in July which basically made Feral Ghouls walk, not dive around, and take less damage to all but the head.

I'm not ruling out this possibility, but this is certainly a setback and makes me sad.

Out with the old, In with the new

Top: GeForce GTX 1050ti 4gb
Bottom: GeForce 9400 GT 512mb

Up until now I have been modding Fallout 4 on my Macbook Pro laptop. I used Bootcamp to install a copy of Windows 10 in a separate partition and then tweaked the daylights out of the game and discovered a workaround for a startup issue. At best I can get 40-50 fps in the special QA Smoke room on ultra-low settings (eg. vsync/grass/godrays/fog/etc. turned off).

The trouble is when I enter the real game world the frame rates plummet. In Sanctuary I'm lucky to get in the teens but can't see where I'm going. Needless to say when users report issues with one of my mods in specific areas of the game, it becomes difficult for me to test. Some issues, like game crashes, are impossible to debug on XBox.

Luckily my wife loves me and decided to let me upgrade my graphics card for my birthday (I know you are all jealous). Here's a screenshot comparing old vs new. Note that the old 9400 card pictured below is actually from my PC and performs on par or worse than the integrated Intel HD 4000 in my Macbook Pro.

Screenshot Comparison

The screenshots below show a stark contrast in both quality and performance. The one thing you don't see is that everything about the game is slower on the integrated card (including scripts). Some areas of the game get as low as 1fps depending on how many objects are around.

Fallout 4 on low settings 640x320 @15fps on Intel HD 4000 graphics

Fallout 4 on ultra high settings 1280x1024 @60fps on GeForce GTX 1050ti graphics

Happy days for me as a modder and I guarantee Zombie Walkers will benefit.

I have published this mod for the PC through the Creation Kit. It should appear under the mods menu when you launch the game (same as Xbox). I'm in the process of adding links to the PC version of the mod and will keep both updated as changes are made.

Zombie Walkers (PC)

I guess news of PS4 mod support being dropped by Bethesda got me thinking about platforms for this mod. If PlayStation 4 support ever returns, I'll publish to that platform as well.

Working on PS4 Mod Support

Bethesda has been working to bring mods to PS4 for months now. During that process, I was deploying and updating my Zombie Walkers mod so it would be ready and had a fair amount of favorites with comments from users waiting to try it out.

Sometime later I published my Ambush Replacements extension and noticed a 24-hour waiting period was in effect for PS4 mods before I could publish the mod. Apparently Sony wanted to institute a review process and Bethesda was trying to accommodate them (Xbox doesn't have any review and you can publish anytime).

Announcement from Bethesda

On September 9th, Bethesda released a post stating that mod support for PS4 was being put on hold.

"Sony has informed us they will not approve user mods the way they should work: where users can do anything they want for either Fallout 4 or Skyrim Special Edition."

 PS4 Mod Update - [bethesda.net]

PS4 Mods Deleted

On September 13th, I received a couple email notifications that my PS4 mods have been deleted by users Famo and Dinasaur. I checked the website around lunch time (EST) and the number of PS4 mods had dropped to around 400. After checking this evening, the option for PS4 has been completely removed from the platform dropdown.

9/13/16 - no option for "Playstation 4" anymore on Platform dropdown.

Future?

My impression is that Sony is worried about modders significantly hurting the user experience because I'm not sure how much further you can go from corrupting save files or crashing the game? Hopefully Bethesda and Sony can work this out and bring mods to the PS4, but it certainly doesn't look good right now. 

First, I don't recommend it. But if you have a cheap PC (or Mac on bootcamp) with integrated graphics like my Intel HD 4000 graphics chip, you can run fallout though it isn't pretty.

Using dxcpl to configure direct x compatability

This article was very helpful in getting past startup crashes. Basically you can set your direct x compatibility using a program called dxcpl:

https://www.reddit.com/r/lowendgaming/comments/3sf7ea/i_did_it_how_to_run_fallout_4_on_intel_hd/

"Force WARP" will cause the game to always load but run at very low FPS (1-5). If I leave this setting off it will crash during startup most of the time but eventually work (After 5-10 tries). I find that using Task Manager to set the priority of the fallout4.exe process to "above normal" or "high" and clicking on the window helps (I run it on lowest res in windowed borderless mode).

After tweaking graphics settings to low it will actually run quite well though there are still some crazy artifacts that appear. With vsync off the frame rates are 15-30.

Speed up dev/test cycle

To get around having to re-start the entire game to test a single small change, I figured out you can actually keep the game running and reload the mod. This is especially important if you game crashes a lot during startup like it does for me (see above).

Basically, remove the mod from the load order and let the game reload (not restart the app itself). Then you can save your mod using the Creation Kit since the mod files will no longer be locked. Once saved, re-add the mod to the load order and then test your changes.

Summary

I play Fallout 4 primarily on my xbox and only bought a PC copy of the game for modding. The above allows me to do basic testing on my PC which speeds up dev time. 

I'm creating this blog mostly to document my current journey into Fallout 4 modding.

Zombie Walkers

I've been working on a Zombie Walkers mod for a few weeks now.  The response to the mod for XBox One has been amazing. Over 20k downloads in the first month and tons of feedback through comments from users posting ideas and thoughts. Having said that, I'm finding the creation kit has some limitations that I keep running into. In some cases I've been able to work around the Creation Kit and in other cases what I want to do just doesn't seem possible.

I've been engaging with users by replying to comments and will continue to do so. However, I'm finding that isn't the right channel to get into all the technical detail I'd like to at times and Bethesda sometimes blocks my comments with their silly language filter (which sometimes blocks normal words). The mod description is also limited in size and I find myself pruning the description with each new feature release.

Moving forward I plan to use this blog to get into technical detail and better describe what I'm running into. Maybe others on the net will have solutions to the things I'm running into or other modders might find some of this information useful.

That's it for now. I have a few posts planned that will be coming soon.