Fallout 3 dev diary

Brother None

Brother None

This ghoul has seen it all
Orderite
Bethesda has added the second in the line of dev diaries to the official site, this time Istvan Pely discusses the design of the PIPBoy 3000.<blockquote>Inspiration came from both commercial product design and military industrial design of the 1950’s to early 1960’s. Elements from items such as old portable television sets and army field radios were studied and incorporated in some fashion along the way. As with all of Fallout 3’s industrial design, a careful balance of realism, future-retro-style and practicality was sought in the final product. In terms of realism, it’s not an essential factor, but a sense of believability within the rules as defined in the Fallout universe is important.

Technology in the world of Fallout 3 is somewhat paradoxical in that it’s incredibly advanced in some ways, and downright primitive in others. Certain technological advancements that we take for granted in our own history either did not occur, or developed along a very different path. Miniaturization is one example; yes, the fact that a device with the capabilities of the Pip-Boy could be made at all is amazing, but it’s still a rather bulky and heavy lump of hardware. It uses a monochrome cathode ray tube, there are no flat LCD/Plasma/OLED screens. Its housing is cast out of a metal alloy, not plastic. And it’s an ergonomic nightmare. But all these qualities give it character, and this was an important aspect of the design, as the Pip-Boy is almost a character itself.</blockquote><center> </center>
Link: Design and Development of the Pip-Boy Model 3000.
 
Good read, neat-o concept art.

I like it.

Still can't figure out what happened to the PIPBoy mascot and why Vault Boy is suddenly on a product made by a different company.
 
Bethesda better have a good backstory on that, involving plagiarism and major epic lawsuits before the fallout!

..maybe even Steve Jobs :twisted:
 
You gotta admit, this guy is definitely putting a lot of love into his design.

Edit... or he just knows how to talk up his own work. Still, I always appreciate a talented designer.
 
The overall look of what we've seen so far of the PIPboy is actually one of few things that I can say looks good to my eyes. It looks really nice from a purely visual standpoint I think.
Having the smudge marks is a fun, but pretty useless touch. I wonder if they will stay in the same place for the entire game? :P

I'm a bit more worried about the functionality. I'm not crazy on the tabs, but if they really do (and I believe they've stated they will do it) make text, icons and other stuff more appropiately sized for the PC then I think it will work fine. That was the main problem with Oblivions UI for me.
 
Stevie D said:
In fairness, I really like this stuff.
Click to expand...

I agree; it's very nice. I like the fact that it lights up in the dark too.
I'd like to see some character concepts next, perhaps a new type of critter.
 
Mikael Grizzly said:
Maybe Vault-Tec bought out RoboCo. shortly before the war?
Click to expand...

Wouldn't we have noticed in Fallout 1/2.

Simple fact is: I can understand why they removed PIPBoy in favour of Vault Boy, because they chose to merge the character screen into the PIPBoy. But since this is also in-game stuff, they do need to come up with a canon reason for this change.

Perhaps Vault-Tec bought out RobCo between the development of the 2000 and 3000, that'd make some sense.
 
..maybe it's the cheapo chinese knockoff version of the pipboy2000, and the reasons for the war were intellectual property lawsuits that bankrupted the Chinese government to the point that they tried to take alaska for it's natural resources to pay off their debt.

either way I find it odd that the pip-boy has a glove-like attachment. (presumably how this VATS idiocy is integrated with the player's ability to aim..)

What happened to the handy wristwatch sized organizer and automap that was the pipboy2000? it wasn't big and shiny enough, or did it not work with the implementation of the RTwP system that they pulled out of their butts (other people's games) and called VATS?


I may not like the direction they are going with this, but I do like the concept art. I admit that it is nicely done and fairly well thought out. (although it's not like they came up with the concept in the first place, so it's more like nicely done rip-off art)
 
And Lo, the nintendites rejoiced as their favorite, yet completely useless accessory returned, lo and rejoice as the power glove once again graces this land in it's matte gray glory and dozens of mostly useless buttons.

Seriously, it looks like a power glove with a screen on it, kinda cool, I like the leather glove-ish version, but honestly this thing screams power glove.
 
Once the Pip-Boy was working in-game, there was something missing. The animation of it coming into view was dynamic, the screen effects were great, but the whole thing felt too static, as if time had frozen. Indeed, time does freeze, but that’s for practical gameplay issues, it’s not desirable visually. The solution was to add a very slight constant idle motion to the Pip-Boy, the sense that the player character is breathing, his arm not perfectly steady. Josh Jones, our animation lead, spent a good deal of time tweaking the motion so that it was subtle and apparent, but not annoying in the least. We didn’t want the player chasing buttons around with their cursor.
Click to expand...

Sounds like they're trying to make a "fantastic" first person shooter.
 
Yeah, they are focusing on making very important stuff like pip-boy litting up in the dark, instead of making an effort in sticking to the canon. :roll:

Looks good, but it's still madness.
 
Madness...?

THIS... IS... SPARTAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
 
Apparently they just have to make everything seem better, more shinier and newer.

madness2fr7.png
 
..or they felt the need to spend months of developement time that they could have used to read up on the backstory of the series, to produce 10,000 shaders for a powerglove with built in dvd player that will positively wow the console crowd.
 
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