More VB Design Docs

[kumquatq3]

And why no design docs for Fort Abandon and Grand Canyon?

[/quote]

Grand Canyon is where a satellite crashed and you needed to go to get a some chip or something out of it. I think you could help certain groups get uranium from there.

Fort Abandon is a town you could build up (or break down) in various ways. And I think you can have a mini-base there to store cars and weapons and such.

I'd LOVE to hear about Fort Abandon in detail

 

[sHooTer]

damnit, why didnt they make this game?

 

[Daemon Spawn]

On the worldmap.... Maxson's Bunker is misspelled.....meh.

/resumes the endless wait

 

[Egis]

Thats some early crismas presents

 

[Claw]

Jericho and New Canaan are more or less two parts of the same location (just like Adytum, Blades and Followers of the Apocalypse were all part of Boneyard), so it makes sense that they have the same number. They probably were in one design document that was later split.

Actually, it sounds like Jericho eventually evolved to replace New Canaan.
Also, I seem to recall someone stating the numbers refer to "meta locations" or something like that, containing several locations. I couldn't really see any evidence of that however.

PS: Talking about missing locations, what about "Circle Junction" and "Big Empty"?

 

[Ausir]

Big Empty is the same as Tibbets.

 

[Odin]

So that sums it up, you now have all the design docs for Van Buren, happy reading!

Where's the design doc number 13 then? Were the designers superstitious? And why no design docs for Fort Abandon and Grand Canyon?

Eh, I thought we had them all now. Must have seen wrong, oh well the hunt goes on for some more then.

 

[Ashmo]

Also interesting would be the F3_Style.doc or what it was called.

It's referred to at several points and seems to contain guidelines on Falloutiness (what a word).

I doubt anyone's going to rat (no, not you, Ratty) that one out, tho.

 

[Brother None]

Big Empty is the same as Tibbets.

Funny how you turned into one of the authorities on VB, ey, Ausir?

Ashmo; that file would be wild interesting and a good point of reference to pick on Bethdevs with.

We need it!

 

[Ausir]

Funny how you turned into one of the authorities on VB, ey, Ausir? Wink

Well, despite being part of DAC staff, I was always quite interested in Van Buren (as you can also see from my Van Buren articles at The Vault) .

I only hate the docs written by John Deiley (Nursery, Ouroboros, Twin Mothers), the same guy who gave us talking deathclaws and the Temple of Trials.

 

[Briosafreak]

He hated the temple of trials, that was an imposition from the marketing guys. He already stated the talking deathclaws was something silly and he would never do it again hera at NMA, even helped the younger guys in finding what definitely wasn't "kosher" regarding the Fallout setting in the VB days, he listened to the fans.


His areas were pretty much colateral stuff, for the adventurers who wanted to squeeze the game of every location and event. One of those locations is pretty interesting, since it underlines a theme present in the entire game, the decay and the no way out fate of any attempt to improve the Wasteland ("war, war never changes", like the human hability to screw up). It gave a slight view of a happy contrast, just to slam it's own decay when giving a better look. This contrast helped to raise the "reality" of the normal zones, and to make a poignent ironic statement on a paradise lost (a bit like BIS at the time...) .

Very good the nursery, the rest i had to see how it would turn out.

Edit: You can find parts of the style doc on the first area doc, i forgot the name. It doesn't have much about the area itself, but a lot of the style doc, actually...

 

[Roshambo]

Aye, while I do grudge him for some design things, I do respect him for explaining and attempting to retain the setting in retrospect.

Compared to, say, the Fallout Bibles.

 

[Claw]

On a sidenote, the Van Buren downloads category contains "Wasteland Merc Mod 2: Vault Net Addon" which is probably wrong.

 

[Roshambo]

No, it was stashed there as a placeholder, as nobody really gives a shit about Wasteland Merc.

 

[Tom]

Hello there everyone,

I have been trying to download and open some of the design documents for Van Buren. Unfortunately I have so far been unable to open the following files; 15.Bloomingfield Space Centre, 12.Hoover Dam and 16. B.O.M.B. 001. Viewing the properties of the files shows they are compressed in a manner my computer does not recognise and clicking "open" after I have downloaded them does absoloutely nothing.

I was wondering if someone could post up the text from the design documents here on the forum or i they new of any links to site where the information was posted so I could copy and paste it straight from the internet? Alternatively if someone could tell me how to get the files to display then I would be much obliged (I am rather tech-illiterate I'm afraid to admit so the more details the better!). Thanks a lot,

Tom.

 

[Ausir]

Download WinRAR.

 

[Dagon]

wow this shit is good
i hope that F3 by BethSoft will be as good as Van Buren was going to be .
And Odin it would be nice if you could get Techdemo

 

[Ashmo]

Download WinRAR.

Or WinACE. Or WinZip. Or 7Zip.

 

[Ratty Sr.]

Or QuickZip. It can open every archive known to man, and a few that were found on computers of the Roswell UFO.

 

[Ausir]

By the way, I wonder where the number Vault 31 for Twin Mothers posted in old VB leaks by kumquatq3 (here) comes from. In the Twin Mothers design document, the vault is called Vault 29, the same as Harold's Vault in Fallout Bible. According to Fallout Bible,

No one in this Vault was over the age of 15 when they entered. Parents were redirected to other Vaults on purpose.

While this sounds suspiciously similar to Twin Mothers (where there were adults initially, but they were old and quickly died, leaving the children to be brought up by Diana), it doesn't make sense for Harold to be from this vault, since he would have recognized his old home, as well as Diana when he came there before going to the Nursery. While most of Chris Avellone's stuff in the Bible is made up, this Vault is mentioned in the Timeline, which is mostly based on old design docs for FO1 and FO2 (that's also why it had many wrong names for places in the first version, like FSEF for West Tek - they were old names for those places in the original design docs). Therefore I wonder if the intention of the VB designers was:

1) Harold was from Vault 29 and Twin Mothers is some other Vault (31, as in the kumquat leaks)
2) Harold was from Vault 29 and it's the same as the Twin Mothers Vault
3) Harold was from some other Vault, and Vault 29 is the same as the Vault 29 mentioned in the Fallout Bible
4) Harold is from Twin Mothers, but he doesn't remember much about his youth after his mutation

Also, which name is more recent - Tibbets or Leavenworth?