Project Van Buren

Beardy Unixer said:
Yeah, but it's still attached to the car. MCA wanted just the trunk in honour of how it kept going missing on it's own.
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But the rest of the car in under water/ground, so only the trunk is visible. Best you can do without making new models for just an easter-egg :aiee:.
 
Maybe we should petition Obsidian to have it appear in The Outer Worlds, or Iron Tower to have it appear in Colony Ship instead.
 
Beardy Unixer said:
Maybe we should petition Obsidian to have it appear in The Outer Worlds, or Iron Tower to have it appear in Colony Ship instead.
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Speaking of petition, I have recently had a chance to ask Josh about so called Jefferson Engine, the engine that powered both Baldur's Gate III and Van Buren. He revealed (and I do not know whether this was know already, though I didnt know it) that Obsidian actually has the code and tools from Jefferson. I've just got an insane idea, and I know it really sounds crazy, but why wouldn't we assemble some team of modders from here, TeamX, and other fallout communities, gather the official support of all the fallout communities around the globe (NMA, MadBrahmin, DuckandCover, Fallout.ru, you name it), and then go and ask Obsidian to provide us Jefferson's tools for fanmade, non-commertial restoration of Van Buren. The main argument supporting us is that the engine is useless for any commertial product Obsidian might have had in mind (heck, it is actually 17 years old), even Josh noted that. Armed with arguments and community, my insane mind thinks it is not totally hopeless effort. Ideas?
 
I understand your enthusiasm but I do not think that the idea you propose is very likely to succeed.
Perhaps I am a bit negative but I have never seen such requests really work.
 
It costs nothing to ask, but the Jefferson Engine....wasn't very good. I'm not convinced you'd save much time fixing it over starting from scratch.
 
The Dutch Ghost said:
I understand your enthusiasm but I do not think that the idea you propose is very likely to succeed.
Perhaps I am a bit negative but I have never seen such requests really work.
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I understand your concerns, but look at it this way - it is not like asking for a source code of Fallout 1 or 2. Yes, they are old as well, but they are still commercially used so that is why no one would reveal their guts to the public. But that engine from project Jefferson? It has never been used, and even though it was 95% done, it was discontinued when Interplay bankrupted in '03 and never reused in any project. Furthermore, nowdays it is commercially useless for any project they might have had in their mind (Chris Avellone and Brian Fargo had some ideas few years back). So even if they were to do their own Van Buren one sunny day, giving the modders community a Jefferson Engine would not hurt them in any way.

Beardy Unixer said:
It costs nothing to ask, but the Jefferson Engine....wasn't very good. I'm not convinced you'd save much time fixing it over starting from scratch.
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What do you mean by "wasnt very good"? It was 95% done back then, and with source code, you can always fix what is broken or update what is technically deprecated. Starting it from scratch is like 5-7 years effort for modding community. Just look at FOnline engine, for how long it has been under developnent (actually still is). This is certainly not a way. But if you had an engine, even in pre-alpha dev stage, but the working engine that has been able to produce tech demo of the game, you would have already saved 3-4 years of engine development.
Is it old? Does it look old? Yes, indeed it does. However, I have always thought that true RPG players do not judge games by graphics. And I am certain that old fan of the series would welcome to see Van Buren in its old glory.
 
The camera was horrible, the dialogue displayed weirdly and was difficult to read, the combat was crap. The whole thing just generally felt inferior to Fallout 2, except the higher resolution.

Like most RPG gamers of a certain age, I'm writing an RPG that may or may not ever see the light of day. I do understand how much work there is in an engine and why it's so tempting...but I'd estimate 12 to 18 months to add a solid RPG mechanics abstraction layer to Godot, verses fire fighting forever with Jefferson.
 
Beardy Unixer said:
The camera was horrible, the dialogue displayed weirdly and was difficult to read, the combat was crap. The whole thing just generally felt inferior to Fallout 2, except the higher resolution.

Like most RPG gamers of a certain age, I'm writing an RPG that may or may not ever see the light of day. I do understand how much work there is in an engine and why it's so tempting...but I'd estimate 12 to 18 months to add a solid RPG mechanics abstraction layer to Godot, verses fire fighting forever with Jefferson.
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I agree on camera, but I suppose it is mostly about controls that make it uncomfortable, and this can be tweaked. I actually liked dialog windows displaying near speaking character, yet as you mentions, it was difficult to read for its kinda wierd layout. This can be tweaked as well, however. The combat - it was said even in readme file and further Josh's statements that combat was actually pretty basic and not even close to what it was supposed to look like, mainly because Interplay insisted on real-time combat, so for the demo purposes, BIS did not even start to implement turn-based combat.

I work on an RPG as well, obviously, this thread is about it, and I can not agree with you. It is almost a year I have started prototyping this one. Of course, it was not under work constantly, but at least 6-7 months of work can be assumed. And I have already done a movement mechanics, which still need refactoring, good-structured UI and general layer code, and now I am slowly moving towards combat. Movement and damage basics are done, but it now look just like Van Buren's one :D And if I look what still awaits me, improving combat, AI which I have great plans about, item interacting, dialogues, quests, and everything else, your estimation about 12-18 months is totally out of place. And yes, we are still talking about basic RPG "framework", the basics to build, not a whole game.

Jefferson had pretty much everything implemented, modifiers, damage, movement, items and interacting.
 
Hardboiled Wanderer said:
Well, I have always imagined Legion's gear to be inspired by Mad Max 2 (like most of the armors anyway), as the football shoulder pads are commonly worn there as a protection. In our concept, as you mentioned, the Legion is far more tribal-like as we know it in New Vegas. It has been only 6 years since it was formed, and due to its rather smaller size and lack of soldiers, it is not even so fundamental about erasing tribes it conquers. For instance, the Blackfoot tribe still exists as a tribe, even though it's actually a part of the Legion, same goes for the Hangdogs. Legion let them be as long as they serve them, Blackfoot as slavers, Hangdogs as Denver dogs breeders, or Twisted Hair as scouts.

(though I have recently discovered major design coflicts in the New Vegas lore about Twisted Hair, so it is not sure they will be in our game due to huge, almost 30 years gap between canon and Van Buren lore. Problem is, it ruins another amazing concept - Hecate, who is supposed to be the only survivor of the Twisted Hair masacre. However, in New Vegas, final conquering of this tribe has been done shortly before 2281... I really could use some help on how to get them in our timeline, for I am out of ideas :D ) .

All the tribes will be finally culturally erased and unified in the years following, but for now, they are left alone. That's why I imagine that since most of the Legion soldiers are still former tribal warriors, there would be no strict uniforming, and they will wear litterally everything they can create or find, combined with some Legion marks and colors of course.
Uniforming the Legion soldiers with football gear surely has its own lore, most probably connected to capturing some bigger city with pre-war football history. It could be Flagstaff after all, which is (in our world) know for Flagstaff Eagles, and (in a game timeline) will be captured in 2255.

Speaking of Blackfoot, I have updated an OP post a little :D
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I think the lore explanation was that they stumbled onto a huge amount of football gear and it was cheaper just to do that. But this would be before they had to be cost effective due to a huge war against the NCR so perhaps the elite of the legion can wear some neat roman inspired armour. Also I hope you include major events of Edward Sallows life in there (him becoming Caesar already happened by then but perhaps things like conforming the tribes, introducing Mars as their god which we know failed since they thought Mars = Caesar, etc) because it'd be frankly bad ass to have a hand in creating Caesar.
 
Awesome. I remember first hearing about Van Buren on another game's forums in the early 2000s, and remember with much disappointment the blue balls and heartbreak that soon followed.

I'm a unity developer myself and could probably lend a hand here and there if need be, I absolutely love writing dialogue (gritty/humourous being my favourite). No affiliation but are you going to use the dialogue system asset? I've found that's probably my biggest time saver as it has endless amounts of things that you can do with it (sequencing, sound, camera, game object interaction etc). 90 Euros spent after 1 year of production is pretty insane - I think had spent about $1500 on assets by my 6 month mark on my first major 3d game.
 
If I can make a suggestion, create a discord if you haven't already - get all of us in there, and create an info dump for the van buren project. Gather all info from every other game that could have contributed to Van Buren's storyline outside of what we already know - easter eggs included (like the trunk in fo2).
 
You guys plan on using voiced characters? I'm torn on what I prefer because the Master was so well done but some games with no voiced characters (age of decadence) have so much personality that a voice sometimes doesn't deliver.
 
Brad M said:
Awesome. I remember first hearing about Van Buren on another game's forums in the early 2000s, and remember with much disappointment the blue balls and heartbreak that soon followed.

I'm a unity developer myself and could probably lend a hand here and there if need be, I absolutely love writing dialogue (gritty/humourous being my favourite). No affiliation but are you going to use the dialogue system asset? I've found that's probably my biggest time saver as it has endless amounts of things that you can do with it (sequencing, sound, camera, game object interaction etc). 90 Euros spent after 1 year of production is pretty insane - I think had spent about $1500 on assets by my 6 month mark on my first major 3d game.
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Well to be honest, if I had bought every asset I use, it would be much higher price indeed :D Maybe around 500-600€. Nowadays it is a little over 120€, as I have recently bought some Quixel assets. However, I am still talking about generic assets only. I am missing a good artist, though during prototyping stage, I am not so concerned about it for now.

About dialogue system, I have an architecture for it, though I am not playing with it until more elementary parts of development are done. AI and combat is currently on schedule.
I appreciate your suggestion, though I dont need any info dump. Firstly, all info has been gathered during "pre-production" stage, I have full cloud of both mine and BIS designs, concepts, et cetera. Secondly, as I said, it is not on schedule right now, prototyping is the most important thing.

Furthermore, since Josh revealed me where the Jefferson Engine is, I have been thinking about it for couple of days now. For last 3 days I am even writting a letter to Obsidian regarding some matters about the engine, and while I doubt I will succeed, in hypotethical case I actually did, I will alter the goals of this project greatly.

Lastly, since I have never actually said that - Thank you all for your feedback and thoughts :D Keep it coming
 
LuciusCorneliusSulla said:
You guys plan on using voiced characters? I'm torn on what I prefer because the Master was so well done but some games with no voiced characters (age of decadence) have so much personality that a voice sometimes doesn't deliver.
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Divide et impera, my friend. Game development is just the same - you have to divide the problems and solve them one by one, from those elementar at first to those more complex later. Thinking about whether or not having a voice acting, or any other late-production matters is just out of place right now.

But... wanna know about my dream? Yes, at least partially voice-acted characters, that is what I would certainly like to see.
 
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