Jeez, has it been over a year already?

Where does the time go?

To be honest, I kinda forgot I even had this blog. So much has changed from April of last year to now. I've "retired" from sim racing, un-"retired", and "retired" again. I've dealt with a roof replacement process on my home. I'm currently undergoing a career change. I've started and aborted multiple projects. To that effect...

Where Fallout?

Oh yeah, about said projects...

So the mod I previously posted about, Sons of the Prospectors, has basically been expanded into a multiple-part series I'm currently calling "D's Adventure Core". Original, I know, right? I'll have a better title in time. Anyway, Prospectors was suffering from a problem that basically stalled all the progress I'd made on it for almost a full year. I like to refer to said stall-out as "I have backstory and no good way to explain it all without resorting to massive dull exposition dumps" and it's a doozy of a problem, let me tell you.

Enter Chemical Reaction.

Penny's Saloon, one of the locations the player will go to in Chemical Reaction.

Chemical Reaction is what I like to call the prequel to Prospectors, in where the player picks up a flyer at the Old Mormon Fort left by Dr. Martin Ericsson (who will be referred to here on as Mad Marty), requesting assistance with creating a special formula, and receiving the location of his laboratory.

I use "laboratory" very loosely. The "laboratory" turns out to be a wooden shack southwest of the REPCONN Headquarters, packed full of makeshift scientific equipment.

Upon arriving at the "laboratory", the player is then sent out to collect ingredients for a special formula that, according to Mad Marty, is meant to reverse ghoulification. This is being done for a client that is throwing endless funding at Marty, as he is apparently the only scientist with the skills and the willingness to attempt such a ridiculous request.

The player is then meant to mix the ingredients at a crafting station to create the requested formula, then bring the formula back to Marty, who then leaves for three days to test his formula on his "subject". He returns with bad news; predictably, the formula doesn't work, and in fact, has near-lethal side effects due to certain ingredients used in the formula!

The player is then meant to gather ingredients for a second formula, and this follows the same format as the first formula.

Chemical Reaction is meant to be a small quest mod that begins to flesh out concepts and story lines that are very important to the eventual Prospectors project.

I'm not going to give away more than that right now, but believe me when I say it's shaping out to be a decent project. I'm taking inspiration from several sources, the biggest being the Uncharted series of games. I love those games and I've always wanted to write a "Big Damn Hero Going On a Big Damn Adventure" series of stories.

So how about the other mods?

Well, as for my currently-released mods, I just released a sizeable update to my Alton, IL Tale of Two Wastelands conversion this year that basically overhauls the entire conversion. Tale of Two Wastelands 3.3 released in March of this year and it seemed as good of a time as any to finish un-fucking my conversion. Actually, funny enough, I was in the middle of redoing my conversion for what I thought was going to be TTW 3.2, but then as I was putting the finishing touches on it, TTW 3.3 was released, basically making me pivot into testing the mod to ensure backwards compatibility. So at this juncture, Alton for TTW is basically done and finished and I won't be updating it anymore unless something game-breaking is discovered.

Now comes the one I'm personally excited for.

I'm currently working on a massive technical overhaul to the Fallout 3 version of Washington's Malevolence, the version of that mod that has been severely neglected for a long time. There's been a lot of unfinished business with this mod that needs taking care of. Empty interiors, buggy navmeshes, you name it, it's there, and it's stayed in the back of my head for a long time. I started working on what I'm calling version 4.0 when I discovered that my woes with the Fallout 3 GECK were caused by the GECK Patcher (that is available on the page with the GECK Extender) in fact hadn't given my GECK the 4GB patch that is basically required to do anything to Malevolence when directly editing it. I'm still at a loss for words on that one.

I've completely stopped progress on my New Vegas-specific mods just to take care of this.

I first have to fix the technical issues with the Fallout 3 version, then I'm going to go and do one more big content patch to the FO3/TTW versions of the mod. I'm planning on overhauling all the underwater sections, finishing the unfinished interiors, and adding in more quests, including finishing Lebowski's World, the cut sidequest that could have basically been expanded into a whole new mod by itself.

I'm basically calling this the "Look at this, wow, it's fucking nothing" update.

Much like the 3.0 update was called the "Bad, So Bad" update after this comment on one of the Discord servers I frequent. Users don't realize how comments like this can stick with a modder when they see it. It's a kick in the pants.

I also have a way to finish up Jimmy Goldman's backstory sidequest, "Siobhan's Story", which was meant to detail the Goldman family's backstory that led up to the events of Malevolence. I've also managed to recover the lost Project ZDIS expansion mod and am looking into finishing that up, although at this point, ZDIS will need to basically be re-written from the ground up as the character that was planned to be the companion, Scribe Lane Newman, wouldn't have a voice. The original VA went MIA over two years ago and it's very, VERY doubtful I'd ever be able to get him back as all known channels of communication have been severed at this point.

In a way, Malevolence is going to get its own Uncut version.

Overpass is done and finished and I'm not updating it again. Although the original mod author did ask me to take a look at his other mod, Old World Secrets; as much as I'd love to clean it up to modern standards, I just don't have the time with everything else I'm working on.

If it hasn't been apparent for a long time with how little I test bug fix patches anymore, it's gotten to where I don't even do test playthroughs for them. You work on big quest mods for 8 years and see if you don't get sick of the sight of them.

Although last year, I was briefly on the Fallout: The Frontier team doing some light interior work for them. Between general life burnout and continuous technical issues with my submitted work, that lasted about three months before I left the team.