Wow, it's been a while, hasn't it? Sorry to keep you waiting.
Anyway, where do I even begin...
First off, I'll go ahead and announce that Team Silent Pizza has bit the dust. It's only ever been one person, so I'll just change over to my new moniker, Janitor Dave. This decision was made to finally close the book on my NASCAR Racing 2003 Season days, as it was the lone relic left from that era of my life. It was a stupid name anyway, eh?
But that's not what you're here for. I know what you're here for.
Where's Washington's Malevolence 3.0? Where's the updates for Alton you talked about? Where's The Overpass Remastered? Where's The Impossible Mod?
Good questions. Speaking about Malevolence, I've released periodic updates on my Twitter, and I'll recap them here.
For starters, I've replaced Acura T.L. with Thomas Burt for Samuel Dacomb. While I liked what he did with the role, it was a much requested change that I felt needed to be made. Thomas has done an excellent job with the re-voicing and honestly, I would recommend replaying just for his voice work alone, if nothing else!
I've basically completely re-written the (in my opinion) bad parts of the story all the way up to Temporary Setbacks. The sequence of events leading to the player's first look at Maddox Island has been changed to... well, make more sense. You don't get knocked out by Enclave soldiers anymore; you are merely approached by them. I'm still waiting on the re-recorded lines from Jack for the Newman brothers. I should probably see if I can get that rolling.
The best change, I think, however, comes in the form of the quest that leads to the player being taken to the Sterrek Island jail. Instead of just walking right into the bank, the player now has to retrieve a transit manifest from the boat dock that the Pirates use to ferry prisoners between Sterrek and the mainland.
The broken "stealth" option when escaping the jail has finally been fixed; previously, the Pirates weren't turning hostile no matter if the player chose the stealth or distraction paths. Turns out, I forgot to properly set the aggression levels of the NPCs. They will now properly engage in combat now.
However, if you manage to sneak out of the jail without being detected, you will receive a double XP reward!
I've added in a new quest (in a similar fashion to Old Runners where it's technically a sidequest but it's required to continue the story) called "Round and Round" which is given to the player by Shilling via a work order posted outside the player's jail cell. The player meets up with a NPC named Kassius, voiced by Bryce Rush. The player will have to clear out Mirelurks in the jail's basement; this has been balanced for the vanilla Fallout 3, and is meant to be a little easier as the player was stripped of all their gear.
Just... don't go down into the caves. Seriously.
Don't.
I will admit, the one thing really holding the update up is my complete inability to re-record the voices I did. My voice has been burning out really quickly, ever since I contracted an unknown respiratory virus back in November 2019. (99.99999% sure it wasn't COVID-19 so no concern there) I have been unable to do the voice for Jimmy, and finding another voice for him is completely out of the question as he has over 350 lines, and I still have to finish his backstory quest. That on top of Eyes and Sterling's lines has really pulled the drag chute on things.
I've also managed to squash a pile of bugs that I've found elsewhere, as well as added in new interiors to explore.
As for Alton TTW, it's on the backburner while I get Malevolence 3.0 wrapped up and ready to go, as well as getting The Overpass Remastered ready for release. That one will be out a little later, though! I know there's still quite a few bugs in Alton that need to be fixed. When I come back to it, I might just do a little more for it on top of the usual bug fixes. Who knows?
I haven't really dug into The Overpass Remastered as much as I'd like to; I've fixed all the grammatical errors I could find as well as squashing as many bugs as I can find. It is somehow even more of a mess on the underside as Alton was. And yes, there'll be a TTW version when the remastered version releases.
The Impossible Mod is still shelved for the time being; I really haven't gotten inspired to work on that one.
On the sim racing side of things, I'm parked for a while; my wheel's PCB burned out and the replacement is coming from eastern Europe, and with the pandemic going on, it'll be a while yet before that gets to me here in the States. Hopefully not long!
I'm looking at doing a series of different tests for Janitor Dave's Winter Run in late December, however, I can't do anything until my wheel is back up and running.
That'll about wrap it up for this report. Thanks for reading!
-Janitor Dave