Oblivion Traces in Fallout3

J

Jakor

First time out of the vault
Just running through a list of the text in fallout 3 makes me wonder about why they have not released modding tools yet.

There are references all over the place in the text talking about "last ridden horse", references to every category of spells in oblivion, and on and on... Sure most of this is only referenced for internal debug reasons and does not show up in the game. I am wondering if they are spending some time cleaning up the text references and removing oblivion texts and triggers from the toolset for fallout3. But what about Diseases. Is that left over from oblivion or new to fallout3 (reference at 00DC9B70)?

With all the references all the way through the code, it would seem that they didn't remove every trace of oblivion out of their sources and before offering access to some of those features, they must remove the traces to oblivion.

(obviously the mod tools exist as it's the same engine as oblivion)

my 2 caps
 
It wouldn't make much sense for Bethesda Softworks to just throw away all their work on Oblivion for Fallout 3, especially if the engine remains the same.

These leftovers are honestly not surprising and not embarassing, unless they want to prove that Fallout 3 is *not* Oblivion with Guns, which it is anyway.

I don't see how they could remove those references in the construction set if they are in the game files themselves, unless the game is heavily patched first.

The mod tools already exist, because a game is not entirely built by programmers speaking C++ fluently. Every game has custom made tools to allow artists or scripters to do their work without a programmer on their back at all time. But it's usually not very user-friendly and, most importantly, it's protected IP that the company doesn't want released.

Which is why they have to simplify the existing tools, and limit their possibilities to prevent unwanted scripts (child killing comes to mind) that could cause controversy. Such things take time and money, and I for one do not take a construction set for granted.

Then again, it doesn't mean the game cannot be modded. Just that the bigger mods will require custom made tools (such as Oblivion Script Extender was required for the more intersting mods of Oblivion).
 
There simply isn't a way to remove all of the traces of Oblivion (or Morrowind for that matter) from the game. I can't see Bethesda spending any time trying to clean up all of the references to the Elder Scrolls world from Fallout3.esm. Too much of the code references these things, and why bother? People know that Fallout 3 was built using the Elder Scrolls engine - there is no secret there.

I also don't believe they could possibly prevent a child-killing mod from happening. There is not a special Child class, and I don't believe they have a special flag on child NPCs that prevents the essential tag from being removed. Even if they did, they couldn't prevent the Script Extender from changing that flag (even if the CS doesn't allow it.) I don't believe that they are trying to prevent mods.

I think that the team was simply focused on getting the game out the door, and now they are working on a bug-fix patch. Also, Bethesda tends to tell us that a CS will be made when the CS is ready to ship. I don't expect that we'll get confirmation until within a week of the CS being released, unless we're told they are not going to release.

Just my take on it.
 
behippo said:
There simply isn't a way to remove all of the traces of Oblivion (or Morrowind for that matter) from the game. I can't see Bethesda spending any time trying to clean up all of the references to the Elder Scrolls world from Fallout3.esm. Too much of the code references these things, and why bother? People know that Fallout 3 was built using the Elder Scrolls engine - there is no secret there.

I also don't believe they could possibly prevent a child-killing mod from happening. There is not a special Child class, and I don't believe they have a special flag on child NPCs that prevents the essential tag from being removed. Even if they did, they couldn't prevent the Script Extender from changing that flag (even if the CS doesn't allow it.) I don't believe that they are trying to prevent mods.

I think that the team was simply focused on getting the game out the door, and now they are working on a bug-fix patch. Also, Bethesda tends to tell us that a CS will be made when the CS is ready to ship. I don't expect that we'll get confirmation until within a week of the CS being released, unless we're told they are not going to release.

Just my take on it.
Click to expand...

Actually there is a special child "class" if you will. Characters have an age classification. If their age class is child, they are invincible. Otherwise they can be killed. It isn't JUST the essential flag.
 
Labels inside the c++ language could remain the same, but text references to "horses stolen"? Seriously? 4 years and can't remove simple text like that from the engine? I don't think that "horses stolen" was hardcoded into the engine itself. Maybe a Player->Scorecard->HorsesStolen counter (but that doesn't have to do with the engine, that's game specific when writting an engine) and the triggers on actions that occur on items of specific types would be the scripting ontop of the engine.


psuedocode:
Code: 
...
on Keys.ActionKey
  call GetItemUnderCursor
  call Item.Action
...
When the key which is binded to "do action" such as opening doors talking to people or whatever is hit, The engine will find whatever object is under the crosshairs. that object would contain all sorts of stuff such as what the object is what state it is in where it is it's health inventory ect aswell as pointers to functions for death/healing/action ect.. The engine can lookup the action for this and call it.

Code: 
...
SomeAction ;as pointed to by Item.Action
  Player.Status = OnHorse
  if Item.Owner != Player
    Player.StealHorse++
....

This part would be part of the scripting on the engine and not actually part of the engine. EVERYTHING in the .esm file SHOULD be fallout3 specific. Traces of ElderScrolls games should be found only in fallout3.exe if over the last 4 years they did not take out all the scripting and callback functions from earlier games. I'm just saying that the tools for packing/unpacking the data from their compression should be available as they would not rewrite those routines inside their engine.

"Child class" doesn't make too much sense as it would be an Object with NPC_CHILD flag set as opposed to NPC and based off of that check they would be invulnerable. Even the age seems a bit far out. It's MUCH faster to do a "if Object.Type && NPC_CHILD" than "if Object.Type && NPC && Object.Age <= 18" check to see if the object is a child or not.

I do believe that creating a childkiller mod would be easy assuming someone could come up with the models to use. A few jumps to remove and the addition of content to the .esm file for the models to use.

Then again, I code in assembly, and I'm anal retentive about being small, and not bloating my code at all...
 
In Oblivion's data files, there are hundreds of spell entries, scripts, NPCs and maps that are never used in the game itself, either they were scrapped, E3 showcases or meant for testing purposes. The thing is, due to the way the engine handles these files, once you write an entry there you can't just remove it. This was the main reason why you couldn't delete spells in Oblivion, because the game expected them to be there and probably did some further indexing based on them.

To put it short, there is probably tons of garbage in the .esms that we can never remove, both leftovers from the creation of Oblivion and from FO3 itself.

In-game traces are a bit more visible. Messages like "You cannot fast travel from this location" and that inescapable "Another satisfied customer" blurt are apparently what Bethesda regard as the most action-packed game mechanisms ever created.
 
oh, so the engine had poor design flaws from the beginning? Hrm... so not everyone is perfect? That's a concept =p (I'm so used to blizzards games and I can't ever find things like this, I figured that everyone programmed as well as blizzard)


Ah well, case solved!
 
So can we use the same console commands in Fallout 3 they used in Oblivion? if not how different.

Have you typed in 'tcl' yet? or how about 'modpcs Xskill 10'
 
Yes, most of the commands carry over. TCL and ADVLEVEL work, I know that personally. ADVLEVEL can even grant you levels above 20.
 
re: Child Class

Interesting. I haven't seen the age classification. I was making more of a statement about C++ style classes - I haven't seen a Child class. The children are likely NPCs, but they do have a Class (like Battlemage or Fighter in Oblivion), so perhaps there is a Child class as well. Or a new age classificaiton I just haven't seen yet.

I can see that being done. Perhaps I'll stumble across that in the decoding. Thanks for the heads up.
 
behippo said:
re: Child Class

Interesting. I haven't seen the age classification. I was making more of a statement about C++ style classes - I haven't seen a Child class. The children are likely NPCs, but they do have a Class (like Battlemage or Fighter in Oblivion), so perhaps there is a Child class as well. Or a new age classificaiton I just haven't seen yet.

I can see that being done. Perhaps I'll stumble across that in the decoding. Thanks for the heads up.
Click to expand...

Age seems to be a property or attribute if you will.

However the way it is implemented could be an extension of an abstract class. That is to say, there is an abstract class of "character" and one extension of that class is human which is also an abstract class. Human then has 4 classes extend it: child, teenager, adult, senior (which can be changed in the console with an agerace command).
 
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