Fallout 3 Modding Interview: The Marriage Proposal Mod

This week we’ve got a special modding interview to very celebrate a special occasion. As you may have seen on other sites, a mod for Fallout 3 was created so that forum member *Puffy*Puppy* (real name Kristy) could propose to her boyfriend Shawn.

Back in June, Kristy contacted our office every way she could think of. Here’s her email to Bethesda Blog:

“Hi, is there any way to get an idea of what it would take to propose to my boyfriend through Fallout 3? Via an add-on, or a mission, or a separate disk? Does something like this take a millionaire to commission it? lol. Because I am just a dollaraire. Is there a way of doing it myself and then kinda creating a level or something?”

From there, we pointed Kristy to our modding forums – where she received plenty of help from our community — including Skykappa, old_andy, and Sesom.

After the break, check out my interviews with all four of them.

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Modding Interview: DragoonWraith

This week we’ve got a modding interview with Kevin Ryan (aka DragoonWraith). Kevin spends a lot of time working as a “Sheriff” for both The G.E.C.K. and TES Construction Set wikis — he’s helped us add some really cool features to both.

The 21-year-old hails from New York City and attends school out in Claremont, CA, where he’s studying to be an engineer at Harvey Mudd College.

Check it out after the break…

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Project Safehouse contest winners announced at Planet Fallout

Back in March, we shared news that Planet Fallout had started a modding competition called Project Safehouse, which centered around creating user-made Vaults with The G.E.C.K. Today they announced the winners in all three categories — Personal Vault, Corporate Vault, and Government Vault.

Here’s a quick look at the winners, who each scored an e-GeForce 9800 GTX video card from the folks at nVidia.

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Around the web and on newsstands

Here’s a few things to be on the lookout for — both online and in print.

Voodoo Extreme has a new interview with Fallout 3 Production Director Ashley Cheng. In the interview, Ash discusses his role with the company dating back to his work on The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. Here’s a snippet from the interview:

What is the process for determining art direction on any of the games you produce?

The art direction comes from our concept artists, our lead artists on the project (Matt Carofano for Elder Scrolls; Istvan Pely for Fallout 3), and our game director/exec producer, Todd Howard. We go through months and months of concepts, looking for the right tone and look. We tend to create concepts of overall scenes to help dictate the direction before getting into lots of detail.

Hit the link below for more news….

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Project Safehouse contest at Planet Fallout

Those of you out there modding Fallout 3 with the G.E.C.K., I thought you should know about a new modding contest over at Planet Fallout called Project Safehouse.

For the contest, they’ll be looking for the best user-created Vault in three categories:

Personal Vault
Corporate Vault
Government Vault

For each of the three categories, contest sponsor NVIDIA will be giving away a GeForce 9800 GTX Graphic Card. The Project Safehouse Contest is for US citizens who are at least 18 years of age and runs until April 2, 2009. For more details and contest rules, head to Planet Fallout.

Modding Interview: Phitt

This week we’re talking with Elder Scrolls/Fallout 3 modder, Philipp Termeer (known in the forums as Phitt). Phitt is a resident of Wiesbaden, Germany where he works as an engineer. Phitt has been playing our games since Morrowind, and began modding with Oblivion.

Phitt is currently working on a very impressive Oblivion, Sheogorad, using thousands of meshes made from scratch. Pretty impressive homage to Morrowind!

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Planet Fallout Modding Update

Today we’re checking in on some of the latest modding news at Planet Fallout.

We’ll begin with the third installation of their State of Modding series. This time around, Blinzler goes head-to-head with BGS forum member Qzilla. Here’s a snippet of the interview:

Any advice to people new to modding (Fallout 3)?
Qzilla: Everyone says this to new modders but it’s 100% true: start small! If your first foray into modding is making a WIP thread for a TC for Oblivion/Fallout 3 and you haven’t even started on it yet… you’re starting down a long long tunnel with no end in sight. The best way to start modding, from my perspective, is to find someone else’s *small* mod, and try to customize it more to your liking, emphasis again on *small*. Mods can get very complex very fast, so the best way to gain understanding is to start with something small and simple, and then once you’ve got the basics down you can start trying to mix things together to do more complicated things. No matter how much you may want to remake the entire Deus Ex game with the Fallout 3 engine — or whatever wild-eyed dream you’ve cooked up — it’s not gonna happen.

For more State of Modding interview, click here.

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G.E.C.K. Quick Tips #3: Weapon Creation Pt. 1

This week we’ve got a new G.E.C.K. Quick Tip on the basics of weapon creation. In this video, Level Designer Phil Nelson takes you through the steps of modding a Combat Shotgun to make it a Grenade Launcher.

Take it away Phil…

One of the more robust systems in Fallout 3 is the one we use for weapon creation, which makes it easy for the rapid prototyping and production of unique weapons. With this system, designers can whip up a new weapon quickly and have a good amount of time left for testing and balancing them. The end result: more kick ass weapons get into the game.

Our first Fallout 3 DLC, Operation: Anchorage, is an excellent example ohow we were able to create some great weapons, like the Gauss Rifle, in a short period of time. This also happens to be my favorite G.E.C.K. system to abuse, which is why I decided to do a tutorial on the basics.

To show everything in one video would take considerably longer then a quick tip would allow, so in this first example I show some of the easier steps and teach you how to turn our basic combat shotgun into a grenade launcher. I hope you enjoy it.

Around the web…

Here’s more news and “stuff” to read up on.

At X-Play there’s two new Fallout 3-related videos up this week. Above you, can find their video titled, “Five Thing We Love About Fallout.” Additionally, they have a video showing off recommended PC mods created by G.E.C.K. users.

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Around the web: Tasty wasteland treats edition

Here’s more Fallout news/coverage we thought you’d be interested in…

We’ll start at Planet Fallout, where they’ve started State of Modding — a new interview series where they talk to modders within the community. The first two interviews, JaySuS and DarN are up, with more on the way.

Speaking of mods, if you’re looking for new stuff to experience in the game, Hellforge has a new feature on 50 Mods You Should Be Playing For Fallout 3. Topping the list is the Enclave Commander mod by that we featured earlier this year, followed by Weapon Mod Kits, which we just featured today.

There’s a couple interesting articles elsewhere worth reading. At IGN, Rus McLaughlin has put together an eight-page History of Fallout feature — that discusses the franchise all the way back to its Wasteland roots. Meanwhile, Clive Thompson reacts to post-apocalyptic atmosphere of Fallout 3 in a column for Wired. Here’s a snippet:

“The big difference with Fallout 3 is that it depicts — with remarkable fidelity — a city that actually exists, and that I’ve often visited. When I emerged from Tenleytown Station, I knew what it was supposed to look like: a bustling city scene of briefcase-toting wonks, trucks delivering packages, people buying coffee at corner stores. When I visited the location in Fallout 3, I saw nothing but the rusting hulk of a bombed-out blue car, with smoke billowing over the buckled asphalt and buildings as brittle as fall leaves”

On a lighter note, I suggest checking out 1Up Editor Kurtis Seid’s blog on entitled, “What I eat when I play Fallout 3.” Check out the brahmin feast above. Mmmm…..brahmin!