Maps, 3D Art, Final Level Design, Audio Remastering!
FPB's endless battle on Klendathu against the bug menace continues, and we make inroads towards the final release of Project Brazil. I totally revamped the Audio across the game, added more art to the wasteland, updated some old areas, and made just tons of overall improvements to our worldspace's ground textures. I'm also adding an outpost system similar to Far Cry 3, and I made a bunch of Lore-Friendly maps.
Project Brazil is THE PASS, to the East of the Boneyards, North of San Bernardino, (the Cajon Pass irl.)
I made this map for The Frontier and Project Brazil's crossover lore and the passing references we have to each other's mods, as well as to show where we are in the overall Canon Lore between Fallout 1 and 2, and Fallout 3 and New Vegas. A lot of our story won't make sense to a lore purist until you play the mod and see how we wedged everything in there. But this next map should help.
This will serve as a loading screen during the NCR Main Quest, as well as an in-game map on General Silverman's desk. It'll go along with other loading screens that I will make exclusive to Project Brazil, so it won't interfere with Vanilla New Vegas or any loading screen mods you've all invariably added to your game over the years.
There are a lot of FPB and Fallout 1, 2, and New Vegas bits in here, as well as nods to other mods, along with the cancelled Fallout 3, Project VanBuren. (See, Project Brazil has good company with its weird title. I could always re-brand it Fallout: New California before we release it though! XD)
I updated Black Horse Ranch with a tons of new assets and art. It looks phenomenally better, it's more fun to play, it's more rich with lore, and it looks & feels much more like a vital location to the Raider Alliance. You pick up your companions here if you use the "sly" / Charisma way out when skipping to the NCR.
Since in the story you can get captured by Raiders and your companions kidnapped, you need a way to escape, and you can collect them here after a daring adventure of your own. You also have to visit this place to kidnap the lead bad guy's daughter, if you are on the mob path. Otherwise the location was useless and easy to shoot up. That is no longer the case.
I'd love it if another modder joined the project to add venders and voiced NPCs to the area. There's a lot more that could be done here that I just didn't for resources reasons.
I wanted more signage in the mod, so I made one for the Vault and one for the Raiders & NCR. I will probably release this as a standalone modder's resource for future New Vegas modders, and, maybe, Fallout 4. If someone else wants to convert them.
I was watching an AlChestBreach video a friend showed me, and notices there was this awesome hanging body. Decided I'd replace the static hanging bodies with these, and they added a lot of value to Union City and various raider territories. Thanks, deedes!
Our dirty NCR outpost Union City also got a resit, with new updated textures, 3d art, and refinements to existing structures for optimization.
Also made new flag textures for our Release Trailer, The Frontier, & our Editing Narration Slideshow.
Last week I went back in time and updated all of our audio in a giant universal pass that encompassed the oldest files in the game that we first recorded in May of 2012, up through all of the new Part 2 audio from October 2015. We got some critiques on our audio from the 4 Year Anniversary Gameplay videos we put out a couple months ago, so I figured it was time I put in the effort to actually do something about it. :p
Generally you never want to record game audio until your project is finished and coded. But on a 2 man team, with limited budgets and time, we had no choice. That led me to make a lot of stupid amateur mistakes in the recording process that have haunted me for the last 2 years, and I'm just now fixing.
I had to learn a new piece of software, Adobe Audion, to resolve these problems.
It turns out I am, in fact, not an audio engineer. I am a visual artist - a radically separate discipline. You do in fact have to learn an entire library of techniques and approaches to get audio right! It's a whole world unto itself from microphone ergonomics to editing to final output. You can literally make an entire career out of JUST audio.
Crazy, right? 1 guy doing 1 job, and JUST that job. His whole life. Unfathomable, the luxury!
I knew when we recorded our voice acting that I needed help, but part of this mod is a learning process as much as it is a show piece of our talents. You should always be learning, no matter how advanced you get in your career. It's nice to have people around who know what they are doing fixing problems, but, when those people cost money, those people have to be you. XD
You can hear elements of the new audio here for contrast:
It's like seeing me naked. :p
Also, if you missed the new intro video for BETA 200 last month. New audio & video here too.
Rick did make a lot of progress this week doing the main quest, it just doesn't show on the chart yet. Trust me, I see this chart in my nightmares. XD But after we get that yellow area good & green, we will announce a release date the following new post. :)
Release when?
Dunno yet.
Depends on how soon these tasks get wrapped up on volunteer hours only.
This will be the whole mod this time, no cut content and no cliffhangers. The whole thing, start to finish, and integrated at the end with New Vegas (and The Frontier, so if you also get that mod, you can play FPB -> New Vegas -> The Frontier all on one character without breaking continuity.)
You can read more about our progress on the Design Documents Found Here. In the mean time, you can keep track of us on ModDB, Fallout Nexus, or Facebook. We've got a thriving online community centered around each one.
You can also throw dollars at me on Pay-Pal so I don't starve to death at my desk: Nexusmods.com
Cheers
Brandan Lee
Project Leader
Loved the Starship Troopers reference, you guys are doing great work here. Certainly a turning point in Fallout modding.
"you can play FPB -> New Vegas -> The Frontier all on one character without breaking continuity" That's awesome !
Thats like a one massive epic saga that will undoubtedly reach the levels that only Obsidian and Fallout modders and fans could envision ( definetly NOT Bethesda ) .
I'm sure if Bethesda had an established world like this they could do something cool with it. We had the benefit of having the world and engine ready for us, and the madness to go back to 20 year old source material as inspiration & try to wedge ourselves in there. I doubt you'd ever get that pitch past an investment advisory board. They are bound by obligation to make a profit, and that means making decisions you or I may find objectionable.
When /I/ end up in those same scenarios, I'm sure I'll have to adapt too changing circumstances too.
Unfortunately , yes - everything became oriented solely around profit . As an example - Gabe Newell himself could finance whole Half-Life 3 from scratch , if he wanted to . But he has in plan to add few more billions onto his account , because these current 5.5 billions arent enough to live normally , lol . Everything gets boxed-in with dates and timelines , the project content gets cut , Bethesda greedily rubs their hands , fanbase suffers from collective amnesia and falls for same tactic for 1001st time , and then Bethesda pretends to be all apologetical ... rinse and repeat ...
Or.. you know.. you become a big shot in the investment advisory board. No?
To the detriment of your own skills and ideals. Boards are subject to group think, there's a reason "Design by committee" is a slur in creative circles and not a point of pride.
The whole point of an 'advisory board' is that everyone in it has a financial stake, and a motivation to not take risks. You might be willing to take the hit yourself and stand up for your ideals, but in the face of the rest of the people on the board who are also afraid of taking the hit? They are people to, and that's something people don't tend to think about looking in from outside.
This **** is the stuff that brightens my day.
Looking foward to the release :)
I can only say : Hooooly shiiite , this is amazing !
You know, I wouldn't mind if you did rename the mod to Fallout: New California. It's a good name.
Yeah, I'm struggling with it. :p
I'd have to remake the logo! D:
But it's on the table.
I to think New California sounds great.
You tell people its called Fallout New Vegas Project Brazil
Oh where is is set?
California
It sounds more professional than Project
It's under pretty serious consideration. XD
There are a lot of logistical concerns in changing it, but if I start now, it'll be ready by release time. Just switching URLs will be a big deal.
The name was meant to point out to the vibe of Terry Gilliam's movie - dystopian future that is centralized with population that is brainwashed and manipulated ... well , something we live in already now , lol .
I'm so happy I didn't waste my money on Fallout 4. Ya'll are doing god's work.
Praise be Atom!
This is the Fallout 4 we all needed and totally deserved.
I'd honestly pay more for this then I did for F4.
I mean don't get me wrong, F4 is a great looker, looter and shooter, but as an RPG it falls on it's face. I don't know how the shooting mechanics will be in F:PB, but I can just feel the atmosphere ooze from these screenshots. And that sticks with me longer then any wicked headshot or firefight. Unless it's a shootout straight outta F.E.A.R, my first playthrough of that is going to stick with me forever!
Honestly, we didn't change New Vegas gameplay at all. We focused 100% on our main quest and our environment art, which is fantastic. We really did that one thing and did it very well.
But outside the main quest is where we sliced it. There's not much there but the Main Quest, which is a non stop source of frustration to me. We needed a community of modders to come in and self-start their own for-fun side projects, but that never materialized. I was too timid in asking for that and didn't foster it correctly, so we ended up with a very strong main quest with lots of role playing and outside of that, it's a literal wasteland.
So close I can smell it!
It's insane how much love and care goes into this mod. Thanks for keeping us posted.
It has been years since i started following this mod, still don't regret a thing! keep the coal burning guys! :D
Long time fan here. It looks amazing. This, this is something you guys should be really, really proud of. The time, effort, and love you put into this is astounding, and...I'm pretty sure you might need some therapy if you're seeing that chart in your nightmares. Best of luck in the final stretch, and hope you don't have PTSD when all is said and done.
It'll probably stop after release. XD
May I suggest that when you are done with this project, you invite lots of modders to make side-quests,new locations,custom NPC's,etc. for you? It would save a lot of time for you (the developers).
It would be like modding a mod ;)
I've been trying that since day 1. So far only Dustin Wing has come through for us. Sesom made a ball in the atrium once, though. And Seddon dropped by once for a few weeks.
Will the Enclave act as a playable faction?
Yep!