greslin

Starfield: Vasco AI Updated, v0.4 Released

The last few days, I've been taking a close look at the Starfield bots and how their AI works and is configured. I've learned a lot that will prove very useful when it comes time to build PAST.

Now that I have a firmer grasp on how the Model A bot works, I was able to go back and review Vasco's brain in more detail. This version of Vasco is probably as good as it's going to get until I have access to proper scripting tools and the ability to really get into the AI packages - in other wo...

Update: Starfield Enemy Aggression, v0.03

Progress is being made on the Starfield combat AI. The deeper I dig into it, the more obvious it becomes about why the vanilla setup is as broken as it is. Good news is, it's fixable.

First, more Unaggressive flags have been set to Aggressive. As I did more investigation, I discovered that UC, Freestar, and NA Security were already Aggressive, meaning that Bethesda intentionally set this system up to always give the "good guys" a strong combat advantage. Everyone is now...

Patching Starfield's AI

I haven't made any secret of my disappointment in Starfield's NPC AI.  The ship combat is okay, but the NPC combat AI is terrible, and one of its worst crimes is leaving enemies just standing there, staring at the wall, while you enter the room and headshot them at your leisure.

Now that XEdit is in an editable state, I've been taking a closer look at the AI. It's going to be a while before I can port PANPC over (a project currently called PAST) - the tools aren't there yet, so tha...

Starfield: The Looking Glass

This will probably be my last Starfield entry here until modding tools become available, so if you're already tired of hearing about it, bear with me one last time and then we'll get back to taking down raiders in the Commonwealth.

Yesterday I finished Starfield's main quest and I've been thinking since about what exactly to say about it. Not regarding spoilers - I'm not going to spoil the ending here for you - but about Starfield in general and the place it has in video games and the B...

Starfield: 20 Hours Later

First: my intention is to get some progress made on PACE dev this weekend. I've been buried under Starfield for the last week, so please just be patient with me. Being immersed in vanilla Bethesda AI again has been a bit of cold water shock, and I'll need some PANPC/PACE therapy to deal with it.

I'm now at about the 20 hour mark of Starfield. 

When I did the first impressions video, I'd only played the first hour: the introduction scene, the first couple of fights, a little b...

Starfield: First Impressions

If the above embedded video isn't playing for you, you can find it here.

I don't do hype. I learned that lesson in 2004 with Half Life 2, and you really only have to learn it once. Games can be good, bad, or just okay until time passes and they get better. All you can do is try to play it on its own terms and with an open mind.

That was my feeling going into Starfield ear...

APC Home Update 1.091 Released: Lighting Fixes

Hey all.  Hope everyone had a good summer.

Still keeping busy, myself. Starfield hits early access on Friday, and my hope is to get a first impression video together for you then. I'm also working on new updates to PANPC and PACE - just because we'll have a new game to play, that doesn't mean I'm walking away from the Wasteland anytime soon.

For now, I've got an update to 2023-08-29 23:04:50 +0000 UTC View Post

APC Home Update 1.08 Released: Night Lights

I'm about to head out for a long overdue vacation for a few weeks, so expect things to be a bit quiet in the land of mod updates until I get back. Good news is, I plan to jump back into PANPC and PACE when I do, so stay tuned there.

For now, I have a new APC Home Update for you. I'm gradually running out of things to do with this project, so it may be a while before I do another update.

This mostly-cosmetic update came about because I noticed how impractical the A...

Released: APC Home Update 1.071

Sigh. You win some, you lose some.

v1.06 had some broken linkages on the doors for the new Valenti and Nakano stops. This release fixes those, as well as fixing a minor glitch in the water boiler script.

v1.071 adds a couple of things as well. First, there's a new stop at the Natick Banks Red Rocket. (Since it turns out that there IS a Natick Banks in-game, I've renamed the Glowing Sea stop - more accurately - to the "Sherborn Red Rocket".)

Finally, I've moved the Fort Hagen...

Released: Tuckered Out 1.3, APC Home Update 1.06

So I got new versions done this week for two of my Fallout 4 mods, and they're both available now for download on the GreslinGames Discord.

The first is a new version of APC Home Update. This release adds three new stop locations: 2023-06-09 18:49:36 +0000 UTC View Post

Tunable Radios 1.05 Released!

So over the last couple of weekends I've released several new updates to Tunable Radios, adding a bunch of new station supports as well as a few new features.

This will probably be the last update for a while, as I'm starting to run out of decent radio stations to add. 

Currently supported stations:

Diamond City Radio (vanilla)
Freedom Radio (vanilla)
Institute/Classical Radio (vanilla)
2023-05-27 22:10:00 +0000 UTC View Post

New Project: Tunable Radios 1.02

By popular request, I took my tunable radio script from APC Home Update and made a standalone mod version. (Please note that this does NOT replace the APC radio, which now is missing a couple of the more recent station additions. You can either patch the TR standalone into APC or wait until I update APC.)

Basically, this mod makes most radios in Fallout 4 capable of selectively receiving the vanilla stations, as well as many of the more popular custom mod stations. When...

Across The River: New Projects on GreslinGames

Setting out to make anything is always like trying to cross a wild river on foot. You lightly step from one tenuous idea to the next, one briefly stable moment after another, trying really hard to quickly get to the far shore before an inevitable misstep chucks you hard into the water. It's not a job for people who can't handle getting wet.

I'm very grateful to not be the only one on GreslinGames 2023-04-14 17:30:22 +0000 UTC View Post

Dev Diary: Working on Tuckered Out 1.3

Oh, Tuckered Out. I just can't quit you.

I'm working over the next handful of months to get all my Fallout 4 mods to a relatively final state before Starfield hits, or at least states that allow at least for the possibility of porting. And right now I'm working on Tuckered Out.

Tuckered Out was my first significant mod project for Fallout: New Vegas. It began with my own annoyance at being a pack mule, constantly carrying thousands of caps and every weapon in the ...

APC Home Update 1.05 Released: Tunable Tunes!

Yesterday I released a new version of APC Home Update. Relax: it's not super exciting, but it does make the radio tunable.

As always, you can get 1.05 in the #apc-home-update channel of the GreslinGames Discord. (Citizen role required.) In case you're new to my APC Home Update project, you can read all about it here.

Pri...

PANPC 2.0.12 Released: The Real Time Response Update

PANPC 2.0.12 has been released and is now available to Citizen role users on the GreslinGames Discord. (Thanks to Cryss for his videos, above - please go like and subscribe.)

Changelog:

[NEW] Near-immediate allied hit and death reactions
[NEW] Car explosion avoidance, grenade dodging
[NEW] Real time trap alerts - monkey, hanging tin can tra...

Dev Diary: PANPC 2.0.12 (dev-6)

“The answer seems to be that we make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones. With the endless inventiveness of humankind, we grasp the very elements which are so divisive and destructive and try to turn them into tools—to dismantle themselves.”
- Stephen King, "Danse Macabre" (1981)

Every so often, I stop and find myself forced to reflect on why any of us do any of this. Coding, writing, going to work, drinking coffee, wat...

Watch PANPC Grenade Avoidance in Action

So lately I've had the pleasure of getting to know James over on We Who Survived. He does these great dramatic and well edited Fallout playthrough videos and you should definitely check out his work. We have been talking and I offered to let him into the PANPC pre-release channel to test drive 2.0.12.

The main thing I'm excited about in the upcoming 2.0.12 is the Real Time Response framework,...

Dev Diary: PANPC 2.0.12 (dev-5)

We're getting there. My original intent was to wrap up 2.0.12 by this weekend, but it has evolved from an update to an overhaul, and a few more issues have emerged in testing. I also had some serious personal life events happen this week that have significantly rearranged my priorities.

The thing about coding is, even when you're not in the right place to be creative, you can always optimize. So I spent a lot of time this week consolidating functions and trimming up game cycles...

Dev Diary: PANPC 2.0.12 (dev-4)

The way things work in PANPC development is, I get some harebrained idea, start chucking code at it, come to the conclusion that either it was really stupid (and so, back it out and pretend it never happened), or else it creates a cascade of complications and consequences that drag the whole thing forward a few yards. Or miles. 

At that point, I often wonder if I'm writing the code, or if it's writing me.

Once I have something ready to test that I'm confident doesn't crash th...

Coming in PANPC 2.0.12: Real Time Response

One of PANPC's shortcomings has always been the lack of ability to immediately respond to combat events. There's almost always a delay of some kind.

This is mostly due to script lagging: in the Bethesda system, the game slows down script processing on a variable basis in order to keep FPS fairly solid. As script overhead increases, and more script activity is happening at once, all scripts increasingly lag. This in turn means that anything in PANPC that involves detecting a situation, f...

New PANPC Compatibility Patches Available!

In recent weeks I've been doing a lot of PANPC compatibility patches!

The following patches are now available in the GreslinGames Compatibility Patch Repo:

Project Zeta by GrilledTurkey
Operation Manhattan by AlxRam
Operation Wilkes Estate by MrColonelMustard
The Forest...