Denver design document/5

This is part 5 of the Denver design document for Van Buren, the cancelled Fallout 3 by Black Isle Studios.

Scripting
Scripting covers a number of elements:

Note that there may be some scripting-specific information for NPCs, audio, art requirements and so on that may be listed there.

General
There are some general scripting issues...

Wacky Scripting: If you get the klaxon/dogs quest finished, all the dogs leave town, but the random encounters with dogs outside of town in the nearby areas goes up.

If you reactivate the Box's robot factor, robots start appearing (see spawn, below), eventually driving out all human inhabitants (dogs and lizards remain because they don't attack the robots and aren't seen as a threat).

Cut Scenes: There will be a cut scene at the Box if Bombay Jack and/or the traitor salvagers aren't dealt with before you go to the Box. The cut scene involves you, the traitor salvagers, and Bombay Jack. Note: Be sure to include animations and IDs to the art for scriptors contained within the cut-scene description.

If Jack blows up his lair, we'll need a FMV of the building blowing up, and a script change to make the map a field of rubble with your characters scattered through it, severely injured.

Respawning:

Dogs and lizards spawn and respawn. Dogs continue to respawn until you kill them all. Lizards respawn everywhere; except if you finish the "kill the lizards" quest they no longer respawn at the New Camp.

Once you breach the Box and the robot factory reactivates, robots start to spawn and take up spots on every single map, including random maps. They move to react to threats, so once a group (like the salvagers) attacks them, the robots will overwhelm and imprison them, with some guys escaping to the hills to never be seen again.

Difficulty Level/PC level/Multiplayer:

At higher difficulties, PC levels, and in multiplayer games, the number of dogs in random encounters are greater and the dogs are tougher. Likewise, the power level of the NCR soldiers, Rival Salvagers, and Caesar's Legion goes up in these cases.

Event Stuff: 

Once the Legion guys are discovered in Denver, every month that passes has a 25% chance that they've left to go back to Caesar, including taking all their slaves with them. This means the PC might not be able to grab Daniel.

Eventually the traitor salvagers are going to make their own strike at the Box. The PC will be able to hear these interactions over the radio. Unless the PC can get there quickly, it'll be over by the time the PC gets there, and the traitor salvagers will have been sniped or bombed by Jack and he'll be in the process of stripping their corpses (or done doing so).

If the PC uses Dogbody's BITE-ME bomb within the New Camp, within an hour the place is overrun with dogs and the salvagers are forced to flee Denver forever. Their camp remains overrun with dogs for several weeks.

Eventually Dogbody attacks the PC, regardless of how friendly or helpful the PC used to be.

ARGOS comes by on his rounds, looking for the PC. If Daniel or the other prisoner is there, he grabs them, too.

Cool Shit
The Cool Shit section is just that -- what's cool about this area? For starters, you should be able to say in one or two sentences why a player would remember this location. If you were a player, what would make you want to play this location? What would make you glad you played this location?

What keeps the PC coming back? More stuff to loot, more trading with the salvagers. The Box. Dealing with Bombay Jack. The NCR guys. Working on fixing the train. Starting trade agreements with the salvagers & NCR. Convincing them to go to New Canaan to work.

Handouts: Riot & plague documents, background on the DCPD K-9 program, correspondence from before the war (the woman writing to her soldier husband, for example).

Vehicles: If we go with the police car option, this is the place to get it, since we have a police station motor pool with several vehicles that can be salvaged for parts.

Train: If you get the train running, you can take it anywhere from Fort Abandon to Boulder immediately, but any other place (Hoover Dam, Reservation, New Canaan) requires working to repair the tracks that are out along the way.

Task List
The Tasks section is a list of all the work that needs to be done for the area. It is a good summary for the producer, other designers, artists, and programmers as to what has been done in the area, who to check with if you have questions about certain tasks, and so on.

This section is only useful if it is used. If we're several months into the project and no one has been using it, then it will no longer be used or updated. There's no sense in wasting time doing additional bookkeeping if it's serving no purpose.

Location Checklist
Each area document will also have a '''Location Checklist. '''

In Fallout 3, we need to make sure that each character type has an equally enjoyable role-playing experience in each location (evil characters and stupid characters are usually given the short end of the stick; the rewards for these types of characters are usually unbalanced when compared to the goody-two-shoes characters). No more!

In addition, there were a few skills and statistics in Fallout 1 and 2 that didn't see enough use by the designers. As an example, Charisma wasn't nearly as useful as most of the other statistics in Fallout 1, and the Doctor Skill was as useless as a third thumb in both Fallout 1 and Fallout 2. If we take care to see that each stat and skill can be used effectively design-wise in each location in the game, then I think these stats can gain back some of the ground they've lost over the past few games. That's what the location checklist is for.

The location checklist is a glorified grocery list, covering a number of the role-playing possibilities for each "kind" of character the player may have chosen (Stealth Boy, Science Boy, Combat Boy, Charisma Boy). This checklist is intended to insure each kind of character has something cool to do in each location, and that the rewards and role-playing experiences for each location are balanced whether the player is good or evil, stupid or smart, a combat monster or a science guy.

Designers don't have to make sure that each entry is checked off for each location – as long as they make up for it in another of their locations in the game. The exception to this rule is for early areas of the game, since those are the first areas the players will encounter, and I want their character to have a rich role-playing experience all-around right from the start. (If the player went through three early areas, and his Doctor skill isn't used once, then he's going to be sorry he took it.)

My prototype checklist consists of the following entries:

Room for Improvement
Also be sure to include hooks for "room for improvement." This section may change depending on how Ferret thinks it should be organized.

Room for Improvement: You can repair stuff at the train station, getting the tracks fixed and the train, after which it's a working train station and can have guests. If you get the connection fixed all the way to NCR and establish trade with them, they'll actually post a small military squad here.

End Movies
Each area document will also have a list of possible End Movies depending on what the character did in the location. This section should contain:


 * The condition for each end movie. Someone has to script this, so make sure it includes all necessary flags or other conditions that need to be checked.


 * The narration text for the end movie. Write it as if Ron Perlman would read it.


 * Some suggested art for the end movie slideshow. Keep it as a simple 2D image. 

Note: Over the course of the project, you may wish to collect art that may be appropriate for an end movie slideshow and just keep it stored in a folder on the server or locally.

A quick example is provided below:

WHERE TO GO CONDITIONS

'''1. NUKE DESTROYS DENVER! (WTG)'''

2. DOG CITY (WTG)

3. DOG CITY mk 2 (WTG)

'''4. FORT DENVER ESTABLISHED! (WTG)'''

'''5. DOG CITY mk 3! (WTG)'''

'''6. FORT DENVER ESTABLISHED! Mk 2 (WTG)'''

'''7. FORT DENVER ESTABLISHED! Mk 3 (WTG)'''

8. GHOUL CITY (WTG)

Random Notes
This section is just for random notes you've made on the location - brainstorming ideas or whatever. It's like a word junkyard for stuff you might use or might not, but you haven't ruled them out yet.

Appendix
Include a summary of changes you've done in a document at the end, and dump it into the Source Safe comments, if you can. Chances are, you'll have to email this information to certain people on the team, so it's worthwhile to record here.

8/11/01 – finished quests, last ragtag bits

8/6/01 – rearranged NPCs so most of them were generic

8/1/01 – added maps

7/1/01 – added quest ideas

06-25-01 – Fallout Location Template document created.