User talk:Blaze55555

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-- Nitpicker of the Wastes (Talk) 02:19, 25 January 2011

Fallout 3 Overhaul Project
Well, that was quite the message :) Detailed info about all stores/merchants and their inventories is something I'd love to have on the wiki as well. Fallout 3 merchants was originally supposed to be the overview page you're missing, but it's not really in the most presentable shape right now. If you want to go ahead and start the project, please do so :)

What would need to be decided is where to put the inventory data. I think you'll agree that putting all the inventory data on one page would be rather unwieldy, and I'd rather not have extra pages just for the merchant aspect when there's already a general article about an NPC. Of course, there are shared shops as well, so I think the natural place to put the inventories would be the stores' location pages (like e.g. Flak 'N Shrapnel's). They're usually pretty empty anyway.

On the overview page, the existing table could then be modified to have columns for general location (e.g. Megaton), shop name (Craterside Supply) and proprietor (Moira Brown), along with the amount of caps, the repair skill of the NPC and the general type of wares. Readers could then go to the individual shop's page to look up the detailed inventory.

On to the inventories themselves. Your observations match with how the system works, at least to my understanding. Here's what I figured out when I looked at it a while back: Basically every vendor is linked to a container (chest, locker etc) which contains his or her inventory (most of them are actually linked to two containers - one the player can access with the key a merchant drops on death, and the aforementioned one with the "real" inventory which is outside the player-accessable game world). These chests contain a number of objects (called "leveled items") which themselves represent a selection of randomized objects. As an example, Anthony Ling's hidden chest contains the objects "VendorArmorCommon", "VendorChestApparePrewar", "VendorChestCapsLarge", "VendorChestStimpaks" and 3x "VendorArmorCommon75". Each of these objects has a certain chance to be present (or not be present at all) each time the inventory is regenerated. In the example, each object save the last are always present (100% chance); each of the 3 "VendorArmorCommon75" objects has a 75% of being present. These primary leveled items now contain a mixture of other leveled items and/or fixed items, each with its own chance (and sometimes player level requirements) to appear. It's a bit like a matryoshka doll, but once you go down the tree far enough you get a list of certain items with pre-set conditions which can potentially appear in the merchant's trade inventory. In the example, "VendorArmorCommon" contains (among other things) "CondLeatherArmor" which resolves to a leather armor with either 15%, 25%, 35% or 45% condition. I hope this was somewhat understandable :)

If your major concern is lack of access to GECK data, I should be able to get the raw data (i.e. which merchant is linked to which chest, what "primary" leveled items these contain as well as a complete list of leveled items) uploaded on the wiki; you'd "just" have to put the puzzle pieces together.

As a final note, I hope you didn't get the impression that console players can't be useful contributors to projects. While there are certain things console players just can't do (taking good screenshots and looking up things in the GECK), there's plenty of other work they can help out with and are very welcome to do :) -- Porter21 (talk) 17:25, January 25, 2011 (UTC)


 * Well, the data export I mentioned can be done automated, so there's not that much work for me involved. The major share of work, putting it all together, could then be done by editors who do not need to have access to the GECK.
 * Adding Fallout 3 merchants to Portal:Fallout 3 can be done by anyone; just click on the little "edit" button in the title of the "contents" box, then you can add whatever you like ;)
 * I'm still not quite sure what exactly you need help with - starting the project (i.e. creating the project page) or editing the Fallout 3 merchants page. For the former, there is an input box on The Vault:Projects where you only need to enter the name of the project and it'll take you to a "form" which you just need to fill out. The latter I'm not sure how to help you with beyond the general ideas I already wrote down above - once you've got the basics of wiki syntax down (which isn't hard), it should be fairly straight-forward.
 * Regarding the exits, you can usually find that kind of info on the various district and metro pages (see e.g. Arlington Utility or Pennsylvania Avenue; it's in the infobox). There's also an overview of the whole metro system at Fallout 3 Metro map.
 * Friday sells neither Infiltrators nor Gamma Shield Armor as far as I can see in the GECK.
 * I'm somewhat tired, so I hope I haven't missed any of your points. If I did, please let me know. -- Porter21 (talk) 22:52, January 26, 2011 (UTC)


 * Indenting is done by putting one or more colons at the start of the paragraph (like I did in my replies here - just hit "edit" on your talk page and you'll see it).
 * It's the principle of wiki editing that others pick up where you leave :) Just go ahead and do it, and I (or someone else) will correct any mistakes you might make. "Fallout 3 merchant overhaul project" is fine; most project names are rather lengthy, but it's better to have descriptive rather than "fancy" names.
 * I'm not sure whether I understand what you are trying to get at with the metro pages, but in any case it sounds like something which would require input from other editors (large scale changes should generally be put up for community review first, that way you avoid into "trouble"/disagreements further down the line). It'd probably be best if you made a forum post about it in Forum:Wiki discussion.
 * Finally, bugs aren't really my area of expertise; I've rarely ran into any (I guess I'm just lucky). I'd start looking on the Broken Steel bugs page, maybe you can find a solution for your problem there. -- Porter21 (talk) 20:28, January 27, 2011 (UTC)


 * I've gone over the project page and did some reformatting. The guidelines look pretty much like we discussed and should be sufficient to get the discussion among project participants started :) -- Porter21 (talk) 22:34, January 30, 2011 (UTC)

Re: Thanks for all your help so far
It'd probably be better to contact Gothemasticator regarding the organization of bug/exploit-related articles - he's simply more up-to-date with the latest discussions and procedures in the area, and I don't want to accidentally cause chaos/confusion by meddling :) At a quick glance, it looks fine to me, but he'd probably have more useful input. Just a little thing - we generally don't use "camel-case" for headlines (just like e.g. Wikipedia).

As far as I know, add-on exploits shouldn't be on the general FO3 exploits page. There are separate pages for the add-ons - at least for some, e.g. Operation: Anchorage exploits. If there is no page for a specific add-on, creating it is better than putting the exploit on the "base game" page.

Concerning the weight edits - no worries, the world doesn't end because of any one edit ;) As a general remark, it should be avoided discussing conflicts between articles in the articles themselves (i.e. no "contrary to what XYZ page says"); rather, the page with the wrong info should be corrected.

Regarding the grab article, sure, just go ahead and correct it :) -- Porter21 (talk) 19:52, February 15, 2011 (UTC)
 * Your changes to the Exploits page are mostly just great. A couple notes:
 * Our capitalization standard here at The Vault is to only capitalize the first word in a title or header, with the exception of proper nouns and names.
 * I would encourage you to be even more brutal in your editing and rewording of that particular article. Bugs and exploits should be reworded for brevity and clarity when at all possible. Noting that there is such an exploit is sufficient. No need to tell detailed stories of any one particular way to get it.
 * Basically, that article (and the respective Bugs articles) could be cut down by half without any loss of information or usefulness.

Thanks. And, cheers.--Gothemasticator 02:54, February 16, 2011 (UTC)