PJ & Co

Dev Diary 68: Level Up!

Heya mutants!

Sorry for the late update but another incredible week is behind us!

I finaaaaaaaaaaally got back access to my old Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/f3vanburen with 4,000+ fans. After I updated the page with a link to the latest release the page simply exploded! Just look at those numbers! Fans were throwing comments, likes, hearts and shocked emojis our way for days. We'll never forget that :D

And I replied to more than 100 messages sent to us, some even going back to 2014. The page was neglected for too long but that has changed now.

This also lead to team growing in size again and we're now operating in the following lineup:

• 6 writers
• 2 artists
• 1 designer
• 2 programmers
• 2 composers
• 3 "pending" team members
• And there's also me as a project lead who does everything: art, programming, writing, etc.

So that's 14 members, possibly 17 in total! That's incredible as for the last 14 months it has mostly been just me working alone. We're on a roll mutants :D

We are moving forward fast, with new content being produced every day. This also means our testing of new releases will involve more people so hopefully more bugs will be squashed before we make a public release.

Speaking of the new content, we mostly focused on CGI storyboarding, writing new dialogs, fixing plot holes, passing around crucial information about why is this might be the greatest Fallout game ever to new team members, adding new world map encounters, adding new party member features...

Another big thing that we also decided upon is to add support for both the original Van Buren timeline and the one that fits the game into Bethesda's timeline. This will be an option during the installation and I will share more details once we iron everything out.

See you soon with more exciting news,

- Team Fallout Yesterday

Dev Diary 67 :)

Hello mutants,

PJ here with some gooooood news! 

So for the last few days I have been reaching out to some members from the old 2014 team and guess what? Some of them replied back willing to return to the team!! :D :D :D

So far, we have the main writer, mapper (who turned pro in the meantime) and composer (who also turned pro in the meantime) back!

Additionally, one artist and a designer might also come back soon. Let's hope others come back too :)

So with the team expanding quickly, I spent the weekend preparing our task lists, forums, wiki and such so they can all be in one place. Also, went over the basics of setting up and using the mapping tool with our old/new mapper. Fallout 2 mapper is similar yet different than FOnline's mapper.

Anyways, those would be news for this week. I did spend some time working on the game as well but those were mostly bugfixes.

See you next week with hopefully an even bigger team :)

-PJ & the Gang

Dev Diary 66: All over the place!

Heya mutants,

hope you've had a great weekend!

It was a pretty chill weekend for me with progress being made on multiple fronts. I finished two new special encounters, wrote 4 dialogs and worked on new art for Dogtown.

I was also doing some scenario writing for a few CGI cutscene ideas I had. Feel those are a must and are much important for immersion. Black Isle Studios developers also had quite a few CGI cutscene ideas so why the hell not put all of those in the game? :) The only prerequisite is that they must be cool and worthy of watching :))

For the upcoming week, I will try and finish all the new special encounters and then focus on finishing maps and art for Dogtown. After that, the road is clear with only dialogs and coding needing to be done to finish R4!

See you next week,

-PJ

Dev Diary 65: Whoa!

Heya mutants,

I just realized we're already at dev diary number 65. How time flies when you're having fun! :D

Since fun means a lot of different things to different people, my gaming fun this week was bringing characters to life through dialog. 11 new dialogs have been written in the past few days! I am happy with the progress and will take a short break from writing. It is time to plunge once again into mapping! This time for some more challenging Dogtown maps.

Although R4 is big, I am actually thinking of maybe adding even more to it! Maybe some locations that are more focused on exploration and less about interacting through dialogs. We shall see how things progress in the upcoming months.

Stay well and have fun,

-PJ

Dev Diary 64: Words. Words, words, words

Heya mutants,

as you might guess from this dev diary's title, the last week was all about writing dialogs.

My fingers hurt and my brain is cooked but I managed to finish 15 dialogs over the last 7 days. That's how I function - when I focus on something I tend to overdo. I'll try and keep at it as we will have a whooping cca 90 new NPCs in R4 needing a dialog. Boy oh boy, look at those numbers, this game is all about breaking records... largest world map, largest number of towns, largest number of dialogs... :D

Well, I have nothing more to report right now asides from that. The thing is .. we want you to get your hands on R4 ASAP, that's where the real reading material is.
So for me, more dialog writing in the upcoming week.

See you then, mutants!

-PJ

Dev Diary 63: Gaps

Hello mutants!

This week I was focused on two things: 

1) Adding finished Dogtown dialogs to the game. All of the dialogs except for a few characters have been finished.

2) Working on the main story.

Dogtown dialogs are self-explanatory so let's focus on what "main story work" did I do? I promised to talk about this a few weeks ago and now is the time.

As many of you know, many things related to the main story were left out of the Van Buren docs. Me and the writers filled in those gaps back in 2014. and additional information was provided by Chris Avellone back then.

All of this was great but still some questions remained. What's the overarching theme? How do we relay that to the player? What happens if the player does something that deviates from the main plot? How does it compare to Fallout 1? How does it compare to Fallout 2? Is it better than Fallout 1? Is it better than Fallout 2? Hard questions as you can see.

But I was determined to work it out and now I can finally say that I have the answers to all of these questions. So, what does this mean for the next release?

This means that R4 will also feature more content related to the main story. So far, it felt like that was pushed to the background and rightly so. 

I didn't want to add too much while still building the framework. With that said, expect many interesting things in the upcoming R4 which give the game its own identity - very similar to the one from Fallout 1 and 2 yet upgraded! 

Looking forward to sharing more details as we progress.

Take care and see you next week,

-PJ

Dev Diary 62: Dream Team

Heya mutants,

let's start with the most exciting news! An artist specialized in creating environmental art and successfully modding games such as Fallout New Vegas, Fallout 3, Skyrim, Morrowind, KOTOR II, Gothic 2, System Shock 2 has joined our team. He has already started working on one location slated for a later release. Depending on his progress it might even be included earlier, we shall see! 

And now back to our regular news. The Mesa Verde scripting has seen steady progress with 25% quests done, new dialogs have been written for the Reservation's NPCs and one new special encounter has been implemented. 

Also, I will be implementing one new change in the way robots are being wasted. As of R4, each robot will explode upon death. This will deal damage to surrounding creatures depending on the robot's size and type. The attacker Repair skill will be used to lower chances of robot exploding upon death. A minimum of 5% chance will always exist, regardless of how high the attacker's Repair skill is. So yeah, watch out how you take out those tin cans and put some points into Repair if you want to melee their shiny ass!

That's all for this week from PJ & the Dream Team, see you soon!

Dev Diary 61: Back!

Hello mutants!

Guess who's back with a new keyboard! And not one, but two new keyboards (just in case)! :D

As promised last week, this will be a bigger update.

First of all, let's recap of what has been done this week. 

Almost 1200 new pieces of art required for one new location have been added to the game! It has been incredibly challenging to find the right tools and methods to properly cut and place all of that into the Fallout 2 engine. But nothing's impossible and there's always a way! :D

Wish I could give you some screenshots right now but I'm keeping this eye candy game-exclusive, anything less than that would be a shame and robbing you of the real experience.

With that finally done, I will move on to programming. The first new location that will be finished is Mesa Verde. This will also be a nice opportunity on some background learning about the real world location. So I will also include an optional historical documentary in the form of a holodisk spilling the beans about this beautiful location.

Another great piece of news is that I somehow missed out on info that a proper way of extending the gameplay time beyond 13 years is possible. So starting as of R4, the 13 years time limit will be gone and you will have time to explore the wasteland. However, that doesn't mean the world will wait for you forever. Some "events" will happen after a certain long period of time has passed and some special conditions are met. The world is alive after all and it will be interesting to hear what story your Prisoner has to tell :)

The time limit was removed with the help of a forum user gustarballs1983 who took time to explore the entire map on foot. It only took him 30 years to do so! :D

I'll wrap up this update with a conclusion me and writers came up with regarding the romance in game. None should feel pressured to add it to the game, it has never been a part of Fallout world while things such as flirting, seduction and sex were. Here's a good article on it https://games.avclub.com/why-love-and-fallout-have-never-mixed-1798283363

However, if they feel like doing any of the following while writing their characters and it fits the overall tone, I'll add it to the game.

- A pulp fiction romance.

- A funny situation similar to the shotgun wedding from Fallout 2.

- A crush such as the one between Tandi and the Vault Dweller from Fallout 1.

So there you have it, if it happens and it fits, I'll add it. If not, I won't force anybody to do one.

See you next week mutants!

-PJ

Dev Diary 60: Cuts & Keys

Hello mutants,

how's it going? This will be a super short post because of 2 reasons xD

1) I spent the whole week cutting up big new art and putting it inside the engine. 

Many tools failed in funny ways due to art's humongous size but thankfully good old ImageMagick saved the day!

2) My laptop's keyboard broke and I am typing this using On-Screen Keyboard. 

Yes, the physical keyboard got FUBAR'd although it's still glowing but it doesn't write anymore :(

Since it's Sunday and the nearest PC shop is closed, the new keyboard has to wait until morning!

With this super duper short update (which took 15 minutes to write using a mouse) I will greet you and promise to come back with a bigger update next time.

-PJ & the virtual keyboard

Dev Diary 59: The lovey-dovey of it

Hello mutants!

It has been another productive week! 

I've resolved most of the issues with companions and finished building the biggest piece of artwork ever. Now putting it into the engine will take a week or two of time but you gotta do what you gotta do - greatness awaits us!

Another thing I started yesterday, is implementing additional Van Buren specific mechanics which add further layers to your classic Fallout gameplay. All of those come from info I got from BIS developers. It will be interesting to hear how different everybody's gameplay of R4 was. I will go into more details about them as R4 release draws near.

Also, an interesting topic regarding adding romances sprung up on NMA forum. Classic Fallouts were created before romances were a thing in RPGs. For now we haven't planned any "Bioware" romances for the game but flirting, seduction, and sex are all in since they're well known Fallout staples. 

So, let us know what you think of romances down in the comments. We will probably run a poll on those too soon.

P.S. Happy Easter to all who celebrate!

-PJ & Co

Dev Diary 58: Report from the frontline

Hello mutants,

hope you're all doing well. This week has seen action across multiple fronts!

Let's keep it short and summarize what has been worked on:

- Support for High Resolution mod is in! 

- Started improving companion control and bringing them more in line with Fallout 2. Still have some bugs to iron out and tweak the AI but it's halfway there.

- Wrote dialogs for two new companions. More on their way for R4 which introduces a whooping 7 new companions! :o

- Fixed a dozen of reported bugs.

- Worked on custom art and maps for one awesome location. Can't say more, don't want to spoil things :)

Next week on the horizon number one priority is finishing the companions!

See you all in 7 days,

-PJ

High Resolution mod support for R4

Heya mutants,

just a quick update to let you know that R4 will support High Resolution mod!

After talking to some players, I found out it's working fine for them and although I couldn't make it run fast on my own computer, I'll add support for it in the next release.

Perhaps one day, the reason for low FPS that some people are experiencing will be found and fixed.

UPDATE:

OK, I think I discovered what's causing the slowdowns. If HI-RES mod is turned on and your graphic card is 2D or integrated Intel crap, then it will run like a PowerPoint slideshow. Forcing the game to use the 3D card makes it run smooth! :))))))))))

-PJ

Dev Diary 57: FAQ

Heya mutants,

this update will be a bit different than usual ones as I feel I should answer some frequently asked questions.

But before I do, here's a recap on some of the things I've done this week.

- added talking heads to some characters

- started writing code for Mesa Verde. This means that Mesa Verde will be the first playable location for R4.

- Upgraded Pip-Boy from to 2000 model to Lil' Pip 3000 model.

- Added two encounters related to the main story.

- Fixed some bugs from previous releases.

- Found some commercial videos which will help me create animations for the game. Haven't bought them yet though!

- My interview got published! Check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaMJCHryTQ8

...

Now back to the FAQ!

...

Q: Why don't you support HI-RES patch out of the box?

A: The final game will have 450 maps. That's 3 times the size of Fallout 2. I currently don't have the manpower to convert all the maps to HI-RES format. Otherwise they look bad. Really, really bad. Like in a broken way bad.

Another big reason is that once enabled, the HI-RES patch brings down the FPS to single digits which makes the game unplayable. I have no idea why is that so, tried all I could to fix it but it didn't help. I have no one to report this to because the HI-RES author stopped supporting it in 2014 and never released the source code.

Q: When is the game getting finished?

A: The main story will resolve in the next 3 big updates. All the updates after that will add the rest of the game locations that aren't critical to the main story. These big updates are each equivalent of 3 smaller updates, like the ones I did before. I assume that I will be able to release a big update every 9 months but things are going faster than I thought so we will see. Maybe one big update every 6 months. 

Q: Will NPCs react to my super mutant or ghoul race?

A: Right now, only a few NPCs will react to your race but the target is that most acknowledge you being different. Our focus now is on normal and dumb dialog. Race reactions will be added last after all the dialogs are finished. It would take too much time to add it right now.

Q: Will talking heads be voiced?

A: We hope so! The plan is to hire professionals to voice-act but it all depends on our Patreon funds.

Q: How many companions will be in the final game?

A: 21 for certain, probably even more.

Q: Will Caesar's Legion be more present?

A: Yes, the Legion will be more present more similar to what was initially planned for the game but got cut and reduced with time.

Q: What is VACCS?

A: Short for Vault-Tec Atomic City Construction Set. It's a location that is tied closely to the G.E.C.K. device and won't be explained or accessible until all of Van Buren content is done. 

It is something that I have planned for the "expansion" and is related to cut content from Fallout 2.

Q: What is the Crater?

A: A location only mentioned in Van Buren. It will be accessible only after all base Van Buren content is done.

Well, I think that covers the FAQ for now. Let me know if there are any other questions you might want me to answer in the comment below.

See you soon,

-PJ

Dev Diary 56: Rinse and repeat

Hello mutants,

this week has been productive! 

I finished Mesa Verde maps and then I spent the weekend working on animations for new creatures: mutated rattlesnakes, giant bats, CRB-S units, new ghouls, and desert stalkers.

Although seeing new creatures in the game is always exciting, adding them inside the Fallout 2 engine isn't much so. 

Thousands of images need to be organized, edited and imported manually. Rinse and repeat! But we're getting there, one frame at a time ;-)

New music has been added to the game! It's hard to pick a favorite new track as they're all great. Can't wait until you hear it!

One other thing before I go - just gave an interview to ramblelime's YouTube channel! He asked me a few questions about the game and modding and then I rambled on for 30 minutes :D

Not sure when it's coming out but you will be able to watch it here https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNPH8fkMZHRtfaXVh8b61Zw 

See you soon,

-PJ

Dev Diary 55: Maps, art, maps!

Hello there mutants,

here I am with the late update. Was planning to do one yesterday but got tangled in work and was so tired that I left it for today. It's better to write when you're well rested, who wants to read gibberish from someone half-awake? XD

Between work on Blackfoots and bug fixing (no more holodisk crashes!), what kept me so busy this week have been locations and custom art for Mesa Verde. Everything was going smoothly until I reached the upper limit of new art a Fallout 2 engine can handle. Yes, the game has that much new art in it. Luckily, I quickly found a suitable workaround and continued working as if nothing happened. 

Another task I worked on was converting the Mesa Verde dialog files extracted from Van Buren tech demo. Incredibly, most of the dialogs for that location were already done by Black Isle Studios so I will bring them back in all their glory.

And one final thing I have to mention is that Mesa Verde probably has one of the best soundtracks of all locations.

A beautiful low-level location with great music - what more can a Fallout fan ask for?

See you soon,

-PJ

Dev Diary 54: Lost N Found

Hellooooooooooooooo mutants,

I have some phenomenal news for you today! 

While looking for a lost piece of artwork in my extensive online archives, I found all the "lost" maps for a Van Buren project I was amusing myself with, prior to going public in 2014. Some of the maps go waaaaay back to summer of 2008! This is incredible as I though these were long lost in a HD crash. Hooray! :D 

So what does this mean for the game, you might be asking yourself? 

Well, it means that many, many of the game locations have their substantial mapping done! Yes, some maps are completely done, some require custom art and some additional touchups. But restoring these maps probably reduced the dev time by a year, maybe even more! It took me 2 days just to sort them out and figure what goes where.

Everything is falling into place right now and I feel grateful that I can share this moment with you all :'D

Talk to you soon,

-PJ

Dev Diary 53: Good One

Heya mutants, 

this was a good week! Both the second writer and a mapper/programmer started working on the game this week. I look forward to seeing how they will leave their marks on Fallout Yesterday!

For me, this week was mostly spent working on Dog Town maps, introducing writers to the tools and game, as well as fixing some bugs. As with the 3rd release, I will include some world map locations to the 4th release that I won't reveal but will let you discover on your own :)

I will conclude this update with a bit of fun Fallout Yesterday trivia :) The scene where the Prisoner meets all those mysterious soldiers who stormed Tibbets was visually inspired by a scene from the 1938 masterpiece Alexander Nevsky. You can watch that scene here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnlKtd5tMDg

Now it's time to go back to the workshop!

See you soon,
-PJ & Co

Dev Diary 52: Happy!

Hello mutants,

here I am with some fantastic news and much Fallout love for all of you!

During this week, I was approached by three fans who offered to add their skills and experience to Fallout Yesterday! Yes, the Fallouty team is finally growing!

One of them already started working as a writer and I'm still waiting for a confirmation from the other two who should work as a writer and a mapper. Which is fantastic as it will speed up the development immensely! I am attaching a video trailer which contains an example of writing from another game project the new writer worked on last year.

Now back to our regular news related to this week's progress. Reservation maps are 95% done, there are just a few technical details I need to clear up and connect everything.

After that I'll be moving on to Mesa Verde which I also expect to be finished quickly.

Also, be sure to check out TKs-Mantis' YT channel. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAVt5Md15JhNSevMSGEEqew
He's a big Fallout fan and produces really great content!

P.S. I updated the installer with some bugfixes related to new special encounters not showing up and BOS patrols being neutral towards super mutants and ghouls. You can just install it and copy over your save games and it should work.

See you soon,
-PJ & the Co

Dev Diary 51: Next stop

Heya mutants,

hope you've been enjoying release #3 and didn't spend too much time reloading! It's a release with content that considerably raises the difficulty bar! 

Two annoying bugs in Fort Abandon have been found so if you encounter any issues there, be sure to grab the latest installer where those are fixed. 

With that said, let me give you a little tour of Fallout Yesterday's next stop.

Out next stop is R4 which will be a HUGE release. After making 3 smaller releases so far, I feel some of those have been rushed and took too long to prepare and test. 

What I want is to make releases that will keep you occupied for months, until I work on the next one. Yes, those would take more time but would be more worth it.

So let's go back to R4! So far this is what you can expect in it: completed Reservation, Mesa Verde, Blackfoots/Hangdogs and yes, Dogtown/Denver!

The last location on that list, being one of the biggest areas in the game and also one of the graphically most demanding ones will take most of my time. If I sense that it has been dragging down the entire R4, I will probably make a release cutting it out, but we will see how it goes! So far, maps for Reservation are 75% done and Mesa Verde about 60% done. Which is awesome as it has only been a week since the last release.

As usual, I will keep posting regular weekly updates on my progress so stay tuned!

-PJ

THIRD RELEASE DETONATING EVERYWHERE!

Yes, my mutated brothers and sisters, the third coming of Van Buren is here!!! Share it, spread it around, play it!

- MEGA: https://mega.nz/file/94UGEJhS#nnjsA1Eye0uZ4A8QFg7VDDtIS9IP9eoPO8ozu8q7l8I 

If MEGA asks for a decryption key it's nnjsA1Eye0uZ4A8QFg7VDDtIS9IP9eoPO8ozu8q7l8I

- Google Drive: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mfSAE4ssVXqk6wO-Cdyj8AGFmz-CZyh6/view?usp=sharing 

- Installer password is winter 2021 (Space between included too.)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

:: IMPORTANT!::

To play this Post Nuclear RPG you *have* to own a copy of Fallout 2 (c) Bethesda.

::INSTALL GUIDE IN 7 EASY STEPS!::

1. Extract the game to a folder of your choice

2. Copy fallout2.exe, master.dat, critter.dat and patch000.dat files to the base directory (the one with patch001.dat)

3. (Optional) Rename fallout2.exe to fallouty.exe

4. (Optional) Reduce screen brightness to 15% and turn on Night Light (if available on your OS). The game was made with a specific art style supported by the original Fallout developers and this is how it's intended to look and feel. It is playable on other types of settings though but might not look as good!

5. (Optional) To pick new Traits, leave one or two slots open during character creation.

6. (Optional) The game uses original blue caves from Fallout 1. If you want to go back to brown caves, delete patch002.dat file.

7. Use your skills, items and weapons, observe the details, experiment, enjoy!

::THIRD RELEASE CHANGELOG, FEBRUARY 1ST, 2021.::

[GENERAL]

- Added 6 new world map locations.

- Added 3 new Special Encounters.

- Fixed new Perks not showing up.

- Fixed wrong dialog for some random encounter trapper groups.

- Reduced number of human encounters on the world map.

- Numerous smaller changes and fixes.

[SOUND]

- Added new music to the game.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Enjoy!

-PJ & Co

Please Stand By

Heya mutants! Most of you know what this post means :D
For those unfamiliar with my custom, this post means a new release is imminent!

I have locked the 3rd release's content and am now assembling the final build files. Expect it in a day or two!

See you soon, very, very soon,

-PJ

Dev Diary 50: One more thing

Heya mutants!

Guess who has to finish just one bigger quest and call this release ready to go into your hands? :D 

This week has seen me doing two special encounters and all sort of smaller tasks, mainly polishing everything and doing bugfixes. As I still have to finish one bigger quest and test the entire third release, I can't promise it will go out next week but in two weeks? That's certain! :D

With these happy news, all I can say for the end is:
Please, Stand By 

See you soon,
-PJ

Dev Diary 49: 90%

Hello mutants, this will be a short but sweet update. 

As you can see from the title, 3rd release is around 90% complete! Hooray!

I still have some dialogs and a few quests to finish but most of it is there. Spent quite some time playtesting it and having fun with it. Can't wait to share it with you! 

This sort of formula where I work on more than one area for an update suits me very well and I expect to stick to that way of working in the future. I also have some new ideas on how to progress with development faster while delivering new areas. But as I am still trying out these ideas and might throw them out of the window, I will talk more about them after I get this release out. 

To illustrate how well this update went, I'll just say that I even found some time to work on a new creature that will appear in the 5th update! Let's hope all the future updates are like this!

See you next week,

-PJ

Dev Diary 48: Getting there

Hello mutants, 

thanks to everyone who replied to my questions and gave suggestions. We even received new patrons. All of that is much, much appreciated! I still haven't decided on whether to switch over to big updates or keep it like it is but I feel that decision is best left for after we get the 3rd release out.

This week flew by and I can't say that I focused on just one thing. I worked on dialogs, programming, tweaking maps and testing new world map encounters. What I like most about this update is how it opens up the world map and gives you incentive to explore it in all directions. There will be plenty of rewards with it but the resources such as ammo will be scarce so careful planning in some tough battles will be a must!

With that said, I'll conclude this week's quick update and go back to the workshop.

Talk to you soon friends,

-PJ

Dev diary 47: 2021 here we go!

Once again, all the best in 2021 mutants! Hope you've had a blast celebrating. We're in a lockdown so it was pretty tame but what can we do except make the best of the situation. 

Besides celebrations, this week was quite busy! I was writing code and dialogs for all the new areas: 2 full fledged locations, 3 smaller ones, and 2 teaser locations. Plus a special encounter. Yes, it seems I just can't stop myself from adding new locations to this update.

So from the looks of it, lots of good things are coming your way! :D

And now for the two worrying things I have noticed: first, when I revised the roadmap for everything needed to be done just to have the main plot areas in the game - I arrived at a date of May 2023! And that is in the best scenario where I release an update every 3 months, around 10 updates in total from now. Mid 2023 seems so far away! So what I was thinking, maybe doing bigger updates instead of these smaller ones every 3 months? Bigger updates with 2 or 3 finished full locations which you can enjoy for a longer period?

And the second worrying thing is that we have a steady drop off of patrons, which beats the purpose of our attempts to gather money for voice acting, cinematics and hiring extra help. 

Money isn't affecting my motivation as I have everything I need to finish the game but I was really hoping for those beautiful animated talking heads with full voice acting and super-cool cinematics.
If our Patreon numbers continue to dwindle down, it might not make sense to keep a Patreon page anymore.

Let me know what you think in the comments.

-PJ

Dev Diary 46: What a year

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, mutants!

Here we are in the 2020's last update. Hope you are all enjoying the festivities, resting and having fun. And also looking forward to ending this year and leaving all the bad things behind us. Lots of good things happened in it too, and I consider my coming back to Van Buren as one of those things. 

I made great progress with the upcoming release recently. I expect the Brotherhood to be completely finished in the next two days. After that, there's some more work left on programming another two bigger locations and R3 will be good for a release!

Also, I've updated the world map around the new locations so you can expect some new encounters there. Some of these will yield great rewards but also great dangers.

I'm very happy with this upcoming update, as we will finally be seeing other locations Black Isle Studios planned for Van Buren. Not to mention get to experience more of that perfect post-apocalyptic atmosphere that could have only been created 20 years ago at Interplay.

Well, time for me to end this update and go back to work.

See you in 2021. Thank you everybody!

 -PJ

Dev Diary 45: Lucky 5

Happy winter solstice, mutants!

I'm back with more news on the epic progress. Yes, I will be adding two more locations to the world map! It sounds crazy but as one of these will for now only be partially accessible, I know I can do it!  Brotherhood, Fort Abandon and VACCS were already previously confirmed. 

However, for the sake of surprise I'll keep my mouth shut and let you discover what these two new ones are for yourself. It will be worth it :)

All I can say is that they're not special encounters, although there will be a new special encounter added hehe

With this happy news shared with you, I will go back to the workshop.

-PJ

Dev Diary 44: Good stuff

Hello mutants,

here's an earlier Sunday update which can mean only one thing - plenty of progress has been made on R3 :)

I'm happy to announce all of the new maps have been finished!
What awaits me now is dialog writing and programming for the two areas.

I will try and include all of the Brotherhood quests although some of them are tied to Hoover Dam which isn't yet accessible. But the beauty of Fallout is that you can achieve things in various ways, not just one.

And if time permits, I will also try to tidy up some of the loose ends from the 2nd release. Although more on that when I discuss 4th release in the future.

Stay well,

PJ

Dev Diary 43: Something's cooking...

Heya mutants,

sorry for the late update. I actually took a break from the computer yesterday as my left eye became bloodshot and a bit painful due to constant gazing at the screen. I must have overworked myself while working on mapping the new areas. This is a big project so it requires extra effort but maybe some more sleep would have benefited me as well haha

But that didn't stop me from working on the game, I just switched over to my little sketchbook and continued writing and drawing there. And I also want to share a screenshot with you! :D

The progress has been great and much faster! With that said, I can even see a late January early February release date for R3! And I'm looking forward to my late December vacation as I will balance that time between full days of working on the 3rd update and enjoying my time with family and friends.

Talk to you soon,

PJ

Dev Diary 42: Three's not a crowd!

Hello there mutants!

Here we are, one week after the second release. I do hope you've been enjoying the game ever since. As for me, I never took a pause and went straight back to development of the third release. It has been going great, much faster than I anticipated!

So what I can say now with certainty, is that the next release will add 3 locations ready for exploration. Fort Abandon, Maxson Bunker and VACCS! As a matter of fact, VACCS is complete while Maxson Bunker is almost complete! The graphics and writing for Fort Abandon are halfway there so things are looking good overall.

With these great news, I will leave you to enjoy the rest of this fine Sunday.

-PJ