Verdant Wasteland

Now also on Bethesda.net, and Xbox version

0.3.1 is up, DLC Far Harbor and Nuka Cola are now required!

Did you felt the need for summer in the wasteland? Always had the impression the sun deserves a more vibrant environment, than the one displayed in FO4? Well I feel like the game has a much stronger inclination for summer, and thus this Mod was born. It started as a simple retexture of the vines and grass, then quickly evolved into a full fledged "green" mod. I've retextured almost 90% of all grass and plant types, respectively simply exchanged autumn time with prewar summer time equivalents. To turn trees green you do not necessarily need to retexture the textures. It was all easily done with the use of material files.

Thanks to @hodilton for the brilliance of his impression Video!

What does this Mod do?

It turns the October wasteland into a June Verdant Wasteland, with diverse plant types wearing blossoms and leaf's. Retexturing includes all grass, plant and tree types, with the exception of some plants that I felt need to stay "wasted" for reasons of immersion, like for example the blasted grasses. You will see Roses in blossom, Brambles carrying fruits, dark green Vine and Helix leaf's, verdant and vibrant versions of Ilex, Viburnum, Evergreen, Buxus, Elms, Maple and much more. See the screenshots and videos for impressions.

How is it installed?

It is recommended to use NMM for easy installation, since there are only texture and material files. For manual installation, just copy the files over to the correct folders.

But this is a wasteland, plants can't grow there?

Who says that? Lore? Biology? Lore might be true, but biology says nature will always return, and since this a completely fantasy based open world game, I'm allowed to apply whichever fantasy I want to, right? Given the experience I gained in the last couple of days, I'm entirely sure Bethesda at one point had the idea to actually make this a game happening in summer time, or, what would be even more awesome, they'd planed for a DLC adding seasons. However, I never really had the feeling they forwarded an immersive display of autumn. It felt more like a summer without leaf's on plants.

Any additional recommendations?

I recommend using True Storms and Darker Nights for higher immersion. To get an even better experience, maybe change your timescale to 5, with the console command "set timescale to 5" without quotes. As of 2022 I'd combine that with Perfect Landscape, Boston Natural Surroundings, Vivid Landscapes, Pine Trees Redone, and True Grass.

Is it stable?

Since there are only changed textures and material files, everything should be perfectly fine. The textures are saved in the correct format and have normal and specular maps applied.

Any performance hits?

It's based on regular 2k textures, so it should not affect your performance in any way. My system as reference:

i7@ 8x3.6 Ghz
980 GTX with 4 Gigs
16 Gigs of RAM
Windows 8.1
1 TB SSD HD

The upside system info is from 2016. Today I'm running the game with an i7 10700k, 32GB Ram @ 3.600Mhz, a 970 Evo Samsung M2 SSD, and a 3070 RTX. I run the game with an ENB(Quantum ENB), Pine Trees Redone, True Grass, and Boston Natural Surroundings on stable 70 fps @1920x1080 resolution with a 144Hz HP monitor.

Will this be improved?

Yes, this will be my long time texture mod, and in the long run will try to retexture every single piece of plant in this game. I will introduce tons of variations of plants, as I already figured, that most plants have at least 3+ variation types in game. This allows me to easily import plants like Ivy, Oaks, Conifers etc.

What's next?

- add proper tree LOD
- fix left over minor cut of tree leave textures
- fix occasionally weird bark texture
- add DLC support once I get to play it

Did you just took and reupload without permission?

Nope. Let's say, as the original creator, I had very exclusive access to the source. I was even giving instructions on how to actually do what I achieved. See over here:

Tutorial 1
Tutorial 2

Notice the date when those threads where created. I do understand however, when visiting and googling for the guys making vitriolic comments, that at least two of them actually stole my original content. Dat irony.

However, a fair warning should be issued here. One little more sentence in comments, regarding me, with a modding history lasting for over a decade, stealing anything from anyone, will get you instant banned, your comments deleted, and yourself reported to the staff immediately. Have a nice day.