So gear up, strap in, and get ready to dive into the world of rad rides that are redefining how we traverse the wasteland!
Hey BlahBlahDEEBlahBlah, thanks so much for agreeing to this interview, for people who might not know you or your mods could you introduce yourself, please?
Hello, thank you.
I am, ever so aptly named as you will see, BlahBlahDEEBlahBlah. These days I make mods for Fallout 4 only. I’ll Maybe do some Starfield at some point too, but we shall see. I’ve actually been modding and goofing off with Beth games (Morrowind best Elder Scrolls/Fallout 3 best Fallout game, fight me!) for a good while, but not at Nexus until the age of FO4 (sorry, Dark!).
I tend to be motivated by things that I just want to see if can make or because I thought it’d be interesting figuring out how to. Not necessarily difficult, useful, or wanted things, just interesting (to me) things. I’m not so much about doing things the right or ‘smart’ way, more the ‘it just works’ way (thanks, Todd!). Most of the mods I make work most of the time, I’m a big fan of ‘Gud Enuff!’. I’m very prone to the feature creep. I care little about the immersion or the lore in the mods I make (but it’s okay if you do). I’m also a bit too honest and rarely wear my ‘modding is the serious bizness’ face, lol. I gravitate toward the silly and memey.
Mod-U-Head - A Modular Head Replacer Thingy is a perfect example of the type of thing I can decide to make on a whim when I am mod-making and left to my own devices. Did anyone ask for that mod? Is it of any real use whatsoever? Did I care then, or do I care now? Nope.
How did you get started with modding, specifically vehicle mods for Fallout 4?
It’s so long ago that I started modding, long before coming to Nexus and FO4.
I don’t think I started with ‘I don’t like the way xyz thing is balanced…let’s change it.’, ‘this functionality could improve the game and/or be useful to others’, ‘this needs more variety’ or ‘this xyz thing is popular’, then I did so and my love for modding was born!
No, I think that I probably said something like ‘I want to do this thing. Why? I don’t know, it just sounds fun/interesting to make and/or ‘cause it tickles my fancy at the moment. XYZ game lets me make/implement stuff, so…Make Mod!’…yeah, that was probably it, totes sounds like me.
What inspired you to focus on creating custom vehicles?
So, that long ago time when FO4 came out, I wanted to make a playhouse. So we did (called The Small Addition, it’s on Nexus, it’s 50% finished). It’s this big, huge, large, grandiose house (Sanctuary Pre-War Player House enlarged to 10x, and a lot of other areas) where I placed all the rando ideas that float around my head at any given moment.
Anyway, so we thought might as well have things to ride around in it. ‘Vanilla has a kitty and a doggy…so let’s see if I can ride those.’ And, in the beginning, it really was just ‘ride’, with no control whatsoever, straight hijacking the vertibird stuff to sit on the head of a cat and shoot a minigun while the cat runs around as it likes, lmao! Then we did some stationary APC turrets that you could also stand on and fire a minigun.
Eventually, we figured out how to control them (literally just actors that you controlled, just like the player, while the player sat in their comfy seat on them, with a minigun, or a Spit Cannon, in the case of the Driveable RadStags). Did a bunch of those, all relatively the same in the underlying process, although some with more fancy fun stuff like Tiny Houses attached, modular parts and else what.
Well, anyhoo, Cancerous1 talked about actual physics-based vehicles. Then he started playing with the Skyrim cart and fixed it so it didn’t go crazy in that game. Then, with the knowledge gained there, we figured we’d try to do physics-based vehicles in Fallout 4. He started with a vanilla truck, did some mesh editing, and fiddled with adding physics to it in 3DS Max till it worked like he wanted in FO4. He figured out some wheels and a kind of swivel steering system, where the entire front axle pivots around a central point; plopped it on the truck and we attached the whole thing to a puller NPC (not unlike Skyrim Cart in the visual aspect, but very different in implementation of course). And it was FANTASTIC! You can see it (and a Little Red Wagon) in Wasteland Wagons.
Eventually, I settled on some creative way (we’ll talk about that in a bit) to get as close as I could to ‘real car’ front wheel steering (not talking about suspension, simply talking about the ‘turn the wheel left/right when want to go left/right’ part, suspension is a whole different topic), then how to propel it in specific directions (started with an almost ‘top-down driving game’ way of directed movement control, way back when) and there we go (Tada!).
Is it perfect? Heck no. Will it get better? We’re tryin’, so hopefully, eventually, yes. Is it presentable at this moment? I feel it is very much so indeed. Does it work better than any other FO4 physics-based vehicle framework? Hard not to, considering it’s currently the only one.
Your mods are really popular and clearly a lot of hard work went into creating them, but did you face any challenges in doing so?
Am I, and the things I do, popular? I don’t know about that, lol. Thank you for saying so though.
Those cool people who do the helpful F4SE, its various extenders, xEdit and all those handy-dandy useful utilities that make all sorts of extra extra stuff possible for other authors, they’re popular (and deserving of it, good job everybody!).
Yes, making these things is crazy difficult (or, goodness knows, maybe it’s just me). Forever, endless, always boring tweaking of physics! Reeeee! But with each addon/update comes (I hope) improvements. Improvements that I then take and back-port to the rest of the physics-based ones. So it’s worth it, the “Reeeee!” moments, when watching it progress.
Unfortunately, we chose one of the absolute worst things to work on when it comes to information about it being readily available and topic-knowledgeable people existing. Like, why did we do this to ourselves?!? LMAO!
But moving along…
Yes, over time we’ve overcome certain difficulties that cropped up/kept us from progressing, but several specific challenges are kind of ongoing and then there’s always new things that pop up. I mean, I did eventually get a good way of doing individual front wheel steering using a fun vanilla Papyrus ‘Fan Motor’ function to spin a central pivot point connected to the front/back of each front wheel in order to push/pull them as needed so that they’d turn when appropriate but also (mostly) not turn when inappropriate. But, stuff like the ever-annoying-to-my-brain issue of the rear-end snap-up/pop when a rear wheel catches on a road crack or whatnot at speed, still working on that lol.
There are other things that need improving of course, but I think that snap-up and the wheel jitter when at speed are my two worst enemies currently.
Could you walk us through your typical workflow when designing a new vehicle mod?
Oh, goodness, let’s see…
I’m no modeller (can’t texture worth a darn either). Cancerous1 can do a bit more than myself and did the work on the Jeep, but they’re not going to be creating much from scratch either.
So that means maybe we start with going to SketchFab or a similar place, or the Nexus-resource-category for something with good perms, or something which I know the author of and can pester them with a request, lol.
Once I get a model and have it converted to a useable format if needed, I can then start cutting the model up so that the pieces are separate and can be easily placed into the locations we need them (I mean, some of that could be done with creative weight painting/skinning, but just easier to work with the parts individualized as I’ve not yet felt the need to move to ‘visible 3D meshes as armor’ yet since I’m still fairly happy with ‘meshes as attached OMODs’ so far).
At this point in the larger scheme of things, and as mentioned, we’ve got x amount of frames from previous addons and can just use one of those to get started. Just plop the separated mesh parts into the right places in it and remove the old meshes.
I then start back on adapting the previously made frame’s collision/physics to suit the particular vehicle’s needs. Wheelbase, axles, bumpers, etc, collision/constraints and creating collision for the body. This I all done 3DS Max (or sometimes NifSkope, to be honest, depending on just how much I feel needs adjusting at that moment) and with its installed Havok stuff needed for doing the fancier collision.
I’d love to say we have a ‘one-size-fits-all frame’ that I use, but most vehicles end up being different enough that they require their own unique frame.
Then it’s just forever tweaking collision/physics properties, exporting, Elric’ing and testing in-game. Rinsing and repeating forever! Or, until, I get tired of working on it, say ‘Gud Enuff!’ and post an update/the new addon.
That’s pretty much the whole process.
I also welcome offers of donated time from anyone who has knowledge in certain areas and works well independently (especially if they know F4SE/deep system level/etc stuff). Always happy to consider offers of help with things that may move us along faster/better/smarter. Like, maybe, some assistance with a working ‘player visibly in driver’s seat’ connection or
Many of your mods feature unique and interesting vehicles. How do you come up with the ideas for these designs?
My older, non-physics Driveables were really just simply based on what vanilla had to offer, what we thought we could do well enough and what I thought I could give an interesting ‘hook’ to “hook” being, as an example, how our old Driveable APC that would only ever be sole of its kind in-game, had an interior big enough to build in, and had a drawer looking area inside where could say player found a tiny dog (namely, Biscuits!) inside.
As for the physics-based ones, I/we did sort of have a list of at least the ‘frame types’ we wanted to make and have available. Otherwise, it almost completely comes down to what models we find, what looks fun, and what isn’t going to need a super big bunch of extra work to get into the game. For instance, I don’t know, we try to stay away from models that are some 300-billion tris/poly/whatever (did I mention that I’m no modeller?) and would take days of fiddling with simplifying the mesh so it wouldn’t kill FPS in a heartbeat, take forever to load or cause the vehicle to lag/stutter. But yeah, SketchFab is my friend!
Speaking of, next (maybe even by the time this comes out) on the list is the collab with Wasteland Garage by Diegonom (3 frame types with 5 body options each, so far, all from that). Then, I think maybe, we’ll see the vanilla FO4 vehicles (minus the Fusion Flea and that other 3-wheeled thing, ‘cause I haven’t figured a good enough way to do single-rear-wheel-steering yet, we tried on the Fusion Flea in the Cycles addon and it’s, well, it’s a bit nuts lmao!).
What are some of your favourite vehicles that you've created, and why do they stand out to you?
BETHO Block jeep, from the Memez 4 Teh LoLz addon. “BETHO”, like ‘LEGO’ but not, for legal reasons (not really), and because Bethesda, I don’t know why I’m explaining this. Why, though? ‘Cause so cute…and has many pretty color options!
RGBAxis and KilaJosh helped a lot with the meshes on that. (this reminds me I need to debate soon’ish whether or not I’ll be back-porting to the Memez addon the new front-wheel setup I did for Wasteland Havok).
Also the Willy Jeep. I know Cancerous1 was happy about seeing that one working, after having worked so hard on it back when. And, of course, ye old (‘ol’ Swivel axle Hips!’) Truck from the base/framework mod.
The Lobo-A-GoGo, too, because it’s just so random and such a wonderful reference to Dr. Strangelove. By the way, that’s from the Attack of the Lobotomites tie-in/addon (thanks, Wanaming0!).
Bethesda recently added vehicles to Starfield, what’s your thoughts on this?
I tried them just today (at time of me writing these responses for this interview), in fact. They’re fun, for sure. Very gamified. I admit I couldn’t remember how to turn on headlights for a moment, though, lol. Headlights are the number 5 key in our vehicles, which can also toggle on an ‘underside’ light, just to point that out.
I’m gonna say something that maybe some people who have tried our Fallout 4 physics-based vehicles may not agree with…after trying the Starfield ones, I don’t feel the least bit bad or ashamed of ours’ functionality/working’ness at all.
I’ll try to explain why I don’t feel that way. Their's work great (for one thing, they have the really cool 1st-person/player riding animations that we haven’t quite figured out how to do yet, so I’m kind of jelly about that), but…
-a) ours were created by just Cancerous1 and myself (and a rare few good people here and there for very specific one-time things) with lots of hard work in spare time, no studio and/or support for the necessary tools.
-b) I’m still working on ours and I feel making good progress over time (though I think they’re in a solidly presentable state even now).
-c) Funnily enough and even though theirs are done quite differently from ours (from the short time I looked and goofed with it, which you can see a bit of that here with Thomas as RevT), it’s uplifting to see that theirs suffer from a couple specific and particular physics difficulties that I also continue to fight with (though they’ve gotten theirs to recuperate from those difficulties quicker than I’ve been able to when they happen).
That’s not an ‘I’m hating on them’ thing, to be clear, that’s genuinely a ‘makes me feel better about not having a handle on that xyz particular difficulty quite yet either’ thing.
Are there any particular vehicles or designs you’d like to see from them?
A land-speeder-esque thingy and 4-legged walkers. Those, yes and another extra-vehement “Yes!” for emphasis. Maybe thinking more specifically in terms of wheeled things? I’d say a segmented vehicle could be fun and something like visible trailer attachments (that’s on our own list, too).
What would you say would improve Bethesda’s Starfield vehicles?
We see already how straightforward it is for authors to do a replacer (or standalone addition) for the body of the base vehicle, even just in the first few days after it was released. Several new bodies on Nexus already, fun stuff, for sure (even made a very basic one myself, though I needed a little rescuing by TrainWiz for the new material/texture process, lmao!).
When I took my look in Starfield CK, apparently, all the nice vehicle settings are right there readily available in Inspector (Furniture>Rev8>right-click>View Inspector) for the merry changing.
How fancy pantsy is that? And the base “skeleton” is all very nicely malleable, too.
As to the actual question…
I’m not sure, though more (possibly pre-templated) modularity, even without Beth doing whole new vehicles themselves necessarily, would be fantastic I think. Not just colors, nor even just wheel meshes/bodies/paint jobs. Really expand it out, like having selectable windshields (and windshield wipers?!), antenna, armor plating, different looking engines, hubcaps, frames with extra wheels/axles (as in setups for 6/8/so on and so forth), etc etc etc. More on the Automatron create-a-bot level or on the overall Starfield ship-type level of customization of parts (not necessarily size, though through providing selectable base frames w/collision that can be appropriate for very large vehicles, can achieve that too), is what I mean.
Make it even easier for authors to add to it, then, by adding base parts that are not necessarily immediately accessible in the base game itself but are readily available for use from the archives/CK for authors to use/base new things on with less work. Maybe even like Dummy (‘empty’) parts (with accompanying animations) just sitting in the files and waiting for a mesh they have/made to be added in. An example would be to make available some extra stock frames that have different amounts of axles/wheels, or rear wheels that also turn (opposite the front, of course…or not), or a body that is segmented, so that an author who has a body mesh (say something like the old FO4 APC) can just use that frame right off the bat instead of adapting their body mesh to a/some frame that really doesn’t fit the author’s concept well.
In fact, that’s even something we ourselves plan to do with ours for FO4. A fully modular setup (with an in-game workbench of some sort…maybe in the form of a ‘Garage’). Obviously haven’t quite gotten there yet, though, and just doing selectable colors/paintjobs, wheels, bodies, and only on a few specific vehicles so far while we continue to focus on the underlying physics and framework.
Having said that…
Something I’ve tried to accomplish in this whole physics-based vehicles set-up, and have somewhat succeeded at, is to keep it nicely open for expansion and friendly to addition as I can (or can remember to/have the forethought to do ahead of time/can think of down the road). There’s still holes in that area but, hopefully, more of it will become easier in the future as I lay down even further groundwork for modular parts. But, even now, it’s set up to accept additions/addons/patches is fairly easy already. An author can add a color/paintjob option in seconds, can add a new body replacer in minutes, or add a new body option to the selection list in probably under an hour.
I’ve even been known to be willing to adjust wheelbases to accommodate such needs, if asked and if absolutely necessary, for an individual to add something new that doesn’t quite fit on an existing frame (since it’s highly unlikely we’d/I’d directly provide our pre-Elric/Max files to anyone of course, even if asked, so that they’d do it themselves…just being honest on that). I’ve long (even with the old vehicles) held the hope that people will come and ask if they themselves can add xyz body, tire look or paintjobs/decals etc as patches/addons. I’m mostly very open to it, as long as we don’t find it offensive in some way and any patches/addons get mastered to/requires our originals on Nexus and proper credits given, of course. You can see an example of exactly that openness with the Appalachian Roadster from schuckster, in fact.
Can you share any tips or advice for aspiring modders who want to start creating their own mods?
I try to make friends with other authors and, I know it’s the internet where anything goes, I try to resist being a jerk (sorry, that’s only way to say it, people remember poor interactions and word gets around about not-nice people, these games’ mod communities are like small towns, they really are). I also try to help on others’ mods (granted, I fully admit I don’t always respond to my PMs/comments that are asking questions or seeking help, so I’m not saying I always help out either, but I try when I have the energy, time and knowledge) and, often, a relationship is built naturally with the author in the process.
…and who best to help out when need a hand? A friend, dur.
Otherwise, just best I can say is I try to start small, I guess. Or, heck, if I just absolutely felt truly compelled to start big and simply could not resist the urge, I guess that’s great too…but maybe I’d start that ‘big’ thing by creating smaller parts of it that can be completed quicker and combined later if want/when ready? Why do I say that? I guess I’m saying that if you break a big thing up into smaller, bite-size bits, you can set more quickly achievable goals and get that sense of completion/accomplishment that ultimately will keep us moving through the larger overall project. Smaller things mean they can really be focused on when learning how to do that thing, not as easy to get sidetracked (or to lose track of where left off if do get sidetracked).
Maybe that’d help prevent getting stuck doing all of an individual type of thing fully before being able to move onto a different type of thing and/or not disrupt the flow so often (‘cause no one knows everything, lol) by having to look up from scratch how to do something. Once you’ve learned a bunch of little things, you can do that big thing and switch between tasks like lightning as needed, with less stopping in between and losing focus. Whatev’s, you’re all smart cookies who get what I’m trying to say.
And, oh yeah, have fun with it! Whatever “it” is…if it ain’t fun, why are you doing it?
Finally, is there anything you’d like to say to our community?
Ummm…hi, community!
In summary/TL;DR: I am MODMAKER BlahBlahDEEBlahBlah and the name fits well. Morrowind/FO3 best game. We wanted vehicles to drive around The Small Addition’s backyard, so we made vehicles. Tada! My mods and I are popular, apparently. Modding can be hard. I have no real workflow, judging by my response, it all seems so willy-nilly. You’re welcome to ask for permission if want to make a patch/addon (for the immersion or just to add something you’d like to see). Remember our physics-based vehicles are a work in progress (a term that sometimes seems to have been lost to the ages, drained from human memory), the first of their kind for FO4. I feel we’re progressing well and hope, if I can keep my energy focused on it, it gets really good someday. Fun and interesting to see Beth themselves finally do land vehicles in a game. Gimme robot cat vehicle to run around Starfield planet on! Have a good time modding…or not, that’s okay too. k thx bye.
Thank you so much BlahBlahDEEBlahBlah for this interview, be sure to check out their mods, and as always if you have any recommendations for future mod author interviews send them my way or drop them in the comments below!
25 comments
For Old Gen game version, you can try the utility on Nexus that will help downgrade the BA2 archive’s that come with these mods to be compatible with your game version.
The utility is here:
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/82114
However, I’ll note that I have not used that utility personally so use at your own risk.
If the above does not allow for them to be used, please provide any further details you may have (like if you had to spawn the item yourself or if it was added to your inventory automatically like is intended) in a bug report on the relevant mod page.
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/44334 <— gud mod by TRCMods. <yes>
I'll trade you 100-gazillion Wanabucks.
(Thank you