"Atomic Lightning" is a single player quest mod for Fallout 4, in which the player helps Donnie, a young power-armor enthusiast, get back in good graces with his gang after he got kicked out for offending their style. During the quest, the player must find different power armor pieces to help Donnie finish the suit. Depending on the pieces the player finds, the resulting power armor suit will be different, and NPCs will have different reactions to the finished product.
Maps
Design Objectives
Branching Story
For this project, I wanted to take advantage of Creation Kit's flexibility and create a branching, reactive story.
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Players will be able to see the results of their choices and how it changes the ending.
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When considering this customization, power armor was the obvious choice.
When the player first meets Donnie, he tasks them with helping him find a helmet and paint job for his set of armor.
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He hopes this will help ingratiate him with the Atom Cats, a power armor obsessed gang.
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The player is given options of helmets and paint to find, and can ask Donnie for his preferences.
The player can get a helmet from bartering with or looting a trader, or from fighting their way through a bandit camp.
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The paint cans can be found in a ghoul-infested hardware store. How far the player goes to look for more paint is up to them.
Depending on which parts the player brings back, the power armor will look different. Donnie will wear what the player makes and confront the Atom Cats.
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If the Atom Cats like the armor, they will let Donnie back in the gang, and the player will recieve the set of power armor as thanks.
If the Atom Cats dislike the armor, they will become enraged and attack.
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After the fight, Donnie will thank the player for having has back by gifting a custom shotgun, and set off on his own.
Varied Environments
Fallout 4 lends itself well to abandoned, apocalyptic settings, but I wanted to stretch that theme farther.
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The first location players will notice is the Atom Cats garage: a parking structure converted into a mechanic shop, drive in theater, and living space.
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The Atom Cats are inspired by 50s greasers, so I tried to capture that feeling in this space.
It's unclear if they actually watch movies, or just like to sit in their cars
Project cars and power armor, what more could you ask for?
It's unclear if they actually watch movies, or just like to sit in their cars
A nearby junkyard has been overrun with raiders. The mountains of trash form a maze the player must explore.
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Since it is a junkyard, there is naturally a lot of debris and garbage, but also some valuable loot if the player is willing to pick through the mess.
The bandits have converted part of the junkyard into a hideout by scrounging together shipping containers and trashed trailers from the collapsed highway.
The hardware store has become infested with ghouls, and has much more of a creepy aesthetic than the other areas, enhanced by the ghouls ambushing the player.
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Naturally, most of the valuable items in a hardware store would have been picked clean, but some scraps remain.
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When the player arrives it is eerily quiet, flickering lights and dust floating through the air telling the player that this place was likely abandoned for a reason.
The place is mostly picked clean, and everything is so quiet...
Ghouls wait around every corner to ambush the player
The place is mostly picked clean, and everything is so quiet...
Open World Feel
Even in a smaller area, I wanted to capture the open-world feeling of Fallout 4
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This meant letting players explore or pursue objectives in any order they wish, and having the game accommodate that freedom and respond accordingly.
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I always want to reward exploration, so curious players might find secret passages or loot in tucked away corners.
Encapsulating the open world feeling also meant providing multiple solutions to a single problem, and let the player choose which path to follow.
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The player doesn't need to find every possible power armor piece to finish the quest, so they can explore as much or little as they want.
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There are also multiple ways to get the armor pieces. A trader has one, so the player can buy it, barter for it, steal it, or loot it off her body; all are valid ways to complete the objective.
Retrospective
What Went Well
What Went Wrong
What Was Learned?
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Complex Scripting: I was proud of my ability to create several branching endings to the quest, as well as making custom power armor for each of them. It truly pushed my limits of scripting in Creation Kit, and I learned a lot in the process.
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Storyline- I was able to pin down my quest story very early on, which left more time for fleshing out the branching paths and open world.
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Quick Iteration: The designs of each environment went through heavy changes and iteration between milestones. I was able to quickly iterate and redesign, which allowed each area to be even better than it would have been.
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Scope: In building out many different environments, I found that each one was a bit small, and I did not have the hours to expand on each one of them.
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Environment Beautification: As before, since I made several different looking environments, it took quite a while for me to get to the pure aesthetics of each location. As a result, they probably could look better, given more time.
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Bugs- The complex scripting involved in this project created a lot of bugs to fix, which ate up a lot of development time that could have been spent on more design-focused tasks.
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Theming and Reuse: Being able to reuse assets and locations, or giving minor tweaks to fit a new theme is an important tool for quickly creating content without building everything from scratch each time.
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Building an environment for mood- When building a world, one must consider what the designer wants the player to feel when they enter a space. Props, lighting, and sound all play key roles in developing that mood.
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Identify high value bugs: Identifying bugs early is difficult, as sometimes they often seem simple. But it is imperative that bugs are fixed as soon as possible, as they often compound on each other when left alone.
Gallery
