Forno & Fredas' Sexy Vault Girl Interface - Alternative Release - 0.50

 

2022-08-22: Forno presented two new perk icon sets—the special unarmed perks, and Dead Money.  These have now been fully integrated.  Systems are in place to guarantee that all of the new artwork can be viewed in-game.

More details below.

 

2022-08-19: Support added for DarNified UI, with one caveat.  Read below.

 

2022-08-17: With the advent of lStewieAl's High Resolution Screens mod, it is now possible to present the full quality of max-resolution icons even in the Pip-Boy.  As it happens, 900x900 is perfectly idealized for Pip-Boy use in 4K—lower means wasted resolution; higher could mean sluggish menus for no discernible gain.  Now you can enjoy this mod's full potential at all times.  The stats menu avatar has also been thoroughly revamped to take full advantage of the new possibilities.

 

 

This is the original Forno FNV mod, updated from its alpha state, packed to the gills with features and a strong emphasis on quality.  Includes everything Forno released and some things he didn't.

 

Forno and I were deeply involved in the development of this mod—he produced his wonderful artwork; I provided feedback, recommendations, observations, corrections, and, of course, the New Vegas guts that would support it.  I supplied the original alpha build of this mod to him in September 2021.  It was decided at the time that the official release would wait for a deeper fleshing out of the artwork package.  It was not well-established at that time that Forno would get significantly drawn away from this project by financial obligations.  At some point during the wait, I was forced to abandon everything, including gaming and a social life, and focus on personal matters.  Nevertheless, I spent months bringing this mod to its current state, and that work is not going to go to waste.

 

I am aware of the existing mod posting.  There's nothing for it: There are certain things I require out of a mod featuring Forno's artwork, and since I'm the only person I know who will supply all of those things, this mod exists.  I also owe it to Forno to ensure his artwork is presented in the highest possible standard, in honor of our lengthy collaboration.  So I brought the mod up to a releasable state.  This release includes all the new artwork released in the last year, and a number of additional artwork pieces that Forno provided only to me.

 

 

In Detail

 

The chief focus of this undertaking was to produce a result which would be unassailable in as many respects as possible, in order to do proper justice to the finest Pip-Boy avatar ever developed for Fallout New Vegas.  To this end, considerable effort was expended in these areas:

 

Providing the maximum detail the game theoretically supports, to ensure that Forno's artwork is allowed to shine.  The target resolution for all provided assets is 4K, and a special function was implemented to ensure that detail is maximized both in the Pip-Boy and in the level-up menus.  Icons in the Pip-Boy are the "sweet spot" resolution of 512x512, and in other scenarios such as the level up menu, they are 900x900—the latter being a 1:1 match for icon resolution at 4K in those menus.

 

 

• Cleaning up the source artwork.  The results of Forno's drawing technique speak for themselves, clearly.  But it's also true that each new piece of vault girl art evinces leftover anomalies, off-color specks, subtle drawing outlines, compositing or scaling artifacts, etc.  These have been painstakingly sniped out of existence one by one where possible, prior to processing the art for use in this mod.  In some instances, after consulting with Forno, extraneous elements were removed; in others, missing elements were carefully re-implemented.  No stone was left unturned.

 

All of the above, and plenty more, were diligently corrected.

 

• A dedication to the original, unexpurgated artwork—effort was lavished to ensure that the full artwork of each icon was preserved as Forno intended.  To this end, for example, the absolute limits of available Pip-Boy screen real estate were occasionally fully tapped.  No arbitrary changes were made, and any tweaks that were implemented were discussed with Forno beforehand.

 

 

• No cop-outs on perfection.  As a vivid example, getting the avatars in the stats menu and HUD to behave is a notoriously finicky process.  But the necessary time and patience was applied, and the result is that if you choose to use the "naked" avatar, rest assured that it will appear seamless in both the Pip-Boy and the HUD.

 

 

 

• Consistency of shade across the entire artwork package.  Furthermore, 100% accurate duplication of the brightness and glow standards established by ItsMeJesusHChrist, the author of the indispensable Consistent Pip-Boy Icons, Clean Vanilla HUD and Pop-Up Message Icons.  If you're using his mods—and you should be—the beautiful 4K detail AND gray levels of the artwork in this mod will be a perfect match.

 

 

• Devotion to the icon rules established by the vanilla icons and shared by Consistent Pip-Boy Icons, which is to say: A very strong focus was placed on sensibly keeping Forno's vault girl the same physical size and position across the vast majority of the icon package, making exceptions primarily only in close-up cases.  Furthermore, icons were centered not on the middle of their image files but rather the middle of their Pip-Boy stage, which is what matters.  All in keeping with the standards of the vanilla icons.

 

Options.  Especially when it comes to the all-important stats menu avatar, there are many options to choose from, since there's no other piece of art the player will find themselves looking at more over the course of a given playthrough.

 

Extra features.  A configuration file is included with this mod which enables one to change things like the layout of the stats menu avatar, or whether the crippled limb indicator is allowed to show a facial expression when it appears.  One may also enable a feature which causes the torso to fake being crippled even if one has a perk which normally prevents this.

 

 

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Q: You said options?  Like what?

A: Apart from the obvious point of providing all of the "alternative" artwork Forno specifically iterated for a dozen or so perks, or the choice of using either a naked avatar or one wearing the vault suit, many additional options were thrown in:

• Several of the contextual HUD faces (the ones which appear with "You lost Karma!", etc.) have multiple variations to choose from.

• You can choose to install the entire package with a target resolution of either 4K or 1080p.
• When Forno drew the stats menu avatar, he drew "neck muscles" on some of the images, but forgot them on others.  Because of the inconsistency, and because these neck muscles do not appear on any of the other artwork, I've provided the choice to either keep or do without them.  (Incidentally, the "dimples" in the tips of the nipples, which are visible in all of the perk icon artworks, are another item that Forno partially forgot to include in some of the stats menu avatar images, and I've fixed that as well.)

• The nipples on the stats menu avatar can be optionally shaded, and there are multiple different shading levels available.

• The file "interfaceshared0.dds", which is normally an important part of packages like this, is no longer necessary to include.  But the option to include it remains open.  If you are using DarNified UI, this is something you need regardless.
• The layout of the stats menu is multiple choice: You can choose to have the avatar fill the Pip-Boy screen, or make room for the other elements.  The player character's name can also be situated in any of several different spots.  See the screenshots above the mod description.
• A special "Author's Config" is provided, with which you may bypass the installation process and just go with what I like.

 

 

2022-08-22: A few of the perks in Forno's latest art packages normally never appear in the player character's Pip-Boy, for a variety of reasons.  This mod forces these perks to appear.  Specifics:

• In My Footsteps—A companion-provided perk.  This normally uses the same art as the Light Step perk.
• Elijah's Last Words—A perk used by a certain companion, as opposed to the player character.  As long as the companion has this perk, it will now appear in the Pip-Boy.
• Ravenous Hunger—A companion-provided perk which normally does not appear in the Pip-Boy.  Now it does.  This one perk requires the use of an .esp plugin.  Details in the installation package.  This necessity may change in the future.  This perk no longer requires the use of a plugin.

 

 

Q: So icons display at 512x512 in the Pip-Boy, and 900x900 everywhere else?  Why not just use 900x900 for both, and avoid the hassle?

A: Nope.  The crux of the issue is that the Pip-Boy's scaling algorithm is very bad.  If icon resolution is too low, the graphics are blurry, as you'd expect.  But if the resolution is too high, things look worse, because all you're doing is sharpening the Pip-Boy's aliasing artifacts.  Observe:

Curved edges in particular have a tendency of revealing this harsh aliasing.  Look at the bottom of the plate in the image.  The 512x512 version, counter-intuitively, is objectively way better-looking.  What it boils down to is that the only way to achieve the best possible look in both the Pip-Boy and the other menus is to ensure one of them is displaying 512x512 icons and the other is displaying 900x900 icons.  In both cases: no more and no less.  This is the first and only New Vegas mod which does this.  Forno's artwork is worth it.

 

2022-08-17: Of course, with the advent of lStewieAl's High Resolution Screens mod, all of the above is now entirely moot, since everything in the Pip-Boy can now display with unrestricted resolution.

 

 

Q: Why did you have to put your life on hold, exactly?

 

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Requirements:

Although this mod was designed around Axonis's Vanilla UI Plus (VUI+), I owe it to my other acquaintance, RoyBatterian, to support his equally great UI as well.  I also owe this to Forno, in order to ensure access to his artwork is maximized.  And so, even though I do not personally use DarNified UI, I have added what support I can for it with my limited time.  If you are using Vanilla UI Plus, you will need to update to v9.07+.  For DarNified UI, the one to use seems to be the "Unofficial DarNified UI Update".

 

Other than that, be sure your JIP-LN, JohnnyGuitarNVSE, SUP NVSE, ShowOff NVSE, etc. are up to date—some things would definitely break without them.  And place this mod below VUI+ and anything that fiddles with icon graphics.

 

Caveat specific to DarNified UI:

1. The crippled limb HUD element will not display properly.  Simply put, getting this to work, while obviously not impossible, would require more fiddling than I have time for.

Never mind.  I couldn't leave well enough alone, so the HUD avatar now displays properly.

2. If you choose the "Naked" stats menu avatar, there will be visible seams.  Once again, this could probably be treated, but I can't afford more timesinks.