companion Meet FULLY VOICED Insane Ivy 4.0!

[Nosimo]

2 hours ago, Reginald_001 said:

As it is now, all of her moves are instakills and most of the effects are just visual, so the best option in survival modes is to simply disable this function in the holotape.

I am thinking about making these attacks real, meaning that a real explosion with damage is placed. Right now other NPC's are pushed but not damaged by the blast force.

 

I can look into making the damages dependent on skill level, meaning that if survival mode is chosen, her attacks will be severely nerfed. But then I'd rather simply make such an option customizable in her advanced holotape (which is lore breaking anyway and shouldn't be used under normal circumstances).

I'd really like to see an option with customizable damages rather than insta kills.  For me the instakills would be fun to watch for awhile but they would take away from the combat eventually.  "Hard" coding the damages solely dependant on game difficulty can be problematic for 3rd party mods which alter hp scaling and such.  By using real damage values you could add some scaling to her powers as she levels up with the player as well.  Options for adjusting the base damage, and level up damage (if you go that route)  could be set as a percentage or something, this would let everyone adjust her to their liking from super ass kicking badass to mouthy wimp :P.  Im not a modder so no idea how feasible this is for you, just throwing things I'd like to see out there.

[TheGawdfather]

19 hours ago, Reginald_001 said:

y'know it IS going to take a while (3 months at least) before we release right? It will be somewhere IN the summer, if not by the end of it.

I can't even go without my daily fix of at least an hour of Commonwealth (!)

 

To be fair. I had no deadlines or budgets while working on Ivy. No sane game developer would spend the amount of resources and time on a follower like this and be in business long enough to talk about it. Ivy is a labor of love, in which I've tried to examine psychology and human behavior, under extreme circumstances from a Jungian and Freudian mixed perspective.

 

Likely the developers and writers got strict budgets in terms of (no more than <n> lines of dialogue) and lots of other restrictions that I wouldn't agree to work under.

 

The reason that Ivy 'works' is because there's 'more' to her, and a lot of that 'more' has been put there carefully and planned out. Little lines and remarks to make her personality take a hold. In that way, even more so in the new build, this takes queues from life: In the beginning it's more of an 'in love' phase, after which a deeper bond forms.

I'm about to load up now. Full release....wooooo...

Ya, that's one of the major strengths of Bethesda games, they've always made community content a high priority at least since morrowind AFAIK. Passion projects abound. (Some better than others, in case you missed my subtle ass kissing, yours is better than most others.)

There's got to be some Adler in there as well, amirite?

As for budget, yeah, you'd probably be dragged out by your feet, by security, screaming, "IVY NEEDS TO BE FLESHED OUT, WHY DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND THIS!?" personal effects box clutched close to your chest. lol

[Reginald_001]

5 hours ago, Nosimo said:

I'd really like to see an option with customizable damages rather than insta kills.  For me the instakills would be fun to watch for awhile but they would take away from the combat eventually.  "Hard" coding the damages solely dependant on game difficulty can be problematic for 3rd party mods which alter hp scaling and such.  By using real damage values you could add some scaling to her powers as she levels up with the player as well.  Options for adjusting the base damage, and level up damage (if you go that route)  could be set as a percentage or something, this would let everyone adjust her to their liking from super ass kicking badass to mouthy wimp :P.  Im not a modder so no idea how feasible this is for you, just throwing things I'd like to see out there.

It's customizable in the way that you can open in XEdit. But the damage leveling is built the same as the vanilla NPC's.

They level up all the way to L50 as well in this manner.

 

But Ivy is overpowered to begin with. She is not for use in such a setup.

I expect once the ESM is out anyone can make a quick ESP hack to balance her out for anything they want (Frost, etc..).

 

8 hours ago, Rampdog said:

Amazing! Does that mean Ivy will be able to teleport into the Institute with you without using the teleport command in her holotape?

Yes. In fact.. there's some moments where I need to disable her warp (e.g. when the player is flying a vertibird)... It's pretty heart breaking to see Ivy warping to you in mid air, fall to the ground, warp again to you mid air, rinse and repeat.. 

[Fiona159]

Tell me, please,how often will Ivy use her skill?

Duke's voice.You may be able to use a piece of text. (piece of cake)☺️

Spoiler

 

 

[Reginald_001]

44 minutes ago, Fiona159 said:

Tell me, please,how often will Ivy use her skill?

Duke's voice.You may be able to use a piece of text. (piece of cake)☺️

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

Ivy's skills depend on her skill level, both frequency and eventually damages.

She starts out with 2 special attacks: Force Push (Ivy pushes enemies away, the fall and need to get up) and Telefrag (Ivy teleports into enemy).

 

More attacks can be unlocked by the following (and will likely be expanded upon at a later time):

 

Zap! Attack

Ivy teleports to enemy then zaps them with an electrical shock.

 

- Science Perk Rank 1

- Robotics Expert Rank 1

- Having both of these unlocks the quest: Find the 'NX-2C Zapper Upgrade' Holotape.

Find the holotape and install the upgrade into Ivy.

 

Boom Bitch! Attack

Ivy teleports to enemy then drops a grenade, or plants it on their enemy.

 

- Explosives Expert Perk Rank 1

- Robotics Expert Rank 1

- Having both of these unlocks the quest: Find the 'NX-2C Exploder Upgrade' Holotape.

- USES AMMUNITION

 

Find the holotape and install the upgrade into Ivy, equip her with frag grenades.

 

Beam Me Up Scotty Attack

Ivy stays with player, but teleports the enemy to 100mrs above the ground, then lets them drop, the drop does damage.

 

- Science Perk Rank 2

- Robotics Expert Rank 1

- Having both of these unlocks the quest: Find the 'NX-2C Teleport Upgrade' Holotape.

 

Find the holotape and install the upgrade into Ivy.

[Fiona159]

7 minutes ago, Reginald_001 said:

 

 

Thank you for your clarification.

[Reginald_001]

4 hours ago, Fiona159 said:

Thank you for your clarification.

Note that this all might change as I test and develop!

[urbanoantigo]

Every time I enter here is a new joy

I loved the missions to go unlocking the new combat skills,

innocent question, I do not remember already I went with her in the asylum, wing still does not have something special with the Zeta weapon that we received? only in the update that we will have the news you commented? I got confused...

 

These days redoing the game of the beginning, I confess that whenever I start a new game I use the help voucher 4 .... but, following there, it is very interesting when the ivy takes the front of a normal conversation of the game, like when we go in the herd-controlled plantation, and Ivy pulls out the conversation with the supervisor, it's good to like her.

 

I keep suggesting some more intense interactions between Ivy and other characters from the game like Cait, I think something very interesting can come out of these two, maybe cait could not be a granddaughter or something like Deby

Nick could also have something special if they went together to farharbor, maybe Dimas had something special for Ivy, an habilidaed or a quest with more information about Dr Stains ...

 

I imagine that you are more in the phase of implantation of the script that should already be ready, but .... I thought about these situations that can be interesting

 

Good work for you??

[LyreAB]

14 hours ago, Reginald_001 said:

Ivy's skills depend on her skill level, both frequency and eventually damages.

She starts out with 2 special attacks: Force Push (Ivy pushes enemies away, the fall and need to get up) and Telefrag (Ivy teleports into enemy).

 

More attacks can be unlocked by the following (and will likely be expanded upon at a later time):

 

Zap! Attack

Ivy teleports to enemy then zaps them with an electrical shock.

 

Boom Bitch! Attack

Ivy teleports to enemy then drops a grenade, or plants it on their enemy.

 

Beam Me Up Scotty Attack

Ivy stays with player, but teleports the enemy to 100mrs above the ground, then lets them drop, the drop does damage.

 

 

For the Zap Attack, an upgrade to a ranged zap might be a way to go.

 

For Boom Bitch, upgrading to plant different types of explosives, such as plasma grenades or even mini nukes.

 

For Beam Me Up, not sure if it's viable, but also teleporting other things above enemies might be funny.  (Not sure the physics supports damage from things falling on an actor though).  Thinking rocks, boxes, anvils...

Also, teleporting mines to an enemy's location might be viable.

 

[Reginald_001]

17 hours ago, urbanoantigo said:

These days redoing the game of the beginning, I confess that whenever I start a new game I use the help voucher 4 .... <snip>

You mean something like this? I made this for when something gets bugged out with users (and to quick recruit Ivy as I was getting fed up with running back and forth to Sanctuary), will be part of the future release as separate download for the cheaters and those with alternative startup mods.

 

But you won't be needing it as you can find the voucher in Sanctuary these days, if you are below level 8...

 

 

 

13 hours ago, LyreAB said:

For the Zap Attack, an upgrade to a ranged zap might be a way to go.

 

For Boom Bitch, upgrading to plant different types of explosives, such as plasma grenades or even mini nukes.

 

For Beam Me Up, not sure if it's viable, but also teleporting other things above enemies might be funny.  (Not sure the physics supports damage from things falling on an actor though).  Thinking rocks, boxes, anvils...

Also, teleporting mines to an enemy's location might be viable.

 

Sounds like good ideas. I already thought of the '100lbs weight from the sky' I think I love the idea and it should be something really random as well, like a piano, or a fridge, etc..etc.. But... it should be an Easter Egg though, firing once or twice. I can apply any damages through script (which I'm already doing anyway). BUT.. it also sounds like one of those things that sound easy and fun to do but will eventually take 10 days of tweaking. So if it turns out to be 'hard' I'll likely not implement it.

 

Development update

I've been fleshing out my proof of concept and it's now stable and workable. I will now start to add features, will likely take out the insta-kill option (however cool it is). And I will start tweaking each individual attack to balance things out, time stuff better, etc..etc.. A TeleFrag attack ALWAYS kills. It's just inherent to the type of damage done.. I mean Ivy teleports INTO her enemy, atomizing whatever was standing where she teleports. She literally takes the actual space that an enemy was occupying, resulting in the enemy exploding into a bloody pulp. (And Ivy being covered in blood as a consequence, which I'm still working on figuring out how to do).

 

Then I will need to test the SHIT out of it by simply playing the game with Ivy to see if there are any weird situations or NPC's she should ignore, etc..etc..

 

DID YOU KNOW?

That if you call the DisMember() function on an actor and dismember its head, the actor doesn't die but continues to attack you like a fucking zombie?

I didn't and it scared the FUCK out of me when it happened first.

[Reginald_001]

The attacks are now very stable and I'm very happy with the result. Some minor tweaks here and there. I think I'm also going to add a line of sight check for Ivy, so she doesn't teleport to another floor when you're in doors and she starts killing enemies you haven't even encountered yet.

 

Speaking of indoors. Her teleporting will likely be much less there and her teleport distances will be shorter. I might even add a physical check (besides the line of sight check) that she will only use the ability vertically when in doors (e.g. to jump up to the snipers when entering the museum.. which is awesome, by the way)..

 

This ability really was created for exactly the type of gunplay you see below in the video. Close quarters it would only cause mayhem and damage to the player and Ivy. I'm also not sure yet what these attacks might do with friendly NPC's in the vicinity..

 

The telefrag attacks are insanely satisfying to watch. The enemy just explodes, you hear that satisfying 'squish' sound and body parts fly all over the place. I can imagine that this looks even cooler if you have the enhanced blood effects add-on installed (I don't as it unfortunately kept crashing my install).

 

This is with a cheat enabled, Ivy does an attack every time she is actually able. This frequency will be far less in the actual release and will be dependent on perks and player level. I am working on skinned bobbleheads which I might introduce for this.

 

And what I'm REALLY hoping to do is to introduce a kill cam as well, I don't have the faintest clue yet how I'll manage that one, but I'm going to do some digging so that, say 1 in 7 attacks, will end with all the action pausing for a bit as you can see Ivy immolate her target in slomotion. I don't even know if this is possible but the idea is there.

 

[Reginald_001]

As you can notice in the video, sometimes Ivy tends to jump 'inside' the player. This is annoying and difficult to avoid as I'm using the MoveTo() method and I haven't really found a function to get the closest 'habitable' area next to a player. I could define a point somewhere outside of the player but then I don't know if that is a large chasm or another type of player hazard (e.g. what happens when the player is on a bridge).

 

So I thought up of this hack.. which is kind of wonky.. that I'm working on:

Creating a secondary 'NULL' NPC with no model and no collision that follows the player automatically while Ivy is drafted. Ivy will then teleport back to the location that this follower has at that point, making it so she never teleports inside of the player, nor at places where she couldn't normally reach. Of course I don't know yet what happens to an NPC's navigation when I take collision out of the equation, but we'll see what happens.

 

(Edit) I can also set her alpha to 0 for a bit, already move her to the player, give her half a second to move away, then fade her in together with the effects..

[Reginald_001]

I find I'm having a huge amount of options.. I can add conditionals to split between sneak and regular attacks, so I can make 'sneak' versions of most attacks:

 

-- 'Loud attack' - Ivy teleports in and drops a grenade before she teleports out (etc..).

-- 'Sneak Version' - Ivy teleports just the head of her enemy away..

 

I don't know yet if I'll implement it like that as this could become a whole sub-mod within Ivy.

But perhaps.. it's worth the extra days spent on fleshing out attacks.

 

I am also thinking of implementing a whole different set of indoor attacks v.s. outdoor attacks.

All the attacks so far have been tailored to outdoor. But indoor you can imagine a lot of cool stuff as well:

 

- Teleport enemies half into the wall.

- Teleport limbs off of them.

- Teleport their guns away.

- Teleport their heads off. (Indoor only attack. <-- FINISHED <- AWESOME. Vid coming soon.).

- Teleport a grenade into their pockets.

- Telefrag an enemy by teleporting another enemy into them (telefrag attack, but then differently).

- Teleport a male raiders cock into his mouth.. (Imagine the horror).

etc..etc..

 

I've also taken some time to sanitize all my scripts, document them properly and add proper 'property groups'

Now that Ivy is an ESM modders might want to look into these and know what all these variables are the fuck about.

 

 

 

 



 


 

 

[urbanoantigo]

I thought of another interaction that might be interesting to invest a little ...
 

Do you know that neurologist who works in the memory lair, there in good neighborhood?
I think the two could have some intriguing conversation, or maybe even an experiment or two ... I imagine Ivy in the chair of the memory buscano some reminder of her time as deby ...
 

I imagine how you fly gets crazy with so many, so many, and so many possibilities of Ivy in the universe of fo4

[Reginald_001]

2 hours ago, urbanoantigo said:

I thought of another interaction that might be interesting to invest a little ...
 

Do you know that neurologist who works in the memory lair, there in good neighborhood?
I think the two could have some intriguing conversation, or maybe even an experiment or two ... I imagine Ivy in the chair of the memory buscano some reminder of her time as deby ...
 

I imagine how you fly gets crazy with so many, so many, and so many possibilities of Ivy in the universe of fo4

Yes I was thinking about that myself. She will likely be used in some way during her vanilla quest.

 

I've been having some INSANE moments with Ivy while testing. One particular moment was just mind boggling. I walked into a room and a raider stood there right in front of me. Then Ivy teleports into him, telefragging him.. bodyparts everywhere.. teleport FX and there's Ivy, complaining that she's all covered in blood and guts. I nearly shat myself from laughter and awe at what is Ivy... Now if I could only find the proper way to apply real blood effects to her during this type of effect, she'd be covered in blood to finish it completely. As there's 'cum stains' in other mods, I'm sure I'll figure it out at one point.

[Reginald_001]

'Free as a Bird'

Ivy flings her enemy into the air using her teleporter.

 

1 - Electro Attack / 2 - Telefrag attack / 3 - Grenade attack

Ivy first uses an electrical attack, then a telefrag, to top it off with a grenade attack.

 

[LyreAB]

 

12 hours ago, Reginald_001 said:

Sounds like good ideas. I already thought of the '100lbs weight from the sky' I think I love the idea and it should be something really random as well, like a piano, or a fridge, etc..etc.. But... it should be an Easter Egg though, firing once or twice. I can apply any damages through script (which I'm already doing anyway). BUT.. it also sounds like one of those things that sound easy and fun to do but will eventually take 10 days of tweaking. So if it turns out to be 'hard' I'll likely not implement it.

 

 

Might be doable if you want to mess with crafting.  Set up a separate Ivy crafting menu (probably at the chem station since that seems to be what most people use), and have different craftable items for her to be able to teleport.  That would serve several purposes.  First, it would let you put a keyword onto the item so you can just use items with that keyword for her ability.  Second, it enforces a limit on how much she can use the ability because of how much junk she's carrying that you've crafted for her.  Third, you might be able to set the damage per item that way by having an attribute on the item for it (or more simply just use the weight of the item).

 

And if you want her to be able to "carry" more "ammo" you can always have upgrade holotapes/blueprints that allow you to "store" the items virtually by crafting a teleport beacon for that item and using that as the ammo.  For instance you could craft an Anvil that weighs 50 lbs for say 50 Steel, or if you've found the "Teleport Beacon: Anvil" you could craft an Anvil Beacon that weighs 5 lbs for 50 Steel plus 1 Enhanced Circuit Card.  You could even do a further upgrade, reducing it to a chip weighing 0.1 lbs.  Each would still have the same effect in game, so same visuals, same damage, etc, the only difference being the consumable used for it.

 

[Uncle64]

Have tried to find out how to set one new home place for her. Cant find it, or I am blind.

[Reginald_001]

Today consisted of setting up conditionals for the quests to upgrade her attacks. I've also updated all her controller holotapes, giving her new features and settings.

With some help I've been able to fix the blood splatter on Ivy during telefrag attacks as well!  

 

 

[SpinX]

I'm disturbed by the fact that I find the first pic extremely sexy. What the fuck.

[Guest]

12 hours ago, SpinX said:

I'm disturbed by the fact that I find the first pic extremely sexy. What the fuck.

Same ?

[Uncle64]

Sits nice and quiet and waits for next version. And I want the voice to.

 

Is it only me that dont change clothes and stuff on her? Dont give her one PA and so on?

She may "carry" one PA for me, I horde them. And she naggs about it and loves me when she have delived it.

[Reginald_001]

Development Update

I've renamed the special attacks to 'HyperCombat', you'll find the appropriate menus in the NX-2C holotape which was basically redesigned from the ground up.

I'll be coming back to those once I'm done with... what is basically, redesigning Ivy's internal 'guts'...

 

I've spent the entire day with untangling Ivy from the regular Follower quests... creating her own systems to minimize the amount of overrides she makes in vanilla follower quests, hopefully eventually eliminating them to 0. I have created Ivy's own AO_Comment and CIS events away from the follower system (by adding my own story manager quests), as it bothers me greatly that she touches upon the vanilla follower quests. When that is done I can clean out any lingering overrides in Fo4Edit and she should be clean as a whistle and much more compatible with multi follower mods, this is all prework for eventually taking her 'out of the regular companion system entirely'. For this reason I am also removing all 'current companion faction' checks with Ivy's own global variable stating whether she is recruited or not.

 

I cannot inject scenes remotely without overriding existing quests. So it's a choice of having Ivy participate in regular vanilla quests and override them, or not override them and have Ivy always stand at the side. I chose for the first option, so many vanilla quests will be overridden by Ivy's interjections, including DLC quests.  I am considering a special 'no quests integration' patch for Ivy, for those that have special needs for those quests not to be overridden.

 

This decision (redo big parts of Ivy's base code) has given me a great deal more work that I had anticipated but as I'm not going anywhere and I want Ivy to be perfect, and I want her optional for those that cannot stand to travel with only one companion I think it's the right choice to make. Yes it adds weeks of work and testing and dev-stress, but o.t.o.h. I feel like a new age of modding is just starting for Fallout 4. And this release of Ivy is more than just an update. With her ESM setup she is an easy platform for modders to expand upon, to give her features that I lack the skills to give her (for now).

 

Animation framework enabled ESP's for Ivy should be easy to set up (if you know how to do that sort of thing). You should be easily able to create body overrides (e.g. make a synth-body mod for Ivy) or any kind of override, without having to make changes in the base mod.

[urbanoantigo]

'HyperCombat',... I Like ??
Ual .... then you ended up rewriting part of the code base ..
but what very work, or rework, gigantic ???
my congratulations for the determination???
 

 

today I do not mind walking alone with the IVy, before I was dropping of walking with 2 or 3 companions at the same time,
but now I think I'm more mature

what I'm really happy about is that you no longer have to dispense with ivy to follow some of the main line missions like Nick or Piper or even some cool minions like Cait.
It broke my heart to have Ivy dispensed at these times.
 

I'm really enjoying the idea of going to FarHarbor with Ivy and Nick and see what she would say about Dinas's conversations with Nick, and I was curious to think that Dimas might have interesting things to tell Ivy about her or Dr Eisteim
 

I'm doing Ivy fanfics when I read the news here ?

[Reginald_001]

Development Update

Another 7 hours of intense development work on Ivy's framework and HyperCombat.. 1.33am as I write an update...

She will now say something like 'HyperCombat engaging' before doing so, in order to draw the attention of the player. A teleport animation will play (where Ivy will be sucked up into the air) and the attack will commence, adding to the cinematic effect, and giving players some much needed time to set up so they can observe the action.

 

Oh almost forgot: HyperCombat will not immediately be available. After reaching a certain point while speaking to her through her service menu, she will drag up a memory about a certain holotape with combat upgrades that she would like to find. Find the holotape and you can enable Ivy's HyperCombat features.

 

I've finished taking Ivy's overrides out of the AO_Comment and AO_Comment_Dialogue vanilla companion scripts and have moved them to her own 'Attraction Object' quests with similar names and a prefix of Ivy. I will start a deep dive into the CIS_Manager stuff where I created overrides and will try to take them out as well, cleaning up overrides in Vanilla quests as I go and learn more about the story manager and quest scripts.

 

After that I will override her hacking system (I have overwritten the followers quest and mean to do something about that) and I'll also fix a long time bug where she would still be able to hack a terminal, even though she was locked out in earlier attempts. I will also make the second and third tries go much quicker by adding shorter dialogue to her hacking routines (they are way too monotonous).

 

Ivy's own AO_Comment system works perfectly and I'm pretty happy with the result, even though nothing changes for her on the surface.

 

I've also made the quest init for the Nuka World quest more robust as during testing I found there were certain circumstances where the initial dialogue would be interrupted (e.g. by a sudden settlement attack) and the quest would be 'stuck'. If this happens, the quest is updated with a message that your conversation was interrupted and you should stay in Ivy's vicinity to wait and see what happens next.

 

And another thing: The stories in Ivy's service menu now have stages, meaning they are not told randomly but in progressive fashion, one chapter after another. She will still say random memories, but any memories that are part of a larger story will be told in progressive fashion (e.g. so Ivy doesn't tell the final chapter of the Pelikan King story before she talked about him to begin with).