Levels of Ghoulification

[Zeisan]

I've been looking for a couple days and haven't found anything on LL, what I'm wondering is there a mod that changes your appearance based on the amount of radiation you've sustained? What I'd like is something like this.

 

0-200 Rads: Look normal, no effects

201-400 Rads: Partial ghoul, rad sickness effect

401-600 Rads: Full ghoul, ghoul rad healing and resistance

601+ Rads: Glowing one, same as above plus rad bomb

 

For the partial ghoul I think it would be great to have around 10+ different textures that would be applied randomly.

 

Thanks for the input.

[ElvenScoundrel]

I think you need more than 1000 rads to even look like a partial ghoul. Ghouls become Ghouls when they are exposed to a shitton of radiation in a short amount of time, and I think the FEV is involved too. Lucky ones that don't die become Ghouls. If 600 rads turned people into Ghouls, most of the Wasteland would be ghouls.

[Zeisan]

Good to know, I was just giving an example. I suppose it would work better with a custom race. You could call it a pretty ghoul or a wereghoul. Maybe I should flesh out my idea more before I upset the loremasters. My apologies for not giving an accurate portrayal of radiation induction into ghoulification. Thanks though, back to the lab again.

[KainsChylde]

There is also a genetic component to ghoulification. If you take 100 people, expose them all to an identical amount of radiation and FEV, you'd end up with 10-15 ghouls, 2-3 supermutants, and the rest would be corpses.

[ElvenScoundrel]

Sorry, but I come into these ideas with lore in mind. If I offended, then your bad.

[Zeisan]

I'm not offended, just disappointed that my only responses have been "that's not lore friendly" and not "this is how you could make it happen". I figured atleast a couple people would think it's a cool idea, guess I was wrong and no one cares to help.

 

Edit:

Going by what I've read on the various wiki sites FEV has nothing to do with ghouls, it is however an unknown genetic factor that turns humans into ghouls. So could it not be possible that a ghoul has a mutation that allows them to appear human at low levels of rad saturation? Because radiation does reduce over time, and with drugs. It's not like the underworld has alot of ambient radiation from all the ghouls there. If I can figure out how to do it I just might.

[srayesmanll]

One thing to note, is I don't do any npc/creature creation and have never fooled with meshes/textures, so take anything I say with a grain of salt:

 

Let's throw the lore stuff out the window for now. As far as the mechanics of doing this, no there is not any mod that does this. Can it be done? Not sure. I would have thought that by now someone would have come up with something like this already - not specifically ghouls, but face/body alterations on the fly. But I see no aging-type mods (to have the a character age during the game), no mods to smear makeup (which I know for sure would have been adopted quickly by the sexout crowd), or anything similar (unless of course I missed something). Now Pregnancy has shown that you visually adapt a body to changes, but you are also talking about a body that changes sizes, not textures. And correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the face does not change during pregnancy. The body swapping in Pregnancy would be a place to start. Also maybe the vapirism face changes in skyrim might be another resource. I think the problem would be this - you would have to create multiple body/face textures that would need to swap out with the preexisting texture at specified points. And the early textures would need to match the original body texture to some degree, or all you'll hear is complaints about how it doesn't look right for their chosen original body. Again, I'm not versed in the modeling/meshes/textures aspect of mod development, these are just my observations on it and take them as you will.

[KainsChylde]

Well, my comment was meant to give ideas. I would have said more but theres a toddler in my house who hates the sound of typing.

 

I was thinking of a % chance of change. In the vanilla game you max out your rads, you die. In a mod make it like a 20% chance that you become a ghoul instead? And maybe, as you level up and become stronger that percentage raises, and maybe make perks that increase the chance even more.Say you start the game at level 1 as a normal, if you concentrate your efforts at each level up toward deliberately becoming a ghoul you max out your chance of ghoulification at around level 6-8.

[Zeisan]

1st off I wanna apologize for my little rant, I knew when I made my OP that I wasn't as thorough as I should have been.

 

Thanks for your input, I like the idea of a texture switcher. Not sure if setbody from oblivion would be a good starting point, I haven't looked into it though.

 

As far as it being a % chance to become a ghoul and increase the likelihood of that chance would you need custom perks. Also would there be certain stats that would decrease/increase the %.

 

It shouldn't be too hard to do the human and regular ghoul textures, most bodies have textures for them. Making a partial ghoul would probably entail cutting and pasting the textures together. I haven't seen any glowing textures for other bodies.

[Halstrom]

Pregnancy basically swaps the outfits to pregnannt versions of those meshes and fits a naked pregnant outfit when there are no clothes worn. As far as I know the only way to swap textures is to set up a race for each stage of ghoulism then swap race, but I seen reports that swapping race screws up stuff like perks.

[Zeisan]

I know a little about programming, I know you can do if x=<200 then y=y, if x>200 then y=z. How hard would it be to program that into a custom race? I'm sure it would be much more complex than that, but that's the jist of it.

[Halstrom]

You would create a custom race for each stage using the textures for each stage then use a quest script or token script to swap the race with SetRace, the problem you may hit is apparently due to internal coding in the engine we can't modify it may reset all the perks everytime you change race. That is only what I have heard, it would be possible I guess to copy all that info before swapping then re add it all after swapping.

Best to pull appart some other mods in GECK and FNVEdit to see how they do it (or how not to do it), also if you are going to code check out the scripting help thread in my signature.

[Zeisan]

I was cruising the nexus and found a couple mods that seem promising, at least in the fact that they change you into a ghoul one way or another. There are several ghoulification mods, so far I haven't seen any that do what I'm proposing. I'm gonna keep checking and see what I can come up with. I wonder which type of mod would work better to start from, a mod that starts you as a ghoul or one that changes you to a ghoul at radiation.

 

I think maybe it should be a mod that changes you into a ghoul and then when you reduce you rads you revert in appearance. I.E. If I accumulate 1000 rads I become a ghoul, if I reduce my rads to 400 or less I look to be a partial ghoul and 200 or less I look like a normal human. Then if I accumulate 800 or more after the initial reduction I become a glowing one, and if you get back to 1000 rads maybe you explode. Of course as you get up in rads your intelligence suffers along with charisma.

[ElvenScoundrel]

Sorry if I came off as offensive, I couldn't know if the tone was sarcastic or what.

 

Most creatures that are not normal in the Fallout universe become what they are due to both FEV- which is in the air- and radiation, so it's not very farfetched to imagine Ghouls being the consequence of both the FEV and Radiation, but it seems the Bible states it's only Radiation.

 

Either way, it'd need to be more than 600 Rads to turn people into Ghouls, or long-term exposure. As an example, Searchlight was a recent event, yet pretty much everyone in Searchlight turned into Ghouls fairly quickly.

 

Ghoulification is essentially a state of Necrosis that isn't fatal, so I'd say that it happens gradually but quickly, but while you can flush out Radiation using Rad-Away, you cannot reverse Ghoul Necrosis, which is why I recommend becoming a Ghoul at 1000 rads. Since that's a lot of radiation, and at that point it's lethal, it's a great gate to becoming a Ghoul. You'd suffer all the cons of Radiation, but instead of dying, you pass out and wake up as a Ghoul or something. Maybe in a doctor's office or somewhere similar.

[Zeisan]

No worries

 

That's basically what one of the ghoulification mods does, you reach 1000 rads, pass out and become a ghoul.

 

Heres a couple examples.

 

Ghoulification

 

Rad OD - Ghoulification

[Soap desu]

You can always make your on like make a spin off of the whole ghoulification, who says you have to only have 2 arms how about one growing from your stomach or a third leg/eye/breast.. .you get the idea... I'm surprised this has not been done yet as it seems like a very interesting thing to have in fallout games.  Here's hoping for the best .

 

 

EDit.. derp this is old thread my bad. 

[Asariphile]

I feel the best way to go about this would be to have a random chance of ghoulifaction when your in high radiation areas (like 7 or 8 Rads per second and above) the chance would go up the more irradiated you are. If you wanted to go for a big mod, you could alter peoples reactions to you as there is a stigma with being a ghoul. Ive thought about doing something like this, but I don't much care for Bethesda's toolset, and instead am doing NWN modding.

[RitualClarity]

If you were looking at some beginning stages of ghoulification check this link

http://fallout3.nexusmods.com/mods/5293

 

The Church of Atom mutation from FO3. Exposure gives some beginning of ghoulification. I have tried those mods that give you Ghoul race and it always felt short. I wanted to play as a ghoul but the effects weren't what was expected. Didn't protect from Radiation. Healing was slower than that of the normal Ghoul when exposed to radiation and many times still died when exposed to long term radiation. Those issues will have to be addressed and overcome. How much and when the effects will take place.

 

I think if it can be done it would be great. There are mentions in the story where people go through the stages. As well as hints (at least to me) that the feral ghoul is an advanced stage of ghoulification. I could imagine various levels of ghoulification and the effects. Perhaps beginning effects are just to charisma etc. then giving some low grade healing or other perks.

 

In FO3 immersion was broken because the game differentiated the conversations between ghouls and "smoothskins" so if you were playing a ghoul it still treated you as a smoothskin. In FNV I don't see to many issues with separation of races in the interactions.

[KainsChylde]

From what I can understand from Here, ghouls have 3 main stages: Sentient Ghoul, Feral Ghoul, Glowing one. Feral Ghouls also have substages like reaver and roamer. They progress in that order. Low radiation = sentient ghoul, mid-level exposure = feral ghoul, high radiation = glowing one.

[RitualClarity]

From what I can understand from Here, ghouls have 3 main stages: Sentient Ghoul, Feral Ghoul, Glowing one. Feral Ghouls also have substages like reaver and roamer. They progress in that order. Low radiation = sentient ghoul, mid-level exposure = feral ghoul, high radiation = glowing one.

Nice post.

In the article they also address the ghoulification process as well and some physical changes.

[spoiler=Clip of page]Ghouls were not created immediately after the Great War in 2077; the process took months or years for some. After a few weeks, their skin slowly started to flake off and crack, as well as partial or complete hair loss. In Fallout 3, Carol explains that even after the War it took a while for the ghouls to start looking like they do now. However, there have been occasions when ghouls are made instantly by large doses of radiation.

 

So this idea can fit into the Fallout world on both sides, the FO3 as well as FNV world.

[Asariphile]

From what I can understand from Here, ghouls have 3 main stages: Sentient Ghoul, Feral Ghoul, Glowing one. Feral Ghouls also have substages like reaver and roamer. They progress in that order. Low radiation = sentient ghoul, mid-level exposure = feral ghoul, high radiation = glowing one.

 

 

It has to do with time when it comes to feral ghouls. Over a period of time every ghoul goes feral. They're brains will slowly go necrotic, and they'll become like animals. The amount of time is unique to each ghoul. Sometimes it takes decades, sometimes centuries.

 

Glowing ones (In the original unraped lore) were just ghouls who got too much exposure and now give off radiation themselves, they've been retconned to be feral as well. In the retcon, Glowing ones got hit with an extremely high amount of radiation when they turn, and thus go directly feral.