Reginald's PreFab ShackFest! - Dev Diary (Daily Alpha Release)

[Reginald_001]

And I just finished the Seventh metal shack for today. Introducing the 'MaxiShack'

 

 

Some beauty shots:

 

 

[Reginald_001]

And I've finished the 8th metal shack today, so now the entire pack has 18 prefabs.

 

Introducing the 'FlakShack!'

 

 

I've put all of the shacks made today together in some screenshots:

 

 

'Beautyshot' of the FlakShack (it's not that beautiful but very functional):


All is quiet in this little town:

 

[Reginald_001]

Here is the alpha build for today: RegsPrefabShackFest_alpha_0_3.7z

Same instructions as before. I'm hoping someone can test it out for me and let me know of any major bugs/issues!

 

This build contains 18 shacks!

You can find the shacks under the 'wood' and the 'metal' build menus, directly next to the regular prefabs icons.

 

And as I continue working, I just finished the ninth prefab in the metal series, making it 19 in total.

Introducing "BushyShack"

 

 

Beauty shots:

 

 

[Guest]

Hey Reginald_001,
Just tested out your most recent build, I didn't have any issues with it and everything seemed to be fine when I used them in my settlements. I'm not that creative so thank you for being creative for me lol It's exactly what I've been looking for with prefabs. Thanks for sharing! 

[Reginald_001]

2 hours ago, Keeshca said:

Hey Reginald_001,
Just tested out your most recent build, I didn't have any issues with it and everything seemed to be fine when I used them in my settlements. I'm not that creative so thank you for being creative for me lol It's exactly what I've been looking for with prefabs. Thanks for sharing! 

Thanks! It's turning into a regular 'Sim Settlements Light'.

Perhaps I should have called it 'Sim Shacks' or something.

[Reginald_001]

Have been fighting with the second door snap in the BushyShack all morning (3 hours long at least). And I finally solved it..  First I had posted something on Nexus, but didn't really want to wait so I continued to struggle on.

 

I can't make heads or tails out of the rotation system for snappoints!

They just don't make any logical sense.. likely because I'm dumb when it comes to math..

 

At least now I can finally get back to making shacks, on to the tenth shack, then I will concentrate on the first store, which will likely prove to have it's own challenges.

 

My last post on this at Nexus:

Quote

I found this in a PDF tutorial in Nexus downloads, but I don't seem to be able to understand it.

When setting up a SP, you have to consider its origin (which is the origin of the main object),
and the orientation of the edge you want it to snap to objects and other objects to snap to it. Our
floor tile has 4 sides, and we want those sides to allow other objects to snap to them (such as
other floors, or walls or roofs etc.), thus our SPs need to be oriented in a manner that allows
that. The SP angle system starts on the positive Y axis of Nifskope
(bottom left in the render window). So, we have the following
Y side => 0 degrees snap orientation
­X side => 90 degrees
­Y side => 180/­180 degress (doesn’t matter)
X side => ­90 degrees
*snap orientation refers to hemisphere’s orientation.
** rotation is considered around the Z axis
So what you have to retain from here is the way SP angles go relative to Nifskope’s system of
axis.

So I eventually ended up in some weird chain of thought where I tried the following combination:
A: -90 x: 1..00000 Y: 0..00000 Z: 1.00000

As soon as I left the editing field, it (NifSkope) changed it into this:
A: 90 X: 0.70711 Y: 0.00000 Z: -0.70711

 

So I tried it in game and it was now facing South again.
Alright, all I had to do was mirror the Z axis, I knew that much.

So I changed it into this (removed the '-' sign at the Z coords):
A: 90 X: 0.70711 Y: 0.00000 Z: 0.70711

And now the door snaps and rotates correctly around the Z axis as it should, rotating 'North'.

I still don't understand why these values work the way they do, and would like to know how they work exactly, so I can make arbitrary rotations on future prefabs, but at least the issue is solved for now in the way that I know all combinations for N, S, E and West.

Note:

I found out that the concrete set is from the DLC, and since I don't want the DLC to be a dependency, I've decided to leave that out.

This means that when I'm done with the metal set, I'll move on to the vendors.

[Reginald_001]

Didn't feel that well today so wasn't able to churn out much. I did make the 'IglueShack!' and I finished the Metal set!

A shack inspired by an Iglo, gone wrong... but right in so many ways..

(Now there are 20 prefab prefabs in the mod, 10 wood shacks and 10 metal shacks.)

 

I will start to experiment with making vendor shacks now.

They should basically be pieces of furniture (e.g. Nifs) that have markers added and keywords to make it a store that settlers will use. It should also have idle markers, so I'll likely look at lot at the vanilla furniture to make it work.

 

 

Despite it's look it's a very spacious shack with lots of room inside.

 

And it's pretty versatile as well! All three shacks are the IglueShack in this shot, but they can be made to look different with a minimal change in lighting.

Recipe tip: Place random furniture and junk on top to make it look more authentic!

 

[Reginald_001]

OK. Here's how you create a settler enabled SecuriShack!

It's funny, normally creating this setup would take me 10 minutes or so to get right and would not look as good, now it took me more time to fetch a settler to assign to the marker, than it took me to build the shack and add a bed and a door.

 

1) Place the securishack, add a bed, some seeklights and some turrets on top.

 

2) Place the SecuriShack marker (from the 'Defense > Guard Posts' menu in the workshop) and assign a settler.

--> THE RUG SNAPS IN PLACE. <--

 

 

3) Profit!

 

 

Dev diary:

I wasn't able to make the entire shack a furniture item. Once I assign it to a furniture piece, the model itself becomes nonsolid for other workshop items. There's NOTHING on the internet on this, other than some gamers fussing about it, and 'use E' to place objects (they were speaking about clutter and the in game option to pick stuff up).

 

It works:

 

 

 

 

 

And the settler walked up to it and took position.. but then I couldn't place a bed or lights on it.

 

I tried a whole boatload of keywords and actor values, trying to make the shack solid to beds, chairs, lights and turrets, but everything falls or pokes through it. So after a lot of fiddling I simply decided to go with vendor/security rugs. I will likely make some shops, then players can place a vendor rug behind the counter and assign a settler to it.

[Reginald_001]

Ok, spent some 5 minutes on a SecuriShack build for some beauty shots. I decorated it inside with some basic furniture, assigned a settler to the rug, added some clutter objects et.. voila!

'Beauty shots'..

 

 

[Reginald_001]

So here is Alpha build 4 already!

20 Different Shack Prefabs, all tested, navmeshed and working. Snap points were added for security rugs on the balconies of both SecuriShacks so you can assign settlers to them at ease now. Once you've placed the 'SecuriShack Guard Marker' you can rotate it at will in workshop mode, to point the settler in any direction you want. This download offers the full Wooden and the full Metal sets
 

No DLC required, no Scripts used (FKSE not needed), works well with all known mods and versions of Fallout4).

 

RegsPrefabShackFest_alpha_0_4.7z (2mb)

 

 

Some more screenshots:

 

And a lot more:

[Reginald_001]

I worked on a very large shack: The "Shopping Center Shack".

But it's basically just a very big shack that you can use for multiple purposes.

 

(All the lights, the thing on top, the objects etc.. were placed later through the regular workshop, you can decorate it as you see fit).

 

 

As soon as I placed a Bar/Restaurant rug behind the counter, settlers came running toward it and started living in it.

Even with the beams inside, they navigate it perfectly as I knitted the navmesh around each bar individually like so:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Much more screenshots:

 

 

 

 

[Reginald_001]

OK. So I was hating on the vanilla dog houses this morning, so I figured that dogs need some proper shacks as well.

Introducing 'The Dog Shack!'

 

 

These are furniture items, they work just like normal dog houses, and Dogmeat seems to like them over regular ones, perhaps that's because these have a nice teddybear, a model of a boat to play with and a comfy mattress!

 

 

There's a small bug, where the dogs are rotated for a bit and their feet seem to hang in the air. I tried navmeshing the furniture, but then Dogmeat doesn't recognize it as something it can use. I think this is a bug in the game, and not in the furniture itself. Likely it's because of the ramp leading up to the entry. But my big annoyance with the vanilla doghouses is that they don't have a foundation and the back always seems to be floating up in the air if I place it somewhere. Now I also know why the original doghouses don't have a foundation. They likely never managed to fix that bug.

 

BUT: After a couple of minutes the dog rights itself and it works like normal.

 

 

 

 

[Reginald_001]

RegsPrefabShackFest_alpha_0_5.7z

 

Ok, so I think I'm pretty much done with this mod:

• 22 Buildable Shack Prefabs:
  • 10 Wooden Living Shacks
  • 10 Metal Living Shacks
  • 2 Security Shacks (1 Wood and 1 Metal)
• 2 Dog House Shacks
• 1 Wooden Generic Platform for Brahmin Feed Troughs or Garden Plots
• 1 Craftable Security Marker (6 Defense) to be placed on the balcony of a SecuriShack
• Door snap points so players can snap doors.
• Lore Friendly
• Balanced Building Recipes

 

It was about 5 days of work in total and I'm very happy with the results!

This is the FINAL alpha that I'm releasing and if no one find any major bugs, I will release this soon here and on the Nexus.

You are pretty 'safe' to use this in your regular game. It's stable, and I won't likely be replacing anything that can break your save games.

 

 

A complete overview of all the shacks you can build can be found in the spoiler:

 

 

 

[Reginald_001]

And I decided to make a second Dog Shack. Dogmeat seems to like this one too!

 

 

[formanfred]

Great work Reginald's ,I love these prefab shacks ?

[Reginald_001]

29 minutes ago, formanfred said:

Great work Reginald's ,I love these prefab shacks ?

Thanks!

 

I can't seem to stop myself. Built a new shack in the metal series, the 11th one, called 'The ShackBoat'.

An open 'thrown together' little shack with a tiny balcony in the back.

 

 

[DRKronk]

Sir, I revise my initial view... you are not a genius, you are a MAD Insane Genius!? Exactly what FO4 needs.

Between this new mod and Ivy, my time in the commonwealth is much more fun.  thank you sir.

[Reginald_001]

36 minutes ago, DRKronk said:

Sir, I revise my initial view... you are not a genius, you are a MAD Insane Genius!? Exactly what FO4 needs.

Between this new mod and Ivy, my time in the commonwealth is much more fun.  thank you sir.

Thank you sir Kronk!

 

I am putting the finishing touches on the mod and am about to upload it to Nexus and here. I've balanced the building recipes as best as I can to make it balanced within the game. Purists not withstanding, it should satisfy most gamers. Otherwise it's easy to fire up the CK or Fo4Edit to change them to your liking.

 

I've also added a basic simple wooden platform, which you can place Brahmin feed troughs on, or garden plots.

(You can also place garden plots on the balconies of some shacks if you want).

 

 

Some beauty shots:

 

 

 

[Reginald_001]

I've balanced it, added the final touches, then released the mod.

You can play it by downloading the file here:

 

@CPU can you close this dev thread for me? Thanks!

[Guest]

Topic locked as requested.