‘On The Shelf’ is a repeating series on my blog covering past mods that never quite made it past early development. Each ‘On The Shelf’ entry covers a specific mod that was developed for a period, and usually never reached the pre-alpha phase of development, for one reason or another. Just because these mods were partially made years ago for archaic versions and never released does not mean that they don’t live on, however - you may notice certain concepts, aesthetics and similar systems in some of my released mods that have taken direct inspiration from these projects. Even if you don’t, one day a similar project may come to fruition and release.
Today’s entry is about Van Buren, my attempt to make a mod based directly on the Fallout series of games. The title itself is a reference to Van Buren, the attempted sequel to Fallout 2 created by Black Isle Studios. As a huge fan of almost all the main Fallout games (haven’t really had much time to mess around in 76 but I’ve heard good things). This project was active in late 2019. Recreating the entire game-world of a universe consisting of five extremely in-depth RPG open-world games entirely in a Minecraft mod ultimately proved to be too much of an undertaking for me, but that’s not to say it didn’t unveil some interesting results. Although there were many interesting features added in the mod, the most interesting to me was the Vault system, generation and VATS.
Vaults were a new structure added to the mod that were scattered around the Overworld underground. In order to find a vault, you needed to first find a map to one, which you could purchase from a special Vault-Tec Sales Representative villager. These guys would spawn in funny vans in villages occasionally.
Once you had purchased a Pip-Boy (to open the vault door, of course) and the Map, it was time for your quest to the future begin!
Once you had found the vault, it was time to open it using your Pip-Boy.
These vaults contained innumerable rooms, mostly centered around a single large atrium with plenty of living spaces and other curiosities.
After joining a vault and sleeping in one of the many cots, you would be greeted with an option to trigger the end of the world, and be transferred to a new dimension simulating the post-apocalyptic Overworld.
Other than the Vaults in the overworld, almost all of Van Buren’s content took place in its own dimension, dubbed the Wasteland. This was a large and barren place, it was almost entirely dry brush or desert. Of course, cities and other hallmarks of former civilizational accomplishments were to be planned, but mainly they featured highways and raider settlements.
Raiders were to be one of many factions that could be encountered in the Wasteland. There would be many others, and a dialogue system that would allow you to potentially gain karma and favor with the specific faction.
In Fallout, especially the 3D games, VATS was a targeting system that slowed down time to mimic the turn-based combat of the first two games in a more lore-friendly but also visually impressive way. It was not too different in Van Buren.
To use VATS, one simply needed to have a charged AP(Action Points) Bar and a Pip-Boy 3000 equipped on their off-hand. Then, after pressing a keybind, they would enter VATS mode.
Vats would automatically take control of the player’s camera when used, and hone in on the closest enemy. Then, if clicked, attacks would be fired in sequential order on different targets. During this VATS effect, time was slowed down to give players using VATS an additional advantage.
This project was ultimately too ambitious in scope, especially considering my skill level in 2019. I also was unable to find an artist to help make convincing sprites or models, hence the quite comical programmer art aesthetic in these screenshots.
But all my work on Van Buren was not for nothing. Eventually, a lot of similar concepts and visuals ended up appearing in a much more polished and Minecraft-friendly way in Alex’s Caves’ Toxic Caves biome.
This biome took so much inspiration from Fallout, along with other apocalyptic media, that it's worthy of its own blog post, although I’ll leave that for another time. Furthermore, the skills I learned manipulating tickrate speeds for both the client and server (how time was slowed down during VATS) may make an appearance in another future project of mine…