Radio song recovery

Computer Build · Post by **Fruckert** » Tue Jul 22, 2014 9:36 pm

So, there's a lot of mods out there that take the radio stations and add more songs to them. This is all well and good, because hearing the same dozen songs for the entire course of one of these games is awful.

I think it'd be way cooler if, instead of the stations just having more songs, you end up looting records/holotapes with songs on them, and then bring them back to GNR and give them to Three-Dog. After you do so, the new songs start getting added to the radio rotation.

Is this feasible at all?

Post by **JaxFirehart** » Tue Jul 22, 2014 9:46 pm

Should be, and would be quite awesome. Especially if you can preview the tracks yourself (also doable).

Post by **Chaophim** » Tue Jul 22, 2014 11:46 pm

I second Jax's reply and with Creative Commons, etc., having a good library of vintage music, this mod could continue to grow via add-on packs. Maybe do the same for the Mojave via a drop box or NPC middleman who gets the discs to Mr. New Vegas. Would go along with a mod idea I had (but lacked the skills to pull off) of having Three Dog and Mr. New Vegas 'share' music between the stations.

Post by **Gribbleshnibit8** » Wed Jul 23, 2014 2:23 pm

It's too bad there's no "StopSound" function. I agree with Jax, this would be pretty cool, should be relatively easily doable by someone who understands the dialogue system (not me :( ) and would really add in an immersive little side quest to the game. Though to be fair, Three Dog being in an old radio station he'd probably have quite a few songs at his disposal anyway.

Aside from the dialogue thing, which I really know little about, I would implement the songs as a randomized loot in containers for households, school, and office containers, making edits to the appropriate leveled lists. Done properly I think only a very few edits would be necessary, to maintain maximum compatibility. From there it's just a matter of tracking which ones the player has turned in, so if they find a duplicate it just won't be taken (Antistar's ammo crafting recipes mod does something similar).

Computer Build · Post by **Fruckert** » Wed Jul 23, 2014 4:34 pm

I was personally thinking of putting the songs in as notes, that way you can listen to them in your pipboy at any time. Figuring out where to put a couple dozen songs would be difficult, though, and would probably lead to a ton of conflicts, so randomized loot is probably a better idea. It should still be easy to add them in as notes, though.

For turning them in, my plan was to put in a terminal in the GNR building that uplinks to a song database, or something like that. There'd be one in the Lucky 38 for Radio New Vegas, too.

Now to figure out how the radios work... If anybody can help with this, I'd appreciate it very much. I know insofar as they're quests with a ton of dialogue attached.

ed: As to Three Dog living in a broadcast station, it's my personal assumption that the EMP from the nukes wiped a lot of holotapes, or...something. Probably going to use that as a justification in the database uplink.

I feel like I should mention that there's also a lot of really cool shit under Creative Commons, as long as where you know where to look. Public domain vintage songs are a far safer bet, but hey, if you can find neat modern jazz that doesn't clash that could be cool too.

Post by **Chaophim** » Thu Jul 24, 2014 5:01 am

I think that's what Jax was meaning. Two 'copies' of the song...one that activates in the radio station playlist and another 'single' version on the playback holotapes.

I'm not a scripter, but here's my theory. Each slot runs on variables like those for Three Dog's announcements - you know, how he announces "... may have been experiementing with Jet at the time ..." for Oasis before you do the quest but "... was seen exiting Oasis ..." after the quest. Variables check to see what sngs have been found and turned in, activating those songs in the playlist once you upload them to Three Dog/MNV.

Computer Build · Post by **Fruckert** » Thu Jul 24, 2014 9:31 pm

So, to facilitate add-ons (putting themed songs in DLC locales is something I'm interested in) being possible, I think I'm going to make an ESM with a big quest with a lot of little variables describing a bunch of songs' discovery status. 0 = not found, 1 = found, 2 = turned in. Then I'd have to add the possibility for all of the discoverable songs into the music topics for each radio station, with the condition that they've been turned in to be able to play. While I'm at it, I might as well try to integrate GNR Extended's radio fixes, so that the bugger actually plays properly.

From there, I think it should be pretty easy to make misc. items that change a respective flag when you pick it up and turn it in.

However, I've been out of the modding game for quite a long time, so I can't remember if what I'm describing will actually work. My biggest concern is how the GECK/game will react to sound files missing, or changing.