Monthly Modder: Antistar

This month we’re chatting with Antistar, a long time modder of Bethesda Game Studio games.

Antistar has even been featured in the 2016 Guinness World Records Gamer Edition for most downloaded Fallout New Vegas mod.

Antistar (Nexus, Bethesda.net) is a multi-talented modder and self-professed Australian computer nerd. He used to work as a level designer at Micro Forte – a name that might be familiar to long-time Fallout fans as they were the studio behind Fallout Tactics. That was before his time there, but he enjoyed working with some of the guys behind that game. While no longer in the gaming industry, modding continues to be a creative outlet, and a constant in his life – before, during and after doing it professionally.

Last month we featured ’Clockwork’ (PC, XB1), a Skyrim adventure with an extended dungeon complex and a partially mechanized player home. This month we’re featuring his two Fallout 4 mods, ’Better Armory Mod (BAM) - Weapon Racks And More’ (PC, XB1) and ’Thompson SMG Replacer’ (PC, XB1), which draw from two ongoing projects, discussed below.

Your ‘Thompson SMG and Better Armory Mod (BAM)’ mods are a sneak peek into two larger projects, ‘Weapon Addition and Replacement Suite (WARS)’ and ‘Project Extend And Change Everything (PEACE)’. What are your goals for these?

I've always gravitated toward the conventional firearms in the Fallout games, rather than the more sci-fi energy weapons. In Fallout 4, I felt that the energy weapons – and the other sort of out-there weapons – were handled fairly well, but I wanted more of a selection of straight-up "guns." ‘WARS’ is aimed at replacing several of those weapons with more overtly true-to-life examples - for example replacing the "Assault Rifle" with the AR-15 platform (i.e. the well-known M4/M16 assault rifle), as well as adding a few new weapons to round out the selection of conventional firearms.

‘WARS’ also overhauls combat mechanics more generally, aiming to nudge the game in more of an immersive-sim direction.

‘PEACE’ on the other hand is a collection of new and changed things I wanted to have in Fallout 4; a kind of catch-all overhaul that is intended to be a sister mod to ‘WARS’ – though you can also use just one or the other. ‘WARS’ for combat, ‘PEACE’ for everything else. ‘WARS’ and ‘PEACE’. (That's why PEACE is such an awkward backronym. "Project Extend And Change Everything"? Yeesh.)

Both mods are combined into one (hopefully) cohesive overhaul by the "War and Peace" patch – because how could I resist calling it that?

What are you currently working on for ‘WARS’ and ‘PEACE?’

‘WARS’ is largely finished except for integrating the ‘AmmoTweaks’ framework, which is currently pending a substantial update – basically an overhaul from scratch compared to the currently available version. I've been excited for a long time to make use of features in ‘AmmoTweaks’ like dynamic ammo type swapping, fire-mode cycling, weapon durability, character stat requirements for weapons, ballistic models for projectiles, etc.

For ‘PEACE,’ I'm just finishing up some "cargo carrier" attachments to be used in the build-your-own-robot system introduced in the Automatron DLC. Big metal backpacks for robots, more or less. Earlier I did a similar thing for power armor, and I think I saw someone describe them as "wearing a wardrobe on your back."

These things are part of the encumbrance overhaul in ‘PEACE,’ which makes your inventory capacity much more dependent on both your character's Strength and equipment.

’Clockwork’ takes the player through several wonderful new locations. What did you draw on for inspiration?

For Clockwork Castle itself with all its Victorian and steampunk aesthetics, I did a lot of research into Victorian art, architecture and life. I watched documentaries (like the excellent "The Victorians"), read history blogs and spent a lot of time in Google image search. Some direct inspirations were games like Clive Barker's Undying, Thief 2 and Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura – all for their Victorian and Steampunk elements.

In contrast, the dungeon design grew more organically out of the story; scenes and gameplay sequences I wanted to have in those areas on the one hand, combined with the existing "tilesets" in Skyrim that I was working with, on the other. I would think of what I wanted to achieve in a particular part and then look at how I could do that with the existing tilesets and art assets.

Clockwork also has an incredible story, was it always intended for a mod?

Yes, the story was written for ‘Clockwork.’ I guess I've been into writing for a long time, but it's mostly always been writing specifically for games, rather than pure fiction.

For ‘Clockwork,’ I started with a set of design goals and practical considerations, and then developed the story in order for those things to make sense. For example, "I want to use text-to-speech for the voiced dialogue, so all the speaking roles will have to be robots” or Dwemer automatons in this case. Or, "There needs to be a reason that the player character – and no-one else – can just come along and take ownership of this big castle."

While trying not to spoil too much, those two elements in particular led to what became the central themes of Clockwork's story: isolation and struggling to connect with others, especially as exacerbated by side-effects of otherwise useful technology. It's something I was thinking about a lot at the time, and is also explored by the terrifying Kairo, one of my favorite movies – so maybe it's no surprise it ended up that way.

For fans looking to start modding themselves, what would you recommend?

The standard first answer is to start small. Modding is very hard work and it's easy to burn out if you're over-ambitious. You should also have a concrete idea of what you want to make and why, and then stick to that plan as much as you can. Feature-creep is seductive but can be another path to burn-out.

When it comes to actually learning how to make the mod you have in mind, the way I always start is to find something that does something similar to what I want – either in another mod or in the base game – and then pull it apart to see how it works. After that comes searching online for tutorials if I come to an especially complicated part.

Would you like to give a shout out to any modders for their assistance over the years?

I received a lot of help with animations in ‘WARS;’ particularly from Hitman47101. Most of the animations in the mod were contributed by him. War Daddy[(https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbqsWMSy1xMnpA-JH8LX0Yg/){target=”_blank”} and [Ha_ru contributed some too – and all of them gave me advice when I was re-learning how to animate myself. So thanks guys!

I'm also very appreciative of all the things isathar – the author of ‘AmmoTweaks’ – has been doing in that mod's upcoming update to make it easier for me to make use of its framework in ‘WARS.’

Going back (kind of a lot) further, I'm still glad for all the help that The 3rd Type and MadCat221 gave me with ‘WMX’ for Fallout New Vegas.

And finally, thanks to everyone that ever helped me out with beta testing one of my mods!

Any mods you’d like to recommend?

I’ll focus on Fallout 4 here because it's what I'm paying the most attention to at the moment and otherwise we'd be here all day. There are a number of mod authors that keep coming up. They just keep putting out consistently amazing mods.

Registrator2000's (Nexus, Bethesda.net) prolific work includes a series of UI mods that are virtually indispensable. FX0x01 (Nexus) specializes in compiling collections of art assets into immaculate weapon mods – which I know from experience is a lot more difficult than it sounds. Still on weapons, asXas
(Nexus, Bethesda.net) is well known for all the gorgeous new-weapon mods he's made. Niero (Nexus, Bethesda.net) has put out a series of beautiful, high-quality armour (and weapon) mods. Kinggath's (Nexus, Bethesda.net) Sim Settlements series just goes from strength to strength and is really an institution all on its own.

Finally, I think toounx (Nexus) is definitely one to watch. Their mods are truly transformative and flawlessly stylish.