Westerhof

I wanted to write a retrospective for myself on the process on making a mod for New Vegas. Just so I can reflect and have a reminder of what I would do better.

Because boy, I would definitely could do things better.

Note, this write-up will have spoilers. So play it first if you’d like to.

The Mod

Released on 24/02/2025, the mod is a (very) short story about Keith Rodgers, a man living in Goodsprings, New Vegas. At face value, he seems like a regular old guy. You help him around the house, doing chores, until you get send off to fetch a package.

At this point, the quest ‘opens’ up to different rewards. You can either follow the objective, or notice that something in the environment has changed. A previously unseen NPC has appeared in Goodsprings, a traveller wearing a heavy coat.

If you ignore him and head to Primm for Keith’s package, the clerk informs you that it has already been picked up—by a man in a heavy coat. He tells you you might catch up to him, if you’re fast enough.

You hastily return to Goodsprings, to Keith. But, as you enter the home, you find him to be shot. Looking for clues, you find shotgun shells on the ground and a key on Keith’s body.

Rummaging through his belongings, you find a journal. It tells the story of his past in the remnant of the US government. As he fled from the organisation, he stashed his gear in the rocks behind Goodsprings.

You travel there, taking care of the wildlife standing in your way. Opening the stash, the man wearing the heavy coat stops you. Keith’s killer. Depending on your skills, you can make him leave by bribe or persuasion. Or you can eliminate him, taking the contract off his body.

If you do so, the paper points towards a motel near the city - the El Rey. You travel there, eager to find out more about the man. But upon reaching the motel, it is clear that whoever send the hitman out for Keith, has packed up and left.

Confused, you exit the motel. Only to see a new face staring at you from the distance. He appears as just a homeless man, resting and smoking. Thinking nothing off it you wander out into the wastes again, leaving this odd tale behind.

Creating

Now, what I liked making the most, is that you can stop the heavy coat man from taking out Keith and going to the El Rey on Keith wanting you to stop the ‘real’ killers.

But this is also where things went rough. I wanted to make the player have the ability to ‘shape’ their story here. Instead of doing this smart, I tacked this on every time I wanted to enable player freedom. And these new features would pile up every time I playtested.

This, in turn, made me have to rummage through the scripts and different dialogue options ensuring that dialogue options would not go ‘out of bouds’. A more suitable comparison to programming would be ‘refactoring’, but not being able to have any regression tests.

That was a pain. I learned how much my mind relies on getting the vibe in the moment. Instead, I should have drawn this out more beforehand by making a flowchart such as the one I have seen online.

Lessons learned

Things I think I did right:

• Keeping scope small by having a limited amount of characters, tasks and locations.
• Show impacts of player decision by random events and dialogue.
• Unique weapons and armor
• I enjoy the story. In playtesting I eagerly want more.
• Using player attributes and skills

Basically, the gameplay loop looks ‘okay’ to me.

Things I want to do better:

• Prevent feature creep that hasn’t been planned. Use flowcharts to map out the flow(s).
• Make dialogue trees, mapping out the options.
• Use flag variables set in the script more.
• Decentralize more: objective ‘c’ is finished before ‘a’ while maintaining flow.
• Do not make use of existing NPCs.
• Shorter questcode for easier filter, such as RWQ instead of RemWhenQuest.

In Hindsight

Some time has passed since publishing the mod. At time of writing, about 2k people have watched the mod page, 117 unique downloads and 8 endorsements. I absolutely love that at least 8 out of 117 people took the time to endorse the mod. That’s an engagement rate of about 6.8%. Lower than 10%, but higher than 0!

I have no hard evidence for a low view to download ratio, save 1 post in the comments. It mentions that it will wait for the quest mod to be voiced. And I get that. New Vegas modding has been around for a long time, and I take up space in the world. Even causing a conflict with a higher quality mod.

In order to ‘compete’ (can you truly compete when it comes to passion projects?), the mod needs voice acting. Maybe some day, I’ll do just that.

Next, the marketing materials are really bland. I only posted a picture of a house. This is quite minimalistic and boring, while the shortness of the quest mod would not say that there’s a big secret hiding just behind that house.

While writing this, I draw a parelell to the CUBE mod in Fallout 3. It had more marketing, but it had an amazing story hidden behind a single house. My mod does not offer that.

So, lessons learned for next time!

Sequel

While I’m going to be working on some Golang and Unity projects, I will be writing the next quest in the chain. It won’t reference Keith directly, but for the player there will be a clear follow up visible.

I will keep you up to date if I release anything else.

Changelog

• 2025/03/07 - Added section player reception; published.
• 2025/02/25 - Initial write