"Auuuughhhhh....!" I stretched out and yawned as the sun poked in roughly through the still wide-open window beside my mat on the floor. Quickly I brought my hands to shield my eyes as I rolled over onto my elbows and knees, getting up right after that.
Standing there I felt a slight kink in my neck as having no pillow was torture. I still felt tired and my posture was all correct and shit, unusual for a gamer of my level. All of this concern faded though as my stomach grumbled again and hunger soon made my mouth water.
"Another point or two.... Why do you do this to me body?" Complaining as I was, I still moved through the apartment to my system console. The shop was refreshed for daily specials again but I ignored it as anything there was just a massive tease for me at the current moment. There was no way I would gain anywhere near 1,000,000 P over night.
With that said and done I just chose food section, selected some basic bacon and eggs and closed it down. I didn't even look at my points or game as hunger was far too pressing for me right now. I get hangry if I don't have breakfast, and no one would like me hangry.
...
Finishing eating I finally decided to get on and check how my game was doing.
|Points: 17,857.50|
'Holy fuck!? What happened!?'
I began searching through the stats of the game and immediately found over one thousand people actively playing. 2381 purchases had been made of Fallout in total and given the price I had set for it, I had received $35,715 in total... In other words, 17,857.5 P.
"I've made bank!"
Excitement filled me as I looked at 100 P battle pass and bought it immediately, gaining 1,100 points straight away as an inventory-like box appeared on the screen. A bed symbol and sheets symbol was shown there, a hint coming up and explaining that I could simply chant 'Summon [Item] here' anywhere in the apartment and the said item in the inventory would appear there.
Beyond that though was the extended Battle-Pass that I received.
---BATTLEPASS---
*Have ten people purchase your game* : Single Bed, Silken Sheets (COMPLETED)
*Update a Game three times* : Dishwasher, Cutlery Set
*Introduce a Unique Feature that could enhance your popularity* : 100P (COMPLETED)
*Surpass 100 active players in any one game* : 1000P (COMPLETED)
*1 player reaches 100 hours played in one of your games* : Air-conditioning, Internet
*Buy 5 enhancements and apply them to a game you have created* : TV, 5 Sets of clothes
*Reach 100,000 Purchases in one single game* : Unlocks the Apartment
|Points: 18,957.50|
The new quests were appealing, especially the unlocking of the apartment. I loved the inside, don't get me wrong, but the outside had things like takeaway, ice-cream and women. All things that I also loved.
With my new goals focussed I decided to finally check in on the players of Fallout.
Bringing up the screen I immediately saw hundreds of different feeds all playing at varying levels of Shady Sands. There was two players though that had reached Vault 15. Darknight and one called Spidersidekick. The two had since learned of the perks system, enabled when they reached the first bar of receiving one. Both had three choices of perks to choose from and these could wildly shape how their characters would play.
Darknight went with a potent combo for his playstyle... Ghost, Sharpshooter and Educated. Ghost gave him extra stealth ability in darkness. Sharpshooter increased his Perception by 2 when shooting in aimed mode and Educated gave him an extra 2 skill points per level. He was a beast in ranged and was quickly picking up other skills that could aid him, such as engineering and electronics.
Spidersidekick however went with a more melee option. Bonus to Hand to Hand was his first choice, giving him more attacks in quick succession. Awareness to see his opponents strengths, weaknesses and possibility of attack and then finally Toughness for the damage resistance. His main weapon was a sword he acquired in a random encounter when he accidently stopped in the desert.
Spider was streaming though whilst Darknight wasn't. I was able to track that through the game interface, the number of viewers, the live feed and even the title that he used for the stream coming up.
"... Wow, i didn't know it would be that effective..."
Hundreds of people were watching his stream, more new comers asking about the game with a slough of people answering them. They all watched on and some of them even said they purchased, which I confirmed a second later as my points went up by 30 once more.
Spider was currently dealing with the rats outside of the blown apart vault entrance, the same merchant guard from Shady Sands at his side as a companion of sorts for now. He hacked one rat's head off and the proceeded to slink to the next as it leapt and tried to bite him, missing horribly.
"Hah, bad choice rad-rat!" His sword struck down with the weight of a strength based character, in other words, It was like me when I got hit by the car just yesterday... 'God my life is fucked...'
More purchases were being made by the minute. This called for something. An update. I needed to thank people for buying and playing the game so far, whilst also giving a tangible upgrade to the visual quality; as it was quite pixelated and I saw many people commenting their dislike for the lack of definition. Personalising a character's looks would also be a good addition.
My plan was to make it so that certain mirrors in towns or safe areas could be usable to implement this feature, much like the magic mirror of Baldurs Gate III. Not an original idea, but one that definitely worked!
Cracking my fingers and clicking off of the stream, I began my work. I had a lot of ideas to pull from for graphical fidelity, Fallout 4, Fallout 3, but all of them had a sort of cartoony aspect to them. I wanted this game to be gritty, a realistic sense to it. Thus I started blending ideas from both games that would fit and then started adjusting.
This worked by taking the images or memories of the art styles from my mind and transferring them to the system, somehow. From there I was able to move around the art in a 3D context on characters or monster and highlight certain areas using tap and drag. With that highlight I could get the system to slowly refine the details with verbal prompting from myself.
To be honest, it was some wizard shit and most of it was very complex to learn. Fortune blessed me with hints though and I some how managed to work my way through. Gone was the cartoony in places where it was needed; death claws, power armour, some of the larger nasties in the game... Now they were almost horror creatures. Blood saturated mangled limbs that themselves were mutated. Power armour had a heaviness and weightiness that was expressed in the movements of them. Terrain now had more realism with crows and other mutated creatures flying around amidst small particle effects of weather.
There was a sun now present, visible for the players to see in the skybox. A skybox that changed depending on the time of day. It was a huge leap in visual quality. Only issue was the bug fixing and error salvaging. It would take a few hours given the fact I'd need to go through it with a fine tooth comb. Alas, that was the price of getting points though...
...
Meanwhile, as Freya built her next update, Damian forged ahead into the Vault finding very little in the way of loot. Some bottlecaps were found and some small clothing items, but they were unimportant and would only sell for one or two caps at most.
He had spent the better part of eighteen hours on this game so far and that was only due to his need for rest. His father had been a no show for a while now, a rest from his incessant complaints about lacking effort in training.
"This is way more fun than beating up some deadbeats on the streets!" He pulled the trigger on his pistol and then re-aimed, having the green display pop up on the creature as time slowed down in his perspective. Really, it was an awesome mechanic he had found and whilst it was influenced by luck, in some ways, he loved it.
"I like how they just explode, it's so... cathartic..."
He strapped the pistol to his side as he inspected some thing around the vault. There were numerous panels and different do-hickeys. Some of them, he could tell, were for opening the vault entrance... But further more, when he looked at some of the objects he got small breakdowns of what the devices were for and in rare circumstances, how they were maintained.
Damian suspected that it was a result of him skilling into Engineer, a wise decision now that he knew of this feature.
"This game really is well-thought out, I mean, a skill system that has in-world explanations. A combat system that mimics real life in a fluid but still game-like way. A story that is compelling in a variety of ways, so far. Then there is the Virtual Reality tech. I would have though my father or Stark had made this."
"Heh."
"Stark would have plastered his name all over it... What am I thinking?"
Shaking his head he walked through the next room, wiping out all of the rad-rats and moles. This time he found something interesting. It was a book, but unlike others he had seen that were merely background, this had a title.
|World War III, Vault Tech Initiative.|
Picking it up he wiped off the exterior to no avail, the dust being a part of the texture and less of a real consideration. Smirking a little he opened the book and immediately was shunted into a cutscene. It was the original cutscene of the game where the apocalypse was introduced to everyone in the original game.
He watched in horror as nuclear weapons detonated all over the world and people were forced into shelters. There was a particular focus on America here, the statue of liberty, the bald eagle... It was now clear where this game was set.
"I'll be damned. It's based off of the USA! Wouldn't have noticed with all the deserts around... But I guess that's what happens after nukes drop..."
There was melancholy in the moment, adjacent to excitement. Fallout was certainly his style of game and it was most certainly going to be the most popular one around for quite a while it seemed.
'I wonder if I can buy stocks?'
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