Fallout 4: Don’t talk about fight club
Game Summary
“Don’t Talk about Fight Club” pays homage to the Oblivion fighting arena quest line. The player has the choice to fight for two brother’s in an underground fight club, in hopes of rising the ranks to the top and becoming the Grand Champion!
This mod creates an entirely different game mode within Fallout 4 that creates a more up-pace fighting style. Coming into each arena match, the player is stripped of their gear and have to scavenge around for different weapons and stimpaks.
Engine: Creation Kit
Platform: PC
Development Time: 8 weeks (70 hours)
Team Size: Individual
Design Goals
New game mode
Scavenge for gear around an arena
Wanting to create a new game mode within Fallout 4, I scripted scenarios in which the player would come into the arena with no gear and had to scavenge for weapons and stimpaks.
Player has their gear placed inside of a locker for them.
Enter the arena with a default gear set.
They must look for weapons placed around the map to fight their opponent.
Having up-paced combat
Scripting situations to remove some of the downbeats generally in Fallout 4 combat.
Automatically pickup weapons
Fallout 4 as a base game is not ideal for picking up multiple weapons on the fly. Not wanting the player to have to stop combat, open their inventory, and equip a new weapon every time they picked up something, I created and scripted weapons that would equip on default.
Player does not have to access inventory when they pick up a weapon in the arena.
Marked it as a weapon favorite so players can easily swap between weapons.
Ammo is attached to the guns.
Scripting required to make the player automatically equip the weapon.
This gif shows the normal process to pickup and equip a weapon.
This gif on the right show the updated weapon pickup and equip process in my game mode.
Interesting gameplay twists
Each fight feels different
So the questline didn’t feel boring or too repetitive, I designed each arena battle to be different.
First arena battle is standard.
Second battle, the enemy starts with a 10mm weapon.
Third battle has the player facing two enemies.
In the fourth arena battle, the player has no weapons to scavenge on their side.
For the fifth battle, there are landmines on their side.
Sixth arena battle pits the player against a deathclaw.
Balancing through Scripting
Fighting a deathclaw is something that is difficult, regardless of level in Fallout 4. So to make it fair and interesting, it required roundabout scripting through things such as perks to make it more balanced.
Added reduced damage perks since you cannot directly reduce how much damage deathclaws do.
Created custom weapons so combat didn’t feel too long or too short.
Created custom armor so that it could still be a challenge to higher levels with better gear.
Removed weapons / ammo that players picked up in the arena to not create an unbalanced money generator.
Early action blocks
Faction based armor
This was the largest mechanic from my action blocks that did not make it into the level. It was armor that players could wear to “blend in” with factions that were normally hostile. Other smaller mechanics that I scripted from the action blocks were things such as a “golden gun” which was a “one shot, one kill” weapon, and power armor boxing.
A specific faction normally has a “kill on sight” mentality with the player.
Once player puts on the “faction armor”, they are able to blend in like normal.
Removing the armor allows the enemies to realize you aren’t a part of their group and will attack.
