Chell's Caves
A Fallout: New Vegas spelunking mod
Chell's Caves or ChellsCaves is a mod i'm working on for Fallout: New Vegas that aims to expand gameplay by providing an alternative "worldmap". It will add a series of interesting subterranean chambers and passages that span across the entire worldmap and create an entirely new experience of travel.
I want to add different distinct areas and tons of unique cool biomes and points of interest like fungal forests, abandoned mines, underground ruins, and even maybe some spooky secrets.
Currently I only have a very small amount of the mod done, the entrance chamber to the Goodsprings Mine. I want it to eventually connect to different places, maybe it will connect to goodsprings cave, an unassuming little coyote den from vanilla, but I definitely want it to connect to a cave near Primm.
Goodsprings mine
Let me give you a walkthrough of Goodsprings Mine. That's the overlook just in front of goodsprings mine. It's behind Doc Mitchell's house, in the foothills of a mountain where there is normally nothing at all.
This is the entrance to the mine. I wanted to do something unique and different to the base game, so I decided make a little mining system where you can mine certain types of stone with a pickaxe. Just like minecraft hehehehehe.
Here you can see the entrance is blocked, and the only way to get in is by mining. Thankfully someone conveniently left a pickaxe right there. They also left it upside down somehow? Huh.
Sidenote: I want to add a way to get loot from mineable stone but I don't know what items to add. I had the idea for a rock weapon that you literally just chuck at people but I have no greater idea. Maybe I'll add a suggestion box to this website and steal your ideas lmao.
Now that I mined through the cave-in, I can head right on in and explore! (don't try this in real life, you'll probably get crushed by even more caving-in!)
Into the depths!
As I enter the Goodsprings mine, one of the first sights you'll see is this little entrance room, before you get to a larger chamber. This entrance room has two lanterns that I scripted to be able to be toggled on and off.
Here's the light toggle-ability in action. Initially when you enter, both lights are off and you have to turn them on yourself, as the entrance is sealed up and people have assumedly not been in here in many years. Thats actually the reason I coded this feature in the first place, I had these lit lanterns for decoration and then I realised it makes literally no sense for them to be lit if the entrance is entirely caved in.
This is the entrance into the larger chamber, I really like this area. Look at the verticality! Make sure not to slip!
I wanted to make the caves feel interesting instead of just having the kind of bland vanilla caves that just feel like regular cuboid rooms, so I used a variety of cave rocks and dungeon pieces in ways they were not really intended to be used. I learned this technique from my brother, but I put my own spin on it.
See those areas where you can fall off into the void if you're not careful? Those are the locations of future passages!
