Mod:Fallout: The Frontier/Development

Fallout: The Frontier was released to the public on the 15th of January 2021 after being in development for almost 7 years.

The Frontier's release was planned on Steam and Nexus Mods with the Steam release a week later. Due to massive interest in the mod and being released on a Friday the servers of Nexusmods.com could not handle the traffic. On the 16th of January the mod was available from the Nexus Mods page again

History
maybenexttime started developing The Frontier around May 2014. He got the idea from the second world-space of The Rockwell Pursuit mod and wanted to create a brand new environment that was not like the Capital Wasteland or the Mojave Desert.

To build his new world he asked Dylan Hollis and Someguy2000 to lead the project. Both declined his offer as they were busy. When his modding friend Hopper joined, they wanted to use assets from the upcoming mod Winter Is Coming to create The Frontier's world space. After getting permission to use the assets and with the help of macintroll the development of The Frontier started.

In a Reddit AMA on the r/FalloutMods subreddit in 2017 maybenexttime said that there are probably at least 30-40 active modders working on his team. With upwards of 100 modders who have contributed to the project.

On the 25 of April the development team announced that they would remake and rework the NCR ques-tline.

Reception
On the 26th of March the mod had 100.000 unique downloads on Nexusmods.com

Controversy

 * Some of the mod's attempts at sexual humor (e.g. Wild Wasteland deathclaw sex, Mae Caufield joking about the Courier taking her virginity when she is underage) did not land with some fans, and were patched out.
 * On the 27 of January news came out that one of the Frontier's developers, ZuTheSkunk posted animated pedophilic content on his personal artist account. The development team decided to remove Zu from the team, remove his work and ban him from the discord channel. This resulted in removing the vast majority of pip-boy icons. It is noteworthy, however, that Zu was never a major developer on the mod and his contributions were on the minor side; therefore any claims he was one of the mod's "main" developers is untrue.
 * The NCR campaign was criticized by some players who felt it was poorly written.

Development team
Over the years a lot of developers (scripters, artists, musicians, voice artists) and other team members have contributed in the creation of The Frontier. <!--La Manna's stuff is all still in. Dusty road to hell, Guns gas guts glory or whatever it is, no mans land, etc

-- I am NazoTheDark, a former member of the Frontier's Core Team. Ask Me Anything!

https://www.reddit.com/r/FalloutTheFrontier/comments/li21cw/i_am_nazothedark_a_former_member_of_the_frontiers/

Why is the Legion and crusader story line better then the NCR one? Because Nazo and Odin are dedicated writers, not scripters.

why wasn't the NCR campaign cut down to be shorter? Because Devilswish had total creative control

Why are all the companions so well fucking written? Because they were written by Nazo and Odin

Who put in all the "horror" scenes? Devilswish, although Swordstone was Rikkurikku

Q:Why does the mod team love to shift resposibility so much? If Devilswish had so much power, couldn't you have reported your concerns to tgspy? So many years and no one dared to even question the NCR questline? Did anyone even playtest it?

A:Are we not allowed to answer questions with the proper answer? Yeah, Devilswish had total creative control of the NCR. Every time an issue was brought up he would threaten to leave. If he left, that would mean that all of the content the former project lead showed off in the trailers would be unfinished, and then there's be a whole different controversy.

Q: out of sheer curiosity, how much of the assets did Devil have? i have been told between 40 to 80%

A: None? I don't know where this "Devil had the assets thing" came from. Devil made a few of his own things, bit pretty much everything not coding or writing related was made by someone else or someone worked with Devil make it. The issue with Devil wasn't that he controlled assets like Unoctom, it's that he was the only one who knew how the coding in the NCRMQ worked.

Q:How do you think the team handled the contreversy ? A:Very, very poorly. The only things that were done right was calling out Zu and taking the mod down, everything else was either poorly thought out (which is understandable considering) or driven by paranoia.

Q:Why does Rancor never take off His sunglasses? A:This was apparently something Ray Chase asked for.

- Phobos - Side Content Contributor-

A long LONG time ago, I realized we didn't have a Frontier variant of Dogmeat. So I decided to make one, but rather then make another dog, I decided on a spider since they were a unique Frontier creature. I don't really think Skitters had any inspirations beyond Dogmeat. Thx for noticing the Hanged Man thing.

Q: Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh yes. Very much so. The NCR Questline was basically his little fiefdom and he refused to share or change anything for anyone. He also went out of his way to not interact with the team.

I asked him a lore question, and it took him a full year to respond to me with "oh there's no backstory there".

My favorite Devil story is when I wanted to make Rags the Mayor of Junkflea. Devil was against it since apparently it wasn't "how he wrote the character, he's just supposed to pathetic". Alright, that's fine, I can respect that. Devil suggested I make the random bartender at the back of the slums into the Mayor but I made Captain Monroe the Mayor instead (she was originally going be Rags' second in command, but when she became the Mayor I created Tag to fill the roll).

As a reference to the original idea, I mentioned in dialogue that Rags USED to be the Mayor but got brainwashed or something by the Enclave to make him who he is now. Which keeps his pathetic status and, if anything, makes him MORE pathetic.

Devil didn't like that either, and instead of asking me to change it, he just went in and CHANGED THE NAME OF THE NPC, without asking anyone. And he only admitted it when I pointed this out. However, the dialogue wasn't voiced yet, so I went in and changed the name in the dialogue to the new name of the NPC and because Devil never cared about my content, I don't think he ever noticed.

So yeah, Devil was a tyrant when it came to anything that touched his content.

Q: The legion in new vegas was a roman cosplay, most of the equipment the legion used was from salvaged armor or sport apparel. Is there any backstory/lore consideration for the portland legion to have freshly made armor(such as valerius' Russel crowe armor) and melee weapons?

A: They picked it from Ostia, which was a museum of medieval arms and armor before the war. They then reproduced a lot of the armors for mass use.

Q: I've seen several quotes stating that the mod was mostly patched together from 2017, was it that bad before ?

A:3). Yes, but not in a negative way. It wasn't "patched together" from stuff that didn't pan out or cut stuff, it was "patched together" in the sense that new things were added on over time that wasn't planned for. Basically we just kept building on to the mod to kill time while we waited for Devil to finish the NCRMQ.

-s for Mae, I thought people would laugh at the Night In the Woods reference and move on. As for the thought process on them, you can check my last post for some of it.-

Q: I´ve heard talk about toxicity and whatnot in the dev team, can you shed a bit light on that? What was is it like working on the mod? A: 3). Oh boy, I was waiting for someone to ask this question. For the most part, working on the mod was fine, but the project has always had an issue of keeping on toxic individuals because they are "needed" to do something. Devil was one of them and there were two others who I won't name here, but one of them is still on the dev team (and no, it isn't TGSpy, he's always been a great project lead and a great guy). As we got closer to release, things started getting more and more strained, which is to be expected with the stress of an upcoming release, so this person isn't to blame for that, but they did make things way, way worse. And whenever I would ask this person to calm down (sometimes nicely, most times not) their response would always be "I'm just blunt and telling it like it is!" I_I. Suffice to say, they were not very fun to work with, especially when all their "apologies" typically had some kind of asterisk that excused them from responsibility. One apology even ended with them saying "do you hear me!?" and @ing me until I responded. This ultimately, is why I left the team. Yes the controversy involving Zu and such took a lot out of me, but at the end of the day, the main reason I didn't say was because couldn't justify working with this toxic individual any longer, especially with my mental health now being what it is. Overall though, it was a stressful but pleasant experience, and I wish all of the team, even the toxic elements, the best of luck on the mod and on future endeavors.

Q: Well, I feel like my first question is the same to many, but what was the thougth process behind the NCR main questline? I'm genuinely curious about it's development.

A:1). The NCRMQ was a hold over from when the mod was a small linear experience, and it shows it's in crushing linearity and COD-esque set pieces. Devil was always way more interested in the coding and visual side of development then the writing, he was also dead set on making something he liked regardless of weather or not it would appeal to anyone else (which of course, it didn't).

A:Is Tricky Dick's name a Black Dynamite reference?

Q:It's a Richard Nixon reference

- Ostia was initially designed by Macintrol and was about 3x larger than it currently is. Testudini reworked the cathedral to be smaller and once we had a proper interior tileset made by Jack, Devils made the interiors -

Q: What was your creative process when writing the Legion MQ? A: It was mostly iterative. I initially worked with a guy named Sub and we made a few drafts together, but eventually he left and then I put together what ended up being the final draft of the Questline.

The main inspirations while writing were the Legion from the main game, Oblivion's Dark Brotherhood and Heavy Metal music.

--

-->

<!-- Sources interview with tgspy no original source... not used !!??? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-E2o-0PuME0&t=566s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waNTnRTXrH8&t=1746s

Nazo sideq and

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https://www.reddit.com/r/FalloutTheFrontier/comments/lehta4/faq_answers_to_frequently_asked_questions/

Q:What's the overall plan going forward? I've been reading Xilandro's tweets to better figure out what the heck was going on and from what I can piece, things look bleak.

A:The immediate goal, right now, is to get things fixed up as much as possible. Replace any content that we had to pull, add in an independent start, go through and fix any bugs that people have found, etc. Past that, things are much further up in the air, although I can say pretty definitively that there are things going on behind the scenes that people will be able to look forward to.

Q: What's the deal with the Doom 3 Pentagram?

A: It was placed there several years ago by DevilsWish. It was noticed by the team, so Wanamingo made a new custom version for him to use. We assumed Devil made the swap, but he either never did, or switched back to the DOOM 3 one. When it was pointed out to use after release, we replaced the model with the one we had made from scratch and removed it from the files.

Q:Why did you feel it was necessary to steal entire sequences verbatim from other games?

A: We didn't. The NCR MQ, and virtually every instance of that was created by one person, and the team didn't have any control over what he created due to the prominence of the member and the fact they were a founding member of the project that insisted on pretty much singlehandedly creating the NCR MQ.

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Trailer on youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_CU9cyP3go Voice Actors https://www.falloutthefrontier.fr/voice-actors/ The Frontier - Dev Diaries | The Return! - ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEV-puWI0Wc -- The Frontier AMA - TGspy - 2 march 2021 (https://www.reddit.com/r/FalloutTheFrontier/comments/lvq4bx/i_am_the_project_lead_for_the_frontier_ama/)

how did the leak in 2017 affect the development - It didn’t.

Do you feel some of the outrage was unwarranted? For example, the fetish thing with feet or lizards, or whatever. To me that was just Fallout wickedness, never understood the rage against it. Definitely not a "vanilla" game. - Yes, it was absurdly overblown

What's your feelings towards people running the uncensored version of the mod intentionally with backported patches? To me it seems some of the removed content is no worse than in previous Fallout games- but it's understandable certain items would be removed in order to keep the project kosher for the diverse group that contributed. Aka, you're between a rock and a hard place. I'm curious as to your honest feelings surrounding the rage baiting and the straight up lies. "Omg America's feet has 10billion powygons!" - I don’t mind. People can use whichever versions they like, we had to make the cut back version to comply with requests from content creators to remove their work or contributions - https://www.reddit.com/r/FalloutTheFrontier/comments/lvq4bx/i_am_the_project_lead_for_the_frontier_ama/


 * When did you first get into modding for Fallout.
 * Before the Frontier, have you worked on other mods or made any yourself? If so, what are they?
 * When you first joined The Frontier Team what was your job and when did you become project lead?
 * How much did maybenexttime interact with the mods development after he stepped down as project lead?


 * 2014
 * Not really, just some minor mods and bits and pieces.
 * I was an interior designer for a while and around 2017 I got involved in the project management side.
 * he didn’t really. Once he stepped down he was pretty much no contact from there on out.

So, what exactly happened when you quit? You made an announcement saying you were stepping down as project lead, left the discord server, than a few days later you were back and making announcements like nothing happened. - I was for all intents and purposes quit. I’d left every server and I was happy just being out of it for a bit. But I felt a desire to actively keep working and not let my team down. So I stepped back in and kept working as usual.

What was the largest the mods development team ever got and out of the original members how many stuck around until the end? - Most of the original core team has stuck around but we lost a handful of contributors. The largest the team ever got was probably in the early days of development when we had like 30 people but no one was actively developing much

Is Devilwish still a part of the team? - No - The Frontier AMA - maybenexttime (https://www.reddit.com/r/FalloutMods/comments/4glr86/fnv_fallout_the_frontier_ama_maybenexttime/)

Weijisen was a big modder who worked on "War for the Overlord" which was a huge success. AlexScorpian and Donta has also made models for various games as well.

Weijisen, Macintroll, Hopper31, Devilswish182, Printerkop, Testudini, Dragbody, Drumber, dogtooth, odinsword and countless more (I would have listed more but we use real names to communicate and forgot some of their Nexus IDs :S) There are probably at least 30-40 active modders working on this team right now. With upwards of 100 modders+ who have contributed to this project.

--- Youtube Fallout New Vegas Mods_ The Frontier Interview With Maybenexttime (1080p_30fps_H264-128kbit_AAC) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWA0K5uLz8I&t=36s

maybenexttime is from philly

00:05:40,860 so I started to get the idea of the frontier by playing Rockwell pursuit is a mod that came out a few years ago and the second world space i believe was paradox colorado where it was a snowy

I thought it would provided like a very brand new environment and it was not like what you played in the capital wasteland in the Mojave Desert so I thought it was something that we could

00:06:13,319 model offers such as Dylan house whom a Rockwell pursuit in some guy 2000 if ,unfortunately they were a bit busy for hopper and me and hopper would then

us we just in released uh the winter is coming mod or he hasn't really released it but he showed off a lot of pictures about any really huh if we could have permission to use those assets we might

00:07:02,548 I recruited Mac control to use with Jason's assets and make the frontier and that's how essentially the project started and once people started seeing

00:08:46,110 excellent core group of members in Devil's which we just in Mac control and hopper and a few others work hard and continue to produce

00:10:40,830 we're hoping for a q2 of 2016 release

00:11:03,860 so how big is the frontier well my chief world's face maker maker Mac control told me it's about the size of New Vegas

00:12:40,909 dynamic weather and not for purely visuals this time some ways like for example if it's like snowing a lot you may have start negative bonuses so whether Mother Nature can now be a foe so you have to be dressed appropriately to fight --

Fallout New Vegas Mods_ The Frontier Interview With Weijiesen (1080p_30fps_H264-128kbit_AAC)

creative director for the frontier + one in charge of visual effects and such

May 29, 2019 The Frontier - Dev Diaries | The Return! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEV-puWI0Wc Al ChestBreach

00:00:27,179 boggles I do custom creatures animations

00:04:04,900 this is a community mod we are a

00:04:21,339 there's so much new stuff that even I is97 00:04:26,139 00:04:30,579 never tried out before four years later like even some of my own stuff that I made years ago I'm still going back and saying wow that's pretty neat you basically we can't keep track of it all there's so much stuff yeah there's

00:05:13,389 because people keep breaking things or things are getting added aren't being told about yeah that that's always been I guess something that I always noticed

00:06:11,468 at one point we did actually consider adder adding a basement area that had all of the developers as skeleton oh yeah time you to a computer yes your holds the key to said dungeon just mod user is just key to that dungeons like what is that please oh my gosh

00:06:55,540 essentially I just message people constantly like hey how's this going hey what are you doing is everything okay you need help jack can jack and jam can say that I have been quite persistent with making sure that things are being kept on top of because he never leaves us alone yeah I appreciate it you know I

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yO1QpTMmJw The Frontier - Dev Diaries - 1 (720p_30fps_H264-192kbit_AAC) Apr 10, 2015

14:05

Devilwish182 scripting intens crazy 4:35

Mindblowing 10.00

speculation fans that the frontier took place in alaska - Nicknames: "The Last Frontier"@ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska 15:35 They choose portland because it would made more sence that the ncr was there becase alaska if farther away from mojave.

When a random user asked why it was nto alaska Alaska is logical but due to lore it would made more sence to let it be portland as it closer to nevade -

between seatle and portland, choose for protland because of the fouutbal stadium - BIG CIty

17:00 Tactical shooter - not enemies with high health - use envorement to your advancement- Cover will deteriate

Origiginonlly reease dember febray 2015-2016 - Goal 33:00

Shooting range 34:00 call of duty ish inspired by. modern warfare 2