There we back again about me and the state of this blog

It's been a while since I wrote anything new in this blog. Yet again, I'm fairly having fun and "being cursed" for the life I'm doing. Still, I'm fine, thanks.

Again, my life stories are directed towards Blaze's Discord server, so if you want to join me in my life adventure on just about anything and Ace Combat 7 modding in general, click here (you must have a Discord account to join).

To sum it up, here are a few updates.

America Rising 2

Remember what I said about "THE America Rising" post that can make you being an Enclave soldier and finish the story with the Enclave? Guess what? 2 or 3 years have passed and Otellino made a breakthrough of releasing a new version called America Rising 2. This is what encouraged me to rebuild my 8th playthrough solely for that, along with hundreds of mods that I bundled in.

OTW, I've stumbled across many useful guides, a few are MOFAM and The Midnight Ride that I got from the PRP mod post's requirements. I make merges and personalized patches out of it and hoo boy, it took me 3 to 4 months just to solve issues that only I can fix. Apparently, the recent cause that I had solved lately is that some armor or weapon data have combinations that their Addon Index refers to 0, which is the first entry in the combination. Since the combinations are just one in the entry, the game crashed mid-loading during boot-up sequence or when you start/load a game. The weird thing is that Buffout 4 didn't output the cause of the crash, so this is obviously hard to detect if you're playing with large load orders. Setting to -1 solves this in FO4Edit if you know which plugin and the weapon/armor data is at fault.

The target idea of my new playthrough with America Rising 2 mod in hand is them being the Shadow Company troopers, with a mix of classic Pacific US soldiers because... one of them is that their homebase is an offshore oil rig. Before that, I gathered links and keep them mods when "it's time", resulting in about 500+ mods in reserve, with lots of standalone weapon mods that I can merge to save the amount of ESP plugins that the game can load in one time.

Note that the limits are hardcoded by nature. Basic plugins (ESM and ESP that isn't ESL-flagged) has a hard limit of 254 (from 00000000 hex to FF000000 hex, with FE000000 is reserved for ESL-flagged plugins as the ESL plugins has a unique load order number that decrements instead of increments), whereas the Light plugins (ESL plugins and ESM and ESP that is ESL-flagged) has a hard limit of 4096 (from FE000000 hex to FEFFF000 hex), with maximum storage of new records of 2048 if the plugin is version 0.95 (valid from 800 hex to FFF hex) or 4096 if the plugin is version 1.0 (valid from 000 hex to FFF hex). This is something that is new to me, at least in the modding knowledge of Fallout 4 since my visit on the MOFAM mod page, which is very smart on Bethesda's end. Not to mention, Creation Club contents are mostly ESL plugins or ESM and/or ESP plugins that are ESL-flagged.

Anyway, about the Shadow Company outfit, you can check it out here. Also, not gonna lie, but the dark colors of the Enclave fatigues, which is based on the Army Fatigues that is retextured and added Enclave logo on it, is reminiscent of that of the Shadow Company from Call of Duty series, especially Modern Warfare 2 and its remaster/remake. I used to be the CoD player once, but then I started to ditch it the moment I abandon modding GTA V for a reason that my parents are watching what I play (plus, had me the urge of playing Modern Warfare Remastered after the unknown cause of my PC shutting down and restarting on its own). The mask/balaclava gives you anonymity, similar to that of the iconic Enclave Gas Mask, if you ask me.

I've started to become a bit active lately on Otellino's server, now that AR2 mod is out. You can join in using this invite link (you must have a Discord account to join). He's currently cooking on version 1.1 to add new features and fixes the bugs reported by users.

Well, I need to test the 8th playthrough to see if everything works fine, and I'll start a livestream on my YouTube channel anytime soon. Come over to my channel and subscribe if you like to see me make more gaming content.

Kinda reminded me that at one point of time, my FO4 game is bricked. Now I know that AWKCR and its descendants being the culprit. See this article for more information.

Boruto and Sarada Companion Mod

A reason one way or another made 4 posts about my fanfic project in FO4 being popular, 3 years ago, although not gaining massive traction as any other websites.

I have this being on consideration after the short story of mine, "The Story of Android 100: Future Town", which can be viewed and read in my other blog's post, was published. I have rambled about this in 4 different posts, stating whether it's safe to use contents ported from other games, the infamous Soviet GSh-18 pistol for Himawari Uzumaki, the difficulty of making this mod (it's not a one-man job BTW; I have to wonder why people thought that Heather Casdin mod is so popular), thinking about using Creation Kit...

I gotta be honest; I've hold back this idea after my post on that bricked FO4 game 2 or 3 years ago and spent my time on AC7 modding so that I can bring my dream "mUh rEaLiSm" weapons from LOFC2 into AC7, which surprisingly, the game itself is abandoned by Eagle Dynamics/The Fighter Collection (developers of DCS: World today). I still doubt whether moderators come knocking on my doorstep telling that porting content is strictly prohibited, despite claiming that ED/TFC has abandoned the classic 2000s/2010s game called Lock On: Modern Air Combat and its successor, LockOn: Flaming Cliffs 2 and DCS: Ka-50 Black Shark. The resources they completely left after transitioning from LOM/CMD format to EDM format can be used in another game if people uses the proper import/export tool. The most prominent example will be ZModeler 2, created by the same dude who made ZModeler 3 called Oleg. The ZM2 app has a built-in module designed to import Lock On models (LOM format), but you have to pay for the license if you want to use it, which is as equivalent as buying a game on Steam in general. A legendary GTA modder called SkylineGTRFreak used ZM2 to import some Lock On models and export it to be used on GTA San Andreas and GTA IV in the past, so it's safe to say that these days, it's safe to do it, assuming that you're not ripping off DCS:W models that is being actively in development since its first debut.

That did work, so I started to get back into FO4 infused with mods after AR2 mod is out, and now this idea is brought up again. I do plan to train myself in using Creation Kit to make new mods for a fresh start into the in-depth inner working of how ESP/ESM development is, but for that, I need a clean game environment. My current FO4 game directory is too cluttered (especially with some of the loose files that aren't packed in BA2 archives) that I have a rather hard time to clean the contents into its original, unmodded state without reinstalling it (uninstalling the game then installing it again). I have noted the rough draft of how these characters look like (from this post) and how I want to be as close as the one from the fanfic short story I made. In fact, lots of mods are being uploaded daily, and a small proportion of them are companion mods.

Also, not gonna lie, I know not many people likes Naruto/Boruto; it's a dream project that I want to realize before I move on to something else. Although, let me ask you this: Nanakochan and Anime Framework. Also, the screenshots that look like cute anime gals most of the times. How come random anime types get generalized here but not specific types like Naruto, Bleach, or One Piece? I know those might belong to Skyrim (The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim), but, really? I've seen/read arts/illustrations, fan fiction novels, and played San Andreas Naruto mods in the past, which has those ninja characters carrying guns, but of every or all places, why not Fallout or GTA V? In fact, tiny proportion of Naruto mods for FO4 are there; you just have to rely with Nexus' built-in search function to find 'em.

Well, that being said, one of my AC7 modding folks said to me, "start small first, then you can think big." Despite criticism, I have no trouble of getting stopped midway. It's just that I need to think about how should I proceed. If I want to realize this dream project, I have to prep a clean FO4 environment so that I won't be hassled with lots of mods or cluttered files OTW. It won't be easy, but it has to get there. Somehow. (Plus, I saved the playlists about CK in my YouTube channel that might come in handy.)

Then, get people to commission the outfits, hairstyles, and whatnot. I realized that after I open the request, no one reached out to me to help, so I'm on my own. The thing is, who should I reach out to?

The real problem after that, however, is the voice lines. If I'm a rich sultan, I could easily pay the American voice actors who were voicing their respective characters in Boruto: Naruto The Movie, but there is a doubt whether companies might sue me for using them voices in a game that isn't belong to, especially since there's an app called xVASynth (found this from a mod that makes Paladin Danse spared and challenged Maxson's leadership afterwards) that can help you synthesize voices from various actors in certain movies or series. That could be a problem in the future, but that's for another time after the rough test mod has been made.

So, there you have it. It isn't scrapped entirely, but it's in the planning after the story has been made. I also have the plans to place them in the rebuilt Oil Rig instead of The Prydwen (basically, AR2 patch for my companion mod) when it's done (had me thinking that they're the US property, and the Brotherhood of Steel isn't even the group trying to restore the old America).

Ace Combat Modding

I'll just be brief and short on this one. After I temporarily left the modding scene, add-on plane mods are now in full swing. Right now, they're testing the waters with this UE4SS application that can help you code a functionality such as the never-before-seen Land Anywhere mod. It became a massive hit on the mod's popularity. Not to mention, this also followed by the release of Tornado GR.4 mod and subsequent skin/livery releases by Lanzerince to complement this release. I gotta say, just like me, Lanze has his own liking to something that he eagerly releases skin/livery mods for GR.4/F3 to satiate his desire. When I get back, I'll be taking notes on updates of my mod that is temporarily abandoned as I left the modding scene temporarily.

Well, this is all I can share for the blog, if you're still reading it. It used to be glorious, now it doesn't. But oh well, this is my life story.

I might be back for more posts, but I doubt it. Still, if you want to keep in touch, you can come over to GHBHSH Discord server here or you can invite me on a server you're making. The choice is yours.

Until next time. 👋

Agung Paramtapa's Journal

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