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Comment by hu3 | Hacker News Reader

Bethesda games community is amazingly insane.

For example yesterday I found out that modders managed to "merge Fallout 3 and its DLC into Fallout: New Vegas, allowing both games to be played in a single playthrough".

It is called Tale of Two Wastelands and it goes above and beyond modding. This is art. More info: https://taleoftwowastelands.com/faq#What-is-ttw

If you like playthroughs, Gopher youtuber is recording an amazing series of it:

- Playlist of Chapter 1 (57 videos): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE7DlYarj-Dekit0ce4ni...

- Playlist of Chapter 2 (4 videos): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE7DlYarj-Dfag97E44fF...

- Playlist of Chapter 3 (32 videos): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE7DlYarj-DcRVZclOtOY...

- Playlist of Chapter 4 (10 videos): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE7DlYarj-DeLxMTphztm...

- Playlist of Chapter 5 (9 videos and counting): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE7DlYarj-DcDxBImozYs...

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I don't understand how there can be so many people putting in so much time and talent into projects like these. I've tried getting into modding many times but it's always overwhelming. I don't even know where to start, so that there are enough people pushing through the obvious hurdles and produce things like this is mind-blowing.

These aren't massive communities, these big modders often know each other and work together.

I'd say it depends on your background and availability. Most people in any of these intense tech scenes are a combination of a)young/low-commitments - in school, summer, no kids, etc. so they have the time and energy to dedicate b) grew up in these scenes so that the barrier to entry to start creating is much lower than someone like you or me trying to figure out how to mod a game for the first time and c) members of a strong community. I used to be in the fansub scene and there's something about being celebrated by your peers for achieving something that only they recognize. Same with the crack scene. I'm sure modders in these communities feel the same way when they can release something and receive so much positive feedback. It's great!

Which just shows -- having kids leads to a massive productivity drop / personal advancement opportunity failure.

Consider wisely...

Alternatively, I think if you just compared accomplishments of population with families vs without you would not be impressed.

Its a tiny population that would turn less responsibility into more productive output.

(I for one would probably not consider making fallout mods a great tradeoff, and that's probably better use of time than most)

Some people have kids

Some people don’t

Some people get into art

Some people get into monster trucks

And because everyone is doing their own thing without worrying about conforming to one pattern, you literally get a billion slices of life to choose from.

One big difference is that if you decide that art isn't your thing, you can move on and try something else.

But Children are a big commitment. For many people it's well worth it, for others maybe not. And that's fine - so long as it is considered.

Not for any weird anti-child reason, just that it's something that probably should be thought through and considered more than trying out a hobby.

> Not for any weird anti-child reason, just that it's something that probably should be thought through and considered more than trying out a hobby.

I'm not sure there is any basis to this statement. It seems prudent but otherwise unfounded.

Only a relative minority of parents report regret at having had kids (<10%)[0]. Of those 10% many probably did consider it extensively, and even if they regret it it does not mean there was any likelihood they wouldn't have kids anyways. Put another way, regret does not mean they were not desperate to have kids before they realised they would regret it.

It's incredibly complex gaining insight about these kind of major life altering decisions.. especially because it's clear people change once they have kids.

I see no reason to think about having children more deeply than just deciding you will try. Getting pregnant unexpectedly is it's only can of worms especially as access to abortion is at the whims of government. Not to mention pregnancy and labour suck.

[0] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/head-games/201909/wh...

I think the underlying question is to see if regret (or other difficulties like financial hardship or things that require a state actor to intervene) are correlated with planning and consideration. Measuring that is the difficulty.

And as that article state - that "less than 10%" number is coming from a population where it is taboo to admit to regret. People have been shown to be economical with the truth on otherwise anonymous surveys - [0] is a humorous example, so how much that may skew the results would likely need to be looked in to. And that's just the responders who know they're replying inaccurately - with such cultural pressure, they may not admit to themselves - there's lots of examples where people deceive themselves about how they feel about things that may go against society's grain at their time. Introspection is really hard.

So I'd see that number as a lower bound, not necessarily accurate.

EDIT:

Additionally the cost - 7% of artists not reaching their ambitions is sad, but 7% of children being unloved and resented is a tragedy.

[0] https://www.iflscience.com/men-cant-be-trusted-to-measure-th...

Great link and mostly agree.

I do question if we can assume any correlation between "regret" and being unloved. Again it would be highly taboo to state you don't love your child.

But I suspect regret does not lead to open resentment or a child feeling unloved.

There are plenty enough cases of parents/step-parents going so far as to kill a child through regret. I suspect many do "love" the child ironically. Because it's a personal subjective experience, at least you can get a tape measure out for a wiener.

I suppose I regret much of my life and current career trajectory but somehow I wouldn't change it for the world because I love so much about it!

> 7% of artists not reaching their ambitions is sad

I know it's irrelevant to your point but I'm sure 99.999% of artists do not even come close to their ambitions. I don't find it sad at all. It's like being sad you don't win the lottery.

A month or two ago, I stumbled onto the RegretfulParents subreddit [1] thanks to an HN comment. After reading all those horror stories... yeah, consider wisely.

[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/regretfulparents/

Some of those stories are tragic, but they are a tiny fraction of the number of people who would literally given up anything they own (including their own life) for their kids.

The vast majority of people on that subreddit would too. They don't regret their kids, they regret the life of parenting that they got into, often without knowing that they were really in for or even worse, as part of an manipulate/abusive relationship or because of societal pressure.

Having kids is way more rewarding than working on any software project. You'll enjoy raising the kids unless you have some kind of personality disorder.

Also, I have a newborn and I work in my projects just fine. [0] Manage your time :)

I would also say that a lot of the time you see that drop-off because having kids is more rewarding than the project, not really because they don't have any time for it.

[0] https://github.com/netpanzer/netpanzer/pull/4

Rudeness aside, if you only have a newborn you may find yourself eating these words in the near, and medium term future.

OMG. Newborn is the easy part. Especially if you’re the bloke.

Breastfeeding is indeed a lot of work. To try to be even, I do everything else. I wish I could do more, she certainly deserves it. We joked I could get hormones...

Just you wait until they're teenagers.

How could teenagers possibly take all your time? Surely they should be socializing?

Like I was mowing lawns by myself unsupervised at 10, what are people doing with their kids all day? :D you have to cook food and provide structure, but...

Oh you mean how tough teenage years are. No sense worring about that.

I am actually excited for the teenager years. I can teach them how to properly drive and slide around a car :)

"You'll enjoy raising the kids unless you have some kind of personality disorder" is one of the most unpleasant, exclusionary and normative things I've read in a long time.

You are talking about 20% of the population. More than any other minority group in America. [0] That is large enough to be a perfectly ordinary slice of human variety. Even if you object to that study's methods it is a huge chunk of the populace.

The portion of the population that doesn't want to and will not enjoy raising children is also a group of people who should not be parents, obviously.

Describing them as having a "personality disorder" achieves what? At best, it pressures probable bad parents into reproducing.... or is that at worst?

Being aware that one won't find raising children rewarding and responding appropriately is highly moral. It isn't a mental illness.

And this nasty, toxic approach to 1/5th of your fellow humans is just something you toss off dismissively in a thread about video game modding? This is the behavior of a person who ostensibly does not have a personality disorder?

[0] https://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2023/childfree-study-confirmed...

If you dig, most people you consider successful probably have kids, you just don’t hear about it.

It seems to me like a gauntlet that can provide drive and focus that can potentially outweigh the ability to dabble or move at the drop of a hat.

I'm super glad I had kids.

> Consider wisely...

You could, for example, also consider being a good parent a productive thing, and a personal advancement opportunity :-)

The whole me vs. the kids thing is a false dichotomy. If it's something you want in your life, it is you.

Consider productivity over time, having a kid or three is a force multiplier.

You have but one lifetime. Over the combined lifetimes of your progeny, your productivity is potentially exponential.

I was modder few years ago. Eventually I find out that I sent more time by modding than playing game itself. I finished Morrowind once a did not pay much attention to sidequests which is about 80% of whole quests.

It is rabbit hole but it gets better. For example I totally abandon graphic mods. It alters vanilla aesthetic, there is literally endless options and usualy coast GPU performance. So focusing on bugfixes is achievable in complexity.

> It is called Tale of Two Wastelands and it goes above and beyond modding. This is art.

Glad to hear, because I invented this art genre with ArsDoom. Still striving

I'm guessing this is your work?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9r_f8un3NE

The description of that video credits one of the creators as Reini Urban, which I'm gonna infer means yes in this case

The game mod yes, the video not.

While this mod is great, I'd recommend playing Fallout NV on it's own first. TTW can ruin pacing and when i played it (admittedly close to a decade ago) I had quite a few near playthrough-ruining bugs.

> I had quite a few near playthrough-ruining bugs.

Sounds like it preserved the core authentic experience then.

I tried to play NV vanilla a few months ago and ran into multiple of these within the first couple hours. Never went back

I forget the name, but there's a mod fix pack for every fallout game.

The mod does its job beautifully: it allows players to play The Capitol Beltway with their Fallout: NV crew and mechanics.

F:NV was the better game, but even as a huge NV fan, exploring post-apocalyptic DC and its suburbs was way more enjoyable a locale than exploring the nuked desert. This gives the best of both worlds.

I agree that the capitol area was amazing, but the design of the game, characters, and experience in NV felt far more fallout-like than 3, which makes sense given who made it.

Fallout NV is an amazing game but its largely composed of bugs.

That's, why modders exits and are active even today. Bigfixes for FNV are complex and makes game absolute solid piece of game.

Many a True Nerd is also in the middle of a playthough: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwH1xJhcXG0dR6Ue5o39y...

Is there anyone who doesn't have an excruciatingly painful and annoying commentary over almost every second of the gameplay?

I realise your question is more of a commentary on MaTN's voiceover, but can't resist answering..

CouchWarrior on youtube has a vast oeuvre[1] of Bethesda letsplays with varying degrees of in-character narration and meta commentary which I find highly non-excruciating.

Most of it is (variously modded) Skyrim - here's one where a high level assassin mage gratifyingly takes out the Black-Briar household by commission which contains both a "silent" and a separate commented version: [2] (skip to 18:30 if you want the commentary).

There's also a partial Fallout 4 playthrough, mostly done with engaging in-character narration as "Saint Billy" [3]

It may not be for everyone, but the thoughtful, relaxed and character-based roleplay-centric approach beats out the squeaky-voiced minmaxing of standard letsplays every time as far as I'm concerned.

1: https://www.youtube.com/@couchwarriortv/playlists?view=1&sor...

2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OADtS8yAsCk

3: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLq3QdWvJDnh024UmnWHvK...

Is there anyone who did playthroughs who doesn't swamp it in extremely-irritating-neckbeard "commentary"?

I didn't make it past 15 seconds of the second video (ie where the game starts, in the OB/GYN room.) I've never heard someone so excruciating.

Get some!

Damnit!

Reinstalling...

I apologize. Have fun!

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