http://praetorian.diplomunion.com/beyond-boulder-dome/
May 13th, 2012, ISSUE 59
BY ROBERT HELMS
Beyond Boulder Dome is a fan-made DLC project for the PC game, Fallout: New Vegas. It features a ton of new content, ranging from new lands to explore, a plethora of new characters to meet and interact with, to various new weapons, armor and creature models. The project aims to keep a high-quality standard, that will hopefully be comparable to an official DLC.
The mod takes the player to the irradiated ruins of Boulder, Colorado, where there is a power struggle taking place, between the Brotherhood of Steel and the NCR, over the Boulder Dome facility.
The Boulder Dome was an advanced scientific research center, constructed in pre-war times as an advanced fallout shelter, meant to withstand the nuclear attacks, so that its occupants could build a new life after the apocalypse. Only the elite of society, or those with pockets deep enough, were granted residence within the Dome. Inside, they went into cryostasis, to rest in a cold sleep for 200 years.
When the scientists rose from their sleep, it was not to a bright, new future as they’d predicted. Instead, they had arrived into a nightmare. Riddled with a strange, new disease named The Seltsam Syndrome, one final gift from the Chinese, time is running out for the scientists of the Boulder Dome. The fate of the Dome will ultimately be determined by the player’s actions, and their moral choices will be far from black and white.
Interviewed by Iouri Synogatch
Iouri Synogatch: Can you tell us a little about yourself and specifically what got you to start modding?
Robert Helms: My name is Robert Helms, or RJHelms84 in the modding communities. I’ve always been interested in having a creative outlet, so in the past I’ve been interested in creative writing and sketching. Modding, for me, has felt like the supreme creative outlet. Playing my own creations, interacting with characters that I’ve designed and programmed is a very satisfying experience. It’s like putting cool ideas into reality, and it’s worth all the work.
IS: What are some of the challenges you faced in putting together and effectively managing a project like this?
RH: As the Project Director, I communicate regularly with almost every person contributing to the mod, so for a project of this size, that becomes like a full-on job in itself, and that’s additional to the actual hard work of being the lead programmer and handling many other aspects of the modding process as well. So it can pretty full-on and time-consuming, so it takes a lot of dedication and love for the creative process to stick at it.
IS: Boulder Dome is almost finished. Can we expect updates, patches, and support for it after it comes out?
RH: Yes, this is a project we’re going to continually work on and improve, not only in the sense of bug-fixing, but also adding new content and quests, as well as building upon and improving the content already present.
IS: What is your next big project, and can you tell us a little about it?
RH: Our next project, which is already well under-way, will focus on the city of Denver. So this will our Chapter Two to Beyond Boulder Dome, and will be an expansion to it, although our Denver mod will be bigger than BBD and add more content.
The story of Chapter Two centers around the struggle of the Legion to hold onto the city, after their victory over the NCR, and the former NCR prisoner salvagers who have mounted their own offence against the weakened Legion troops.
IS: Do you plan to continue modding in your spare time, or to take up game design professionally?
RH: It’s difficult to tell what the future holds. For now, I plan to continue modding, but it seems to be increasing in steam. A few of us have considered working on a new game from scratch, sometime in the future. So we’ll see what happens! For now I’m just enjoying the whole experience.
Beyond Boulder Done expects to be released in Summer 2012. If you are interested in following the progress of this mod, you can read updates and look at pictures at the Beyond Boulder Dome blog.
