Where I Hang My Hat X: Coastal Cottage (Storybook) · 12:11am Mar 23rd, 2017
New banner for Ashes of Equestria
It took even longer than anticipated, but I finally have my latest Fallout 4 settlement in a state ready for revelation. This project took almost a month (and in truth, there are a few small areas of the settlement not entirely finished), but my rework of Coastal Cottage is finally ready to show off. Once I’m done with this, I plan to finally catch up on weeks of PMs that I’ve received this month.
(I apologize to anyone I’ve left hanging for a while. 
)
As you might guess from the (frankly amazing looking) banner above, the biggest news in the Fallout: Equestria community since my last blog is from The Overmare Studios: the rebranding of Ashes of Equestria and the release of their newest demo!
The wonderful and dedicated fans at Overmare had this to say about the rebranding:
This might come as a bigger surprise to some than others, but we've decided to change the name of our game, from Fallout: Equestria to Ashes of Equestria.
In our latest podcast, released along with this blog post, we discuss the name change in more detail, talk about the current state of development, and answer some of your questions.
...The name of our organization remains the same, The Overmare Studios, and always will. The rest of the game’s content remains the same; we are still making an open world RPG based on the story of LittlePip and co, written by Kkat. We’re only changing the name of the game, and of course the logo. If that satisfies you, feel free to admire our sweet new logo, stop reading and go play our latest demo!. But if not, read on to find out why exactly we're doing this, and what it entails for the future.
[del]
Despite changing the name, we would like to stress that our unofficial subtitle will still be "the Fallout: Equestria game, based on the story by Kkat", in reference to the novel on which it's based, and its author. While all future material will refer to the game as Ashes..., we certainly won't bite your head off for using the old name every now and then. We are not trying to hide our roots, just ensure our future.
So, what does this mean for the future? In short, it means our options are far more open than they were before.
Frankly, I'm excited at this news and what it means for the progress of the game. I look forward to trying out the demo and to everything they give us in the months and years to come!
Check out the announcement of the Wave 5 demo and get download links here!
And now, on to Coastal Cottage…
“These Walls” by Piepon
Coastal Cottage is a small, out-of-the-way settlement location that many settlement builders shun. The place has very few unique features and gives you almost nothing to work with. The terrain is extremely uneven, the existing structures are useless, and many of the pieces cannot be scrapped without mods or even resorting to the “disable” command. Below are a couple screenshots of Coastal Cottage as you find it. As usual, you can click on the pictures to see a much larger version.
So for this project, I started by loading up the mod Scrap Everything by shadowslasher410 and cleaned out everything in the settlement (save for a burning barrel that I chose to keep).
For this settlement, I decided to go a different route. Instead of renovating existing structures or creating a settlement of buildings that the settlers constructed, I decided to create an entirely new set of “pre-existing” buildings that the settlers fixed up and moved into, much like Covenant. I set about turning the plot of land into what had once been a planned community before the bombs fell.
So below the break, I present to you not “Coastal Cottage” but my settlement of “Storybook”. 
Of course, my settlement creations pale in comparison to some of the real masters out there. I’ve even seen a Coastal Cottage build go up on Nexus last week that blows my “Storybook” away. But I’m still quite proud of what I have been able to bring to life.
This blog will be incredibly picture-heavy. The smaller images posted in the blog contain links to full-sized images. As always, I would love to see your own settlement work and mod recommendations.
I meant to use this image on Valentines Day. But I think it is a great choice for here too. Thank you, EStories!
Before the showcase, let’s talk mods. I want to give a special thank you to TIAS-A1927. Several of his excellent mod suggestions were instrumental in creating this settlement.
New mods used for “Storybook” include Thematic and Practical by 5like and G2M - Workshop by g2mXagent, both suggested by TIAS-A1927. Likewise, at his suggestion, I updated Modular Kitchen by evanpox and Better Stores by blazeda59, and I am extremely happy with the upgrades to those mods.
On a side note, I want to thank Littlepip on Steam for showing me some of the wonders Littlepip has done with manufacturing and encouraging me to update my copy of Manufacturing Extended by Kentington. Littlepip, your patience with me is extremely appreciated, and your aid in this has been wonderful. Thanks to your recommendations and instructions, I was able to take a couple days off my work in Coastal Cottage and build a center in Sanctuary that will pull all the purified water, raw food and bottlecaps that my settlements produce and deposit them into new containers. Now I will get the benefits of all my shops, water sources and farms without losing anything to the workshop storage caps.
Also, thanks to TIAS-A1927, I have picked up Place Everywhere by TheLich. The mod has some amazing features and more versatility than my previous choice of Precise object moving and rotating by ad3d0. I would love to use both, as the latter does have one feature that Place Everywhere does not - the ability to move objects on a strict x or y axis regardless of your facing. Unfortunately, the two mods are not compatible. I do that work by console now; a little bit of extra work, but nothing compared to what Place Everything saves me.
Finally, a few additional mods added into my collection to craft this settlement include Advanced Bubble Turret Set by ccmads, Craftable Blossom Trees by frogprincess_q4 and the Atom's Greatness and The Cabin in the Woods build sets by Ethreon. (Honestly, all the church work in "Storybook" is done with Snappy HouseKit by robboten, which is a far superior workset, but Atom's Greatness was used for building the wall around the settlement.) Last but not least, I applied the texture set from Realistic Brick Wall Re-Tex by railgunz76 to Custom Concrete Walls by moriartykain to get some great new brick wall pieces without sacrificing my normal concrete build set.
Without further ado, I present my latest creation:
Storybook
“an idyllic wasteland village community”
Click images for larger versions.
Here is the main entrance to the village of Storybook: a path leading up beneath a walkway bridge from the street below. From village level, you can also see the front gate on the southeast corner of the wall. A lot of landscaping was done to bring Storybook to life, including all the trees you see, as well as several waterfalls along the front cliff face. (At the bottom of each waterfall is a cistern entrance so the water never floods the street.)
Here you see Village Center, the mayoral commerce building for the village. Below are a couple of the shops inside as well as the records room.
Storybook’s Clothing Emporium serves the needs of the villagers as well as visitors. Most villagers can be seen sporting unique Storybook fashions.
On the west side is the “Raven’s Entrance”, the rear entrance to the village. A winding path leads from the back, between the church and clinic to the center yard of the village.
(The inner door to the church, visible here, is from the mechanist’s lair. It opens vertically and provides additional security, turning the entryway into a kill box. This is one of the doors I had fun getting just right, as is the iris door on the lighthouse.) The church now serves as the town’s armory.
(I’m very pleased with the lighting effects I created in the church. Coastal Cottage suffers, at least in my game, from a common bug that makes most lights fail to eminate more than a slight fraction of their normal illumination, so a lot of tricks were used to light Storybook properly.)
Below is an interior shot of the clinic.
Adjacent to the church is the Fountain House, a unique building that houses the showers and laundry spaces for the village.
The waterfall from the Fountain House also feeds the pools that decorate Storybook’s center yard.
The red and green manor visible across from the Fountain House is the main living building in Storybook, including the village kitchens, dining area and butchery.
Above, the loft holds bedding for many of the residents. Below, the extremely uneven terrain means one side of the manor is a full floor higher off the ground than the other. The underporch is being utilized for storage and repairs.
The center yard of Storybook is dominated by a great oak tree and the treehouse built into it.
The Storybook Treehouse has two living levels and an upper deck (complete with barbeque grill and table).
On the southwest corner of the village lies the municipal building which serves Storybook’s electrical and plumbing needs as well as provides the village greenhouse
The most interesting element of the Coastal Cottage site is the small natural cave beneath the destroyed cottage. In Storybook, that cave lies beneath the church. Angel has claimed this space as her own. An enchantingly illuminated path leads down to Angel’s “girl-cave”.
Inside, the cave is snug, pleasant and warm.
On the north side, behind the clinic are the mirelurk pens, where the villagers breed mirelurks for their meat. The villagers plan to expand this area to also have pens for chickens or possibly rabbits. Tucked away in the northeast corner is a small, quiet yard with meditation pool. The fountain spray in the center changes color as it reflects the different colored lights beneath.
Storybook at night.
Holy bejesus...
Now that is amazing 
That looks gorgeous. It certainly puts my Coastal Cottage to shame.
Utterly cool!
My Coastal Cottage is much less elegant. In fact, I made it into what I call "The Junk Tower Hotel". It uses all sorts of different material pieces, with lots of awnings on each floor, to look out, as well as plenty of neon lights to make it a grand mish-mash
Alas, no pictures of it, but the Tower of Junk is quite picturesque on the inside, even if it doesn't look quite so from the outside.
Plus, I really wanted that place to look like a wayward hotel since it's on the road to FAH HAHBAH! So use every material I can lay my hands on, and make it work.
That looks awesome, Kkat!
I think my Costal Cottage is...still a working progress to put it lightly. I've actually ran two or three mods to help give me as many build materials as I want and I wanted unlimited supplies so it fit my needs perfectly! 
If I can get some time to play Fallout in the near future, I hope to create a lot of stuff.
First part: Ughh, I'm happy for you kkat, I really am, but I think ashes of Equestria might be pushing it a little. no, actually, its pushing it a lot. Rebranding it probably saved it from Bethesda, but Hasbro is well within its ethically and legally to shut this down.
Coastal Cottage... I am now sad. I can't as to how much in terms of graphics muscles is being flexed her since I don't know your mod set up, but clearly Bethesda is clearly capable of making well polished games. Skyrim, Fallout, Doom, story, characters, marketing, they got all that down.
So why does F4 suck? Such awesomeness in terms of look deserves a personality to go with it. They've got none of the heart and have turned my sweet beloved old friend into Skyrim with guns.
And now I'm off to weep over my file of fallout 2 since I don't have the cd and they don't sell it anywhere.
I love what you've done with it. You have amazing skills Kkat
Hey Kkat, have you ever considered utilizing the recent mod Transfer Settlements? With this you can create blueprints and share them with others so they can experience your creation in their own game. I'd love to explore Storybook and some of your other settlements myself!
Kkat, you have more time than I ever will in my life...
Or you just know how to manage it better than I ever will.
Probably the latter.
4468520 From what I understand, those blueprints only work if you have the same mods. And not only do I use dozens of mods which you would then have to download and install, but some of the mods I use aren't available anymore.
4468578 You would be partially correct, however I believe blueprints just ignore items if they're missing. Additionally, I doubt anyone who really wants to see these places wouldn't object to installing prerequisites for them. You could include a modlist with the file, and I can't imagine that there are enough unavailable mods that it would break the settlement or couldn't be compensated for by using others. TS seems pretty great at porting objects exactly as they were.
Regardless, I just wanted to suggest it since I'm sure plenty of others would love to explore your settlements. But if you can't or don't want to, we can still settle for screenshots.
4468508
Actually - no. "Equestria" are not registered Hasbro trademark, they checked it before rebranding.
4468724
ah. my mistake then
4468508 Both Fallout 1&2 are available on Steam last I saw. Also through GOG.
This is absolutely gorgeous, and including the cave, the treehouse, and the church armory there are plenty of fun, memorable buildings.
My favorite has to be the treehouse: it's far more ornate than what came to mind reading "treehouse" at first to me.
Though it seems like Mirelurks would be hard to keep in pens: and that they might just claw through a chain link fence.
I'm just trying to imagine how one would raise mirelurks. Food could just be tossed into the pen, but assuming it gets cleaned how would that happen? Or how would one be taken out to be butchered without some mass attack? Can they be domesticated at all?
Scrap everything...SOUNDS LIKE MY KIND OF MOD!!!!!
4468910
yeah, but steam downloads are mod and editor proof and don't allow the restoration project.
4469059 Not entirely sure about the mirelurks, but after Angel saw the mirelurk pens at Thicket Excavations, she had to give that a try. Mirelurk meat is good eatin'.
4469558
That makes sense, and maybe they are more docile when fed well.
Regardless, it adds an extra touch of realism to a such a nice colony that they'd raise something more than plants to eat.
4469558 Now i am on console and don't have far harbor but im building a large base in a new game at Sanctuary, would you like me to update you on its progress?
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4469278 I don't know about the restoration project specifically, but I got FO:NV and FO4 through Steam, and have heavily modded both games successfully. The Nexus Mod Manager program worked like a charm.
4469278
Are you sure? Because I'm able to install a "LIttlepip" mod on Steam version of Fallout 2 without any problems. I thinks that I also installed restoration project but not sure about this one.
hi hi
With a settlement like this, I half expect to see a bunch of ghouls walking around or something. At night when the fog rolls in, if nothing else.
Are those little glowing things on top of the greenhouse some kind of super science turrets? I admit I haven't played Fallout 4 yet, so I don't know how things work, but this town doesn't look like it has large impressive defensive structures.
4471317 Amusingly, the first (and only) attack that the place has suffered was from a mob of ghouls during a radstorm.
The electrical units on the top of the municipal building are fancy energy emitters that provide wireless electricity throughout the settlement. The settlement actually has very strong defenses, but they aren't easy to spot. (The best picture would be the mirelurk pens.) The wall creates a barrier to most creatures, allowing only a few points of entry. At regular intervals along the stone wall there are pop-up plasma turrets. There are similar turrets build underneath the porches in the Village Center building and on the "kill room" walls of the church armory.
And, of course, everyone is well-armed. So if something gets past the automated defenses, they have to deal with the residents.
Hi Kkat, I’m really happy that all those mods were useful to you. I’m really in love with the G2M and T&P and Place Everywhere it’s just a must have (I hope you are using the F2, F1 and F3 functions which are realy neat!). I think they will be especially helpful if you pursuit more wooden-like settlements like your Country Crossing.
To be honest, this feels really cool to hear, since YOU were actually the person to got me to use mods! I had been making settlements for a while on F4 but after seeing your firsts “where I hang my hat” I decided to slowly start downloading mods (I always am extra weary of adding any for fear of bugs,) and most of what I have were literally downloaded following your links. So, thanks you if anything!
About Coastal Cottage, I really think this is your better work so far, it just looks amazing. Not only has a great decoration, but overall has a great sense of aesthetic. Looking at your town, and your buildings, each corner looks came out of a painting cause it’s express it has it’s own personality and tells it’s own stories, I think it’s the best we can do to make the settlement to feel alive. It’s at least what I try, though we have been exploring different concepts.
It’s very interesting and you really opened my eyes at what you can do with prefab-building walls. My first experiment with the building-walls that come with Homemaker were simply dreadful, just like the hormigon walls, I had a lot of problems to design the forms I wanted since each wall has an actual physical space that you have to take in account and plan ahead how to get together, walls, roofs and floors, and avoid getting annoying little holes or spaces in the middle, that’s why I ended finished working mostly with wooden and warehouse walls.
One of my main problem when I try to build settlements that are thought as big integrated structures, is that If you have to make a long wall and you choose the wooden walls, each kind of them it’s so uniquely designed, that repeating it in the same pattern clearly stand outs and looks terrible, that’s why I mostly use the warehouse walls, which being much more plain and less “unique” can be used more sparingly though they still get too repetitive if abused. I’m thinking now on exploring the prefab-walls and see what I can do with that, even if I’m a little weary of adding even more mods to my collection.
I also love the work you’ve done with lighting, It’s something I’ve seen in other works and it can make wonders but I haven’t explored much yet.
I found really funny how once you’re building settlements you really get a lot of technique on it, since there are a lot of little tricks that help you a lot. I found fun how with each new one I learn so much new things that my previous ones look embarrassing XD.
Right now I’m still working on Starlight (I almost add “Glimmer” XD). This two pictures are slighty variations of the same place. Do you, (or anyone) know any mods for letters though? I had a hard time scaling the little letters that came with the vanilla decoration but they are not the best. I’m surprised there is any mod that provides you with simple letters to make your own boards (and the neon ones can get super repetitive quick)
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The third pic it’s an older one, that show that same space but from above (before I added the decoration though).
As in my other later works, I’m intentionally trying to go by a asphyxiating, crowded and improvised feeling for the settlement.
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And you know, maybe you can’t, but I do have a relative small number of mods (and I’m sure you have them all) so I may try to use the Transfer Settlements with some of mine and made them public if anyone wants to see them a little, would be nice.
4471525 Thank you!
The most useful tool in Place Everywhere is the "=" function, allowing you to copy location elements to multiple other items. (Just being able to set all the wall lights at the same height with ease is wonderful, and I use it for so much more than that.)
The Homemaker wall sets are awful. I use Homemaker extensively for its furnishings (and, particularly in Storybook, for its landscaping), but I stay away from its wall sets.
For pre-fab walls, I recommend Snappy Housekit and/or Snap 'n Build. I used these for almost all of the walls in this settlement, and a significant portion of the walls in my other settlements, including County Crossing. I also very strongly recommend you look into the amazing Settlement Objects Expanded mod. That mod has a ton of great pieces, including some very nice alternate wood pieces.
I love your "asphyxiating, crowded and improvised" aesthetic. As for letters, the only lettering mod I've found that I use is this simple one: DLC Letters. It takes the existing letters from the DLC, gives them proper snap points, and scales them.
4471376
Ghouls during a radstorm is so fitting for this place. It's got something of a Kingsmouth Town feel to it, I think.
Just reminds me how unimaginative I am at times sadly.
I can't wait to get a PS4 so I can play this version!
I now feel inadequate on every level.