I'd like to hear your thoughts on a couple of things I noticed when working on making a list of all FO3 holodisks. I guess the main question is: "What makes a holodisk a holodisk?" This may sound weird at first, but of course it's not the obvious cases I'm talking about.
I'm not sure how much you are into the technical details of FO3; hence a little explanation. Every note, holodisk and terminal entry has a corresponding "NOTE" object in the game files. Basically it stores the text and/or the location of the audio/video file that should be shown when looking at it. Like all items, a Pip-Boy icon and a world model can be assigned to it. Since all of the aforementioned source text types are NOTE objects, it's not as easy to tell them apart at first glance.
Now, the clear-cut case (one would think) for a holodisk is of course if it has the holodisk world model assigned to it. However, some of the NOTE objects with the holodisk world model are only available as terminal entries in the game - but if you were to spawn them via console, they'd appear as a holodisk. An example are the Citadel terminal entries about Liberty Prime. In normal gameplay, they are terminal entries. If you'd spawn them via console, they'd appear as a holodisk.
Another group of NOTE objects where the line is hazy is those which have no world model but the holodisk icon in the Pip-Boy. A few of these are clear cases (e.g. the Replicated Man holotapes) but a lot aren't - for example, most of the "note to self"-style Pip-Boy entries about passwords have the holodisk icon.
Now, are these two groups - holodisk world model but no holodisk in normal gameplay on the one hand and no world model but holodisk icon on the other hand - holodisks? :) -- Porter21 (talk) 18:32, October 22, 2009 (UTC)
- A bit hard to say, but for Fallout 1 and 2 holodisks, we also call messages copied from computers that do not exist as inventory items "holodisks". Ausir(talk) 20:14, October 23, 2009 (UTC)
- Well, I've opted to go by "appearance" in the game. If it actually exists as as item in the game (i.e. you can get it from an NPC's inventory, it's lying around somewhere etc), I've put in the holodisk category, otherwise in the terminal entries one - seems to make sense to me. For FO1 and FO2, volume probably wouldn't justify separating terminal entries and holodisks. For FO3 it's a bit different - we have 100+ holodisks in FO3 (in terms of actual ingame items), for FO1 and FO2 combined we have about 40. -- Porter21 (talk) 12:02, October 26, 2009 (UTC)
- Maybe the PC has a little USB type thing that he connect various electronic data devices to, and downloads it onto his holodisk, which is built into his pip-boy and has a lot of memory? --24.72.49.251 23:02, November 6, 2009 (UTC)