Fallout 2 Modding: Quick Question / Answer Thread

Damage is randomly within min-max.

As for the formula, it might help if you explain what the hell RD, RB, CM, CD, ADT, AI, ADR and RM are supposed to mean.

 

They are the damage mod on the ammo used, as listed in the inventory image (always 1/1 for melee/unarmed attacks). It is 1/1 for most ammo, 3/2 for some, and a whopping 2/1 for Gauss and Needler AP ammo (i.e. 200% damage). JHP ammo has a 2/1 mod as well, but also a +20 DR mod so that Damage Resistance is increased on the target. This still results in far better damage than other ammo, especially with criticals. On AP ammo it is an erroneous 1/2, which means all AP ammo is shit because it does half damage.

I've fixed this in F2WR by giving AP ammo a 1/1 mod and a -40 DR mod, whereas JHP has a 7/2 damage mod and a +48 DR mod. This puts the point where AP ammo outperforms JHP at Metal Armor (whose DR I have also increased, while lowering DT).

The damage mod values are stored as signed integers in the ammo proto file, so in theory they can be negative, but I have no idea what happens if you try.

 

The numbers are stored as 32-bit integers, but I'm not sure if the game treats them as such. You'll have to experiment.

This page contains all you'll need to know to start modding: http://www.nma-fallout.com/content.php?page=fo-modding

You may also want to check the fallout wiki for more accurate information on the proto file format.

 

This page specifically.

 

There are no hidden characteristics like that. And there's no difference between thrust and swing.

 

I think it's already done in mechanics overhaul mod.

 

This is possible, with the hs_combatdamage and hs_tohit hook scripts. It does require you to rewrite much of the formula yourself, if you want to do it correctly. And yes, I believe these mechanics are implemented in Jim's mechanical overhaul and phobos' combat rebalance mod.

You can download the sfall script editor and open the hook script .int files in those mods with it, to see how they have done it.

 

On many occasions modders are saying that certain things are "impossible" to change, or in the engine. But there are mods which work by changing the engine, e.g. Mr. Fixit. What is going on? Is it that changing the engine is possible but difficult because it depends on a lot of code, or is it more difficult (for example, if some things are closed source so they can't easily be replaced or even recreated).

Asking because I'm planning to spend some time modding, preferably contributing to very promising mods which need programmer time. Any loosely related advice which wasn't mentioned in the question would also be appreciated.

 

Changing the engine is difficult because it basically means reverse engineering it, hunting down memory addresses and writing a lot of assembly code.
The preferred way to do it nowadays is through sfall, which is open source, but even so it requires that you make a custom version of it which might not be compatible with future versions or other mods.

 

mr fixit is actually a funny example of how inflexible something like graphics in the engine still is. When you first look at it, it might seem very simple: the inventory art of the item you want to create superimposed over custom artwork by the mod creator. But this inventory art (frm's) can't simply be used on the fly: it has to be converted to a pcx file first. These pcx's don't have the transparency that comes with frm's, so you can't simply superimpose them. So what the creator had to do was manually integrate each and every piece of item art with his custom interface, which is really silly when you think about it.

This is sort of a lesson for everything related to fallout modding: very little is out of bounds or strictly hardcoded per se, but you will need to be creative in terms of intensive (or even total) workarounds (see some of my threads for how this applies to something like AI modding).

 

So all modding would've been different and much easier if they'd made the game open-source?

 

Yeah, but that wasn't a thing in the 90s.

 

Are there reasons [technical reasons] that the FOnline engine cannot be used to replace the original in a future user patch?
(Loosely akin to BG-TuTu.)