Some general advise to players of Fallout 2 - this game can bug up for completely inexplainable reasons...therefore save often, and save in different slots.
My method is very simple, every town gets a new save, in a free slot just outside the actual town (on the desert map), that way if you fuck up and accidentally kill someone you're not meant to and the town goes crazy, you can always load the clean save. Now while running around the towns themselves I use a quick-save slot, usually slot 10 (which is conveniently named QUICKSAVE
).
Remember never save in a combat situation, there is a small chance the game will break when you do this. So if you fail horribly in combat and all your lovely NPC get killed, either suck it up and play on, or load your previous quick-save.
One trick when you encounter a random encounter - as soon as the map loads push the "a" key on the keyboard and initiate combat...you will get the first attack, but also you can run from your opponents if you wish to...if you run far enough and keep pushing the "a" key you can basically run off the map.
Now critters will engage you when their perception is high enough to see you (just you the player, NPC don't count), so running away sometimes is enough to escape. Things like scorpions have a perception of 2, while Deathclaws have a perception of 6. People generally have a perception between 5 and 7, while robots have perceptions of 8+ (Floating Eye Bot has 10).
IIRC the higher perception (the player), the greater the distance from you opponents, when combat initiates in a random encounter (combat distance modifiers).
And even when you take all the precautions the game can still occasionally break, especially if you use an editor and mess around with your stats and items. So save often and save in different slots. Remember the RP allows you to save 1000s of separate games slots, so there's no excuses using the one save slot and saving over it continuously.
') ) and Darek's corresponding proposals/comments on page 15.
What about talking heads? I seem to recall you saying something about a goal/wish to give every major character a talking head. Even though F2 has a larger game world it has fewer talking heads than F1. I'm looking forward to meeting Cassidy in the RP.