Fallout 2 Very Difficult Mod

dude_obj

Vault Senior Citizen
Moderator
I uploaded a new mod that increases all critter HP, AP, and EXP in the game.
The idea is going beyond "difficult" mode to "very difficult" or at least harder.
The readme for this is below ....

EDIT: My upload didn't show up on this site, not sure why, so its available here.


Fallout 2 Very Difficult Mod 1.0

What it does

This patch makes the game more difficult by increasing the bonus hit points (double) for all creatures, and giving all creatures 2 bonus action points. As a reward for the more difficult fighting, the player gets 150% of the original experience points for each kill. In addition to this major change, the patch also does the following:

- Player starts wearing the vault jump suit
- Player starts with the pipboy
- Player starts with the Awareness perk
- Sulik, Vic, and Cassidy will wear vault jump suits if they join your party
- Party members received the HP and AP increases also
- Includes the random encounter booster patch.


Requirements

This patch is built from the US 1.02D version patch. It will not work with any other version (sorry). This patch actually includes everything in the 1.02d patch (PATCH000.DAT), plus a new rebuild of all of the maps, critter protos, and critter instances on the maps.



How to use

Copy the FO2VDIFF.DAT and FO2VDIFF.EXE to your Fallout2 directory. Click on the FO2VDIFF.EXE to run the game. Warning: Don't forget that you have to run the FO2VDIFF.EXE (NOT FALLOUT2.EXE!) each time you play the game with this patch. You may want to make a shortcut to FO2VDIFF.EXE on your desktop so you don't forget.

For best results, it is recommended that you do a fresh install of the game before running this patch. If you don't want to do that, make sure that the following is done before playing:

1) Delete all save games from \Fallout2\Data
2) Delete everything from \Fallout2\Data except for the SOUND directory
3) If you have a \Fallout2\dev\proto directory, delete that too

The patch includes a replacement of ALL critter prototypes, instances of those critters on the maps, and a rebuild of all maps. It is therefore NOT compatible with old save games. Using this patch with other mods may cause bad results, its not recommended. Use this patch at your own risk. It does not modify the game, so if something screws up, just do a reinstall of Fallout 2.



Questions and Feedback

If you have questions or feedback, you can post them at NMA here:
http://www.nma-fallout.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10612

Or you can send me an email to desolation@cogeco.ca

Please let me know if anything strange happens when you play this patch.



Credits

This patch uses Andy-Spacetrain's FO2LC (Fallout 2 Loader Creator) to patch the Fallout2 executable in memory before running the game. This is how the player gets the pipboy and vault suit, and also how the game loads the FO2VDIFF.DAT patch file. Andy's loader tool is here:
http://modguide.nma-fallout.com/tools/#Loader

The means to update the critter prototypes was inspired by ColJack's Prototype Editing tutorial:
http://www.coljack.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/fallout/


The patch also includes the Encounter Booster modified worldmap.txt file created by Haris/Miran
http://www.nma-fallout.com/forum/dload.php?action=file&file_id=620



Technical Info: How this was done

To create this patch, the following was done:

1) A directory was created to build the patch contents

2) The entire contents of the \maps directory from the Fallout2 master.dat was extracted into this patch directory

3) The 1.02D PATCH000.DAT was extracted into the patch directory, overwriting some of the original maps.

4) The artemple.int script was modified to give the player the awareness perk at the beginning of the game.

5) The fallout mapper tool was used to edit the critter prototypes and increase the HP, AP, and EXP points. This replaced all of the \proto\critters and all of the maps.

6) DAT Explorer was used to create a DAT file

7) FO2LC loader creator was used to build the executable FO2VDIFF.EXE that patches the FALLOUT2.EXE and runs the game, enabling the pipboy, changing the player appearance to vault suit, and loading the FO2VDIFF.DAT patch file

Note: My first attempt to increase critter hit points was done using a prototype editor. I discovered that simply changing the protos does not work, because the critter instances are stored inside the map files. I found out (inspired by ColJack), that if I change the mapper2.cfg to include save_text_maps=1, the mapper saves both a normal .map file and a text version. I thought I would have to edit the text version of the maps to rebuild the critter instances (with new values), but it seems that as long as save_text_maps=1 is configured, the saved .map DOES contain the updated proto values. To be clear, I edited the prototypes by selecting them on "critter" selector bar in the mapper, changed the EXP, HP, and AP for each critter. Then I had to open each map and save it (with the save_text_maps=1) enabled. It takes a long time to save maps this way. It appears that the mapper is frozen (not responding) but this isn't true, you just have to wait. Editing the protos this way seems to work, as you can see with the awareness perk. The ants in the temple originally had 6 hit points, now they have 12. All critters were changed except for Horrigan, because I don't think its possible to go past 999 HP.
 
dude_obj said:
- Sulik, Vic, and Cassidy will wear vault jump suits if they join your party
Where do they get them from then? :?

dude_obj said:
- Includes the random encounter booster patch.
Does anyone know how much this increases encounters by on an older computer? I seem to get enough random encounters as it is. :) Thanks.

dude_obj said:
Requirements

This patch is built from the US 1.02D version patch. It will not work with any other version (sorry). This patch actually includes everything in the 1.02d patch (PATCH000.DAT), plus a new rebuild of all of the maps, critter protos, and critter instances on the maps.



How to use

Copy the FO2VDIFF.DAT and FO2VDIFF.EXE to your Fallout2 directory. Click on the FO2VDIFF.EXE to run the game. Warning: Don't forget that you have to run the FO2VDIFF.EXE (NOT FALLOUT2.EXE!) each time you play the game with this patch. You may want to make a shortcut to FO2VDIFF.EXE on your desktop so you don't forget.

For best results, it is recommended that you do a fresh install of the game before running this patch. If you don't want to do that, make sure that the following is done before playing:

1) Delete all save games from \Fallout2\Data
2) Delete everything from \Fallout2\Data except for the SOUND directory
3) If you have a \Fallout2\dev\proto directory, delete that too
You can use the US patch with the UK version, as I've done for the child patch, since the child patch unpacks all the frms to the data\art folders will leaving them there affect running this mod?
 
requiem_for_a_starfury said:
Where do they get them from then?


The protos for sulik, vic, and cassidy (as party members) were changed to use the hbjmps (sulik) and hmjmps (vic and cassidy). I guess I was just tired of looking at the tribal (hmwarr) and fat guy (nmfatt) models. Where did they get the jumpsuits: you gave them the suits when they joined your party. When you first meet them they look as they always did, when they join you they wear jumpsuits. The proto for sulik is different than the "sulik in your party" which actually has 6 protos, stage 1 through 6. The generic sulik uses hmwarr appearance, the 6 others use hbjmps. Same idea for vic and cassidy. Where did you get the jump suits. I don't know. LOL

requiem_for_a_starfury said:
Does anyone know how much this increases encounters by on an older computer? I seem to get enough random encounters as it is.

Regarding the random encounter booster, I don't know what it does on older computers, but I without tweaks don't get many encounters on 1.5Ghz Celeron or 2.2Ghz Athlon machines. Perhaps I shouldn't have stuffed that patch down everyone's throat :lol: but if you get too many encounters you can just put an original copy in \Fallout2\data and it will override the one inside FO2VDIFF.DAT.

requiem_for_a_starfury said:
You can use the US patch with the UK version, as I've done for the child patch, since the child patch unpacks all the frms to the data\art folders will leaving them there affect running this mod?

Edit: Andy says his loader/creator works for US and UK versions, so perhaps it will work with the UK version. However, my patch includes the contents of US 1.02d patch000.dat (plus my changes), so I'm not sure what that means wrt the UK version.
 
so this is pretty late, but just figured I would tell you some bugs I ran into.


1. The car doesn't appear in Sanfran when you arrive with it, I guess when you rebuilt the map you forgot to include the spot where the car sits?

2. In modoc , when you're supposed to blow up the rock pile and get to Cornelius's watch, when you climb out there is no goo laying all around, and when you go back down, the rocks are still there (I guess you didn't make a map for the guey modoc and the rockless cave?)


Thats all I found, I didn't really want to mess with it after I saw those bugs. But hey, would you consider releasing a barebones version of this? Just the increased encounters / harder monsters / exp increase? That way people could use a lot of the fixes found in the various fanpatches, with your mod. or maybe you dont care and im waisting my breath. Ohwell!
 
agris said:
1. The car doesn't appear in Sanfran when you arrive with it, I guess when you rebuilt the map you forgot to include the spot where the car sits?

2. In modoc , when you're supposed to blow up the rock pile and get to Cornelius's watch, when you climb out there is no goo laying all around, and when you go back down, the rocks are still there (I guess you didn't make a map for the guey modoc and the rockless cave?)

This is strange because I made no changes to anything but the protos, and then did a save maps as text, which seems to update the critters on maps with new stats in the protos (found this out by accident). So since I didn't change anything on the maps I have no idea why these two bugs would occur, but thanks for trying out the mod and reporting these bugs.

agris said:
would you consider releasing a barebones version of this? Just the increased encounters / harder monsters / exp increase? That way people could use a lot of the fixes found in the various fanpatches, with your mod. or maybe you dont care and im waisting my breath. Ohwell!

The strange thing is that this is exactly what it is. There are no changes except proto values. The DAT file consists of the entire contents of patch 1.02D, updates to all critter protos, and replacements of alls maps. And the maps were not changed at all, they were simply "save as text" in the mapper (as mentioned above).
 
agris, do you have a save game from just before you arrived in SF for the first time? If so could you possiblly put that in a zip file and email it to me. I can try to find out what the problem is with the car in SF. If the rest of the game worked okay, then maybe this mod is (almost) bug free, except for the original FO2 bugs of course.
 
sure, let me dig through the scary batcave that is my hard drive and see. I think I still have them.
 
sorry for the gravedigging but did anyone get this mod ? i would like to try this one out but the link is down and it not on NMA ether.

Does anyone have this mod. please pm if you do tnx
 
This mod progressed into the unofficial Fallout 2 expansion pack. It was nearly finished last I heard, but the two guys working on it decided to take a break for a little while due to real life commitments from work and stuff.

If you want an update you should email or PM

dude_obj
Corpse

These are the two people working on this now, that have added a lot of new calabirs etc... that do major damage, but you need them to help kill the stronger critters. The critters now have access to the more powerful weapons as well.
 
Wild_qwerty said:
This mod progressed into the unofficial Fallout 2 expansion pack. It was nearly finished last I heard, but the two guys working on it decided to take a break for a little while due to real life commitments from work and stuff.

If you want an update you should email or PM

dude_obj
Corpse

These are the two people working on this now, that have added a lot of new calabirs etc... that do major damage, but you need them to help kill the stronger critters. The critters now have access to the more powerful weapons as well.

Its been awhile since these guys last posted on NMA. When did you talk to them? They deserve time off but it would be nice to know that they take some time off and that they will come back.

Its sad to see experienced modders just walk away in the wasteland .....never hearing a word from them ever again
 
This is a pretty decent mod right now, deifnately steps up the difficulty. Of course, since I am running on a P3-800, with no map speed issues in the first place, I get a LOT of encounters. So... my perk and skill planning was quite different this time: more points into outdoorsman (plus i found a LOT of wilderness survival magazines) and perks like ranger and healer (to help me heal more between battles without using up stimpacks, saving them for battles)

The only thing I DON'T really like about this mod is making all followers wear vault suits, which I found rather silly.
 
Rev. Layle said:
The only thing I DON'T really like about this mod is making all followers wear vault suits, which I found rather silly.

I agree. But i think he did this so you buddys can wield other weapons like plasma rifle, miniguns, etc. So they are more usefull then before
 
I can send dude and corpse an email if you want, I know dude was real busy at work and prior to taking a break he was working full time and spending more than forty hours a week on the mod!
 
So how IS that Fallout Expansion mod coming along?

It would be fair(er) to have some more/bigger munitions to take out those pumped up critters... 8)

Is there any chance of a 'normal' fallout expansion mod with critters with normal health?

or perhaps some kind of ingame switch or an alternate version of the mod?
 
Back
Top