Fallout2.exe Patcher

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Tannhauser

Venerable Relic of the Wastes
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jdoe407 has created a Fallout2.exe patcher, which allows users to change Fallout 2's resolution and the speed of the World Map. From jdoe407's thread on our forums:<blockquote><center>
</center>This has been designed for the 1.02d us executable and I can't guarantee that it will run on anything else. There are still many bugs with fallout2 when running with a higher resolution.

The patcher is run in the same directory as Fallout2.exe. What it does is it takes the original executable, makes a copy of it and then applies a few patches to it depending on what information you give to it via the gui.

The slider bar in the "World Map" section determines how much you want to slow the world map down by. The higher the bar, the slower it will get. To enable or disable it, just simply check or uncheck the "Slow Down World Map" check box

The way I patched the file this time did require the removal of error checking functions. All that the patch changes are the destinations to some jumps/calls. The patch also re-writes the resolution picking function into a much more compact system.

Most of the interfaces are in the upper left corner because I'm not too sure on how the mouse events work just yet. The larger the resolution... the more errors you will have when loading different areas. For those who wanted crazy resolutions, you can have them.
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Fallout2Patcher_V2 binary: http://www.jdoe407.com/cpp/precompiled/win32/Fallout2Patcher_V2.zip
Fallout2Patcher_V2 source: http://www.jdoe407.com/cpp/cpp-win32/Fallout2Patcher/Fallout2Patcher_V2.zip
The development of the resolution/mapspeed hacks can be seen in the thread here.</blockquote>At this point, the largest issue with higher resolutions seems to be somewhat screwy dialogue screens.

Great work jdoe407, and to all the other modders in our forums that made this possible! We all look forward to further releases.

Thanks to Ozrat for spotting this.

Edit: Uploaded to the NMA server also.
 
Shame it's practically unplayable at anything above the default 640x480 resolution. But what you can see looks really good.
 
Simply awesome! Hopefully it gets polished to perfection. Right now it is simply a proof of concept, but not really playable, right?
 
Hah, this looks pretty awesome. I'm saving a Fallout 2 playthrough for summer (don't want it tainted by a semester from hell), but heck, now that I've seen part of New Reno at 1600x1200, I want to take shots of all the locations at that res. Looks like Fallout Tactics...nice and clean. Unplayable, but sure is cool to look at. The Fallout world has always blown me away with the painstaking detail put into the environmental. Fallout Tactics most of all, but without F1 & 2, there would be no pretty Tactics maps.

The world-map slow-downer is intriguing, though. I used the program Turbo to make the world map go at a manageable rate before, but the bad thing is that it increases the load times (no separation between world map and everything else that uses the CPU). I guess this might work with the same method, but hell again, it's worth trying.
 
Odd, I never had any problems with the world map travel being too fast. I didn't realise that it was such a common complaint it required modding.
 
Mad Max RW said:
Shame it's practically unplayable at anything above the default 640x480 resolution. But what you can see looks really good.
Click to expand...

With some resized FRMs for dialog and barter its playable, although the text is a bit difficult to read. Its far from unplayable, almost everything works fine, although the dialog screen needs fixing and the map scroll points are set on maps for 640x480 so you see past the edge of maps. More discussion on this is in this <a href ="http://www.nma-fallout.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=12483">thread</a>. I am playing at 800x600 and its definitely playable with the resized FRMs.
 
Now THAT's some frickin' amazing work ! I still remember how great it was to see IanOut using those high resolutions.

Awesome !
 
Yea, the only other problem is that the maps were only designed to be viewed at 640x480 res, so at higher resolutions you can sometimes see blank areas of the map. But this is an easy fix, the maps jsut need updating to fill in those blank areas :)
 
Wild_qwerty said:
maps jsut need updating to fill in those blank areas
Click to expand...

There are scroll blockers on maps (misc object number 11) that are placed on the map to restrict scrolling past the exit grids. Since these are manually placed on the map I don't see a way to support multiple resolutions unless different maps are made for each resolution. If you have a map built for 800x600 you'd see past the exit grids at 1024x768. Maybe not a big deal, but I plan to make a set optimized for 800x600.
 
would this set work for 640x480 as well? In other words would the higher res maps be backwards compatible with the low res mode?

So in theory you could make a 1024x768 version that would work for 800x600 as well.

Not that it matters as I only have a 15" monitor and will play 800x600 :)
 
If the community where to produce maps that fill in the blank spots and scroll-blockers for their respective resolution, couldn't the program be made to insert the appropriate map for the selected resolution?

So if A. decides he wants to play in 800x600, it would load dude_obj's 800x600 maps, or if B. wants to play in 1024x768 they would load different maps, optimized for that reso.
 
agris said:
If the community where to produce maps that fill in the blank spots and scroll-blockers for their respective resolution, couldn't the program be made to insert the appropriate map for the selected resolution? So if A. decides he wants to play in 800x600, it would load dude_obj's 800x600 maps, or if B. wants to play in 1024x768 they would load different maps, optimized for that reso.
Click to expand...

Yes if there was multiple versions of maps, a batch file could copy the right set to a patch directory before running the executable. Some of the maps are difficult to make wider though because they have special artwork, for example the arroyo bridge map, the enclave dock etc.
 
I suspose if some artists were foudn to extend those custom tiles, it would help. But of course the smaller the res, the less new art that will be required.
 
Fez said:
Odd, I never had any problems with the world map travel being too fast. I didn't realise that it was such a common complaint it required modding.
Click to expand...

Yeah I have had that problem several times... I never complained as I was trying to get from point A to B quickly most of the time.
 
Maphusio said:
Fez said:
Odd, I never had any problems with the world map travel being too fast. I didn't realise that it was such a common complaint it required modding.
Click to expand...

Yeah I have had that problem several times... I never complained as I was trying to get from point A to B quickly most of the time.
Click to expand...

I get it all the time on this computer. The only reason it annoys me is because you seem to get a lot less encounters, and nearly no special encounters. You can miss out on some good stuff because of that :P.
 
Will there be support for widescreen resolutions?
I'm currently running 1600x1024. Perhaps, if possible, have a button that runs FO2 at desktop resolution (which in my case would indeed be 1600x1024). I would assume that to be the most prominent option for less common resolutions.

If possible at all that is. Very cool work anyways!
 
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