Fallout 2 mod FO2 Engine Tweaks (Sfall)

[TF]

I wonder if it could be possible to convert Fallout 2 World Map style to the (in my opinion) better Fallout 1 worldmap style. I've never liked Fallout 2's world map. Too bland for my tastes.

What do you mean by style? The actual images used in the map? I think the idea with FO2's more bland and sand-dominated map is that the desert etc moved in over all the craters and ruined cities in FO1 since it's been many years. It kind of makes sense.

 

[Lexx]

This wouldn't be a good idea. The differences between the Fallout 1 worldmap and the Fallout 2 worldmap are, that the view of the worldmap in Fallout 2 is further away. That is also the reason, why you can't combine the two worldmaps into one big.

 

[Kanhef]

There's much more color variation and contrast on the F1 map than the F2 map. The ocean is blue, and cities are a visible part of the terrain. New Reno and San Fran are big enough they ought to show up.

The scale in F2 is quite a bit bigger – note the distance between the military base and Shady Sands/NCR. 17 squares in F1, 8 in F2. Traveling time increased quite a bit as well: crossing a square of desert takes 10 hours in F1, 25 in F2.


Timeslip - sorry, but I don't think that script will fix it. The 'gain foo' perks don't actually modify primary stats (same thing with perks that give bonuses to skills). It looks like the level-up routine doesn't check for Gain Intelligence perk, which is why you don't get more skill points.

 

[Timeslip]

Timeslip - sorry, but I don't think that script will fix it. The 'gain foo' perks don't actually modify primary stats (same thing with perks that give bonuses to skills). It looks like the level-up routine doesn't check for Gain Intelligence perk, which is why you don't get more skill points.

You're right. Silly me for assuming it would modify the extra stat and not actually checking first...

For the purposes of fixing this bug it doesn't matter, because the extra stat is allowed to be negative. (My script did work, with some modifications to get all the function names right. I've tested it since posting.) The problem will be that anywhere else that makes a direct check for the gain intelligence perk will end up giving double bonuses.

The best thing to do would be to remove all of the hard coded checks for the gain xxx perks, and then modify them to increase your base stat by one. That would ensure that they all give exactly the right bonuses, but would be tedious and could introduce more bugs if any checks got missed.

Are there any other problems with the gain xxx perks not giving the bonuses they should? If not, I think I'll just go with the original request and stick a check for the gain intelligence perk into the level up code. If there are other problems, removing all the checks might be more efficient.

Edit: After a quick look for all the checks for the gain xxx perks, the only ones I could find were in calculating the current stat, which basically just adds the base and extra stats together, and then clamps the result into the allowed range. In that case, the perks should just have an identical effect to increasing the extra stat anyway...

Edit2: Pretty sure the perks aren't checked for anywhere else. I think the script idea would be best tbh. Removing those checks and modifying the perks to increase the base stat would give the same effect, but would break save games, and just adding a check for gain intelligence perk on level ups would leave anything else that depends on base stats rather than the current stat broken.

 

[Slaughter Manslaught]

I hate the Fallout 2 map because it's too bland. You only see dirt, desert and mountains. If the map was the same map style of Fallout 1, we would have many ruins around New Reno, some ruins around Klamath (not many), NCR would be somwhat big enough to show on the map and San Francisco would be HUGE. Instead, you can only see desert, sand, mountains... too bland for my tastes. It's one of the few bad things in Fallout 2.

 

[Kanhef]

If the script works, great. Rewriting a bunch of perks doesn't seem worth the effort.

 

[Glovz]

@Timeslip

Sent you a PM with updates for my mods and mention an upcoming mod - hope it's clear enough.

Thanks in advance for all your help!

 

[Continuum]

@ Timeslip

It's not possible, I guess... But I'll ask anyway. Are you able to somehow hack this freaking engine and remove tile size limit? He doesn't recognize tile larger than 80x36. This is one of the most retarded limitations for the artists

 

[Timeslip]

1.28 is up. Please let me know if you find any problems; I'm a bit suspicious of the black skilldex fix and gain xxx perk fixes, but I've done more testing than I usually do (not very much, admittedly. ) and haven't spotted anything yet.

>Added a fix for the skilldex button vanishing if you have many active quests and holodisks
>Added a fix for the gain xxx perks not giving all the bonuses that they should. (Will only effect new games)
>Updated the ap ammo mod (From Glovz)
>Hopefully fixed the issues with quickload
>sfall will display an error if you try running the win xp version in win 9x compatibility mode
>Added an option to override the art cache size, to fix F2RP EPA crashes without modifing fallout2.cfg
>Added new script functions: get_shader_texture, set_shader_texture

It's not possible, I guess... But I'll ask anyway. Are you able to somehow hack this freaking engine and remove tile size limit? He doesn't recognize tile larger than 80x36. This is one of the most retarded limitations for the artists

I've no idea how tiles work. I know the art cache is limited to 16k per element, but larger tiles should fit into there easily enough...

 

[killap]

1.28 is up. Please let me know if you find any problems; I'm a bit suspicious of the black skilldex fix and gain xxx perk fixes, but I've done more testing than I usually do (not very much, admittedly. ) and haven't spotted anything yet.

>Added a fix for the skilldex button vanishing if you have many active quests and holodisks
>Added a fix for the gain xxx perks not giving all the bonuses that they should. (Will only effect new games)
>Updated the ap ammo mod (From Glovz)
>Hopefully fixed the issues with quickload
>sfall will display an error if you try running the win xp version in win 9x compatibility mode
>Added an option to override the art cache size, to fix F2RP EPA crashes without modifing fallout2.cfg
>Added new script functions: get_shader_texture, set_shader_texture

Very nice!

What exactly did you change to fix the skilldex issue?

 

[Timeslip]

Very nice!

What exactly did you change to fix the skilldex issue?

There's a function at 004998C0 that sets up the buttons on the screen, and it uses a variable which doesn't get reset correctly between function calls, which causes problems if it's called once to set up a large number of buttons and then again with a smaller number. I manually set the variable back to 0 each time the function is called now.

The fix defaults to off at the moment, because it might cause problems if anything is expecting the variable not to be cleared. There's elevators, the mr fixit mod and a couple of other things I want to check before I default it to on.

 

[killap]

There's a function at 004998C0 that sets up the buttons on the screen, and it uses a variable which doesn't get reset correctly between function calls, which causes problems if it's called once to set up a large number of buttons and then again with a smaller number. I manually set the variable back to 0 each time the function is called now.

Alright.

The fix defaults to off at the moment, because it might cause problems if anything is expecting the variable not the be cleared. There's elevators, the mr fixit mod and a couple of other things I want to check before I default it to on.

I'll do some testing myself as well.


Also, what did you do for the art_cache config? 1047 for XP and 255 for Win9x?

 

[Timeslip]

I'll do some testing myself as well.

Thanks.

Also, what did you do for the art_cache config? 1047 for XP and 255 for Win9x?

256 on windows 9x and 1024 on xp. I've been using 1024 on my copy of fallout since I installed it, and it's never given me any trouble. You multiple the art cache size by 16k to give you the number of k of memory that fallout reserves for the art cache, so a setting of 1024 allocates 16mb of memory.

 

[killap]

Did some quick testing.

Quick load now works correctly again.
I enabled the skilldex fix and elevators appear to work just fine - I only tested one though.

 

[Continuum]

I've no idea how tiles work.

And what do you need to know?

I know the art cache is limited to 16k per element, but larger tiles should fit into there easily enough...

Exactly. Engine is able to handle large scenery pieces (for example 300x300), longer walls, but not tiles. It's hardcoded somewhere...


-------------------------------------EDIT

But from other hand without hacking Mapper you'll not build any map from larger tiles, I guess... So, forget about this.

 

[Jordan]

Timeslip

Whether probably to add new function?

Example

The original

message_str (int msg_list, int msg_num)

The new

msg (name file, msg_num)

msg ("Scripts\acklint.int", 100)

 

[Skynet]

1.28 is up. Please let me know if you find any problems; I'm a bit suspicious of the black skilldex fix and gain xxx perk fixes, but I've done more testing than I usually do (not very much, admittedly. ) and haven't spotted anything yet.

>Added a fix for the skilldex button vanishing if you have many active quests and holodisks

This may be a stupid question, but will this fix also affect skilldex and sleep button vanishing, when "too many items" bug hits?

 

[Timeslip]

msg ("Scripts\acklint.int", 100)

You want to be able to read strings from a compiled script? That wouldn't be easy to do using the file name like in your example because I wouldn't be able to translate the file name into a script pointer. I might be able to do it using an offset into scripts.lst instead.

This may be a stupid question, but will this fix also affect skilldex and sleep button vanishing, when "too many items" bug hits?

Afaik, the too many items bug corrupts your savegame rather than making the skilldex button vanish, but to answer your question, no, this isn't a fix for the too many items bug.

 

[Jordan]

Timeslip

You want to be able to read strings from a compiled script? That wouldn't be easy to do using the file name like in your example because I wouldn't be able to translate the file name into a script pointer. I might be able to do it using an offset into scripts.lst instead.

I was mistaken!

msg ( "acklint.msg", 100)

Ability to read lines on the file name.

 

[Timeslip]

I was mistaken!

msg ( "acklint.msg", 100)

Ability to read lines on the file name.

That's doable, as long as the msg file isn't packed into a .dat. Will that do, or were the files you wanted to get at packed inside dats?