Fallout 2 mod FO2 Engine Tweaks (Sfall)

[Continuum]

A gif lacks some of the information fallout requires. (Orientations, action images, hotspots etc.) And top of that, I'd have to throw out the gif palette information, so aside from saving one conversion step there would be no advantage.

Exactly. FRM format isn't a problem at all. The problem is with engine which isn't able to use unique, 256 colors for each FRM. Only one, "global" palette is used. This has already been discussed, somewhere in this thread.

 

[taag]

Well, since I'm still having problems with brightness change after FRM conversion I'm looking for a way to solve it.

I always thought if you name your PAL file as your FRM file, the game would load that one instead of the global one. The problem is there are almost no programs which can create a proper custom PAL file for Fallout engine.

 

[Timeslip]

I always thought if you name your PAL file as your FRM file, the game would load that one instead of the global one. The problem is there are almost no programs which can create a proper custom PAL file for Fallout engine.

No, it only does that for full screen frm's like the help screen. Remember that fallout uses an 8 bit display, so it's physically impossible for it to use multiple palettes in a single screen.

Even if you force fallout to use 16 bit mode, it just creates an internal paletted copy of the frontbuffer and decodes the whole thing at once rather than one image at a time, so it doesn't help at all.

 

[taag]

So I guess there's nothing that could be done to improve Fallout's technical issues? The stuff with EAX is the peak of it?

P.S. Can you switch off deleting the files from proto directory and subdirectories unless they're set to Read-Only? It's not really that big issue, but I once forgot to set them to Read-Only and lost about a week of work. Forgot to backup as well

 

[bloodien0se]

Anyone have any good global.fx files they'd like to share? The one on Valut-tec seems to be the only one anyone has published specifically for fallout. I don't know much about shaders myself but if anyone has one they like feel free to share.

 

[Josan12]

@Josan12 and Timeslip:
where can I find new weapon animations? I'd like to improve F2wedit to support the new codes but after reading all thread I do not understand how this work (my English is not so good). I know the structure of proto file and I know what where is in hexes, but I need to know what means letters n, p q or other Timeslip wrote about them in some last posts.
Please help.

@ Cubik, I have created some new weapon animations .... if you want me to send you the FRM's just PM me.

Great tool, BTW, and Qwerty and I would really appreciate it if you can update it to work with Timeslips new codes.
But, i haven't managed to make them work yet. If you can figure it out and code it into your tool, that would be awesome. I hope Timeslip's explanation of how it works helps you.

EDIT: Dammit! no matter what i do, the game seems to want to use E animation (club) The Mapper (and Cubiks editor) confirms i've changed the code to O (12 - cos the animation field is blank, or <error> in the mapper) It's like the game looks for O animations like i tell it to, but can't find them. Do i need to edit critter.lst? I notice it lists HMMAXX, and there is a 11 1 after it. Anyone know what the 11 1 means?

Also: @ Lex & Qwerty: have you guys managed to make this work?

 

[Timeslip]

P.S. Can you switch off deleting the files from proto directory and subdirectories unless they're set to Read-Only?

I probably can, but I suspect fallout behaves like that for a reason, and that changing it will have side effects. No harm in trying though.
Edit: yup, was easy enough to change. I still suspect side effects though, so I'll leave it disabled by default.

EDIT: Dammit! no matter what i do, the game seems to want to use E animation (club) The Mapper (and Cubiks editor) confirms i've changed the code to O (12 - cos the animation field is blank, or <error> in the mapper) It's like the game looks for O animations like i tell it to, but can't find them. Do i need to edit critter.lst? I notice it lists HMMAXX, and there is a 11 1 after it. Anyone know what the 11 1 means?

You shouldn't need to edit critter.lst. I didn't make any changes to anything other than the proto...

I really can't think of any reasonable reason why it's not working... You've deleted patch000.dat, edited the correct proto, made sure you've edited the correct byte, (editing 0x39-0x3b will cause the mapper to show an error for the animation code, but wont have an in game effect. If the byte you edited was 0 to start with, it was the wrong one,) you changed the byte to 12 rather than 0x12, (I haven't been using hex for the animation codes,) made the proto read only, made sure the mapper and game are both using the same data directory, (i.e. you haven't changed the critter_patches or master_patches line in fallout2.cfg and forgotten about it?) you've set UseAdditionWeaponAnims=1 in ddraw.ini and aren't loading a save game that has a cached copy of the proto?

Download filemon and check that fallout is reading the proto from the data directory, and that'll also let you check which animations are getting loaded.

 

[Wild_qwerty]

I honestly havent tried it yet

Josan, can you post a link to download the sniper files and I'll take a look

*EDIT*
As long as we are nagging for new file types, anything other than MVE for movies would be nice or is this limited to 256 colours as well? I just get sick of the massive file size so it's not really that important. Take a look at the Freespace 2 project where they got the source code (with the mve code removed) and added DivX support.

 

[Mash]

Hi, Timeslip

I sent you a PM yesterday, just wondering if you received it or not?

 

[Timeslip]

1.36 is up.

>Added an option to increase the number of sound buffers available for sound effects
>Added an option to stop fallout deleting non readonly protos
>Fixed movie compatibility with v1.7 of the resolution patch when using graphics mode 5 or 6

Increasing the number of sound buffers to something higher than the number of hardware buffers supported by your sound card may make sound effects a bit weird, (unless you're on vista with it's 0 hardware sound support, in which case everything probably sounds a bit weird already...) and I have no idea what effect stopping fallout from deleting the protos will have. I still think it does it for a good reason.

Josan, can you post a link to download the sniper files and I'll take a look

I've just been using a mixture of the other animations, so if my spear looks like a rockets launcher when I equip it and a minigun when I throw it, I know it's working. Saves having to wait for new animations.

As long as we are nagging for new file types, anything other than MVE for movies would be nice or is this limited to 256 colours as well? I just get sick of the massive file size so it's not really that important. Take a look at the Freespace 2 project where they got the source code (with the mve code removed) and added DivX support.

Possibly. Of course, anything higher than 8 bit would require a dx9 graphics mode and wouldn't work on the win9x version. Will add it to my todo list for 1.37.

 

[taag]

I probably can, but I suspect fallout behaves like that for a reason, and that changing it will have side effects. No harm in trying though.
Edit: yup, was easy enough to change. I still suspect side effects though, so I'll leave it disabled by default.

I'll let you know if anything weird pops up.

Also why restrain yourself by pushing on with the Win 9x support? I haven't seen one since Win 2000/Me hit the shelves and that was ages ago in IT calendar.

 

[Timeslip]

Also why restrain yourself by pushing on with the Win 9x support? I haven't seen one since Win 2000/Me hit the shelves and that was ages ago in IT calendar.

Remember that fallout is an old game, and a lot of people run it on old computers. Believe me, if I release a broken win9x version, I soon get to hear about it.

I don't limit features just because they don't work on win9x in any case. The dx9 graphics modes, eax support, and anything that relies of dx9 mode (some script functions, resolution scaling, letterboxing for widescreen monitors, hardware shaders, windowed mode, etc) all only work on the win 2000/xp/vista version.

 

[taag]

I understand you're not limiting the features but wait, there are really folks running Win 9x?! And a lot of them as you say?

I have some web stats from (poor) east Europe and they say this for 50000+ users


Win 2000 1.94%
Win 98 0.91%
Win 95 0.03%

Carry on with your support, but you have to wonder after a while...

 

[Lexx]

Well, I like it. I use Ubuntu/ Linux and I couldn't use sfall if it (as example) would only work in Dx9 mode or similar.

 

[Karel]

Well, I like it. I use Ubuntu/ Linux and I couldn't use sfall if it (as example) would only work in Dx9 mode or similar.

I'm not sure about that - Wine has quite good DX9 support (or it's getting there). See:
http://www.winehq.org/site/status_directx

d3d9.dll 95% complete

But I'm not so sure about antialiasing etc. - especially with AMD/ATI cards and buggy fglrx.

 

[Lexx]

Yes, it is possible that it can work with Linux/ Wine too, but I can not run it on my PC. I tested lots of graphic drivers and so on, but nothing runs really good. Thats the reason why I better use the standard - So that I can play and use Fallout 1/2 for mods and stuff.

 

[Timeslip]

OK, I have movies mostly working. What I've done is to modify the fallout movie playing function to check for a file with the same name but the extension .avi, and if it exists play it back with direct show. If it doesn't exist, fallout tries to play the .mve as normal. The play_gmovie command still takes an integer, but I've increased the number of available movie slots to 32, all of which can be set in the ini or via the set_movie_path script function, so there's no need to overwrite the original movies.

The 'mostly' part comes from the way fallouts background music insists on carrying on playing while my movie does, you can't escape them using the mouse, only the keyboard, and they occupy the whole screen regardless of aspect ratio. I'll have to work on that before release.

I have some web stats from (poor) east Europe and they say this for 50000+ users

That may be true for the average computer, but my point was that if you only include people who play fallout 1/2, the win9x percentage gets a lot higher. (Also, the win xp version of sfall works on win 2000 afaik. It's the same kernel.)

Well, I like it. I use Ubuntu/ Linux and I couldn't use sfall if it (as example) would only work in Dx9 mode or similar.

That shouldn't stop you using the win xp version of sfall, just make sure you stick to graphics mode 0.

 

[Josan12]

@ Qwerty:

Here's a link to my new Wakizashi FRM's for you to test with. Though like Timeslip says, it doesn't really matter what FRM's you use.

http://www.mediafire.com/?hehtjennmqp

Let me know if you can get them working.

Also: Although i'm still unable to make the new animation codes work, when i placed a hex-edited proto on the first map (entrance to the temple) the player sprite dissapeared when i equipped the item. The proto was (hopefully) pointing to HMWARROA.frm etc in the data>art>critters folder. When i then placed a leather jacket on the map, put it on and equipped the weapon it used the club (E) animation! I don't understand. Can anyone explain?

 

[Cubik2k]

The updated tool (F2wedit) is ready:

http://www.speedyshare.com/145161370.html

please test this carefully but I'm sure this must work quite good.

If you have some ideas to improve this option please write about this.

Thanks

EDIT:
This is v1.3.0.6 and is compatible with new changes made by Timeslip in sfall v1.37

 

[Mr.Wolna]

@new animation, you have use the mirror option? casue when you look at the 5 diffrent ... you can see the critter change the hand where the sword is wearing.