FO2 Mechanics Overhaul Mod

Wait for a bit tho, I'm working on a big new update and I just need to fix a problem with the item generating stuff and do some additional testing and I'll put it up.

 

Big new update up in the first post! I just did some testing going through all the motions in the temple and arroyo and checking out klamath and not a single hitch, so seems to be doing well. I'll try and finish the game once at least before releasing v. 1.0, but don't count on that being any time soon.


Also, small change at the end of the installation instructions.

 

I would always play a game vanilla first run through (so also no RP), but maybe that's just me. Besides, FO2 slightly addresses the balance issues of FO1 by nerfing higher skill amounts (you'll get to 200+% combat skill much, much slower than in FO1), though of course it's still p. much a disaster. Still, a great disaster, so might as well give it a try.

 

and of course I left a display message in at the very beginning because I'm an idiot. It's just on map start up (it shows the amount of items in a set of arrays), I'll have it out next version which'll be pretty soon (just figured out how to do some interesting things).

 

@phobos2077 @Sduibek, just to move the off-hand discussion from the manual thread, and given that it is (for the moment) only possible in my mod, might as well put it here.

Right now I'm still working on the intricacies of correctly determining the off-hand (harder than it seems with nightmarish actions like switching your armor for the armor you're carrying in your invisible off-hand being possible), but here's the plans for my mod:

Flare in hands: light radius (player light source disabled by default) of 8 hexes, which is treated as daylight for THC (so not a good idea when dealing with enemy snipers).

Radio in hands: if a teammate also has a radio in inven, you transfer part of your unused AP defense bonus (which in my mod is multiplied by Perception, so denotes the amount of time you spend "concentrating" on an enemy attack a la GURPS) to that teammate. The amount transfered is decided by your Leadership skill.

Motion Tracker in hands: while this "concentration" defense bonus only applies to enemies you can actually see, the motion tracker extends this to all enemies. So in my mod you would be able to larp a commander with radio and motion tracker giving instruction to his troops, might be amusing.

 

Thanks dude, but it's clear there's just something deeply wrong with the installation; either I'm giving wrong instructions or there's something crucial missing in the files. I'll do a fresh FO2 install before uploading the next version (something I should have done a long while ago of course, so apologies for that).

 

I've been thinking about a reworking of the way hostility works in Fallout. The biggest problem with it is that it's extremely unnuanced and silly:


- there's almost no gray area between being neutral and full on suicidal town warfare: you could be a town's hero, but the moment you try to steal a beer they will all collectively suicide rush you to the last man, woman and child. Instead, there should be gradations in how hostility works: being caught stealing a flower (or merely being suspected of having done so) or grazing someone with a stray bullet should have less of an impact than minigunning down the mayor or robbing the town bank. Every "team" (i.e. those who will join each other in a fight) will have a hostility meter that'll gradually fill up as you're suspected of thievery, etc., or very rapidly with more egregious acts. This way you can also reduce the chance of hostilities erupting through certain acts.


- There's no chance for surrender. People can run away, sure, but they'll often never end hostilities, reinitiating combat until you finish them off. Which is very annoying. I feel something interesting could be done with this: enemies (or the player?) offering their possessions (and xp value?) in exchange for being kept alive, which also takes away their hostility. Killing them anyway costing karma/rep or something.


- many forms of hostility are "blind" to each other. For instance, during combat, the engine doesn't check whether or not a certain script wants to engage the players (this means that if you're encountering a caravan fighting raiders, the raiders will only notice you and attack you after they're finished with the caravan).

 

Yeah, I'm definitely doing this more now that your register_hook_proc thing allows you to do this so easily (I'm really only just starting to realize the full brilliance of it, awesome job man). However, in some cases, such as where I need to override an entire formula (damage, to hit, etc.), I still need to use the more clunky regular hookscripts which complicate modularization as far as I can tell.

 

But this particular example, namely hostility, shows another limitation, because I would have to use mass compile to change all instances of attack(dude_obj), self_attack_dude, and attack(source_obj) (the attack_setup ones seems most deliberate) into a procedure where I can override them, and then need to make a number of exceptions (boxing, etc.), which all in all makes modularity hard to accomplish (though I could of course do so within this procedure, but I still detest having to work with normal scripts for this reason).

 

Eh, fuck it, now I'm starting to think I should really keep this mod in the realm of global/hookscripts for now. Even I can tell that this shit has feature creep written all over it.

 

Having some fun with energy weapons. I talked a while ago about how I wanted each energy weapon type to have its own distinct mechanics, which I'm now finally able to do animation-wise as well.


For lasers, I thought it would be interesting if they could pass through targets if the armor didn't stop it (so the damage value of laser bolts decreases with every obstacle they pass through). Also, I thought it'd be amusing if they could ricochet off of walls (maybe just metal walls and metal armors, tho I'm not sure which direction they'd bank when hitting a critter, maybe just random?). The wall ricochets don't work for corners (yet), but north/south and east/west walls work nicely:





For plasma, I wanted to have splash damage, but I'm still not sure how to do it animation-wise (so for I've tried just have it split into difference plasma balls on impact, but that looks a bit weird). In the meantime, I also put together something like the shockrifle in UT, with a really wide cone effect for testing:








Next up, I'll try and do some fun stuff with explosives (wall bounces for grenades, doors and containers flying around crushing people, fun!).