HOW TO: Fully edit Fallout1 maps in mapper2.exe, the BIS official Fallout 2 Mapper.

Well, considering that it's possible to create mods for the game since over 5 years, it's not a lot.
 
Lexx said:
Well, considering that it's possible to create mods for the game since over 5 years, it's not a lot.
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5 years? Hasn't it been out since like 1999?
 




@all

Lexx raised a good point. In terms of the larger discussion, however, I think most will agree the reason we haven't more Fallout 2 mods is that we haven't a sufficient number of people who know how to make them. As I've offered before, learning the Fallout modding tools, techniques, and general theory requires a frankly unnatural amount of hobby time-- particularly if one is not a professional computer programmer. I suppose my comment is, then, that anyone who knows how to work with Fallout 2 material is also in practice already sufficiently capable to mod Fallout ("1") as well.

Fallout has a very linear plot and a tight time limit (at least initially), and major mods may be difficult to integrate with the storyline. Fallout 2, on the other hand, is much more suitable for modding because of the relatively open-ended nature of the story ("GECK? Yeah, well, you villagers look fine to me so I'll get around to it whenever...").


Endocore


 
Endocore said:




@all

Lexx raised a good point. In terms of the larger discussion, however, I think most will agree the reason we haven't more Fallout 2 mods is that we haven't a sufficient number of people who know how to make them. As I've offered before, learning the Fallout modding tools, techniques, and general theory requires a frankly unnatural amount of hobby time-- particularly if one is not a professional computer programmer. I suppose my comment is, then, that anyone who knows how to work with Fallout 2 material is also in practice already sufficiently capable to mod Fallout ("1") as well.

Fallout has a very linear plot and a tight time limit (at least initially), and major mods may be difficult to integrate with the storyline. Fallout 2, on the other hand, is much more suitable for modding because of the relatively open-ended nature of the story ("GECK? Yeah, well, you villagers look fine to me so I'll get around to it whenever...").


Endocore


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What I would love to see, and maybe somehow we can get this going, is a better sharing of information among this community. I know for a fact that a handful of persons before me, if not dozens or perhaps even more, have done what's in this thread to get map-editing on Fo1 working. If that's the case, why isn't it listed anywhere?

In other words, Part of the other reason Fo1 isn't modded as much, is because a lot of times when people learn stuff, they don't fucking post it online, so everyone has to relearn the wheel. It's selfish and annoying.
 



@Sduibek

I very much agree with both the notion and the sentiment you expressed, which motivated me earlier me to add my own findings to yours. I remember without much fondness the terrible difficulties I encountered in trying to learn ropes of Fallout/2 modding some time ago-- what little information that is available at all is widely dispersed here and there across the internet, in articles full of hyperlinks to material that hasn't been available for years, and so forth. A quick perusal of the Fallout Modification FAQ here at NMA shows that most of the info is years out of date (though before someone points a finger and suggests I offer to rewrite it if I feel that way, I'll concede the issue in advance).

Perhaps I'm simply not a "natural" in such matters, but I recall I required a week of researching and experimenting for several hours a day just to figure out how to get the mapper working (in that case, for Fallout 2). Learning the scripting language required even more seemingly endless effort. For the benefit of anyone currently trying to do the latter, by the way, I'll offer that the way I finally became proficient in scripting was to sit down with a dozen of the larger scripts for Fallout 2 as well as the header files that come with the mapper. Anywhere I saw a number in a decompiled script, I searched through the headers until I found out what that number represented-- and then I copy/pasted until no numbers were left in the ssl and only (fairly) readable and comprehensible text remained for my further study of the actual processes followed by various scripts.

The bottom line is that as matters currently stand, anyone who would like to become proficient at Fallout/2 modding-craft has to figure things out on their own. If they persist, an undeniable benefit of this process is that they will indeed be much more keenly proficient than any "student" who has attended "classes" (so to speak). On the other hand, however, with the entry barrier to modding so high one can hardly wonder why we don't have more modders.

I try to do my own minor bit when I can to add to the community's permanent record in a way that will hopefully be helpful to clueless beginners (I'm slowly working on another lengthy article on scripting basics for the modding wiki, but am unsure when I'll be able to finish) since I remember the hard time I had when I was clueless myself. Unfortunately hobby time is always in far too short supply, however, for me to contribute as much or as often as I would like.

We all benefit when knowledge-- particularly esoteric technical knowledge-- is commonly shared and widely dispersed. The easier we all make it for such new folks as come along these many years after the release of Fallout/2 to learn how to mod, the more mods we'll all have to play, and the happier we'll all be.


Endocore


 
Man, and Fallout 2 is even one of the few (older) games with a great amount of tutorials and knowledge on the internet. Sure, it's not all easy to find / access, but really, it could be much, much worse. I personally learned everything I know from looking at how stuff was done in Fallout 2. The original scripts helped a lot- After all, pretty much everything you could want to make was done already in some form in either Fo1 or Fo2. You just need to remember what you want to do and where you've seen similar in the original games. Then look at the scripts... of course, this includes a great amount of try&error as well, but still. It could be much worse.
 
Lexx said:
but still. It could be much worse.
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True true. It could be like Diablo 1, where all modding is done via Hex-editing and Assembly.

OH YEAH! Fun times.
 
It's heart-warming to see people building upon my work.
Great to see the script list problem solved. Lack of a working list was a major PITA for me.

I think there aren't much mods for Fallout 1 mainly because it didn't have a mapper and because the scripting language is a nightmare to learn for non-programmists. And IIRC there aren't scripting tutorials specific for Fallout 1.
 
Sorrow said:
And IIRC there aren't scripting tutorials specific for Fallout 1.
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Correct, or at least not that I found anyway. It's on my to-do list. At some point I'll get a Fallout1-specific scripting guide up on Vault-Tec Wikia. Which I could link here of course.


Endocore would you be willing to provide a list of the entire folder tree you are using? You mentioned the empty folders called master.dat and all that, I'd like to make sure I can have the same folder structure as I need to work towards having a small install. After my RAID failure my restored Fallout2 folder is retardedly huge and messy. It would be great to get your list to compare to the one I'm having to rebuild.
 


@Sduibek

Is this helpful? (image)

Though not germane to this mapper discussion, since I originally raised a different issue here I may as well finish up the same here.

[spoiler:3f458d71e3]Though perhaps you already fixed FIXT regarding the issue of the Hub Hookers script allowing free services, my own corrected version (fully tested in all circumstance iterations) I made when I last looked at the materials last year-- which also includes additional enhanced gameplay-- is:

Seriously, this stuff is for adults only. (hhooker.int + msg for FIXT Alpha 4.1)

If you'd like to include all or part of that material in a future FIXT, please feel free to make whatever use you like of it; some of it may be too racy for prudent inclusion. All the changes I made should be fairly self-evident and easy to follow, though the particular fix for the "no-caps" problem is actually several fixes distributed over several nodes. Note I also wasn't fond of the way you organized your standard "start" node macros in this as well as all the other FIXT npc scripts, so I rewrote that section too.[/spoiler:3f458d71e3]

I noticed you had a number of posts recently with technical questions that haven't received responses; I haven't had time in several weeks to think about Fallout and that situation is unlikely to improve for some time :(, but my favored approach to technical forums such as this is to look into presumably hard questions to which no one else on hand knows an answer (and thereby increase my own learning as well). Since you seem to be imminently gearing up for another major round of FIXT efforts if I get a chance soon and those other posts remain unaddressed by others I'll try to offer whatever assistance I'm able. Keep up the good work on all your projects. :clap:


 
Endocore said:
Is this helpful? (image)
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Awesome, fantastic. Thank you! I've actually been scared to do any mapping work since Alpha 4.1 because of my Fallout2 (mapper) folder being so fucked. This should get things going again :cool:

No need to apologize for not responding to things... I'm on here too often is the real issue, not anyone else's absence :P

Thanks for the working on the hookers for me! (ha, that sounds funny)

Lastly good idea about scouring the forums, I'll keep that in mind.
 
Does anyone have a link to the modified fallout 2 master.dat , i dont want to scroll through fallout 2 maps. Current link is dead
 
Drobovik, I have small suggestion, please remove from the folder this file:
FO2FO1_map_converter_v2.1.2.6_by Cubik.zip

there is newer version 2.1.3.7 which is faster than the old one ;)
 
Well, if it's ok with you, @Cubik2k, I would like to leave it archived for completeness purposes. For history, so to speak. Newer version is present which most people will use anyway since it is... newer:)
But if you are ABSOLUTELY and POSITIVELY want me to remove it, I will
 
Ok, I understand, so leave it archived for history :) Removing file was only my small sugestion.
 
I tried both Sduibek's setup and Endocore's setup and I'm having problems with both. Under Endocore's setup, I can open FO1 maps, but scripts seem to be incorrectly associated, for example it shows Lars in Junktown using elev9.int script. It's all mixed up in terms of scripts.

Following Sduibek's steps, I had to improvise a bit... in step 6 Sduibek's says "Make sure the CRITTER.DAT and MASTER.DAT in the Fallout2 directory are actually the files from Fallout 1.". I assume he meant FO2 .dat files? BISMapper doesn't run for me without them. Also he extracts FO1 master.dat to the FO2 root folder whereas Endocore extracts it into the data folder... Anyway, after some improvisation I can open the maps, but again scripts are mixed up so clearly I did something wrong.

Would someone be willing to write a 2023 guide on how to get FO1 maps running in BISMapper? Including the paths in mapper2.cfg. For the uninitiated. Thank you.
 
And it works now. Not sure what was wrong, must have had some files mixed up. Anyway, I'll write down the steps myself just in case somebody else also goofs up

dependencies:
Steps:
  1. make a clean install of FO1 and FO2 (I used the GOG version)
  2. create a BISmapper folder and extract into it BISMapper files
    mapper2.exe
    mapper2.cfg
    m2_res.dll
    f2_res.dat
    m2_res.ini
  3. edit mapper2.cfg and set:
    critter_dat=critter.dat
    critter_patches=data
    master_dat=master.dat
    master_patches=data
  4. in the BISmapper folder create 3 folders
    BISmapper\critter.dat
    BISmapper\master.dat
    BISmapper\data
  5. extract FO2 master.dat into \master.dat folder
  6. extract FO2 critter.dat into \critter.dat folder
  7. delete the maps folder in \master.dat (these are FO2 maps, we don't need them)
  8. extract FO1 master.dat into \data
  9. extract FO1 critter.dat into \data
  10. copy the data folder from FO1 install folder and overwrite with it the \data folder in BISmapper
  11. search for PERK.MSG file in \data folder and delete it (there should be 3 coming from FO1 master.dat)
  12. enlarge protos in \data\proto\critters to 416 bytes (you can copy the 416.bat there and run it) (download from the mega link); the 416.bat works only on Win10+ though
  13. replace scripts.lst in \data\scripts\scripts.lst with the one from Sduibek (mega link)
  14. replace AI.txt in \data\data\AI.txt with the one from Sduibek (mega link)
 
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