Looking for a good tutorial

[lust]

I'm going to get started on a fallout2 mod (as a modder who loves fallout2, NO idea why I haven't done this sooner), and I familiarized myself with the mapper.

I'm looking for a good tut on how to place cities, and how to change the text for dialogue nodes (I can't find em!), and generally how to put together a mod.

I don't really need something for the mapper tool or the scripting language, rather something that gives a good overview of where everything is located (a lot of it I found -- a lot if it I can't find).

Also, I can't figure out how mods get distributed.

I checked the sticky but I couldn't find exactly what I was looking for.

I thought maybe someone who's working on a mod had a collection of this in one place.

EDIT: Right now I'm using smacks...

If anyone wants to work on a mod with me... =)

Thanks!

 

[lust]

Okay. I found everything I was looking for in master.dat

(sorry, sorry... I'm a newbie at fallout2 modding)

So let me see if I got this straight...

For my mod I need to make a new master.dat where i insert compiled scripts in a .int format that reference the .msgs (same file name) using the call node methods?

OR use the /data directory which will override the master.dat when the game loads, mirroring the directory structure in the .dat (because master.dat is huge)?

Okay, and if I rewrite master.dat completely I can put in only changes, and the game compares this to what's on the CD and only uses the new information...

So do I got it?

 

[dude_obj]

> I'm looking for a good tut on how to place cities

Not city placement but see these tutorials
http://www.coljack.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/fallout/

City stuff
http://nma-fallout.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7229
http://nma-fallout.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9908
http://www.duckandcover.cx/forums/viewtopic.php?t=7275
http://www.duckandcover.cx/forums/viewtopic.php?t=5506
http://www.duckandcover.cx/forums/viewtopic.php?t=4978

Use search feature to find more about worldmap and cities
Also see the map related .msg files in \text in the master.dat

> how to change the text for dialogue nodes

http://www.duckandcover.cx/forums/viewtopic.php?t=131

> how to put together a mod.

Read as much as you can. There is tons of info about this in the archives. I suggest taking a few days reading through the archives before asking a bunch of more questions.

> I can't figure out how mods get distributed.

See above

> I thought maybe someone who's working on a mod had a collection of this in one place.

I have a big collection of tidbits but its in formatting right now, will post soon. Most of it was found in the archives (hint)

> For my mod I need to make a new master.dat where i insert compiled scripts in a .int format that reference the .msgs (same file name) using the call node methods?

Well not exactly. Usually you want to leave the master.dat alone and add custom stuff in \data or in a custom patch file. The mapper came with the source code of most of the scripts and the compiler. You need a preprocessor (watcom) to compile them.

> OR use the /data directory which will override the master.dat when the game loads, mirroring the directory structure in the .dat (because master.dat is huge)?

Yeah don't bother changing master.dat

> Okay, and if I rewrite master.dat completely I can put in only changes, and the game compares this to what's on the CD and only uses the new information...

One interesting thing you can do is extract the master.dat to a directory called master.dat. The game still works and you can mess around with the files inside master.dat. Great way to learn how stuff works. But your custom stuff probably shouldn't go in there.

Read: http://nma-fallout.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7281