What Remains: A Singleplayermod Basing on the FOnline Engine

I planned to do some preloader where you just click and the screen disappears.. (at this loading time issue I mean).

And yeah, I probably scrap those "hints" (especially the one with "Press C for your character screen was just an example - there I can agree that it makes you think the game thinks you're stupid :D ).

At the other thing.. Would you feel the same if it was just a quote an npc will tell you in the game anyway? So it's just some kind of premise, a reminder what the guy told you?
 
The discussion about Big Guns/Energy Weapons and merged skills was interesting.

x'il has some arguments, mostly about being able to get hand made energy weapons and that kind of stuff. In FOnline:2238 you can create a character based on a single weapon skill no matter if it's Small Guns, Big Guns or Energy Weapons (or Melee/Unarmed). You can also craft the weakest weapons of each kind as well as their ammunition with very low requirements.

But although the item description says they were civilian stuff, the reality in the game was that you could not put your hands on a Laser Pistol until you had advanced quite a lot in the game. And in my opinion, just because something is "allowed to civilians" doesn't mean it will be massively used. I don't believe that authorities would be letting civilians arm themselves so much in the middle of a Cold War-like political situation. There were communist insurgents and I bet there used to be a lot of control and surveillance. The permission to own energy weapons could have been restrictive. And prices could have been too high for most civilians to purchase them.

In Fallout 1/2, you didn't even find energy based weapons in vault armories.

And about the scavengers that live after the War crafting home made energy weapons, well we could also ask ourselves if they would not prefer to give those energy cells a different use, fueling other kinds of machines. Fallout 2 with its Highwayman showed that both Microfusion Cells and Small Energy Cells were batteries that could be used not only as ammunition.

I believe a modder could choose any of the two options about this kind of gear, and both would do fine in the context of the Fallout Universe.

About merging skills, I agree with Surf Solar that this is not dumbing down. This is something I believe should have been there since the first Fallout. Especially when it comes to Firearms: if that skill was there in Fallout 1 for example, I would have used a 5 STR character, like I do most of the time, and swallow some Buffout to use Minigun and weapons like that (I never used drugs in the original Fallouts, never needed them).

Each tendency has its pros and cons, its own possibilities and characteristics. I don't see no reason to consider any of the as something better than the other. A good modder would know how to work well with any of them, and I personally it will work just fine in What Remains, which seems will not be so based on combat anyway.
 
Thanks x'il for pointing out that I have poorly updated this thread here. ;) And no, it wasn't because of the "questionable Skill treatment" issue. :) So, since there haven't been so many updates here, this will be a rather big one to keep you guys up to date.

In the past months, there were mostly very very minor updates, but many of them. The FOnline Engine we are using is great and allows for much freedom, but it lacks some feautures (or rather they're just not "activated" yet) the original Fallouts had. Bringing them back and improving them where we thought it's needed was the first goal and we're still on it. One of those things is for example missing soundeffects, doors didn't make sounds when a critter opens it, the "switch weapon mode" sound wasn't activated, melee/unarmed hits weren't played and so on and so on. I'm pretty sure that there are still some leftovers I have to look for, but there's plenty of time.

On the same note I was doing new soundeffects lately. Having a microphone being able to do good field recordings really pays off. I spent a couple of days recording all kinds of stuff, pens moving on paper in all kinds of variations for the "new message in textbox" sound, moving, crumbling paper or switching pages in a book, these kinds of things. Doing field recordings also means that there is a plenty of material to use in digital audio editing, meaning drastically slowing down pieces to the point where it is not recognizable anymore what source it comes from, adding reverb and such, basically meaning that my goal to create good ambience surroundings like in Icewind Dale I/II or Planescape Torment can be achieved. A mockup of background ambience (street chatter+actual music) sounds like that.

Here are two of these examples. A piece used in Sewer-y surroundings, and a piece used for a big church and its basement "dungeon" (no, not a FO1 cathedral ripoff). People who have followed this thread closely will know that these are only the "backgrounds", the blankets, the real music will be triggered when player walks over certain places/hexes.

Staying at the audio department, we've developed some small goodie, the "Jingleboy" how I call it. It's a system allowing scenery objects or other items in the game to attach music files to certain dialog nodes. Players can repair a broken Jingleboy with spare parts, the aid of books or tools, or a high repair skill and bring holodiscs they've found in the Badlands to play songs or audio messages for them. Besides the "cool I can listen to some old music?" it has actually some real uses, for the aforementionend audio messages. Audio messages? Yes, you need some device to play them for you, since the player is not in posession of a Pipboy. So, to play some of your discs you've found on the occassional scavenging run, your best bet is to look for such a device.
A "vanilla" (as in it is already on the jingleboy and not raided/scavenged) song is for example this. Or this one, a small nod to the cautions player of Fallout: New Vegas. The audio is edited to make sure it fits into the maps "room" and reverb, plus the iconic *ca-ching* when you throw the occasional quarter in.

Apropos quarter - it is one of the few currencies ingame. You can ofcourse still barter with all your items, but when it comes to a real "currency", some hard coin, quarters surely took the rocket skyrocket way when it comes to "things being valuable" for the simple reason that most of the vending machines normal people can't just loot "eat" quarters. Besides that, it wouldnt make sense anyway that after such a short period of time after the war, in a geographically different region than the FO1/2 area (WR plays in Michigan, Illinois..) Caps would be a currency too. The same goes for many animal critters, such as Deathclaws for example. Don't worry, there are equally new interesting things to compensate. :)

While we're talking the area of the game, this prewar map is a brief overview. Basically, we're exploring the area around Lake Michigan.
map071t.png






Another thing we brought back and flavored it with the What Remains style are the Game Over screens. A nice comment on the example video I uploaded: "Almost makes Death appealing." - which says a lot about it, imo. :) I always liked those Game Over Messages in FO1/2. Here are two examples.



[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVbUSM17lzQ&feature=related[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=to7yrGSZrF4&feature=related[/youtube]

Then, on the same vein I am fighting against the boredom the Fallout 1/2 endgame brings (eyeshooting everything), also, the AI is really weak. I've generally made them "smarter, depending what Encounter you are facing. For example now there are NPC rushing towards you, with many AP and high Damage Resistance , while their sniper buddies shoot at you without you even noticing them with low Perception, they will try to eat you alive, not being the normal cannon fodder like in FO1/2. They corner you in certain situations and I've designed many maps to be more challenging and not being "flat" - means that there are cliffs or roofs where enemies shoot you from, with Perception and ToHitChance disadvantages to the player, meaning normal "strategies" won't work. There are much more animal critters doing poison or radiation damage to you, ofcourse it can be avoided by items/armors. Ofcourse, there's supposed to be some difficulty slide, so it doesn't get too unfair for people just want to experience the story/Choices.

Mentioning Choices and Consequences, this is actually the part which eats most of the time. Having branches in pretty much every quest means lots of rechecking, creating variables and what not, especially if you want to cover up all kinds of possible player builds. Right now, the shooting skills are really ok for the playable part of the game, but Unarmed/close quarter combat is horribly overpowered with the right powerbuild. :D

Last but not least, here's some small snippet of the UI overhaul for WR I am doing. This is the Loot window, you can now scroll horicontally with the mousewheel and can loot all, or in small ocassions when it is needed, place all.

pickup2.png

The main User Interface is something I am still on, here is the last draft I made before I started to do this post:

dddaipfk.gif


Still not perfectly what I want, the animation on the right which triggers when combat is on will now be vertically and only covers the combat end/turn end buttons. The above space is reserved for some kind of radiation counter, as this plays a much larger role in WR than FO1/2.

If you survived this post and readed till this point, thank you!
I try to update this place more often, I promise. :oops:
 
Looking good Surf Solar, it's different, but still works...I think the little tweaks over time can only make it better. :clap:
 
Awesome update !

I really like the voice on the ending screens.

I didn't see too much updates on your official forum recently (I check it on a weekly basis) though I'm not registered :oops:
So where is the best place to keep track on your project :wink: ?

Anyway, keep up the good work!

--
Aguirre
 
Lookin good! Them deathclips gave me some BG2 vibes. Which is indeed a good thing.

Edit: And just having downloaded the ambiance soundclips... the amount of talent around these parts is truly humbling.
 
Haha, you're actually very close to the actual thing where I'll use the track (the lumberjack stuff I mean).

And yes, it's a crazy street preacher in the background. You can help or kill him in the game too. :P
 
Awesome mod. I cant wait for this and it is very very good on FOnline engine. Thanks you Surf Solar for doing your mod.
 
Wow those ending screens are epic.
The voice (voice generator?) and the music sample are working perfectly. Atmospheric.
 
Hi,

I must say I like the idea behind this mod/game. "Rusty" Fallout, survival etc.
That's why I've read this thread and the blog more carefully and I have some thought I'll share with you. As well as ideas - hopefully not all of them are rubbish :mrgreen:

Regarding skill system changes
Unlike many previous posters, I don't mind them. I understand why it is a valid idea to merge the shooting skills in such game setting. No option is ever ideal, but imho the one you've chosen is the better one, as far as game balance is concerned. On other hand it is not essential.

Some said that energy weapons were common and available to civilians. But on other hand they weren't that common in Fallout games. And the energy cells were quite expensive and less common than other ammunition as well. Despite the in game descriptions, some energy weapons were made (or perhaps even designed) after the war, by BoS or others.

You may find some extra explanations why those weapons are so rare in the game area. EMP from the bombs would damage the electronics in energy weapons (the player could find such guns destroyed and unrepairable - even a lot of them in some location). The pre-war state could have imposed some laws prohibiting in some way civilians from buying such weapons. What was available before the war is probably not the best argument - think about the cars in Fallout setting. A lot of wrecks, but almost none working.
Another, quite funny scenario: the player finds such weapons and they are great, but the ammunition is totally unavailable so they are worthless (at least for most of the game). :D

I find merging H2H combat skills into one quite logical. Perhaps it wouldn't be in a medieval setting or a combat oriented game. Plus the player probably won't be using Power Fists etc. Actually knife combat isn't that far away from unarmed combat. You still have to control distance, maintain guard etc. I'm talking about basics, but learning the specifics isn't that difficult when you're already good at CQC.

I'd also consider merging Doctor and First Aid. Unless Doctor won't be redundant in your mod (healing diseases, for example).

You can add extra perks allowing for more specialization. For example a perk giving a bonus to melee weapons or energy weapons.

I can't agree with the "dumbing down" argument. In some cases reducing skill variety is bad, in some it is not. The skill system has to be tailored for the game/setting, not the other way around. Merging weapons skills into one would be bad in normal Fallout, but may be completely valid in this case.

From game mechanics and real life point of view, shooting from a laser gun isn't all that different than shooting from a normal gun. It's actually easier. There are lot of things that the shooter has to consider when using a normal firearm (recoil for example) that are different with energy weapons. But at close distance this may make no difference. A good small gun expert would probably be quite good with energy weapons after some basic training, but that's not the case in S.P.E.C.I.A.L.
Also, shooting from a sniper rifle is totally different than bursting from a SMG and probably a plasma rifle would require different technique than a laser rifle. But making 10 different and totally separate gun skills would make no sense.

Regarding aimed-shots and other combat mechanics
Shooting opponents in they eyes is a part of Fallout combat and it doesn't bother me at all. That said I don't mind your changes. And I agree that it was too easy (especially in Fallout 1) and oversimplified combat tactics.
I'd implement this change differently, though. Instead of removing eye-shots, I'd make them a lot harder. So even a well trained sniper would have a small chance to succeed. And I'd made the bonus even bigger. A nod towards risk-takers.

I don't know the Fallout Online engine, but I'd add a small AP cost for changing the weapon. In Fallout one could have a minigun in one slot, a plasma rifle in another and cycle them at no cost. If he had to spent 1 AP to do it, combat tactics would gain a new element for the player to consider. It could be annoying to some players though.

I'd also increase the AC bonus for unused AP points. Normally you get 1 AC for each AP left, which IIRC decreases enemies chance to hit by 1%. Not much given that you spend those APs on dodging and generally making live a lot harder for enemies to hit you.
2 AC for 1 AP with a perk increasing it to 3 AC for each AP would be good imho. Assuming that FO engine didn't change normal AP and AC figures.

If you have control of shooting modes, you could add a new one: long shot. The player spends more AP (maybe even twice as much) to aim carefully. This gives him a decent bonus to accuracy and a small bonus to critical chance. In some situations it would be better to fire once with a bigger chance to hit than fire twice with a smaller one. Some extra tactical options. But if it's hard to implement, there's no sense to spend time on it.

Regarding weapons:
I understand that guns and ammunition will be harder to get. With this in mind I'd suggest:
  • Rebalancing small guns a bit. Make the gap between handguns and rifles more noticeable. This doesn't mean that all rifles must be powerful or that unrealistically powerful handguns can't exist :)
  • Making special ammunition (JHP and AP for rifles) much rarer but also powerful. For example you may find only 3 AP rounds for your sniper rifle during the entire game, but they are very good.
    It's a bit harder for handguns, because AFAIK expanding ammunition is used as often as the ball one (not AP! this implies a hard metal core). But this problem can be easily solved.
  • At some point of the game a bow or crossbow could be used by the player or by some tribals :)
  • Make the ammo for the best guns generally rare (or even very rare). This way player won't be able to shoot to every enemy with his Sniper Rifle. He'd had to use a weaker gun most of the time, and the rifle only against stronger opponents. Cycling between guns during one shootout would be even more important.
  • I'd increase the chance of a critical failure resulting in gun stoppage or a misfire. Maybe not those resulting in damage to the weapon, because it will be too irritating for the players.
Ammo could be also crafted by the player :) Shells could be found on dead enemies (with guns), gunpowder made with chemicals (science) etc. Or at least he could sell the shells.

An interesting idea would be to allow the player to find great energy weapons at some military stash, even early in the game. But there would be no ammo available for them :) Actually energy guns could be quite common at that stage of the timeline, but without ammo or damaged beyond repair (with resources available for the player/NPCs). A small twist for the setting.
Imagine a special random encounter with a old battle ground, full of bodies of soldiers in destroyed combat / power armour and with totally useless high tech guns :D

I don't know if the FO engine supports item wear/damage. If it does, be very careful with it. I personally find the system in Fallout 3 annoying. Repairing weapons with other weapons even if the damage isn't big is also a bit stupid.
A good gun shouldn't damage itself with each shot, assuming that the owner takes care of it. I'd allow the player to clean \the gun to repair some damage, but only if the gun is in good shape. For example a weapon with 100% durability before a fight has 90% after it. The player can clean it to regain the 100%. But if it gets damaged to 70% after a critical failure, cleaning wont work at all. I hope you understand what I mean.
Of course weapons found by the player may be damage and require repairs or spare parts.

If no wear system is present, you can probably emulate it. Just create two or three versions of weapons (when needed): fully functional, worn and damaged. The damaged doesn't work, worn has a bit less damage and smaller range. Maybe is less reliable.
This way the player may find weapons in various shape and repair them (or pay NPCs for it). They can get damaged after a bad critical failure.

Regarding other things:
I'd made skill books a less common. Not too much, but this way you will encourage the player to spent skill points on skills which he would normally increase only by reading books.
But add some special/unique boosk. For example a Vault-Tec Nuclear War Survival Guide increasing Survival but also Science, Repair and Doctor by a small amount.

If you plan to force the player to eat like in ADOM, be careful with it. Usually such features turn out to be mighty annoying. Survival skill could probably deal with this problem (increasing or decreasing the chance of "no food" or "no water" encounters).

Diseases could be a nice addition to the game. As a background thing (people lacking medication etc.) and maybe to some extend as something that can affect the player.

You wrote that the fights will be quite rare. Watch out to not overdo, because many players enjoy combat in Fallout as much as the setting, plot and quests.

Make Rad-X less effective or less common and radiation more common. This way the player will have to deal with it more often. It would also make perks like rad resistant more useful. This requires balancing.

Good luck.
 
Wow, now that's some indepth post on that matter, thank you! Such posts always give me lots of points to my "motivation skill" - and I even could find some ideas I really like of yours (AP cost for switching hand slots, diseases etc)!

I'll write you a PM and will edit some longer post in here then! :)
 
I'm glad that you found my post useful.

I forgot about one little thing: currency.

In Fallout 1 we had bottle caps - they were used as currency thanks to the Hub. In Fallout 2 NCR dollars were the main currency, replacing the bottle caps.
While the Hub was founded in 2093 (so before the game time), I doubt that caps became the base currency in a different region, and so fast. This would require solid trading connections with the Hub.

The most realistic option would be a simple barter exchange. Good or services for good or services :) Good would include also very simple things like food, clothing, tools, medicine (antibiotics, not drugs). Services would include also very basic stuff like helping to dig a well etc.

Of course this is not the simplest or best suited solution for a computer game. A good compromise would be to introduce some currency, maybe giving it a short in game story to make the setting a bit richer :) But at the same time in some settlements the currency would be worthless. This way the player would feel that the post-apocalyptic economy is only starting to develop.

Some items in some settlements may be much cheaper or more expensive than in other, which would show that the economy is driver my the day to day needs of the nuclear war survivors.
 
I'm lurking Surlf Solar's mod for long time. It all sound really good and I can't wait 'till release. I will give you some thoughts and ideas I have for it.

currency - some time ago I played paper RPG in post-apo world. There was no currency at all, only barter. If you wanted to buy a beer in a bar, you had to pay with ammo :)

Also DR Prozec had cool idea with crafting ammo and finding shells at dead enemys. Shells can be used as a currency here. They are more useful then bottlecaps :P



As for damaging weapons - I hate this sh*t. I mean - how is it possible that gun is in 96% condition? For me either guns are broken or they are in good shape. So that kind of weapon damage is lame...
In real life you can shoot billion times and the gun won't wear off. It can be in good condition or just suddenly break without warning. But no 80% damage bulls*it.

There should be 3-4 gun conditions, that should change ONLY with bad luck critical failures or with good repair skill.

- Very good condition - Gun looks like it just have been made in some pre war manufactury!
[120% damage and accuracy]

- Normal condition - this gun have seen sun and sand for some time. Paint on it is little scrathed off, but it's in quite good condition.
[100% damage and accuracy]

- Bad condition - Rust here, rust there... some parts are fckd up... But you can still shoot it... On your own risk...
[80% damage and accuracy, jinxed perk only on you]

- Broken - Yeah... You can still crack skulls with it...
[Can't use it]



Sorry for my english.

Good luck with the mod. Don't rush with it... :)
 
I tend to agree with Lazo and Dr Prozac, especially about weapon condition / repair. Weapons should work as expected until damaged, and then they should not work. (Or with light damage, they should have reduced performance but increased odds of catastrophic failure.) In fact, a weapon that isn't cleaned regularly should have an increasing chance of becoming damaged. A weapon that's damaged but still used should have an increasing chance of being destroyed: i.e., of having a catastrophic failure that destroys it or injures the user / nearby people. Damaged weapons should be repairable; destroyed weapons (whether harming the user or just breaking) should not.

Oh, and grouping skills into more-logical units is fine with me, as is splitting some skills when it makes sense (as Dr Prozac mentioned): which skills should be combined and which should be their own skills will always be an area for debate, though. Many of the previous arguments against your skill changes were not convincing to me. (E.g., two major fallacies of reasoning were: the "appeal to tradition" [it was this way in Fallout 1/2, therefore keep it], or "slippery slope" [your changes would be just as bad as eliminating most of the other unique skills]. Such fallacies violate rules of logic and therefore are unconvincing as arguments.)

Just my $0.02. :cool: Your mod sounds great; I'm looking forward to trying it out. :=)

-m
 
I perfectly know what you mean as I hate this repair approach New Vegas/Fallout 3 has aswell, where you have to constantl tweak/repair the weapon after n-shots and it feels a little forced/doesn't make much sense.

In What Remains (=FOnline Engine) however, there will be a repair system aswell, but it feels a lot less tedious to use. Each Weapon and Armor has a "broken count" (10 "levels" so to say). If your armor gets hit/you shoot your gun (depending on your luck stat, it breaks faster/slower), you get some % added to the damage of the item. If the counter reaches 100%, it's "broken" or needs maintenance, you fix it with the repair stat and a "broken count" is added. You can repeat this procedure 10 times, till the item is finally broken. Also, the higher the broken count is, the higher is the chance for critical failure, ammo loss, weapon jamming etc. As for new crafted items, it takes VERY LONG that the item is completely worn off, so most of the players (who don't have a Luck Stat of 1 only) won't even see their stuff being completely broken. I hope it won't be a chore to use, but IMO it feels pretty comfortable right now and can still be a bit tweaked later on.

As for the currency, I completely agree with Dr.Prozac - but already elaborated on the currency in an earlier post on the same page here. ;) In short=no real currency, but there are local items which are being used to trade with each other. In town X, item A is useful to trade, in town Y it's useless etc.

Thanks for the feedback! :)
 
Lavo said:
Also DR Prozec had cool idea with crafting ammo and finding shells at dead enemys. Shells can be used as a currency here. They are more useful then bottlecaps :P
This was my first idea :)

Second one: Jimmy Hats. They're small, useful and are virtually impossible to forge :) Of course there must have been a factory/storehouse with a lot of them in the region (side-story opportunity).

Anyway appearance of some form of currency in a post-nuclear world is inevitable. If there's no trading centre which would enforce it (like the Hub or NCR), people will want it because it's much more practical than carrying big items for trade. In this case it must be something useful (thus valuable) and relatively small like ammo, medicine or perhaps batteries. Maybe fuel, but not in Fallout setting. Though one may argue that this things aren't real currencies ;)

Surf Solar said:
As for the currency, I completely agree with Dr.Prozac - but already elaborated on the currency in an earlier post on the same page here. ;) In short=no real currency, but there are local items which are being used to trade with each other. In town X, item A is useful to trade, in town Y it's useless etc.
Right - I've missed it somehow (or forgot that you've wrote it).

Thanks for the feedback! :)
Your welcome :)

Surf Solar said:
I'll write you a PM and will edit some longer post in here then! :)
Hmm, didn't get any :)

Edit:
The item damage system in FOnline sounds fairly reasonable :)
 
Dr Prozac said:
Second one: Jimmy Hats.
:lol: I had to think about that one for a moment. Much funnier (and more euphamistic) than "condoms." :P

Dr Prozac said:
Anyway appearance of some form of currency in a post-nuclear world is inevitable.
There'd be an initial period of barter, though... currency requires some sort of valued, fungible commodity with a generally agreed-upon value, whether by consensus or from authority. Lacking that widespread consensus or authority, barter would prevail, and currency at best would be local.

Shortly after the war, it would make more sense that everything would be bartered and that item values would vary from region to region (or person to person in many cases). However, in game mechanics terms, I would think it would be hard to have a bartering system interface without some kind of monetary "counting" system to make item values comparable. I suppose the numerical values could be hidden, though, so all the player sees is the items being traded... that, or the interface could expose the approximate "unit" values of the item sets being traded on the trade screen, but no actual money would exist. (Kind of like trading in Fallout 1/2 where neither party has any caps / $.)

Still, what's likely to happen in a pure-barter system is that traders (players) will resort to some kind of common unit (like the "ammo is currency" idea) as the yardstick against which to compare all other items' relative values, so they will be able to assess trade-partners and make better-informed trading decisions. For example: "Traders in City A sell stimpacks for 80 5mm shells each, but only give 20 shells for a stimpack, whereas in City B, trader Chris sells stims for 65 and buys for 45."

Anyway, the barter system in What Remains should be fun to play: it will certainly make me have to think more, which is generally more fun for me. :-)

(Plus I love your revised interface design, Surf Solar; that looks awesome. :-) )

-m
 
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