xkcon's ultimate rip off Mod (Unofficial expansion for FOT)

I think I would like to give it a try now. Can you send me the mod by Wetransfer to hugo@hugonadeau.com? I'll add it to your ModDB page right after for everyone to download it. It's great that you have it available on your site, but it's better to keep it available in two places than once don't you think? Thanks mate.

 

Superb. I'll place the file on ModdB tonight and make a try for this mod, of course

 

File on ModDB. I'm playing now the mod. It seems effectively a bit harder, but I manage at this point I appreciate the fact that I really must save my bullets the most as possible...

 

Well, I'm in Quartz and no matter how I play it Patricia blows up the moment after Ugly speaks. Sneak in, rush in, TB mode or CTB, no matter. I'm not hanging around either. I start at roof top stairs every time and do not wait, even if I take fire unanswered from the guys and dogs in the hall. Just straight from the roof with only snipers directly to the room. No timer ever seen either. Open the door, Ugly speech triggers, and then Patricia goes boom in the next second. I've seen you mentioned your work on triggers on prior thread posts but it is still buggy.

If you've done this much repair on it and it still screws up then you might delete the whole bomb business. Maybe put her in that back room without a bomb and put more muscle up with Ugly. Just surviving the shootout is work already. No need to screw player rep on mere chance and bugs. Patricia against the back room wall it will still make player have to skip burst and shot weapons, making the shootout risky enough.

And casual talk about losing squad members in Quartz doesn't work. Squad members are time and resource investments. I'll reload a thousand times to avoid squad member death. The players picked at the Alpha bunker will be the same when I go into the vault. Swapping out team members or replacing dead ones is never an option for some FT gamers. I won't even consider the boxing career as a result. I will pick my six and they will ride everywhere with me to the end. That's the basic premise of a team tactics game. I'll send certain characters to do a certain job but all 6 will be on the map. Any map or quest expecting otherwise won't be played through. All those extra recruits to pick from later in the game? Pipboy, Grimms, Mother, Riddick, etc? Never used one of them in all my years playing FT, and I bought the game in 2002. I groom my specialists to be what I want them to be for the endgame, not select them off a rack. I don't think I've ever played the game without Farsight from start to finish.

 

I just went ahead and finished it even though Patricia gets blown to bits. Then it said objective complete on rescuing her and they mayor even thanked me. I'm not sure I lost any rep but I'm tired of trying to do it without her dying. I think I finished every open quest on the map. The deputy still won't move to let me upstairs, so either that opens later or you have to be evil and gun the office down. I see an stairs to go underground that is blocked, a pool ladder that only goes up, and some ground openings on the north side that has no access. I hunted the map forever but the only parts going down that I found were in the gas station and Ugly's jail. If there are more routes down then I'm stumped after a few hours of poking everything. I still have Headcrusher's task, but with no railroad nomad camp in town I'm guessing it is offsite. I just thought with this being a bolt-on portion that Quartz was completely self contained. Feel free to correct me if I'm still missing something on the sheriff's office, other underground areas, or a nomad camp in town that somehow I missed after poking it forever.

 

Ok, so I remembered Felicia's name wrong. You knew who I was talking about. All I ever saw of her was an exploding mess. I was invested in an outcome, not her.

Whatever. After about 30 tries I took what I got. I do like "perfect games" but I won't spend forever at it unless it kills a team member.

As for your objection to my "whole team" playing style it is hardly surprising given that was how the game was built to be played when it was released. The only thing I'm not doing as envisioned when the game was made is swapping out different team members. I prefer to build my specialists, not contract them. I'm not into one character games. I didn't like the Tanya missions on the old CnC games and I've never wanted to play a FPS game. No desire. I like gaming team and large unit tactics instead. If I'm so weird like that then why are MMO clan games so popular? Team games have risen in popularity over time and single character games have declined. I realize you have invested effort into the single character mode in this mod and recognize some may want it. I'm not criticizing your effort. But individual character mode isn't my thing. Lots of folks like me out there or MMO's wouldn't be the current gold mine online.

Now about my 2nd post I asked about 3 things. Is the railroad clan thing outside of Quartz or did I miss it? Is there any other underground portions I haven't found besides the gas station and Ugly's jail? Am I missing something in the town itself to move the deputy away from his post blocking the stairs besides gunning him down? No need to give me particulars yet. I'd like to figure them out if I can, but in this case I'm not sure that options even exist.

 

Why are we still on this? I said I like a perfect game, but I hit my limit eventually. That's not being anal. By perfect though, I mean doing it without repercussions, like to rep, not missed opportunities. If I don't like the idea of doing something altogether then I just don't do it, unless the game mandates it. Like the drugs. Never bothered. I leave plenty of useless gear on the battlefield and still manage to carry a 6 digit pile of script into the vault ending. I just don't bother with certain things. but I don't like blowback on my team. I can always compensate lost XP or needed script in this game with roaming the wasteland. Can we get off this now?

Can I ask my questions about Quartz a 3rd time or are you just shutting me down?

 

Schoolyard taunts about my lack of desire to play an evil character? You think to judge a person you don't know, based on the way they want to play a game?

Seriously?

All it says to me is that your mod is extremely incomplete. When FT was made there was always good, evil, and neutral paths to succeed. But then I was realizing that incompleteness when reading the mess you made of the locale texts. Detail and good documentation aren't your forte. Of course making copies of guns already in the game makes no sense either except adding to clutter and unnecessary file size. And being able to sell some 2 dozen land mines for over a half million in script shows lack of QC. Seems like the main goal was to give you an outlet to mod yourself a virtual crime life. Fact is that playing FT to keep your rep as high as it can is a hell of a lot harder than pumping booster drugs to power your way through and using theft/brutality on innocents to get free stuff.

You don't know me at all as a person. Your inferences about me show projected self insecurities. Fact is that likely before you were even born I was at war in the Levant. The real thing, which is a lot more "wild side" than you've ever known. I left the playground in the 1960's. So when you taunt me that I don't have the stones to play evil in a computer game when I've already put real men into the ground decades ago then I can only smirk at your insecure braggadocio.

All your taunts tell me is that you made a mod that isn't complete with 3 full paths and you are left with daring players to play the lone path you created. A good FT mod maker would have figured out 3 paths.

The boxing thing? Yeah, I went and tried it. One punch and Clubber T was called out, like the others before him. Kind of dull traveling back and forth for the chump change. My main character is a classic Slayer type. So yeah, I do tend to like a long range shooter around.

I tried to not jam this all down your throat. But you just getting your panties in a bunch over someone who wouldn't play the mod your linear one path way. Since this is your pinned thread to promote your mod, I suppose that you'll have to live your childishness in print. Those wanting to play a mod that is actually like the FT game will realize this mod is just a one playing style incomplete mod, not to mention the documentation mess, file bloat, and weak QC. I'm at level 18, have 3/4 a million script, haven't been inside of Fortress City yet and just played Quincy. The mod is an easy XP and cash cow.

 

Get a room you two.

 

A good mod maker would make a mod that he enjoys playing. Modding is an hobby, not a job.

 

There's some interesting things in what +Zeke+ is saying/proposing. Please don't take it personnal you two. I think that could be a very interesting mod improvement idea for you xkcon to deepen the story by considering more incomes, for example joining the scribes in each bunker to identify different extremist factions members inside these bunkers, hunt them down or throw them out, acheiving peace by other means or "bartering" your way through some ennemies with a barter skill or charisma check, that, in Tactics, we do not have enough use for. This could even lead to "reverse" missions where you are trying as a kind of saboteur to prevent these factions to acheive their goal to preserve peace.

I don't know much about your mod, I just started it, but for example when I met with a guy near bunker alpha telling me that I could help slaying the infidels or something like that by brigning a holotape to a certain guy, I really wanted NOT to do that, and wished that I would meet that faction again, but this time to stop them instead of helping them.

After playing Tactics maybe 2 or 3 times, it is clear that they wanted to create some kind of parody where you are forced to play the "evil, patriotic army guys". Seeing the game this way, it could make sense that its unofficial expansion kind of "force you" to play evil side quests the same way. But for me to enjoy being part of this, I think it needs to assume a certain degree of irony, self-criticism or include some characters, like in Tactics, that are fondamentally against your views and show it clearly.

 

But then there is little to do because you didn't complete 3 path versions. By not giving 3 paths you just end up with tons of things the character can't play through. Instead, you lock the player into a linear game of one playing style if they want to experience it all. Whereas for the original game missions you can choose any of the three paths to get the game ending cutscreen outcome you desire.

Sarcasm and jibes never translate well to the written word. Just because you feel it one way doesn't mean you are capable of conveying that tone. Anyone who has time online knows this. Hell, they created emoticons just to help mitigate those problems back in the 90's, but it is incumbent on the writer to realize the limitations of the written word that poorly conveys tone and conveys zero facial or body language. How long have you been online? Most folks online seem to understand this. Books have the 3rd person descriptions because dialogue doesn't contain everything needed to get the point across. For all I knew, you were being pouty that someone constructively criticized your mod. Actually I still do.

It is incomplete. When FT was made every reputation decision point came with at least two choices, if not three. But whichever you chose you had the opportunity to play it through, not simply lose the opportunity to play through. Saying people can play it any way they choose in FT means they can choose any of the three reputation paths and still experience every storyline. If you only offer one path then the player is left with nothing to play through if it doesn't fit their chosen rep. You made it linear, which by definition means players cannot play it any way they choose.

I said locale, not local. Those text files that allow the game to have markers, explanations, and identifiers. They aren't organized. Items just slapped in on each text file with no order. You can't differentiate groups of items, nor even identifying changes you've made. Anyone who has taken a coding class has had it drilled hard into them the importance of neat documentation. As long as you got it to work you never came back and cleaned it up. Which also relates to the bloat. You went and made tons of repeat items. If you didn't like the stats of an original items then you just change it, not add a new one. New items are actually supposed to be new, not a repeat. Maybe that's why the bunker vendors lose things sold to them. The old code is likely maxing out its buffers. Unless an item has a certain important trigger attached then there only needs one type in the game. The game does not need two kinds of 1911's, Uzis, or HK sniper rifle that fires the same ammo and does basically the same thing. It's not hard to just give it more range or hitting power if you feel the need to improve it. Your way just adds unnecessary bloat to scroll lists for items and increases the games files size, the latter increasing latency and straining 20 year old buffer programs. That why when I try to buy a combat knife I sold 3 missions ago to the quartermaster he no longer has it. He ran out of space.

And the $25,000 apiece for mines sold from Gargantua's lair means you just bolted something on and didn't QC it.

Sure, I can just uninstall your mod and not have to deal with the problems, but the mod remains flawed. Flaws are flaws, not opinions. If you put a mod out there flawed then you should expect people will call them out. Responding with childish taunts and implying it is somehow the user's fault doesn't change the flaws. It just says you aren't interested in hearing criticism.

Sure, one he makes for his own personal use. But when you put it out there for public use then you can expect public criticism.