Incline Fallout 2 Mechanics Overhaul Mod Discussion

[Jim the Dinosaur]

The former. I punched lots of stuff (including a robot with enough DT to shrugg my punches, lol) while shouting I AM A MAN and only got a error now. At least the AP error doesn't happen anymore.

Something memory something.

I'm gonna see if I can get a screenshot now.

That's enough mang. I'll try it out tomorrow morning and see what's wrong.

No, game slows down during playing, critters walk slower, no relation to map entry I think. Its not getting slower as I progress, I think. It got slow in Klamath. Its a bit better in the rat caves but I have a feeling its still wonky because I swear I went running right at rats' faces a few times and they took weirdly long until they spotted me. Game goes back to normal speed during combat mode, weirdly enough.

Should I activate use of dual-cores within sfall or there's no way to use them? This processor is dog shit.

No clue about most technical stuff, sorry. I recently also noticed the game slowing down for the first time, but that was when I had a lot of shit running at the same time as well, and closing those made it run smooth again. I have the feeling the problem might be the new armor repair stuff; it has to run continuously for the player and party member, and now that it also changes thresholds that might be becoming a bit too heavy. Maybe I can think of some more efficient script...

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

The Brazilian Slaughter Think I've finally found the bug. A lot of the new threshold calculations of course have divide by 0 in it when it comes to leather armors. That's why it went fine as I was testing because I mainly did so with Power Armor. Will try to have it fixed in a bit.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

The Brazilian Slaughter Here you go, didn't experience any slowdown as I was trying it myself, but if FO2 can't be properly played on a Netbook then it shouldn't be played at all, so I tried as many economizing measures as possible. Let me know if it's any smoother.

New version, mostly to fix a horrible bug in the latest version! Also, it now has a more proper readme courtesy of Drobovik.

- bugfix for the armor repair system (it would previously try to divide by zero and crash when the damage thresholds were zero).

- Hopefully some performance enhancing changes: made a couple of scripts more economical and less taxing.

Get the update here!

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

Thanks bro! This mod is pretty cool and its a pleasure to be helping a fellow codexer incline Fallout, not to mention I'm helping making this mod more madure and bug-free, so that eventually all Fallout gamers can eventually purge the popamole from their Fallout 2 with this mod.

Bro, anything wrong with dropbox lately? I can't download your mod from there anymore if I'm running Firefox, I have to switch browsers to do so. Weird.

No clue. And it's not dropbox, but some spinoff called "box" which I've grown to like because it allows for version switching while keeping the same link. Never had a problem myself...

edit: just tried it out with firefox and worked fine..

1. Why all energy weapons cost more AP to fire? I see no reason why a laser pistol takes more AP to fire than a normal pistol. IMHO energy weapons are already in serious disadvantage during most of the game until the Plasma Rifle comes along, no need to give them a extra penalty without a advantage.

Fuck... good point. I had some rationalization in the back of my mind, but you're completely right.

2. So, you thinking about verifying if Megamod compatibility is possible? I know megamod is a crazy, half-stiched together insane-awesome combination of mods, but it might work due to its scriptness... or so I hypothesize. Also it would allow you to play with Mr. Fixit.

Maybe it'll work, I'll beg MIB88 for a source on one file I need. The only thing I'm sure you wouldn't be able to use is the difficulty mod.

edit: and of course I forget that metal armor has 0 electricity resistance.... fuck, will have a fix up in a while.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

Question: About the armor values in relation to human or humanoid critters. Does the repair mod affects them or their armor works like default?

Yeah, I had to give them some repair/science/trap values (customizable), because they of course had none by default, so it's something like the relevant attributes (so AG + PE for traps) times something + their experience value divided by something. If you don't change the values the Enclave troopers at the end have something like 100 repair etc, so they should have the best maintained armor (in addition to the best armor period of course).

BTW, about the armor:
- I leveled up and put some skill points in repair (I got it tagged). I noticed it didn't work and my armor values were the same. I went to another map and the armor values went up. Odd, must be the script only loading your new armor values when you change maps. Fixable?

Hmm... just checked the script and I don't think that should happen. Will see if I think of what the problem is.

Bro, noticed two odd things:

When you drink beer, a message saying you gained 20 unarmed damage pops up.

(nope, it didn't give me 20 unarmed damage)

Heh, forgot about that. Morale uses the only unused stat of the game, which is "unarmed damage" (which was of course merged with melee damage somewhere along development). Will see if I can change the text somewhere.

Noticed this one a while back, but thought it was a one off:
Dead bodies affected by the item randomization rise (while dead) for some reason. This guy is the "dead guy with a 10mm pistol near the Rat-King" in the Rat Caves, he had two brass knuckles with him. (already properly looted on this screenie). This also happened with the aforementioned dead vertibird enclave troopers. Odd.

Holy crap, I'll have to look through some stuff.

(Also, the Rat King is weaker in your mod than in vanilla. In vanilla he has like 50 HP, in your mod he only had 39 HP. Not sure if he was tougher. Thanks to Sulik, through, he wans't trouble.)

Hmm.. yeah I have to make some changes to the formula. Draq already gave me the idea when he rightly pointed out that Super Mutants etc. really need the extra HP/lower DT/DR combo to differentiate them from other critters. I'll change some around.

 

[DraQ]

Hmm.. yeah I have to make some changes to the formula. Draq already gave me the idea when he rightly pointed out that Super Mutants etc. really need the extra HP/lower DT/DR combo to differentiate them from other critters. I'll change some around.

Anything soft shouldn't really have much DT and possibly DR.

Even if supermutants have superhumanly tough hide, that would still, at best, put them on par with human + leather jacket or possibly leather armour.
Anything that can punch holes in those should be able to punch holes in supermutant.

That should affects most mutants and animals.
I reckon deathclaws should have it a bit higher, to live up to their reputation, but I think even they should mostly rely on HPs, modified crit table and maybe some DR for vitality.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

New version! Use link above.

1.36

- fixed bug where (again) a value would divide by zero in the armor repair mod.
- fixed the text for gaining morale after drinking booze.
- fixed the resurrecting dead bodies bug (they'd get extra hp from the stats mod), and the bug where they'd get additional weapons for you to loot.
- dropped extra 1 AP cost for energy weapons. Not too sure why I put that in in the first place; you can easily restore it of course with the Weapons .ini.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

Downloaded, will play today and report any bugs found.
Say, now that the bugs are fixed (so far), any new features you're planning?

Not really any new features for the moment, just expand/tweak existing ones:

- Over at NMA everybody just wants one thing seemingly, namely the Bozar to be a sniper rifle, so I'll first add an option to the weapons mod for changing attack modes on weapons so they can do that themselves.
- I only realized as I was making the weapons mod that I had completely misjudged the max range values. I originally assumed it was something like an "effective range" or whatever, but then I saw the 50 hex range of the gauss pistol and I realized that of course it had to be a real actual max range due to bullet drop, like JA2's. That means I misjudged the distance penalty in the to hit formula and have to think of some alternative (maybe I'll just revert it to the original's).
-Like I said, change the HP/DR/DT formula (I'll probably just add the changes as an alternative formula).

That'll be in the next version probably in the next couple of days, after that I'll see if I can something more serious with the radiation stuff.

Bro, why your instalation instructions tell to mess with maps and scripts folder in the patch000? There are no such folders in your patch, before or after installation. Step 4 is non-existant lol.

I'm pretty sure that's necessary for the regular install because you first extract the regular Patch000.dat, and that has those folders, which the game likes to overwrite and destroy your game. Wasn't sure how the UP or RP install worked so I just left it in just in case. But I'll specify from now on that it's for the regular install.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

The Brazilian Slaughter almost forgot, there'll also be a version "compatible" with the Megamod in the next version (as in, you'll have to check for yourself whether it works). I forgot that I didn´t need to beg for a source file after all, but just do the same thing as with RP & UP.

 

[DraQ]

- Over at NMA everybody just wants one thing seemingly, namely the Bozar to be a sniper rifle, so I'll first add an option to the weapons mod for changing attack modes on weapons so they can do that themselves.

With Bozar I'd find a happy medium.
The weapon in vanilla is hardly balanced (stealing minigun's "ultimate meat mincer" thunder) and hardly consistent conceptually.
Let's look at the description:

The ultimate refinement of the sniper's art, the Bozar is a scoped, accurate, light machine gun with an ammunition capacity of thirty .223/5.56mm rounds. It delivers phenomenal firepower with great precision and can easily pierce the strongest of defenses. Though somewhat finicky and prone to jamming if not kept scrupulously clean and in good repair, its many good qualities more than make up for its extra maintenance requirements.

It basically states Bozar to be a hybrid between an actual sniper rifle and a machinegun in terms of its niche. It's a scoped, accurate and powerful rifle capable of firing in bursts. Ok, such exist.

However:
-you generally wouldn't be firing this kind of gun in 15 round bursts if you wanted to stay accurate
-you generally would want such gun to be selective fire

So - reduce # of rounds per burst to, say, 3, reduce magazine capacity accordingly, give it range matching SR, and give it single fire capability.

As for miniguns, I'd actually increase the ammo capacity and #rounds per burst. Let *BRAAAAAAP* be *BRAAAAAP*.
For the record: RL minigun *BRAAAAAP*s 100 rounds per *second* of sustained fire and it's about the RoF you actually want if you necessarily insist of using a rotating barrels assembly instead of ordinary MG.

 

[DraQ]

I like the idea of Bozar with burst and single, but I'm afraid a burst-bozar may be potentially very very cheesy.

It already is with its 15 round bursts.

One weapon I would like to see get a power-up (besides laser/plasma pistol) is the FN-FAL rifle. It (or better saying, locally-made versions) is the standard issue longarm of the brazilian army (yeah fuck your 5,56mm shit, BRAZIL STRONK!). It is a heavy gun, but any military guy (and I know people that served) will tell you how ridiculously powerful a 7,62mm rifle is: That thing is pretty much reality's plasma rifle.

In Fallout 2, its a boring pop-gun that fires ridiculous ammounts of bullets in a shot, which is hilariously ridiculous because firing a 7,62mm rifle like that is a sure way to miss everything, ask any former serviceman here. At best you fire three shots, usually single or double tap.

Case in point: FN-FAL in FO2 should be a strong, solid rifle not the bad pop-gun it was. Also it should be heavy. Does it have any weapon perk that gives accuracy? I would take it out to simulate how hard it is to fire a 7,62mm rifle like that.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

It basically states Bozar to be a hybrid between an actual sniper rifle and a machinegun in terms of its niche. It's a scoped, accurate and powerful rifle capable of firing in bursts. Ok, such exist.

However:
-you generally wouldn't be firing this kind of gun in 15 round bursts if you wanted to stay accurate
-you generally would want such gun to be selective fire

So - reduce # of rounds per burst to, say, 3, reduce magazine capacity accordingly, give it range matching SR, and give it single fire capability.

Yeah that'd be cool. I'll see what I can do with sfall's "force aimed shots" function, so bozars can have aimed bursts.

As for miniguns, I'd actually increase the ammo capacity and #rounds per burst. Let *BRAAAAAAP* be *BRAAAAAP*.
For the record: RL minigun *BRAAAAAP*s 100 rounds per *second* of sustained fire and it's about the RoF you actually want if you necessarily insist of using a rotating barrels assembly instead of ordinary MG.

I'm still not sure about that, mostly because I'd like ammo to become more of a scarcity. But then again they're fucking miniguns, they're supposed to be about waste.

But there's also the thing we discussed about shotguns, which I've come to think is even more problematic due to the fact that weapon switching is essentially without penalty. You could have dedicated unarmored/light armored focused guns (Miniguns, Shotguns), and dedicated heavy armor ones, but this just means you have a bozar in one "hand" and a minigun in the other, switching when necessary and giving you a huge advantage over the AI. Still not sure how you'd solve this problem.

 

[DraQ]

I'm still not sure about that, mostly because I'd like ammo to become more of a scarcity. But then again they're fucking miniguns, they're supposed to be about waste.

Having a weapon that is extremely powerful but also wasteful would emphasize scarcity - would you rather engage in prolonged fight firing your AR in single and relatively short bursts, or take out minigun and finish it in one turn at the cost of BRAAAAPing most of your ammo away?

Still not sure how you'd solve this problem.

Switching is in itself a problem. Would it be feasible to forcefully block switching when 2h weapon is equipped, os that the other slot, while still there, would be inaccessible? Or maybe to add AP cost for switching between 2h weapons?

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

I'm still not sure about that, mostly because I'd like ammo to become more of a scarcity. But then again they're fucking miniguns, they're supposed to be about waste.

Having a weapon that is extremely powerful but also wasteful would emphasize scarcity - would you rather engage in prolonged fight firing your AR in single and relatively short bursts, or take out minigun and finish it in one turn at the cost of BRAAAAPing most of your ammo away?

Hmm... I wonder if truly making ammo scarce could then result in a tactic of only partially loading your minigun to lower the burst ammount artificially... I'll think about it. But regardless, anyone can change the burst ammount the way they like.

One other question for you about miniguns: do you think it makes sense that they have a lower damage per round output than another gun with the same 5MM ammo, like the Assault rifle? It always seemed weird to me.

Switching is in itself a problem. Would it be feasible to forcefully block switching when 2h weapon is equipped, os that the other slot, while still there, would be inaccessible? Or maybe to add AP cost for switching between 2h weapons?

Have tried it endlessly. I think it's impossible because the game is blind to what you carry in your other hand oddly enough.

 

[DraQ]

One other question for you about miniguns: do you think it makes sense that they have a lower damage per round output than another gun with the same 5MM ammo, like the Assault rifle? It always seemed weird to me.

Doesn't seem to make much sense.

Have tried it endlessly. I think it's impossible because the game is blind to what you carry in your other hand oddly enough.

Is it impossible at any point? For example it may be impossible to do once both weapons are equipped, but maybe it would be possible to script 2h weapons to force unequip whatever you hold in you other slot, and equipping anything to force unequip other slot if it holds 2h weapon?
Actually, it would be nice if it could be made to work this way, as it would allow you to kick down the doors while brapping with minigun.
:D

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

Is it impossible at any point? For example it may be impossible to do once both weapons are equipped, but maybe it would be possible to script 2h weapons to force unequip whatever you hold in you other slot, and equipping anything to force unequip other slot if it holds 2h weapon?
Actually, it would be nice if it could be made to work this way, as it would allow you to kick down the doors while brapping with minigun.
:D

I have the feeling I've tried that one too... I think the problem there was that you couldn't force unequip on one hand only, but I'll go through the motions again. It was a while ago when I last tried and maybe it'll make more sense to me now.

 

[DraQ]

One more thing.
Them rubber boots.

Keeping them in inventory should suffice.

Is it impossible at any point? For example it may be impossible to do once both weapons are equipped, but maybe it would be possible to script 2h weapons to force unequip whatever you hold in you other slot, and equipping anything to force unequip other slot if it holds 2h weapon?
Actually, it would be nice if it could be made to work this way, as it would allow you to kick down the doors while brapping with minigun.
:D

I have the feeling I've tried that one too... I think the problem there was that you couldn't force unequip on one hand only, but I'll go through the motions again. It was a while ago when I last tried and maybe it'll make more sense to me now.

So force unequip on both hand and force equip what you tried to equip in the first place?

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

So force unequip on both hand and force equip what you tried to equip in the first place?

Ah, but when do you unequip both hands if you don't know what's in the other hand? Do you do it constantly? It's a lot trickier than it seems I think.

 

[DraQ]

So force unequip on both hand and force equip what you tried to equip in the first place?

Ah, but when do you unequip both hands if you don't know what's in the other hand? Do you do it constantly? It's a lot trickier than it seems I think.

What calls or whatever can you work with?

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

1. Lotsa more crippled limbs in combat. I must've got something like ten or more cripples from Arroyo to The Den, no eye cripples so far. Its a real pity the Doctor/First Aid healing system in the original FO games is total bullshit, with the player being able to set back legs using his magical hands, that could've been really interesting expense of resources if done right. As it is, its more of a bother to get crippled because you have to click-clack until your limb heals. Unless it doesn't and you've expended your doctor skills for the day while being in a combat area. Having to go through the entire Toxic Caves with a broken leg was frightening. (hilariously, it was Smiley who had his boots melted lol).

I'm assuming you get crippled mainly from crit failures (unarmed style tends to get you all those "cripple a random limb" failures)? Or is it crits from the enemy? Either way, I should definitely mess with the default values, because that's insane.

Edit: I'll try and think of some alternative to the doctor skills current use. Maybe something automatic...

3. Unarmed combat is more interesting. In vanilla you had, essentially, four choices: Punch/kick faster, punch/kick aimed. Then you got the unarmed extra attacks but they cost too much AP. Now, even in the early game there's more choice: You can punch/kick faster, you can torso-aim (brillant idea there BTW) or you can do proper aimed attacks. Your idea to make unarmed skill defend against unarmed skill was genius too: I notice it gets harder for me to punch critters (who have high unarmed skill) than to punch most humans (who are mainly gun-focused). Makes sense, as a critter or a martial artist would be able to defend himself a lot better than a gun-wielder. This also makes torso-aim attacks a lot more useful, because you're trading speed for accuracy; one could abstract it as using more skill a more skilled/faster/instinctual oponent.

Thanks! Pretty happy with that one, unarmed in FO became boring 95%-fests even faster than shooting did. Interested to see how the boxing and martial arts quests go with this system.

4. The unarmed AP bug is not yet twarted... in the early game I used pretty much snap punches. Now that I'm using more aimed punches, I'm noticing my aimed attacks are using the wrong ammount of AP sometimes. My aimed punches should be using 5 AP, sometimes they're using 4AP and I can aim punch-twice and even remain with one AP sometimes. Snap punches are working ok through.

Damn, I'll look into it.

5. Sulik found a new vocation in life:

(WTF?!)
Bringing healing to the hurt, aparently. Such is Sulik, one hand can bring death just as well as the other hand can bring life. Pity he doesn't go heal me when I use the skill for some reason (I'm nearer to myself? Pretty sure his skill is better than mine).

Weird, guess he has a high xp value, and that's inflating his skills. Did that ever work with Lenny in the first place? Never was too clear on the whole NPC helping with skills thing.

5. Any idea in relation to the Outdoorsman skill?

Not really. Let me know if you think of something.

 

[DraQ]

Ping?

Again, what part of FO is exposed and accessible to your modding efforts.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

Ping?

Again, what part of FO is exposed and accessible to your modding efforts.

Dude, either narrow the question down or trust in my valiant/inept efforts to try and make something out of this.

 

[DraQ]

What parts of game mechanics can you access. I'm trying to come up with some way to persuade the game to only allow one item equipped if it's a 2h weapon, but don't know at what level you're operating and what do you have access to.

I presume FO has some way of telling 2h and 1h weapons apart because it has a trait using this information.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

What parts of game mechanics can you access. I'm trying to come up with some way to persuade the game to only allow one item equipped if it's a 2h weapon, but don't know at what level you're operating and what do you have access to.

I presume FO has some way of telling 2h and 1h weapons apart because it has a trait using this information.

I understood that, but for god's... whatever, I'll just try and fill you in:

I can tell if a weapon's two handed
I can tell what hand the two handed weapon is in, if that hand is "active"
I can tell when hands are being switched
I can tell which inventory slot the weapon's in (but these slots stay the same when the item's equipped)

I can force a hand toggle
I can force a both hands unequipping
I can force a drop of the specific weapon

That's all the relevant info I can think of.

 

[DraQ]

So, can you do the following:

on user-triggering toggle (in combat):

if(current weapon is 2h)
{

allow toggle
if(hand is not empty)

toggle back​

}
else
{

if(hand is not empty)
{

allow toggle
if(current weapon is 2h)
{

toggle back​

}​

}​

}

?