FAQ 2

[BrahminBrain]

my first question would be:
Why is the FAQ useless in its current state?
My answer would be that it treats the fallout2 editor /questions/issues/problems/bugs/crap in a generic way rather than actually tackling one problem at a time.

You may ask yourself who is this guy that comes here and bashes our sweet FAQ.....Who cares? He is probably just another troll.

IMHO what aspiring mod creators need can be summarized in just one word:tutorials.

I would love to see a tutorial on how to create a generic area that when exited moves the player to another area.I belive thats the first step.
Then maybe a tutorial that adds to the first map a critter than you can actually talk to(a simplistic and generic dialogue tree etc).
You can follow that with a generic quest tutorial ...a quest thats added to the dialogue with that character that requires you to kill ONE ant and has a reward after its completition.

Right down to the complicated stuff as creating your own worldmap from scratch and such.

Now some uber newbie questions:
1)How do you play a map you made with the official editor in the game.(this should be the first thing explained in the editor's doc but i cant find it)
2)in the f8 mode of the editor can i talk to people?
3)how do we edit the dialogue tree with a person? is it in one of those SSL files? Also the SSL files seem to be the ones who handle the quests...and in that case we should make a library of generic scripts *e.g. police that moves areound an area / bystander / etc* another thing would be the complexity of these SSL files...i mean i dont think BIS hardcoded every critter in the game...a thing to help us would be an utility that creates general critter ai scrips for us :for example in that utility you would name the critter, say that cityX is the critter's location and the util would add the line #include "..\headers\cityX.h" in the critter's SSL, it would also add the rest of the generic script for that critter in concordance with the type of critter like what he does when he is attacked (stupid villager-runs away/mutant-kills you)etc etc etc.

3)is it posible to import "maps" in maps? from what i have seen the copy all button does some magic things.......what i was thinking is more in the line of "prefab" stuff.....as in i create a house (an acomplishment in itself considering the way the textures are spread in the editor) save it as a map and import it in a map and place it.

4)how can we edit the way an item looks......

5)what are the benefits of unpacking the fallout2 dat(or master or however they are caled) files? maybe a detailed tutorial with links etc on how to unpack it

in order to make it possible for all new fallout adventures to surface i belive we at least need to tackle some of these problems

just the tip of the iceberg for now...forgive my newbie-ness
and im really sorry for ruining your day...

[Stevie D]

my first question would be:
Why is the FAQ useless in its current state?
My answer would be that it treats the fallout2 editor /questions/issues/problems/bugs/crap in a generic way rather than actually tackling one problem at a time.

Each to their own, mate. I agree that a walkthrough/tutorial would be very useful. I also think the FAQ would help in building it, which is why I'll continue compiling it.

[Temaperacl]

1)How do you play a map you made with the official editor in the game.(this should be the first thing explained in the editor's doc but i cant find it)

This depends- if you've altered an existing map, then you just need to make sure that the map is located in the right location in the directory structure (I believe the mapper automatically places it in the right place for you) and it will take the place of the normal map. For example, if you alter the main klamath map, then you get there by going to klamath. If you have made a new map, you have a bit more to do- you'll need a place to access it from, either from the world map (which involves editing city.txt), or from an existing map (in which case you'll need to add an appropriate exit grid/teleport via script depending on how you want the player to get there.). In any case, you'll (I believe) need to add an entry into the appropriate files, maps.txt, maps.msg, etc.

2)in the f8 mode of the editor can i talk to people?

Yes.

3)how do we edit the dialogue tree with a person? is it in one of those SSL files?

Wait for me to finish the new version of FODE I'm working on.. . But yes, you are correct, the dialogue tree is contained in the script files (the text of the dialogue itself would be contained in the related msg file..

4)how can we edit the way an item looks......

To do this, you'll have to alter the appropriate .frm file- you can't do this with the mapper- what you'd probably want to do is extract the .frm's you want, get them into a usable format, make the changes you want, convert them back to .frm's, and put them in the proper location in the fallout2/data/art/{type}/ if memory serves.

[BrahminBrain]

ohh i have two 3) questions O_O >8(
thanks for the replies Temaperacl <3

[Zeronet]

I think a tutorial would help greatly.

[ColJack]

give people time lads.. the editor has only been out for 2 weeks... people are still trying to work out the details for themselves..

right answers..

1. the easyest way to get maps in to the game at the moment is to name them as the existing maps. they just replace them..


3. no you can't load maps within maps.. if you want to make a house then you just have to re-build it for every map.. lets be honest, if every map you make has the same house on it then it would look pretty dull... you can duplicate a house once you build it on the same map though using the copy buttons....

5. unpacking the dat means you can alter all of the things you want.
to unpack the entire master.dat, get a copy of datman lite ( available from the duck and cover fallout 2 modding page ) and open the dat in it.. then just right click and select extract entire dat.
unpack it to your fallout 2 directory and it will create a directory called extracted master.dat.
then you rename the master.dat file to master2.dat, or other suitable name, and then rename the directory you just created to master.dat.
the game will then use the files straight from the master.dat directory and not the master.dat file, this does result in a very small reduction in loading times since the game doesn't have to unpack the files before it can use them..