Could a fan remake be done of Fallout 1/2 on a different engine?

[Charwo]

I was reading up how some guy made a fan remake of Civilization 1 on excel, and how much I love Civ2 but want more control over things I can edit or not (if you must know it's the BOSS scenarios that keep me coming back), I was thinking maybe.....maybe someone could rebuild Fallout 1 and 2 on a more modern engine. The goal here wouldn't be to turn it first person like so many failed Bugthesda conversions, but remake it on an engine that it becomes stupidly easy to mod the game and create mods for the game.

I gotta be honest, the reason I don't want to try the Fallout mods I have is I have to wipe and clean Fallout 2, and thus mostly lose my saves.

I'd like to have a more modular system where i can tag these overhauls on or off, and add it new mods for Fallout 1 and 2 on an a la carte basis.

Thing is it works for mods of Bugthesda engines, it works for abadonware, but to actually make Fallout 1 and 2 properly, you need isometric top not overwhelm the design team AND an overworld for the same reason, as well as allowing for a sense of scale no open world game can have.

 

[Lexx]

Sure could be done.



But nobody does it.

There's new engine projects being worked on for generations by now, but except for the FOnline engine, nothing is playable. And the FOnline engine is a multiplayer engine with a different scripting language, so you can't just drag&drop Fo1/2 into them and call it a day.

Every few years some person appears and talks about remaking game x in engine y, but it never works out.

 

[Charwo]

Well, the thing is.....without developing a new engine, what would work best for an easy moddable isometric game, in terms of art assets, AND introduction new mechanics AND creating new locations and quests?

 

[Gizmojunk]

...you need isometric top not overwhelm the design team AND an overworld for the same reason...

These days, unless you are making an NES Zelda, or Gauntlet clone, ISO is no harder than FPP. Fallout 1 & 2 development used 3D character models to create all of those sprites; the same goes for Baldur's Gate 1 & 2. Using 3D tools and a 3D engine simplifies things a lot. You need isometric—because that's Fallout.

Troika was doing a 3D Fallout~like concept game, before Bethesda bought the Fallout IP. One can assume they were hopeful of converting their game to a Fallout 3 if they managed to acquire the rights for it.

...as well as allowing for a sense of scale no open world game can have.

Open worlds can exist in any perspective. Bethesda made a Terminator game in 1987 that featured a scale model of Los Angeles. Technically a Fallout game could work without an overland map, and just be realtime exploration—the way Arcanum works when you avoid using the overland map. It would take a player forty eight [realtime] hours to walk from the West coast to the East coast. The game is better for having the overland map.

FO3 could have played out on the scale of Fallout's map, if they had only spread out their principle game locations, and had the engine auto-generate the in-between space. The original Fallout actually did this to a limited degree. It tracked the character's location on the overland map, and presented suitable encounter maps for the terrain underfoot when encounters occurred. (For some reason this was broken in Fallout 2)

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These concept examples are not impossible using Gamebryo:

Spoiler

 

[Charwo]

OK I like this conversation. See the reason I'D want isometric is because I'd THINK, maybe I'm wrong, it be easier for less talented people to make new items. After all, they only have t do textures and not models, and the animations aren't that important other than walking and running

The purpose of a world map isn't just to provide scale, but also make it very easy to put in new locations. You can add new areas to existing settlements via the town screen OR put a new location on the world map very easily. Like I HATE the Fallout 4 settlement system but imagine a new settlement either in an abandoned but mostly intact small town or city section. And you organize the rebuilding. You provide money and do quests for manpower and the town slowly starts be=uilding itself up until it looks as good as Vault City, AND with an armor placer. assuming you are playing Fallout 2, you could salvage power armor off of Enclave soldiers around Navarro or buy them in Shi Town and donate them and you'll see various guard wearing the power armor.

Of the thing that I would have done with my Vault Dweller had there been mods, or I wrote fanfiction, was getting a giant desalinization plant in San Jose up and running with the help of quirky new characters and a bunch of hard working slave......I mean total non spaient Mr. Handy bots that work all day and night to get all the rust out.

 

[Gizmojunk]

Areas in Fallout 1&2 are a pain in the butt; they use dozens—scores of little slices of imagery to construct a jigsaw puzzle of the finished image as a two layer backdrop. To this day, the main reason Fallout 1 & 2 both chug, is the loading of those many, many tiles. Any new [Temple of Elemental Evil style] engine for a new Fallout game would hopefully load in the whole image, or load parts of it in larger chunks; or just be a 3D map; even if the game is false 2D, like Pillars of Eternity.

________

An interesting thing about the way FO3 works, is that it has plenty of empty (and non-interactive) buildings all around, and any of them can be used as a level entrance; made into the door of a new map pretty easily. The interiors are made with standard area tiles.

As far as prop locations on the open landscape go... completely new ones would have to use custom 3D models, and/or made with careful re-use of existing ones, but it is not difficult to import the assets once they are made.

Spoiler

 

[Gizmojunk]

An interesting thing about the way FO3 works, is that it has plenty of empty (and non-interactive) buildings all around, and any of them can be used as a level entrance; made into the door of a new map pretty easily. The interiors are made with standard area tiles.

As far as prop locations on the open landscape go... completely new ones would have to use custom 3D models, and/or made with careful re-use of existing ones, but it is not difficult to import the assets once they are made.

Spoiler

I wonder if FOnline could be used (copies of its internal functions) as a dll to facilitate the load and assembly of Fallout 1 & 2 sprites, and the map backdrop locations as single images [sprite sheets, for the critters, and characters] into RAM to be used in Unity3D or other.

 

[Lexx]

To this day, the main reason Fallout 1 & 2 both chug, is the loading of those many, many tiles

What kind of computer do you have, that Fallout "chugs" to load?

 

[Charwo]

An interesting thing about the way FO3 works, is that it has plenty of empty (and non-interactive) buildings all around, and any of them can be used as a level entrance; made into the door of a new map pretty easily. The interiors are made with standard area tiles.

I wonder if FOnline could be used (copies of its internal functions) as a dll to facilitate the load and assembly of Fallout 1 & 2 sprites, and the map backdrop locations as single images [sprite sheets, for the critters, and characters] into RAM to be used in Unity3D or other.

Let me ask you another question as a mod creator and someone who can make assets....is there a way to to create an overworld effect in Fallout new Vegas/ Fallout 4. I mean it's the Bethesda engine such shit that it's not worth it? Or could OpenMW where you could have thousands of mods make such an endeavor not a buggy broken, mechanically limited mess?

The thing is most people who make remake mods, want to recreate the game exactly as it was. I don't know if I'm unique in that if I were to help with a project like that, I'd want to build it in such a way that things could be MUCH different. For instance, one of the things I've NEVER liked about the Vaults is that they aren't built logically, even the control Vaults. More than that though, they have conventional firearms but no ability to make more ammo. They should have lasers, and the lasers should have a stun switch. Like you equip a laser, it brings up stun, kill or if you have enough science Overcharge, which drains like 2-4 cells and does 2.5 times the damage. And you should be able to, if you have the right perks to arrest pr enslave raiders and have someone else pick them up (as an anti frustration feature)

I want horses and bicycles and giddy up buttercups being used by raiders and good guys alive. I want some caravans to use trucks and wagons and auto-rickshaws, even if I can't put it in now, I want to make sure they can. I'd want to create new death animations for the modern game, mostly putting back in the Fallout 2 animations, an lasers cutting people in half instead of disintegrating them, the attack animations of Tom Infantiate (pretty awesome) a configurable critical kills, a random encounter toggle to give you more narrative control and even a coup de grace system where you can shoot people all you want, but they won't die unless you deliver a coup de grace. And you can also give medical treatment to NPCs recently 'lkilled' around you by either skill check or stimpack.

I'm not saying these kinds of features should be inbuilt (except the stun kill feature of la least laser pistols) but I'd want to make sure these things could be implemented by modders at a future date with minimal fuss.

Also, an mod engine that lets you prime a save game, and have the engine re-spec the loaded mods to match the ones the save fille has and will tell you what mods you are missing. That would make switching around so much easier.

 

[Gizmojunk]

I have never played FO4. I am by no means an expert with the GECK, or Nifscope; or the TES CS versions. What I did learn, I have mostly forgotten; though I could pick it up again with a few days of using the GECKs.

Skyrim has an overland map; it stands that a Bethesda FO game could have one too. In FO3 (and presumably 4) the terminals and the PipBoy are 3D menus, with interactive models. I assume this could be used to make an overland map for FO3 & 4.


In my post above, there is a drive-able golf cart that I modded, surely caravans could work the same way with luggage carts. Bethesda did it with a mono-rail. What I wanted to do (, but could never find the information for) was to have the wheels adjust to the incline of the ground, the way the feet & legs of the figures do, as they walk around. I am sure that it can be done.

There was a fellow who scripted decapitation into Oblivion—and was later hired. Some of the other features you mention are probably doable in their engine. Large 2D HUDs do cause a noticeable delay when they load. IRRC, Socrates200x once speculated [agreed] in answer to my question, that a proper turn based mode code likely be scripted into FO3, by way of AI and time manipulation script commands. AI's can be switched off or controlled, and game time can be stopped... and with that, consecutive turns could be implemented.

*I do not know this, but I speculate that since the game supports a point & click interface for in-game menus, I bet that it might be possible to design a combat menu that behaves similarly to combat in Fallout 2, or Tactics. I seem to recall that there is support for clicking on an object, and getting its entity ID.

What kind of computer do you have, that Fallout "chugs" to load?

Relative...

*That was a developer quote actually, though they said it many years ago.

 

[Charwo]

What I meant is yes, you CAN make an open world, but you'll NEVER have the resources to fill it. I think Arcanum wasted it's open world, but let's be real modding wasn't a thing in 2000. The reason I want closed maps is to give travel weight and to make it very easy for mod makers to create their own world spaces within the map and place them down easily without fear of overlapping each other. Also it gives wha should be big cities a sense of scale. And just having carts and cars and horses (yes I'd put horses in) with variable rates of travel requires less resources to create and process. You can save it for more important things. Unless you want to have car cashes, which in a rebuilding post apocalyptic world would make sense and be awesome.

 

[Lexx]

but let's be real modding wasn't a thing in 2000

Half-Life and Doom tend to disagree with you. :>

 

[Gizmojunk]

What I meant is yes, you CAN make an open world, but you'll NEVER have the resources to fill it. I think Arcanum wasted it's open world...

I disagree, in both cases. An open world of vast expanse does not need to be one big [overland] dungeon or large scale metropolis; nor have a theme-park style encounter over every other hill. It can be generated encounters for the most part, and be peppered with hand crafted principle locations, as well as both generated and hand crafted random encounters.

I wish FO3 had done it this way; used its overland —exactly— the way Fallout did. It was the obvious choice to use generated encounter terrain in between the settlements... with random encounters along the trips between them. Their games all feature [so-called] 'fast-travel'. Had they but implemented a map like the one I've shown above, that could have have been their 'fast-travel' map, and they could have chosen parameters for selecting a world-space (for encounters) based on the depicted map terrain (underfoot) when the encounter happens.

Like Arcanum, the map could —technically— be traversed in realtime, but of course never being intended for that, and expecting the player to use the abstracted overland travel for long distances. (That way there could actually BE long distances in the game.)

FO3 does account for travel time after [so-called] 'fast-travel'. It advances the game clock several hours if you use the map to travel directly to Rivet City from Vault 101, for instance. This is good, but largely unused behavior, as time is meaningless in their games, but they could have done it; could have done 'fast-travel' at least very similar to Fallout 2; and better yet similar to Fallout [1].

 

[Charwo]

Half-Life and Doom tend to disagree with you. :>

Not modding exactly. I mean there were total conversions and tweeks back in 2000, but when I said mods I meant the midlevel, modular, self contained quests and objectives that are basically for Adventure and RPGs. Beleive me if there had been modding for Fallout and Arcanum I would have had a seizure of happiness.

The thing that I'm hammering home is what I'd want and what I think is most important to an RPG's shelf life is the ease of making modular self contained quests with good stories and characters.....and environmental mods.

 

[Gizmojunk]

This is true.

The Grimrock games are the epitome of this in action. The first one did not ship with a level editor, but they did include one in a later patch, and the second one improved upon the first impressively. It's why they are still actively modded to this day—to this evening in fact, as I am finishing up part of a team-effort Grimrock mod tonight; and it will be released on the 8th of this month.

The Grimrock level editors do allow a complete novice to cobble together a working map in minutes (literally), while allowing an experienced modder almost full control of the game via lua scripting.

 

[Charwo]

This is true.

The Grimrock games are the epitome of this in action. The first one did not ship with a level editor, but they did include one in a later patch, and the second one improved upon the first impressively. It's why they are still actively modded to this day—to this evening in fact, as I am finishing up part of a team-effort Grimrock mod tonight; and it will be released on the 8th of this month.

The Grimrock level editors do allow a complete novice to cobble together a working map in minutes (literally), while allowing an experienced modder almost full control of the game via lua scripting.

Well, how applicable could that level editor work in an RPG setting? Not just setting up enemies to fight, but designing towns, NPCs, putting together dialogue, that sort of thing?

 

[Gizmojunk]

Play the mod.

[It's not live yet]

As far as the unsupported design elements... it's usually possible via scripting. We have dialog trees, and limited NPCs (and a town) in the mod.