Ideas for Fallout 2 modding

Makenshi

Ahoy, ye salty dogs!
I've searched in the forum to see if someone had these ideas before, but it seems no one did (at least I didn't find anywhere). As I posted once before, I don't know how to make a mod but like to contribute with ideas, so let me present them, in hope that someone here put them to good use (main targets, of course, are Team X, Chris Parks, Killap, MIB88, and other famous modders around here 8) ).

1. Marcus, the super mutant

How about changing his look depending on the type of armor he is wearing, just like the look of other party members in B-Team MOD/MIBB 88 Megamod/Patch 1.05? His look could be the 'naked mutie' when without armor, his standard look when using Leather Jacket, the look of the lieutenant of Fallout 1 when wearing Metal Armor, and Horrigan's look when using PA. Its possible to scavenge the lieutenant's sprite from Fallout 1 and use it in Fallout 2, isn't it?

Before anyone targets an ICBM on me, let me say: I know a super mutant doesn't fit in human armor, so basically you modders(somewhat genius IMHO) could put in the game some altered armors, which would look like the common armors in inventory, but be a bit heavier, have the 'Mutant' prefix and it's scripts (or whatever it is you guys tinkle with) forcing the item to be equipable only by Marcus (or any super mutant some modder may come to add as joinable NPC in a future mod - hey! now that's a nice idea too!). As foretold, these modified armors could keep the inventory icon of the common ones to save trouble.

About I'm still being a nice target for an ICBM thanks to Marcus using PA's, as if the Enclave had an army of mutants in PA like Horrigan, let me say: just one extra Mutant PA in Navarro should not destroy reality, as Horrigans PA is not indestructible, and thus they would be smart enough to keep a reserve in Navarro in case something happens to his armor.

Anyway, this is just an opinion and I'd like to hear comments about it, but please be polite. I ask this because I was almost banned from a french forum for "having ideas that cannot be accepted for they CAN'T exist in the Fallout world, which is perfect and imutable". Actually I just don't access that crap anymore.

So, IMO the armors could be just these:

Mutant Leather Jacket - Standard look
Mutant Metal Armor - Lieutenant's look
Horrigan's PA - obvious...

2. Skynet

I never accepted well the fact that a super AI like Skynet would be that silent after being out there, experiencing the outside world. If possible, why not fill him with floating text like Cassidy, so that he can show his interest in the "wonderful human post-war society"?

More than his silence, what really makes me spit fire and burn in hate is that the super Ai is connected by an amazing cyber brain to that stupid samll robot. How about changing his sprite to one of those nice and bruiser security bots? This way he could stand a lot more damage (I believe security bots have HP, AC, DR and DT of way bigger than the small bots) and kick ass with his miniguns/rocket launchers (not that Gauss Rifles are bad, but...). Hell, I believe the modders here can even put him to shoot lasers and plasma! Or better, shoot 2mm EC as if he had a built in MEC Gauss Minigun! Cool!

3. Pulse Rifle

This one should be easy; I really don't know why the bloddy, bloddy hell the game developers didn't make the Pulse Rifle have a visible shot like the Pulse Pistol. In fact, all other energy weapons have visible shot, except for the Gatling Laser. So the idea is, obviously, to give the Pulse Rifle a visible shot, and this should be equal to the one of Pulse Pistol/Alien Blaster.

Question: In Fallout 2, in which category are pulse weapons included? Normal, Laser or Plasma? Fallout Tactics seems to have corrected this missing by including eletric type damage in the DT/DR, but in Fallout 2 it's still not clear to me. If anyone can explain, I'd be grateful.

Not a new idea: About resistances

But it's one I think is nice. I've been playing Tactics these days (nothing compared to the RPG's, but keeps me sharp :P ) and noticed the DT/DR offered by the armors changed: while in the RGP's they offer Normal/Explosion/Fire/Laser/Plasma, in Tactics it's Normal/Explosion/Gas/Fire/Energy/Electric. And Energy resistance has been reduced to an amount similar to that of Normal resistance, opposed to the RPG's in which Laser was useless, because Laser weapons come late in the game, where Laser Resistance was too high (not to mention that when, laser weapons appear, plasma/pulse/gauss are avaliable, and those are much better).

In my opinion, this is better and could be implemented in FO1 and FO2 mods. Gives sense to the very effort of Energy Weapons Development in Pre-War era.

New idea: About BoS bunkers

To me, those Brotherhood of Steel bunkers in The Den and NCR are a waste, since there could be local quests avaliable by talking to those metal armored BoS guys in front of them, just like with Matt in San Francisco BoS bunker. Then we'd get access to these specific bunkers independent of each other.

And, of course, put some reward on these bunkers (like in Unificial patch 1.05) to make it worth the effort.


These are just general ideas I had, if I have more I'll post them here.
 
Makenshi said:
2. Skynet

I never accepted well the fact that a super AI like Skynet would be that silent after being out there, experiencing the outside world. If possible, why not fill him with floating text like Cassidy, so that he can show his interest in the "wonderful human post-war society"?

More than his silence, what really makes me spit fire and burn in hate is that the super Ai is connected by an amazing cyber brain to that stupid samll robot. How about changing his sprite to one of those nice and bruiser security bots? This way he could stand a lot more damage (I believe security bots have HP, AC, DR and DT of way bigger than the small bots) and kick ass with his miniguns/rocket launchers (not that Gauss Rifles are bad, but...). Hell, I believe the modders here can even put him to shoot lasers and plasma! Or better, shoot 2mm EC as if he had a built in MEC Gauss Minigun! Cool!

I am not gonna nuke you for your ideas! :) Anyway, I wanted to do something with Skynet, too. The floating texts would be easy to implement. (Do you have any ideas for some? If so, feel free to e-mail them to me.) And I was also considering the deal with his body...or at least to offer the player a choice of robots to put him into. I don't think that would be too hard to incorporate either. I was also playing with the idea of being able to put other NPC brains into those robot bodies (maybe something to teach Myron a lesson about getting all 'grab-assy' with female characters!). Anyway, I do like the idea of adding more to Skynet...something to give him a little more character.
 
MIB88 said:
I wanted to do something with Skynet, too. The floating texts would be easy to implement. And I was also considering the deal with his body...or at least to offer the player a choice of robots to put him into.
I love that idea. Maybe some fallout tactics Robot critters could be usefull? making skynet a little more powerfull and more unique then all those other robots
 
Makenshi said:
Question: In Fallout 2, in which category are pulse weapons included? Normal, Laser or Plasma? Fallout Tactics seems to have corrected this missing by including eletric type damage in the DT/DR, but in Fallout 2 it's still not clear to me. If anyone can explain, I'd be grateful.

It's electric in Fo2 as well, that and EMP just don't show up in the inventory screen.
 
To MIB88:

Be absolutely sure that I'll force my brain to have ideas to send you if it doesn't have on it's own :P

To Oracle:

I don't now if people here will agree with your idea of using Tactics robots because they're not as 50's retrofuturistic (is this how it's written?) as the robots of Fallout 1 & 2. But I'm with you to the bitter end, because Tactics robots kick ass :twisted:

To Per:

Is there anyway to know this hidden DT/DR? I suppose it's calculated the same way as the other resistances. Thank you for answering Per :wink:
 
Makenshi said:
Is there anyway to know this hidden DT/DR?

The Fallout II Cracker utility displays them, Falche doesn't for whatever reason. And FUCK shows them for critters.
 
Not a new idea:

But it's one I think is nice. I've been playing Tactics these days (nothing compared to the RPG's, but keeps me sharp :P ) and noticed the DT/DR offered by the armors changed: while in the RGP's they offer Normal/Explosion/Fire/Laser/Plasma, in Tactics it's Normal/Explosion/Gas/Fire/Energy/Electric. And Energy resistance has been reduced to an amount similar to that of Normal resistance, opposed to the RPG's in which Laser was useless, because Laser weapons come late in the game, where Laser Resistance was too high (not to mention that when, laser weapons appear, plasma/pulse/gauss are avaliable, and those are much better).

In my opinion, this is better and could be implemented in FO1 and FO2 mods. Gives sense to the very effort of Energy Weapons Development in Pre-War era.
 
New idea:

To me, those Brotherhood of Steel bunkers in The Den and NCR are a waste, since there could be local quests avaliable by talking to those metal armored BoS guys in front of them, just like with Matt in San Francisco BoS bunker. Then we'd get access to these specific bunkers independent of each other.

And, of course, put some reward on these bunkers (like in Unificial patch 1.05) to make it worth the effort.
 
Makenshi said:
New idea:

To me, those Brotherhood of Steel bunkers in The Den and NCR are a waste, since there could be local quests avaliable by talking to those metal armored BoS guys in front of them, just like with Matt in San Francisco BoS bunker. Then we'd get access to these specific bunkers independent of each other.

And, of course, put some reward on these bunkers (like in Unificial patch 1.05) to make it worth the effort.

Yes, this is exactly my old, blank dream... :) But for MOD it seems not to be enough interesting and motivative...
 
I 3rd the above. This is a copy and paste from the Killap addon thread, I doubt he would consider the following, extracted comments and suggestions from the FO bibles:

. NCR is rumored to have a mechanized vehicle division outside of its farming vehicles, but the number of vehicles in the division is unknown.

Good idea for a random encounter perhaps, stumbling on NCR armour wait near V15 maybe, good excuse to use tactics armoured car maybe.


Sgt. Granite and his crew after the destruction of the Enclave? - After reaching the mainland, they headed north to Navarro (or the remains of Navarro, depending on how your PC left it)

No one knows what happened to Navarro after the Enclave was destroyed. It's unlikely that the BOS seized it after the events in F2 because they didn't have a strong military presence up North at the end of F2. They would have been interested in taking it, however - although they would have suffered serious casualties

After the game ends Sgt. Granite and his people lead the defence of navarro against the brotherhood, you can fight against the brotherhood and lead Navarro as a military Dictatorship (Bad ending i.e. you take over towns etc as quests) or the good option would be to get them to join the brotherhood after exterminating hard liners, either way should lead to new quests.
 
we had a talking head model made up for Casidy in the mutants rising mod, it looked pretty cool too. I could try and dig it up and upload it some time. Of course all as you would need then is a voice acter for Casidy and you could upgrade him to a talking head in FO2, some scripting required of course.

I imagine it would be somewhat contraversal though, we had a *lot* of "discussion" over what casidy should look like, the end result was very good I thought.
 
Wild_qwerty said:
we had a talking head model made up for Casidy in the mutants rising mod, it looked pretty cool too. I could try and dig it up and upload it some time. Of course all as you would need then is a voice acter for Casidy and you could upgrade him to a talking head in FO2, some scripting required of course.

I imagine it would be somewhat contraversal though, we had a *lot* of "discussion" over what casidy should look like, the end result was very good I thought.

Offtopic

Wild_qwerty. So I can assume mutants risen is official dead now ? If so will the stuff thats was done be released ? those files might be usefull for other modders or maybe someone want to pick up where you guy left the mod.
 
I like the ideas very much. I like the mods that doesnt alter the original game much and just gets it closer to perfection. :P


Makenshi, when you post a new idea also edit the first post and add it there too, it's easier to catch them all :)
 
Demonslayer said:
I like the ideas very much. I like the mods that doesnt alter the original game much and just gets it closer to perfection. :P

Me too, but MIB88's Megamod was built upon A New Vision Mod; I made a cheeky request for a version of Megamod not based on it, and received a round NO. I deserved it for being cheeky! :P

Demonslayer said:
Makenshi, when you post a new idea also edit the first post and add it there too, it's easier to catch them all :)

Aye, sir!
 
I like your idea about Marcus. especially the Lt.'s Sprite from Fallout I. I have some ideas and I doubt anyone's suggested them (or at least it again confirms I suck at searching)

Fallout I
1. I'd like to have some more 9MM ammo so I could play longer. I'd like to see if I could beat the game with Gizmo's piece. Either a large cache or being able to buy more would be fine

2. Putting in some of the guns of Fallout II into Fallout I like the Guass pistol and rifle. That might not be possible, and if not, OK.

Fallout II
3. A house you could buy or steal, that doesn't effect endings like the mob mansions in Reno, where you can store your stuff in chests and lockers or something.

4. A merchant in a town with like 10,000,000 gold so you can see whatever you have without the merchant running out of money.

5. A modification to let Davin and Maria level up and stay so when you're on the Enclave they don't get shot to pieces. I think there's one for Maria, but I don't know if there's one for Davin

Quest for Fallout II
6. Save Private Dobbs. I'd rather have a 21st century soldier as an NPC than the robot anyday. His floating diolouge would be priceless.

7. Repair the Vault Dweller's equipment. Put a broken power armor and a broken .223 pistol (separate items, but there's unused spots) in the chest behind the Elder in Arroyo. To repair the pistol you have to go to Buster, or Reno Arms or Valerie and do a "favor" to them (like sleeping with Valerie is male, but NOT female, you ladies can do the nasty with Eldridge or Buster), or going on a quest of some kind. Power Armor is trickier; somehow make it so Valerie can fix it mid-game, well before you go to Navarro.

8. Maybe refurbish an old distillation plant for NCR. You'd have to defeat something, like maybe a Deathclaw herd, get the engineers together, repair the piping, maybe fight off raiders one more time. This would land you karma for kicking out whatever lived there (maybe even Enclave for some reason) and it would make NCR more prosperous and they'll offer unusual stuff like:

A copy of Starry Night
Books for the presidential library:
The Complete works of William Shakespeare (improves speech +10)
I, Robot (+5 Repair +5 Science)
The Frontiersman (+10 Outdoorsman)
etc.

And stuff like that one can either buy or quest for, depending on the modder.

9. Green Fallout II. Just once I'd like to see green, green, green, blooming trees, bushes, maybe some flowers. Not many squares would have to be changed at all; just a few like where sidewalks and streets have desert in 3/4 of the square.

10. Just once, a rebuilt urban center; think the city random encounter from Fallout one, with the buildings rebuilt, the streets paved and painted, all the signs in place, if non functional, the sidewalks not crumbling. Might make a good new town. Maybe in Oakland.
 
7. would make the game very easy.
Some of what you said can be edited by a char or save game editor and the other ideas aren't that great, imo.
 
You might be right on some of them, though I do think the Saving Private Dobbs has definate potential in the right hands. A lot of these are actualy quite simple to do, especially Green Fallout, in theory anway if you know who to edit files, like the Vault 13 better stuff file for Fallout I.

Still, the 10,000,000 gold merchant is basicly for the end where you're driving around, attractinh robbers in caves and you have a lot of high powered and priced stuff with no one to sell it too.

And the repair the Vault Dweller's equipment comes from the fact that regualr power armor is never viable because I've always found it AFTER I went to Navarro. Having Power Armor in the Temple, yes that's unbalancing; having it when you get to Navarro; not so unbalancing. Besides it would add flavor to th game, and that's why I suggested it instead of just using the mapper.
 
And the repair the Vault Dweller's equipment comes from the fact that regualr power armor is never viable because I've always found it AFTER I went to Navarro. Having Power Armor in the Temple, yes that's unbalancing; having it when you get to Navarro; not so unbalancing. Besides it would add flavor to th game, and that's why I suggested it instead of just using the mapper.

If you think anyone would lug around 80lb of broken equiptment for half of the game you need to think again. Its like the broken rifle in new vision. A nice touch but totally useless.
 
Konig15 said:
You might be right on some of them, though I do think the Saving Private Dobbs has definate potential in the right hands. A lot of these are actualy quite simple to do, especially Green Fallout, in theory anway if you know who to edit files, like the Vault 13 better stuff file for Fallout I.

Personally, I like the way he melts, and I'd miss it in the game. :twisted:

Konig15 said:
Still, the 10,000,000 gold merchant is basicly for the end where you're driving around, attractinh robbers in caves and you have a lot of high powered and priced stuff with no one to sell it too.

This guy would be either long dead, and his fortune divided by the ones who robed him; or would be the undisputed ruler of the post-apocaliptic California... or more...

Konig15 said:
And the repair the Vault Dweller's equipment comes from the fact that regular power armor is never viable because I've always found it AFTER I went to Navarro.

If you try to play the game with some linearity* (which the game offer little and does NOT force you to follow), you'll find Mariposa Military Base before San Francisco, which is before Navarro. And both San Fran and military Base have PA.

*To me, linearity in Fallout 2 is choosing to go to Vault City after getting out of The Den. Motives? Because The Choosen One is looking for a G.E.C.K. or anything related to Vaults; The moment he leaves The Den, the map in his PipBoy shows only Redding, Vault City and New Reno (if you got all info in town). Of these 3, Vault City is more likely to have a Vault or a G.E.C.K., and it's sure there's Ed, who sold the water flask to Vic. From the Vault 8 computer, you learn of Valut 15: where to go? Fallout (the 1st more than the 2nd, IMO) is not linear, but is built to allow the player to make his own linearity if he/she wishes.
 
Well, a couple of years ago I had a savegame where I was trying to get as many encounters as possible. With the Pulse Rifles and such I easily had 2-4 million dollars, and that was from three yeeks of getting robbers, Enclave Patrols and press gangs versus hubologists.

And about the equipmwnt, I never said one had to lug it around; I'd just dump it in the trunk place and when Valerie's offer to fix it came up, it'd be there waiting. It might not be overly practical, but it would be nice to see the ol T-51b back in action, at least for a little while.
 
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