Fallout Tactics mod Children of the Apocalypse 2

Hi, I present you a new FT campaign, Children of the Apocalypse 2.
Yes, two. Some might remember there was another campaign few years back (showthread.php?185077-Deti-Apokalypsy-English-Translation). I am the guy behind it. We were two brothers wanting to create something cool back in the days of 56 kbps modems (at least this was our reality, I even had to move the 12MB campaign from my PC to PC with Internet connection on a floppy). He made up the story and was writing all texts, I was doing the maps. It wasn't of high technical quality, lots of ctrl+c, ctrl+v tile placement, no complex triggers etc., but the story, texts and jokes were the selling part. The whole story was dark and grim reality of post-apocalyptic life on one side and lightheartedness and silliness on the other side, with many pop culture hints. We were making it for ourselves and for our local (Czech and Slovak) Fallout community. We have never even thought of publishing it elsewhere.
At first, it was single missions with Thirteen as the protagonist. Later, I've learned how to use campaign editor, so I modified the missions and slapped it together somehow. It was bugged and overall pretty bad though. One of the main problems was that the trigger for exiting the bunker map wasn't set as preserved, so you could visit it only once. Still playable, because you didn't have to go back to bunker. Anyway, making the campaign made me want to continue, so I started to work on a sequel by myself. My brother helped me flesh out some things and he wrote some texts, especially the first two briefings, but that's just a minor thing. I was on my own and it took me a lot of time, because I couldn't maintain the working morale.
In 2011, a Slovakian guy named RastiC joined me and helped a lot. He was speaking of adding new sprites and what not, and made me look at NMA and Duck and Cover. That turned out to be the best thing that could happen to the campaign, because I learned a lot of cool tricks. The work was still slow, though, and it took us another 2 years. The last months of production were like "Oh man, I haven't done anything in the past 2 months. Let's just finish this already and be done with it!". Around that time I stumbled upon the thread linked above. I couldn't believe it. It was like finding out the chick you banged 6 years back bore you a child. A child you'd like to keep now, but it already died of pox or something
I realized it might be a good idea to translate the game. I started right after releasing it in my native language, but it bored me quickly. In the end it took me almost 2 years. The playtesting at the end of translation revealed many bugs and many missed opportunities and stuff, so I spent few weeks by fiddling with weapons and triggers and testing some unorthodox approaches to the missions. So now the English release is basically a version 1.1.
It's worth noting that I've never played any FT mod ever (save for my mods). Only some basic stuff like adding SG-1 as the starting team in Brahmin Woods.


Ok, enough of the back story. Let's get to the campaign itself. It features 7 primary missions, 2 secondary missions, 1 bunker, 1 semi-bunker, few special encounters and an endgame party. There are also few "hidden" stories and few small quests.
You'll take control of a common soldier in the ranks of organization known as the Children of the Apocalypse and help them in their struggle against the eastern Brotherhood of Steel. The initiation through fire will make you a formidable warrior and you'll soon become a leader of a small unit (what else do you expect from FT? ). There will be times when you'll feel superhuman (depends on how much drugs you'll do), but you should never be seen as some Chosen One, savior of Wastelands. The game should treat you just as one gear in the machine.
The missions usually have more approaches to them, though I'll admit it's nothing big most of the time. The kill count can vary from 0 to "Everyone's dead, Dave". The setting once again combines lighthearted and grim approaches.
You can play as a ghoul and supermutant and the game will acknowledge this at few points. There's a point in the game where even your charisma is checked, but it's still a dump stat to be fair. Recruits don't all have CHA 1 for roleplaying reasons!11
There are some bugs and some loose ends, but I no longer want to spend time fixing it. It's definitively playable, although it sometimes crashes. The translation is official, but by no means professional. I had problems translating jokes and word plays especially - sometimes I came up with something different, sometimes it just is no longer funny.

TL;DR
Download: ulozto.net/xpGd5mUi/cota2-rar
It didn't let me post any URL, so that's why the links are lame.

Let me know if you'd like a proper translation of the first campaign. The story of 2nd campaign continues where 1st ended + few weeks. The amount of text is roughly the same (looks like the 1st campaign has much more trash characters in the files though). It would take me few weeks (up to 2 years, heh).

 

When I see the quality (or rather lack of thereof) of maps in other mods posted here, it makes me sad no one plays my campaign. So I decided to post a few screenshots. Also I added a banner to the first post (I don't know why it wasn't there).




Some maps are pretty vertical...





If you make it to the last level, you can have a talk with all the important characters. And even with some unimportant, if they survived.

 

Just the authors' nationalities, for fun. I am Czech while RastiC, the creator of those sprites, is Slovak. The game is set in New Mexico. There's a character, though, who is potentially (if you trust him) from the Kingdom of Bohemia

 

Nice to hear that, and also bad. Have you entered the map before or does this happen when you enter for the first time? I only know my mod crashes when you use turn based mode in later missions, never encountered it (or heard of it) anywhere else. I am afraid there's little I can do, since there are no crash logs. There are two things that come up to my mind:
1) Start again. Perhaps the error is caused by something that happened in previous missions and you carry it over in the save. Maybe just try earlier save, if you have one.
2) I could try to replay the first two missions your way, save it in Weltenkraft and send it to you.

I know it's boring to play something you've just played, but it is probably the best solution. Neither might work in the end.

 

Glad to hear it worked! Wish I knew why it's bugged.

There won't be any updates. I finished the campaign 3 years ago, English translation (with patch 1.1) a year ago. It's finished.

I started working on another campaign last year. I've done a lot of world and plot design, mapped few cool, detailed maps (with help by RastiC once more) and reworked the skills, weapons and consumables. It would be very different from the CotA campaign, much more in veins of Fallout 2. First draft had only 1 player character. Later I added controllable companions, with the amount limited by charisma (max 3 at 10 CHA). But then I moved from village to big city and I lost the drive. And motivation. I have already though about making the game shorter, but it would feel unfinished as it is already meant to be quite short with soft level cap at 8th lvl. I am afraid I won't finish this one, so have this screenshot:


I would probably need just a writer to do the dialogues for me, but I don't like the idea that half of the people who would play the campaign would ultimately be the creators themselves

 

Yeah, you nailed it with the motivation. If there were few people waiting for me to finish the mod, to ask from time to time how's it going, it would be easier to set aside other activities and work on it. Anyway, I am happy you like this one and thank you for the kind words

 

The first campaign can be downloaded here. Beware, it's in Czech, so unless you know at least some other slavic language, you won't understand a shit. It was never translated (no one asked). Also, the selling point of that campaign were jokes and references to our Madbrahmin community. It's not very well made in the level and encounter design part (I was a 14 years old fucker without experience at the time).