Fallout 2: Shattered Destiny 1.1 Patch

Morbus

Sonny, I Watched the Vault Bein' Built!
Fallout 2’s recently released mod “Shattered Destiny” has received its first patch. You can download it the English version here and the German version here.<blockquote>Installation: Just unzip the *.zip file into your Fallout 2 folder and it should work.

Bugs fixed:

- german speaking people are now english
- included Jacen's spell checked english textfiles
- the guhl in the caves shouldn't let the game crash
- after you were kicket out by Father Jorddan, you couldn't finish the Bene-Quest (if you haven't it already finished)
- some debugging messages deactivated
- the doubled question by the brahmin-boy fixed
- fixed the "error" message from some of the shelter dweller
- included Cubik2k solution for Bene (the "Bring me to the caves"-option)

The text changes are mostly for the english version of the mod.</blockquote>Link: Fallout 2: Shattered Destiny website
Link: Shattered Destiny Discussion

Thanks Lexx for letting us know.
 
Rapidshare mirror for both files (game and patch):

Code:
http://rapidshare.com/files/60615687/sd_complete_eng.rar.html
 
Well, it seems to be working now. Miranda isn't speaking German any more, the game doesn't crash at the point with the ghouls and I've cleaned out most of the spelling errors. The only problem I had was that I had to unpack and then repack the dat file to get fixes working.
 
Lemme start ranting...

#1 - Don't release an English version if you don't have a decent English writer to translate the mod. "Decent" includes knowing the style of Fallout's English dialogues. The current version is atrocious.

#2 - Don't drop the player off in the middle of nowhere right from the start. It causes quite a feeling of displacement if there's no trail of breadcrumbs to get you started.

#3 - Don't expect me to play the game the way you intended it to be played. Most people won't know what you expect them to do. This results in weird conversations because people mix up the sequence in which they encounter the NPCs.

#4 - Don't use NPCs or usables as decoration. The first handful of NPCs should have dialogue, so don't throw random drones at me as a greeting (take note of how most cities in Fallout 1 had introductory guards with short dialogues). Don't point out NPCs in the description if they don't have any dialogues ("a guard watches you closely", with the guard being the first NPC in the game -- and not having any dialogue at all).

#5 - Don't tell, SHOW! If I'm supposed to find an item, make it obvious or make sure I'll encounter it when I look for it -- don't let my character tell me where to look. Besides, talking to yourself is annoying enough in real life. It's even more annoying in games.

#6 - Don't put me on rails. Long sections of question-answer style dialogue are obnoxious, boring at best. Let me break out when I want to -- give me an option to panic during the roulette, for example, and never force me to endure more than one "[CONTINUE]"-only bit of dialogue. Chances are I already heard that speech or don't care about the whole story and only want to know some details. This is one of the main reasons BioWare RPGs are so utterly boring -- they just throw blocks of text at you and think proper atmosphere follows naturally.

And that's only from about ten minutes of playtesting. I admittedly ran through a couple of dialogues rather than reading them properly, but that's mostly because of the aforementioned flaws.
 
#1 - I am not the best english speaking person, so if I ask in a round, if somebody wants to help me with the translation and only one, two or three are willing to do this and tell me "yes, I am the person for this job!" what should I do? Tell them "no, you don't!"? Like I said before.. I am not the best in english, so I can't check the translations, whether it is like it should sound.

#2 - I agree, but: Should I let the player start in the desert, so he has to move to the town by himself? (not on the worldmap) I think, this wouldn't change anything really big.

#3 - Tell me what part you mean exactly.

#4 - I agree with the guard, but haven't had the time to change this.

#5 - What part do you mean exactly? I can't remember a dialog, that says "show! There is the item, take it!" (as example) and doesn't define the position or place it in you inventory.

#6 - I agree, but I wrote all dialogs by myself and after a while you just think "damn! have to finish this xyz.." the problem was, nobody wanted to help me. The german fallout community is really lazy with this things... :/


And then, after a while I just thought "if I don't finish this project in this and this time, I will cancle it, because it has no sense to push the mod two years more with the actual position. It's like with Mutants Rising. "Demo this year or the project is dead."

The only thing, that pushs me forward and motivated me, was the thought that there aren't really much Fallout 2 mods out there.
 
Ashmo said:
#1 - Don't release an English version if you don't have a decent English writer to translate the mod. "Decent" includes knowing the style of Fallout's English dialogues. The current version is atrocious.

Did you play the original release or the patched one? I didn't translate the mod, I simply tried to take the spelling errors out of the first release.
I admit it may not be perfect, but at the very least its not as bad as it was before.
 
I ran the patch and it still says I'm looking for "a work".

It's not that there's something wrong with the maps that could easily be fixed. It feels like they were created on the spot with no careful planning. It's a design question, not the fine tuning.

When encountering the dying child in the radscorpion cave, my character talks to himself afterwards, telling me where to look for the antidote. An antidote I might easily have found and used for myself if I had found it prior to that dialogue, mind you.

The problem is that all mods face the decision whether to rush things and deliver an unplayable product or whether to do it right and risk eventual death of the project. You chose to go with the former one and here's the result.

Mutants Rising for example took the middle path: most of what they released feels very polished and well-done. However they only released a short bit of the final product. The important thing is that at no point you notice how much of the project is unfinished because they decided to cut the really unplayable parts and instead focus on a homogenous, but shorter gaming experience.

You decided to cut corners in order to allow the player to actually finish the game (or chapter, or whatever). The problem is that those cut corners show and severely hamper the gaming experience.

Try to focus on a narrower scope and use your available resources to create something fun and atmospheric rather than try and get the whole thing done at the cost of making the game actually something worth playing.

A short, well-done demo reflects more favourably on your project than a large, unpolished mess.

Case in point: the bunker section near the radscorpion cave. The hallway is too narrow and doesn't seem even remotely realistic because there's a lot of wasted space and the hallway just turns in zig-zags for no reason other than making it longer. The rooms are at the ends of random T-sections. A smaller, but less claustrophobic and stretched-out hallway would have played a lot better.

It's great to see how much energy you and those who helped you spent on the project. It's just to see that energy go to waste because of poor planning.

I think the mod shows some good talent, but TBH, the story, or at least the implementation thereof, is too weak. The characters, maps and story elements seem horribly generic.

Some things (toxic caves, water chip, ... see above) were taken straight out of Fallout 1 + 2 (which is good for the odd playful citation, but can quickly turn into plagiarism if overdone), some are just boring. The few things that are genuinely creative and funny aren't enough to justify the huge pile of brahmin dung you have to dig through in order to find them.

I'm not trying to shoot you down, you're just providing a very easy target.

Yes, I think you could have created a decent mod if you had a huge team to help you out, but there are already huge teams out there, desperately in need of a good mapper, writer or scripter.

Maybe the modding community wouldn't be so short on helpers if people would support a select few mods rather than running off and doing their own, doomed from the start?

Sorry if I sound insulting. I don't really mean to. I'm only being painfully honest about my impressions.
 
Its odd, that it still says I'm looking for a work. That is one of the first things I noticed and edited. :?

As to running the patch, I had to repack the original bat file with the new files, to get all the fixes working, so maybe thats part of the problem.
 
Ashmo said:
I ran the patch and it still says I'm looking for "a work".

Like I said: If just a few people offering there help to me, I can't make a choice.

Ashmo said:
When encountering the dying child in the radscorpion cave, my character talks to himself afterwards, telling me where to look for the antidote. An antidote I might easily have found and used for myself if I had found it prior to that dialogue, mind you.
Well, you CAN'T find the antidote in the maps. You have to talk to the guys inside of the caves. So I don't see a reason in telling you to talk to some guys, when you even don't know, that there are these guys.

Ashmo said:
The problem is that all mods face the decision whether to rush things and deliver an unplayable product or whether to do it right and risk eventual death of the project. You chose to go with the former one and here's the result.
I think, you can't compare this. It is just a mod from one guy (me) without profit, without anything else, just some spare free time. Should I let the project die because I have not enough ressources to make it like the next next gen RPG?

Ashmo said:
Mutants Rising for example took the middle path: most of what they released feels very polished and well-done. However they only released a short bit of the final product. The important thing is that at no point you notice how much of the project is unfinished because they decided to cut the really unplayable parts and instead focus on a homogenous, but shorter gaming experience.
I don't agree with you. Sure, the quests and dialogs, and so one where fine, but really really short (the dialogs as example. IMO not more, then you can have with my mod). At least they should build a new start map. It wasn't really well arranged and the mix of all building-set types doesn't make it better. (just as an example)

Ashmo said:
You decided to cut corners in order to allow the player to actually finish the game (or chapter, or whatever). The problem is that those cut corners show and severely hamper the gaming experience.
You mean the "to be continued" screen at the end? At least, you finished this mod, but not the hole. If I haven't done this, would you say something different? (as example if I would say, that this is not the hole mod, it's just a demo)

Ashmo said:
Try to focus on a narrower scope and use your available resources to create something fun and atmospheric rather than try and get the whole thing done at the cost of making the game actually something worth playing.
Like I said. It is just a modification and I didn't have had more time/money/willing people, that wanted to help me and no, I don't want to make small mods, that can be includet in Fallout 2.

Ashmo said:
A short, well-done demo reflects more favourably on your project than a large, unpolished mess.
Well, if you call the mod "large", then I have to feel honoured. :>

Ashmo said:
Case in point: the bunker section near the radscorpion cave. The hallway is too narrow and doesn't seem even remotely realistic because there's a lot of wasted space and the hallway just turns in zig-zags for no reason other than making it longer. The rooms are at the ends of random T-sections. A smaller, but less claustrophobic and stretched-out hallway would have played a lot better.
I agree with you.

toxic caves
Hmm, I never thought of the toxic caves.

I'm not trying to shoot you down, you're just providing a very easy target.
Not more easy then other people, who are creating modifications for games. (on a "we-are-no-professional-game-designers-like-XYZ"-level)

Yes, I think you could have created a decent mod if you had a huge team to help you out, but there are already huge teams out there, desperately in need of a good mapper, writer or scripter.
Yes, sure. But because of my experience over the years, I can feel, that the most of them will never release there stuff.. thats the reason, why I don't want to join a team. And honestly: The most of them are dead or where dead (at least half-dead).

Maybe the modding community wouldn't be so short on helpers if people would support a select few mods rather than running off and doing their own, doomed from the start?
Yes, I agree with you. But in the time, when I started working on my mod, there (as far as I can remember) was no active team. (for bigger mods. I don't mean patches or such a thing)
At the moment, the bigger mods are raising up again and I hope, that this will hold on. But if there isn't a kind of sign of life from the projects every few weeks, the motivation goes down and the chance to release something will also fall down...

Well.. maybe I also don't agree with you. If there would be more mod projects, there could be more competition and with this there could be more and varied mods out there.

Sorry if I sound insulting. I don't really mean to. I'm only being painfully honest about my impressions.
Normally I am the guy for this job. :o :aiee:
 
Toxic caves? My bad. I meant the radscorpion caves in Fallout 1. Been a while since I went there, so I must have mixed up the names.

I'm not saying your mod feels *large* in the good way. It only feels rather empty and drawn-out.

If you were just trying to say the MR demo lacked long dialogues, then I agree. But I think that's a good thing.

Sure, some of the dialogues were a bit too linear or hostile (what if I don't WANT to yell at the guy? Gimme a peaceful alternative!) for my taste, but they mostly got the style right.

The thing is, they chose quality over quantity, in their level design just as in their writing. No long dialogues, but short ones that are interesting to follow.

The mixing of tilesets worked remarkably well. In fact, I didn't realise it until you mentioned it. It works because it makes sense considering what they want to portray.

Yes, some of it is unfinished and lacking, but it's nowhere near finished and only a demonstration of what they are going for -- and as such, it compares rather favourably to what you presented, even if yours is a work-in-progress as well.

It's astonishing how much you managed to pull off on your own -- I already said its obvious a lot of energy went into the project. What's sad is to see what the preliminary result plays like.

If it's an indication of things to come, i.e. a demo rather than a finished game, you should try to make the player hungry for more. Try serving me a well-made appetiser rather than just a spoonful of the main dish.

Look at what you are presenting to people as not only a sample of your work but also and advertisement to pique the interest of potential helpers -- if you still want people to help you.

I know it's easier to tell people what they're doing wrong and how to fix it than actually doing it right by your own, but I never said this was more than a quick rant in the first place.
 
Your mod

Is the mod supposed to be over after you kill [thr doc]/ escape at the end?(After you fix the water problem and get knocked out and taken to the Dr.'s secret place). Let me know :roll: . Also, You may already know this, but you can pre-order F3, released in 9-08. :shock:
 
???

Is it supposed to be this short? (You get taken to the docs secret lair and thats basically the end?) If you plan on doing any more stuff I would like to write your English version, I don't know German, but if you write it the way you did in the mod, or just give me a general idea of what you want it to be then I can write great dialogue for you, free of charge. :clap: P.S. you are like the fourth person, might even be the same person, who has requested help writing dialouge, and I have offered help free of charge every time, but no one has taken me up on my offer. I don't know what else to do, maybe I should pay to write? (no, I am not going to pay, I'm just saying)
 
Re: ???

jacksam said:
you are like the fourth person, might even be the same person, who has requested help writing dialouge, and I have offered help free of charge every time, but no one has taken me up on my offer. I don't know what else to do, maybe I should pay to write? (no, I am not going to pay, I'm just saying)

At least, I can't remember. -- don't know.



Well, I also didn't expect, that there will be such a great interest on the mod. My webspace statistic says this month (until now): 18.33 GB Traffic.

Code:
# 	Hits 	         KBytes 	           URL
1 	2780 	5,97% 	9969351 	51,71% 	/fallout/downloads/shattered_v1.0.00_eng.exe
2 	607 	 1,30% 	4509082 	23,39% 	/fallout/downloads/shattered_v1.1.00_eng.exe
3 	348 	 0,75% 	2892459 	15,00% 	/fallout/downloads/shattered_v1.0.00_ger.exe
4 	43 	  0,09% 	600389  	3,11% 	 /fallout/downloads/shattered_v1.1.00_ger.exe
It's only the statistic from my webspace. There are also links here on NMA, moddb and so on.

If I had know, that the german interest is so low, I would have concentrate more on the english version.
 
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