Fallout Tactics utility Fallout Tactics Scripting Engine (0.52a)

Hi Melindil! I'm surprised no one replied to you already about this game changing addon! And sorry to not have replied earlier, I was busy in hollidays... Thanks again for all your work and all the promising features to come...

I'll test this as soon as I can along with a new interface. I really want to implement custom perks for main character too based on global variable changes after special quests. Please tell me if I need more info from you to add this feature to my mod.

Also, please tell me if a flag and UA code could be used to allow some items with a tag in the inventory to trigger some skill or stat changes to the character wearing them (example: if you have an item tagged Backpack in your inventory, you have +100 lbs of carry items. Other example: if you have boots in your inventory with Boots tag, you have +10 electric resistance). Thanks!!

Keep on good work and stay connected, I'll send you screenshots soon.

 

I'm finding myself coming back to FOT modding, and this sounds promising.

Things I would like to change most are restrictions in the number of recruits you can take, as well as on the number of passengers on vehicles. Also some way to manipulate time so you can rest x number of minutes, hours, days.

 

Fabulous idea! Fallout 1 was strong on time related triggers, actions and quests, and I think this is still an advantage compared to many (maybe all) other games in the franchise. I have the idea in my mod to create a quest where you have to keep a recruit alive in the wild for at least a year. The only way for me to include that would be time related codes that affect global variables.

That is exactly what I have in mind yess! I thought about that because Fallout 1,2, Tactics have a great weakness, you just can't equip many items to receive bonuses as in many other games. This is not an issue anymore if you can just "have" that item for it to be effective. Other examples : Special survival tools, a compass, a survival straw, gaz mask, gloves, mechanic-support legs or arms, binoculars, motion sensor, etc. etc.

You are reading my mind here! I am looking forward for this kind of stuff to make the quartermaster in my mod to act like a container (all items free to buy from him). It is because in my mod the quartermaster is in fact the player's cooler with all items added to it as a 0$ item, so the player can take them when they appear (fresh meat from skinned animal, animal pelts, water gathered, etc.). At this point of my mod you can add any items from your inventory to the cooler but can't take them back... The items must be at 0$ to be taken by the player. I would like them to have a value, but still being optained without payment to the quartermaster...

 

I have tested having more than six recruits in a campaign, and have had no problem. There are two ways you can do this; one is through triggers. That was a problem before when tags got stripped entering a new map, but now that the tag name stripping has been removed through hex editing, it can work on a campaign. The other way is adding a map where only the main character is spawned, and putting a recruit master there. However, it would be much better if the limit was removed, so you don't have to implement tags, or enter and leave the recruit area mentioned, to add squad members.

Vehicles have a limit of 7 passengers. Add a gunner and driver and you can take a maximum of 9 per vehicle.

 

Yes I have. Only the first six are shown; and adding a button to scroll in both the recruit master UI as well as the main interface, would be awesome.


Other things that would be great to fix would be making vehicle weapons use the sound effect specified on their entity rather than the generic vehicle attack sound.
This would make it possible to have different mounted weapons on vehicle turrets. Also fixing the vehicle gunner bug which uses the weapon skill, and awards kills to the driver rather than the gunner.

Some way to add more races, and being able to specify their traits, default sprite, sounds, etc. would be worth looking into.

 

Great! Yess I'm the kind of person here that need some more Lua script engine documentations, I tend to be lost a bit in this new way of coding. For my part, I created a statue for you as promised in one of the cities (ha! ) and still working on my new Worldmap and quests writing. My next goal is to make color portraits and test them with your changes. I'll test also these new promising functionalities you describe then. Thanks again for your impressive work!

 

He! Just installed the engine about an hour or so ago. Easily installed and worked instantly. That's a charm to work with serilously, and it will save me a lot of time and attention as I will not have to worry about engine bugs anymore. You have my thanks. Still have to make a couple of colour portraits, then I'll send you a postcard!

 

Awesome work melindil, definitely checking this out.

 

My list of several strange engine issues to repair / improve (mostly from other threads here or on DAC):

1) Electronic Lockpicks:
"Unfortunately Electronic Lockpicks don't work correctly in the game. There is an option to tag doors as "Electronic" as well as the Lockpicks themselves, but it wasn't actually enabled. So it looks like we're stuck w/generic lockpicks."
It would be great to have working electronic lockpicks. The solution to have a tagged item and then to create triggers for every door is a bother.

2) Super Tololkits X Repair Item:
" there is a bug w/vehicles needing an item to Repair them. I seem to recall having simply used a Super Tool Kit on one once and the vehicles was repaired. That's why I only have standard Tool Kits available on the map. If you intend to use this in one of your maps, I recommend checking into this possible bug."

3) Give item from human to NPC:
"The give item from human to npc command doesn't like multiple tagnames.. From NPC to human will work with trading umpteen tagged items but from human to npc will only trade one item and won't move equipped items, even using multiple preserved triggers."

4) Turret and maybe Object races shouldn't be affected by drugs - it could be implemented the same way as for robots, they aren't affected by them.

5) # alive in a zone (not verified by me)
"it appears that the "Quantity Team" and "Quantity Player" triggers don't work for # alive in a zone other than anywhere."

6) First Aid, Doctor skill use during combat:
"Things that make you go 'hmmm': In turn based play, when using the First Aid or Doctor skill during combat your medic must have fewer AP than he needs to use the first aid kit or doctor's bag. For example, if Stitch has a use cost of 8 AP for a First Aid kit, if he has 8 or more AP he can't use the First Aid kit. He will appear to use it, but will do nothing-- he will repeatedly play a "use item" animation and no healing will occur. If he has 7 AP or less, everything will be fine. This is an engine bug that cannot be fixed. If you need to heal someone and have more AP than the healing item requires, take a few steps back and forth to lower your available AP first. I've known about this bug for a long time, but in thinking about the matter recently I now think this problem makes the "Stat" perk (which in the past I've had my medics take multiple times) useless-- if using a medical kit is going to take two turns no matter what, how many APs remain on the medic's second turn is usually of little importance."

7) Items not removed from inventory:
"Quest items don't disappear from inventory if the character holding them is inside a vehicle when leaving the map. The engine has problems calculating containment, and nothing can be done about this."

8) AP costs of consumable items are not displayed
"All consumable items (food, drinks, drugs) do not display an AP cost in when placed in a character's active item slot, yet they have a use cost of two. There is no known way to fix this problem."

9) Vehicles cannot be deactivated
" something that doesn't work is deactivating vehicles by deactivating their Player Index or moving them to a deactivated PI."

 

@TorontRayne will probably be interested in this thread. Since I think he wanted to do some Fallout Tactics projects or modding or something.

 

OK, I will add more of them there.

 

Personnally I implemented electronic lockpick in my game by giving doors the tagname "Electronic" and adding Electronic Lockpick in my game as keys with the tag "Electronic". It works without any trigger but there are some downsides to that :

- No other key can be used to open these doors, the tagname is already used
- Each and every electronic lockpick must keep its tagname to work. If, for instance, an electronic lockpick exists somewhere on the ground, it must have a manually entered tagname to work.

That bring me to two other bugs I wish to add to the list :

- All items on the ground in maps (not in container or on an entity) automatically lose their tagname. They must be assigned manually to work.

- All items on entities (added in the entity inventory with entity editor) lose their tagname in game. This is infuriating because that means ALL random encounter entity items don't have any tagname. It is a serious problem in my mod and it brings me to tag guns, weapons and many items in random encounter as not lootable.

 

Citing other modding gurus:

1) "When working with tagnames always add the tagname in the level editor and not the entity editor, unless your tagged item or recruit is going to be placed in an inventory, or be available via the Recruit or Quarter Master. Because when you place items or actors etc in the map the field 'tagname', above the entities window, overwrites the tagnames given in the entity editor."

2) "When adding tagged items to an actor's inventory (either an actor, vehicle or container) do so via the level editor as inventories added via the entity editor are not part of the map and tagnames will not be imported."

Re 1) So the bug is in the level editor, it should take over the tagname of the just inserted entity from its ent file. Then you would have a possibility to rename it or leave the imported default one. Might be an easy fix?
Re 2) It's probably too complicated to fix that.