New Fallout Project

D

Darque

Still Mildly Glowing
Greetings :)

This was posted on the Obsidian boards and several of us have come together to work on a project because of it.

It was posted on the Bethseda forums and now here. If anyone is interested, please send EnderWiggin a line.

His email is at the end of the announcement.

EnderWiggin said:
I know there seem to be a lot of disgruntled Fallout fans who seem very passionate about "their" franchise. I would like to attempt to unite them in a more productive, positive manner.

If they feel they know Fallout, and want to see a true Fallout with:

SPECIAL
turn-based combat
isometric view
PC release

Then, I offer you this suggestion. Let's make a fan-made Fallout. There are editors are tools for the Fallout 2 engine. Using the Fallout 2 engine, we can make a total-conversion that will preserve the Fallout title, and produce what many of the fans want to see.

I believe that I've got a pretty good take for a storyline that sticks pretty closely to the Fallout universe, with war being a central theme. (The war speech is uttered before both Fallout games, but war was never the central theme in either title. I believe a Fallout title can retain the feel and mileau while actually focusing on war as the main theme).

I won't say anymore about the story right now, because I don't want to spoil it for everyone now, and I'm certainly willing to take suggestions from future team members on it as well.

It would be more more serious than Fallout 2, while taking advantage of the Fallout 2 engine.

Interested? Drop me an email. enderandrew@sluggy.net
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What a creative idea -- considering there's already Mutants Rising, Fallout: Yurop, FanMade Fallout, ...

Good luck.
 
I see... so does that mean you think additional projects are not needed? That there is already enough "Fallout"?
 
This was asked on the Bethseda forums... just in case anyone had similar questions here. (note: this is about Ender not myself)
You do know there are like 4 mods currently in the works right? Can you script? Can you use the FO2 mapper? Do you have the time? Can you stick with this for a year or two?
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I've worked with other mod tools, and RPG makers in the past. I've hand coded games. My most recent programming project was a MUD codebase in C.

I'm not a great mapper. I haven't tried the FO2 Mapper yet, and will need to do some research as to whether it would be best to do this in FO2 or IanOut.

I am a very well organized person, but no project like this can be done by one person.

My goal is to assemble a team, and work on one city, and a small demo. In that city, we'll learn more about what's feasible, and how long it takes to handle certain small projects. From there, we can set larger goals and grow.

I already have several volunteers from the Obsidian forums, but am certainly looking for more volunteers. Our forums, and website are already in the works, and I just suggested this today.

Obviously, this is very new, and exists in pre-production. I know of the pitfalls of major mods, and why they fail. Often it's due to poor-planning, poor workload distribution, lack of small feasible goals, and the inability to shift workload to other team-members when time commitments change with volunteers.

If I do assemble a team (which seems likely from the initial response) and head it up myself, there will be a second to step in if I can't commit time myself, or become swamped. I was the Operations Manager for a start-up company, and had 70 employees working for me, so I know a few things about scheduling, and delegating responsibility.

I have no interest in competing with, or stealing thunder from other mods. I would love to cooperate with, and share any expertise and resources with other Fallout modders. I think the Fallout universe is special, and it's fans like no other. I truly want to see the community grow.
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Can I make a recomendation?

Please, Please, Please start smal and then work up to the bigger mod/game.

MR is a total conversion/new game. Its a massive project, I personaly spend on average over 30 hours a week (I also work fulltime) on it. Ands its taken me the last six months to get to a point where I can now produce quality FO2 Graphics (many of which I will be releasing to other mod teams). Its a huge learning curve to begin with and it is a lot more involved than you would expect.

Anyway that being said start off by making one town, if you get that done and working add another and so on.... That way you can see and feel the progress, this helps to encourage you to continue on, also the hardpart is not finding members, its finding reliable members. We ahve had our fair share of 'memebers' who joined read the forums and didnt contribute anything.

Of course we at MR will be releasing our Dialog editor down the track which will speed up your production big time.

If not just make an expansion for the original FO2 (for example the "abbey" mod)
 
Please, Please, Please start smal and then work up to the bigger mod/game.
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This has been stressed on our end as well.

I've done some fan game work before (in VERGE and other RPG creation programs) so I know that trying a big project is very unwise (especially when the group hasn't worked together)

We're thinking of making a single demo town first (one that will use all the features we intend to work with) to see if we can work together (and how well) and to get our feet wet with working with this kind of project.

:)
 
Just a quick question: Why do people ALWAYS say something like "our webpage is already under construction" ? I mean, you have not made anything yet. And all the "basic" sections you will most propably have there say "Nothing here yet, check back later". I mean they are most likely empty. So why do people always make their webpages 1st when they are doing some project or similar. Is there fear that someone will "steal" the webpage name and ask money for it or something like that?

My apologies if someone thinks that my question is trivial.
 
Greetings.

I appreciate the positive support people have shown this project in it's very infancy.

I also appreciate the offers to share resources. We've had offers to help with mapping, scripting, website and dialogue so far.

My big concern at the moment is a lack of an artist, and like Darque said, the current plan is to start with a single city and then reevaluate from there.

Any support, be in in shared resources, ideas, or actual volunteer work is greatly appreciated. Our forums should be up soon, and I'm positive that we've got some good Fallout minds already quickly assembled.

While I understand this project hasn't even assembled a full team, I am very optimistic about it none the less. Over at Obsidian, a few suggestions turned cynics into eager volunteers. I think we've got some solid ideas, and I'm always eager for more input.

Edit: To answer the above question, our website is being assembled so that the team will have it's own place to work on the project. We don't claim to have anything to show at the moment other than goals, and plot ideas. We require a forum of our own to run the majority of our communications through, and thus the necessity for our own site at the moment.

I know that some people approach tasks by completing only the simple parts first to give themselves a sense of accomplishment, and thusly a website is the first part done in a mod. Our goal is to work towards developing a city and a demo.
 
EnderWiggin said:
Edit: To answer the above question, our website is being assembled so that the team will have it's own place to work on the project. We don't claim to have anything to show at the moment other than goals, and plot ideas. We require a forum of our own to run the majority of our communications through, and thus the necessity for our own site at the moment.

I know that some people approach tasks by completing only the simple parts first to give themselves a sense of accomplishment, and thusly a website is the first part done in a mod. Our goal is to work towards developing a city and a demo.
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I think what he's pissed off about is that you have empty sections.
Links lead to content. It's just the way the WWW works. Having links lead to empty placeholder pages is not only pointless but also annoying and annoying your potential supporters or fans is a bad move.
I'd suggest just putting a placeholder instead of the link: just don't make the label an actual link, just make it text. Just drop the anchor if it's not going anywhere sensible.

No website is "under construction": good websites are updated frequently and non-static, therefore claiming they are under construction is just another way of saying "Look, I ain't got the time to produce something worthwhile, so I just put that note there until I'm in the mood to do so.".

Placeholder pages are counter-productive.


And please don't misunderstand me, I considered this post "constructive criticism". If it came out a different way, it's because I'm bitter.
 
EnderWiggin said:
....I know that some people approach tasks by completing only the simple parts first to give themselves a sense of accomplishment, and thusly a website is the first part done in a mod. Our goal is to work towards developing a city and a demo.
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I would have to agree with this statement, its does give a boost of encouragement to a flegling team.

I'm no artist, but I can convert most of the critters from Fallout Tactics into FO2 if you want some of them. Though I am fairly busy with MR. But I have written a tutorial that even a New-Be could follow to make the critters. Just let me know what you need
 
Has someone posted the link to our site yet?

If it has, I missed it. The site exists as a communications device for our team.

If and when that site becomes public, I'll try to have plenty of content and keep it updated. I'm a post-a-holic, so I don't think that will be a huge problem.

Once again, I appreciate the feedback from everyone.

And to Qwerty,

I'll gladly accept any FRMs you want to offer us. I was under the impression that many of the FOT critters had already been converted. I also saw that your team was released a tool for that purpose. It's nice to see you guys are really trying to support the Fallout modding community as a whole.

Right now, my main concern is going back and going Fallout research, jotting down ideas, and trying to figure out what my limitations/capabilities are with something like IanOut.
 
Its is also fairly easy to convert the tiles from FOT into FO FRMs for scenery, I just converted the playground slide last night and it was fairly simple.
 
That is good news.

I'm trying to look for an artist, but before we can work on making a city for a demo, we need tiles.

I'm still in research mode, so please forgive the naivety of some of these questions. I haven't been able to play with IanOut yet.

IanOut seems the way to go, and from what the website lists, it has a few editors. However, all art is pulled from the critters.dat and master.dat files.

Do I need to add new artwork to these master files, or can IanOut deal with seperate FRM's?

How useful are the FO2 modding documents in dealing with IanOut? Can I hack traits and perks? (We've had a request to bring Night Person back for instance) Can I run full FO scripts?

Can I edit the GUI at all?

Are there any existing resources of tiles, sprites and the like that I can start with outside of FO2's two dat files?

Does IneptPlay seem to police the modding community? Do they care if sprites are borrowed from other properties? I know Bethseda frowns on Morrowind mods borrowing graphics/textures from other games.

Once again, I appreciate your help!
 
They released the tools to make a mod (the mapper) so it would be fairly hard for them to argue we arent allowed to use them.
 
Basicly, if you make a mod using the graphics from a FO game you must do it in such a way that the user needs to extract the files from the FO directory and move it to the mod directory.

At least I think thats how its done.
 
I wish you will in this endeavour, and I'm sure you will succeed where Betsheda will likely fail. Good luck to Ender, Darque, and their team of probable misfits. 8)
 
I haven't played with both the FO mod tools and IanOut yet, but it looks like IanOut may be the way to go.

I don't want to add a town to Fallout. I eventually want to make a new campaign. We're starting small with a single town.

So IanOut is probably the way to go, and IanOut requires the Fallout 2 data files.
 
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