New guy to modding, lotsa weird q's

[sniktch]

I am a :n00b: and have severeal questions. Please reply in english, my knowledge of programming is as good as Myron's knowledge of manners...

1. Is it possible to restrict characters to specific weapons/armor without resorting to stats?

Example: I want to make 5 prefab chars, each very good with specific weapons types, but restricted to specific weapons in those types, i.e. prefab 1 is a god with small arms, but only pistols and shotguns...and NO full-auto toys... so burst-shotguns are out as well. I also want each of the characters to be restricted to 1 or 2 armors as well.

2. how do you make new items? I am thinking of making a pair of armors per char, each usable by only that char, and unusable by any other char....as well as some char. specific weapons...

3. Is there any way to make a prefab who starts outside the base parameters(IE more than level 1, has perks, more than 2 traits, or more than 5 char points allocated) able to use tough-guy mode? or to make a normal prefab who dosen't lose theit text when the modify option is chosen?

4. Ok, the biggie: Is it possible to make a setup where choosing any one of the prefabs makes the 4 you did not choose appear in the first mission-regardless of the prefab you choose?

EX. I choose prefab 1... prefabs 2-5 are in either mission 1, or 2-3 are in mission 1, 4-5 are in the recruit pool after mission 1....and make it work with ANY of the prefabs.... 8O

Thanks to all of you who answer.... and GREAT work on the mods/site...

Thanks again!

[Jimmyjay86]

I get the impression that you are asking these questions with regards to only changing the prefabs in the normal campaign. So you aren't going to set this up for a new mission.

1. It wouldn't work without modifying the skills. You may only give the PC or even NPC a certain weapon type but without changing certain skills relating to the usage of the weapon, your human may as well be a monkey. Also some weapons have high minimum strengths. The specific weapon used is pretty much up to the player. That is the RPG part of the game.

2. Not too sure on this, but for a mod to the existing game I doubt if its possible. If you made your own mission you could have more control. With your own mission yes it it would be possible.

3. That I don't know - you would have to test to find out for sure.

4. Again , not without modifying the mission file (mission01.mis) and I don't think that is what you want to do.

[sniktch]

1. It wouldn't work without modifying the skills. You may only give the PC or even NPC a certain weapon type but without changing certain skills relating to the usage of the weapon, your human may as well be a monkey. Also some weapons have high minimum strengths. The specific weapon used is pretty much up to the player. That is the RPG part of the game.

Ok, I am asking if for how can I make a char who cannot use guns other than sig P220, CZ75, and the Ithaca pump-action shotgun(modded versions) wirhout changing stats, not how do I make a god with small arms... figgered that out already. I have the base stats, skills, perks, and traits set for the chars, I just want to restrict them to SPECIFIC toys.

As a note, what I am trying to do is make a mod to enable me to play characters from Gunsmith Cats in Fallout Tactics... have pics, and have already figgered out how to insert them, just need to know how to make the character's toys restricted to their preffered weapons( i.e. Rally never carries anything other than pistols and shotguns, Minnie is easy(throwing, traps), Misty, is also easy, (sneak, melee, steal, lockpick), etc..

[Max-Violence]

Well, you can always manually lower the actors' skills into the negatives. I.e. have your "Rally"character have -100% skill in Big Guns, Energy Weapons, Melee, Unarmed, and Throwing. That'd kinda discourage the actor from using a SAW or a Laser Pistol

As far as specific weapons... you'd have to mess around with the stat requirements for the weapons and make sure only the actor you want to use the weapon meets the requirements.

Or, you could use triggers to make it so that if a character equips something they're not supposed to, the human player gets a nasty message and the mission fails :mrgreen:

[OnTheBounce]

Don't take this as a flame, but I am about to piss on your parade:

Rather than trying to hamstring entities so that they can/cannot use certain items, why don't you simply rely on the tried and true, combat tested method of "role playing"? I would simply put notes in the character's descriptions as to what they prefer to use, assign some bonuses/penalties here and there (for instance add a few points to your trappers Traps skill, and maybe give them the Crazy Bomber perk right at the start) and from there on out simply rely on role playing.

While FoT isn't an RPG, it does have RPG elements and I'm pretty sure that I'm not the only one that plays my recruits w/their own idiosyncracies. For instance, going beyond simply weapons proficiencies/preferences here, I always saw Jax as having a love for Happy Pies that bordered on fetishism. So he would always grab all of the Happy Pies, much to the chagrin of the rest of the squad. He also had a penchant for calling things "cocksucker" and liberally sprinkled his speech - all of which occured only in my head - with that nifty little word.

Cheers,

OTB

[Jimmyjay86]

OTB mentioned:

He also had a penchant for calling things "cocksucker" and liberally sprinkled his speech - all of which occured only in my head - with that nifty little word.

So that's where the voices in OTB's head come from!!

I hear complaints all of the time from people who say the game is too easy. Then when I tell them they don't have to pick up and use all of the armour, weapons, and ammo they come across they still don't get it. You can mentally limit your game playing to just a baseball bat if you set your mind that's the way you want to play it! Why try to make the game do all of the decision making. Set the rules like OTB said and tell the player to abide to those rules.

[sniktch]

That's eventually what I did, and thanks for the feedback, now I have another q... I am trying to change the sprite for the first prefab to the same one as "Ma Baker", IE medium civillian female, for the leather jacket look, but whenever I try to start the game, I always have the tribal female...Is there a way to do this? Thanks again!

[Max-Violence]

Try and set the actor's race to Unique Humanoid instead of Tribal.

[sniktch]

Actor's race was set as BoS human...

[Max-Violence]

Well, set it to Unique Humanoid anyway!

[OnTheBounce]

Actor's race was set as BoS human...

The Citizen, Medium sprite isn't allowed for that race, which is why you're having those problems.

I just had an idea while reading this over, too. Since you can modify what the races are called, I'm wondering if maybe by setting the PCs up as "Unique Humanoid" we could resolve some of the armor issues we've been trying to get around. Perhaps...

I need to run some experiments...

OTB

[sniktch]

Aha!! No wonder...Thanks for that!

[sniktch]

Sorry about the double post, but I changed it to unique humanoid, and now the in-game portrait is blank....

[OnTheBounce]

Sorry about the double post, but I changed it to unique humanoid, and now the in-game portrait is blank....

Did you monkey w/the Display Name field? That's the only explanation I can think of. There is nothing preventing Unique Humanoids from having portraits, as Generals Barnaky (both incarnations) and Dekker are Unique Humanoids (they use the "Sarge" sprite) and they have portraits.

This won't work anyway. I tried it using a Vault-0 citizen and the armor he was equipped w/didn't change his appearance. While he could equip any type of armor (Reaver, Raider, Enviro, etc.) he still looked exactly the same. It did alter his DT/DR and AC values, though.

Damn, oh well, it was worth a try, I suppose.

OTB

[Forty-six & Two]

Yea, I tried that already.... Unique state sets the selected sprite to default.

[sniktch]

Wasn't the sprite that was bothering me, it was the char. portrait in-game... totally blank....

[OnTheBounce]

Wasn't the sprite that was bothering me, it was the char. portrait in-game... totally blank....

Yes, we get side-tracked around here...a lot. But like I said, if your display name is correct you should have no problem w/the portrait. There are no rules for Display Name and Portraits except that the former has to match the latter's file name, minus the file extension.

For instance, if you have the following entry in your characters.txt:

name_M02_informant = {Snitch}

Then the file name for the portrait should be M02_informant.zar .

If that's not the problem, make sure that the portrait is located in the correct folder (gui/char) and failing that, take a look at the PNG image that you converted to ZAR format. Make sure that it is 75 x 100 pixel (width x height).

Cheers,

OTB

[Red]

It might be important that the image be grayscale - without a single dash of frivulous colour?

Unrelated but I know the portraits support alpha though, as the original demo ones had a neat picture frame which had alpha... Well, unless they removed that feature from the full game

[Jimmyjay86]

That shouldn't matter, color will show up just as well although it does look better in black & white.

[Red]

JJ86, please REMOVE THAT FUCKING AVATAR BEFORE I FIND YOUR ADDRESS AND KICK YOUR PUNY ASS.

Thanks.