Wasteland Merc 2 Released

[Blargh]

The contents of this topic are, as anticipated, highly amusing. Thank you all. I do appreciate your efforts.

[Filogreek]

I dont understand why everyone is complaining about this mod. I knew what I was going to play, a MOD that made the game more difficult and challenging. I even knew that it would be a more freeform and not a story-driven mod, so I didn't care if everyone told me to bring x of y for z caps.

I actually like trying to survive. Running away from dogs just makes me want to strive and become powerful enough to kick their arses later on
I like finding weaknesses or using tactics that will help in a fight. No more Bozar spray-and-pray crap.
It felt rewarding killing all the robots in that factory at level 4 because I managed to blind them, all making them retreat all the time.

[Kizmiaz]

Damn you!!!! I just downloaded it! I'll let you know if you ruined my vacation or not!!!
Hey! Wait! Ruined?

Esith: SpEelling.

[Haris]

Well when you get the hang of it, it becomes really addictive.

[Forty-six & Two]

Explain to me how youre gonna get away from the wild dog encounter that has 5-6 dogs all around you?! This encounter may well be the first or just second encounter you get into after leaving Flagstaff, so your char will be lvl1 at that point. Now, unless your char has 10 endurance and 10 agility, I dont see anyone getting away from those 5-6 dogs. They have high AP and good initiave, they surround you easily and eat you up.

The cannibal, gecko and plant encounters are escapable for most lvl1 char builds, but this wild dog one really kept ticking me off when I played the mod, since getting it meant certain death for my intelligence/perception/charisma build.

Its just bad design. Like the silly starting area, if there had at least been a little explanation as to why you were there and that you had to escape the aliens, then it would have been fairly ok. But I have to read these things on forums and in walkthroughs?!

I actually think this mod might be semi-fun to play when you get past all shit you get handed at start and dont go comparing it to the cave outside Vault 13 in Fallout 1 or the temple of trials, its nothing like that. Those two starting locations had lots of backup as to why you were there, why you had to fight or run or what ever. WM2 has nothing of this. Im not asking for intricate story like Fallout 1&2 but WM2 seems to have a background story and some plot, but its just not explained at all, at least not from the start.

[Thor Kaufman]

Thor Kaufman
I am guessing you took that folder called Wasteland merc 2 and put in to fallout 2 folder. You need to open Wasteland merc 2 folder and than move all files from it to fallout 2 folder. If this wasnt the case that you probebly have patch000 in your fallout 2 folder. Than you should just remove that.

I overwrote the data folder with the new files and renamed the patch000.dat as described in the readme.

But I only use a minimum installation with image file, maybe that's the problem?

[Haris]

Thor Kaufman yea it has to be huge instal. Never really thought of that as i allways have huge instalation.

And when it comes to story. Well where you start does have a story, it should have had a movie. But making a movie would have taken equally long time for us as it took to make entire mod.

But to be honest when it comes down to why you start there as you do it has mostly to do that the engine is freaking hard coded. And you must start at certain map and than enter another map in order to get vailt suit and pipboy from the start. And why brotherhood cleans it out is cause Arroyo must die in fallout 2. It is hardcoded that Aroyyo map must change in to dead Arroyo. So the best thing we could do is make 2 new maps than change. And same with gamma movie. Where enclave shots that family. Its hard coded that it must come. Only way to remove it is by putting different map instead of it. So thats why you encounter brotherhood troop on their way to clean out infested flagstaff. And than it turns in to brotherhood.

While in WM1 we had Flagstaff get infested by aliens, and in gama movie you found that house with dead alien and some alien items on it. So it kinda builds on that way.

And dogs encounter. While we where beta testing it we wanted to remove them. There where several other anoying encounters that we did remove. Example would be 12 spore plants with 12 dogs. But the dogs one gets killable at level 4-5 and actually does give decent exp boost. Plus in this mod there is a way to boost all your stats to 10 if you got to black market with tons of money and implants.

Also random encounters are not custom. We took those that allredy existed in fallout 2. Only thing that is custom is worldmap file that tells when you encounter them. But what ever you encounter here you could have encounterd in Fallout 2, plus in fallout 2 it wasnt level based. You could encounter it all at level 1.

[Brother None]

Kharn speach does mather in this mod. You just havent figured it out yet.

You're not listening. I know speech gives you more fetch-quests from the Kingpin and stupid shit like that. I don't care. Tagging speech in Fallout meant that I didn't have to fight, I could talk my way through all major situations. *This is simply not true for WM2*, which is one of the things that seperates being good at WM2 from being good at Fallout. So PLEASE stop insulting people on this subject.

And so far i have gotten more positiv feedback on this mod than negative. Only thing is that most negative feedback as usual comes from dac and nma forum posters.

No, that's the nature of message forums. Your own site has a message forum, people who register there are people who want to play and beat the game, people who *enjoy* it. That's not a good average of Fallout fans. DaC and NMA are.

And I don't think many people at NMA tried it, so far.

And Kharn, seriosly, at level 4 you made fatass opinion about the mod. Metioning tons of stuff that mod has as if it is missing it. I dont even wanna get in to it. Just keep playing it and you will see that you where wrong here.

Seriously? Screw you. You're acting as if it's MY responsibility to properly play through a mod. It's not. Have you ever heard a game designer say "You didn't give the game a chance, you should've played it through"? If you did, that designer was a whiny bitch. The same is true for modders. If you want people to enjoy your mod, it's YOUR job to make it enjoyable from the start, NOT MINE.

Oh and here is the list of skills that are more usefull to raise in this mod than they where in both fallout 1 and 2.

That list is bullshit. Many of those skills were not just useful, but could be vital in Fallout 1 and 2 if you chose them to be vital. That's the difference

If I tagged speech, I could survive on speech. If I tagged sneak, I could survive on sneak.

If I tag speech in WM2, I have to fight to level up. If I tag sneak, I have to fight to level up.

You simply don't seem to be capable of understanding what Fallout is about. When people talk about open-ended and choices between good and bad, they don't mean dumbass choices like "Who do you do fetch-quests for, Good, Neutral or Evil?", they mean an open system where you can chose which skills you progress with and can jump between different karmic elements.

I understand that you removed these elements from your mod, but please don't sit there and claim they're still there on dumbass grounds like fetching for good/bad/evil or skills being useful to support characters that are combat characters no matter what. That's an insult to Fallout, as this mod is in general.

Hell, a lot of your mod shows a kind of designers-lazy-logic-flaw. You see, there's a lot in it that you know of, like hidden stuff in Slaver's Camp and ways of upgrading in the Black Market. These are often not obvious to players because they're not hinted at, you can't find them unless you HAPPEN to stumble upon them. That means you have to read manuals and forums to play the mod. Explain to me how that is a good idea?

You should so have used the Tactics (or BoS, hah!) engine, since this mod, like Tactics, is a combat game, not a CRPG, like Fallout.

And when it comes to story. Well where you start does have a story, it should have had a movie. But making a movie would have taken equally long time for us as it took to make entire mod.

You could've had text scrolling by. Lazy, yes, but less lazy than this.

But to be honest when it comes down to why you start there as you do it has mostly to do that the engine is freaking hard coded.

That's an excuse, but try to follow my logic here:

Arroyo - starting location, basic quests, basic items
Dead Arroyo - useless location, nothing there but a send-on message

Infested Flagstaff - useless location that you can only run away from
Brotherhood base - one of the main towns

Do you see the problem here? Again, I understand wanting to go a different route from Fallout, but turning it into this pustule is just mean.

[TheBigLebowski]

I like the feel of it, just curious as to why dogs get 2 turns though - They kill you pretty much every time


The quests I've seen so far are very inane and weak - "Collect so many of something and I will give you so many bottlecaps"

I'm not bad mouthing this mod in any way - In fact I am enjoying it aside from the quests and ravenous fucking dogs

So -
Do the quests get better?
Why do dogs get 2 turns?


(If dogs have always had 2 turn in FO then just ignore that one)

[porksoda]

You're not listening. I know speech gives you more fetch-quests from the Kingpin and stupid shit like that. I don't care. Tagging speech in Fallout meant that I didn't have to fight, I could talk my way through all major situations. *This is simply not true for WM2*, which is one of the things that seperates being good at WM2 from being good at Fallout.

It sounds to me like you tried to advance in this mod using tactics and concepts that worked in Fallout and Fallout 2 but are no longer a viable option. This mod is not a rehash of Fallout or Fallout 2. It's a new approach to the game. Part of the appeal of these games is the fact that you have to be creative and try new things when faced with problems. It's the stuff I come across that's slightly out of my character's league that I enjoy dealing with most. The encounters where my probability of losing is high are the most interesting, simply because I have to sit there and think to myself: How the fuck can I use the workings of the game engine and combat system to survive this fight?

... like hidden stuff in Slaver's Camp and ways of upgrading in the Black Market. These are often not obvious to players because they're not hinted at, you can't find them unless you HAPPEN to stumble upon them.

I would definitely not like to have all the hidden shit spelled out for me on a giant billboard. There's fun to be had EXPLORING.

[Brother None]

It sounds to me like you tried to advance in this mod using tactics and concepts that worked in Fallout and Fallout 2 but are no longer a viable option. This mod is not a rehash of Fallout or Fallout 2. It's a new approach to the game.

That was my point, porksoda. Haris was insulting people by saying they weren't "Fallout-pro" enough to play the mod when they complained. As the mod actually has little to do with Fallout's game-structure, I think Haris should stop making that remark. Don't you?

The encounters where my probability of losing is high are the most interesting, simply because I have to sit there and think to myself: How the fuck can I use the workings of the game engine and combat system to survive this fight?

I loved fights like those in Fallout. I loved trying to beat the Raiders immediately when saving Tandi and would love it if I succeeded at it. But that's because that's well-structured, varied combat inside a well-made story setting. Not countless dog random encounters.

I would definitely not like to have all the hidden shit spelled out for me on a giant billboard. There's fun to be had EXPLORING.

Yes, if it makes sense.

I like puzzle games if they ask me to solve a puzzle that makes sense

I hate puzzle games that ask me to pull levers until I find the proper combination. That's just stupid.

[Haris]

Kharn trying to pass your dissliking of the mod as if it was porly made mod is just waste of your time. There is tons of people that hate entire fallout series. Some of them hate turn based combat overall, some of them just simply never gave the game a chance. They said "rats in a cave, fack that." and than they never played it again. Now your trying to say cause those poeple hated the fallout series its purly designers fault for not making them start in junk town right away.

Well you know what? If you dont like the mod just dont play it. Dont act like you payed for it. There is tons of other people that are playing it right now and having a blast with it. Allso its one of hotest mods on Gamespot in last 4 days. And plenty of russian and east european sites call it a miracle mod.

So simply if you didnt like it dont play it. And arguments like alot of combat in turnbased cant be fun are kinda wrong. I had plenty of fun playing jagged aliance 2 and it was all turn based combat all the way.

And sneaking in wasteland merc 2 is one of skills that can really pay off. You can do majority of get item missions just by sneaking in to combat location and lockipicking boxes in them and than runing out. And getting the mission items by not ever firing a shot.

[porksoda]

Haris was insulting people by saying they weren't "Fallout-pro" enough to play the mod when they complained. As the mod actually has little to do with Fallout's game-structure, I think Haris should stop making that remark. Don't you?

Most definitely, it is always wise to avoid insulting the people who you are creating games/mods for. I am sure it's somewhat frustrating from Haris' perspective to have people who hated the mod post messages how they just don't "get it", but insults are a much shittier response than even a vague explanation of what the point of the mod is.

I loved trying to beat the Raiders immediately when saving Tandi and would love it if I succeeded at it. But that's because that's well-structured, varied combat inside a well-made story setting. Not countless dog random encounters.

Again, I agree. But I really do think you're overexaggerating those silly dog encounters My character was able to run away 75% of the time with minor damage. And running in fear for my character's life just makes payback all the sweeter later on in levels, when I'm thrusting sharpened spears into the damn dirty dogs' eyes....

[Brother None]

Kharn trying to pass your dissliking of the mod as if it was porly made mod is just waste of your time.

Are you sure that's the case? Are you sure it's not you trying to pass off your mod being poorly made as people just "disliking it"?

You need to learn to take some criticism, man.

There is tons of people that hate entire fallout series. Some of them hate turn based combat overall, some of them just simply never gave the game a chance. They said "rats in a cave, fack that." and than they never played it again. Now your trying to say cause those poeple hated the fallout series its purly designers fault for not making them start in junk town right away.

What a load of crap. People that didn't like Fallout generally don't like games like that, because as an open-ended TB CRPG Fallout was extremely well made. If you don't like open-ended TB CRPGs, ok, you won't like Fallout, so tough. I never said that makes the game badly made.

There's a difference between that and the fact that most fans of fetch-based TB MMORPG-simulators (huh?) would still have trouble with your mod, as it's just not that good.

And didn't I explain why it would be a good idea to make games similar to Fallout if you're going to (ab)use Fallout's engine and name?

If you dont like the mod just dont play it.

Oh yes, the poorest argument of all finally comes out.

Dont act like you payed for it. There is tons of other people that are playing it right now and having a blast with it.

I don't care. There are tons of people who gave up in desperation before getting anywhere, too. See this thread and your own forum for examples.

Allso its one of hotest mods on Gamespot in last 4 days.

So? Fallout total game mods are pretty damned rare, so that does not shock me.

And plenty of russian and east european sites call it a miracle mod.

Link, or it didn't happen. And I want to see the exact phrase "miracle mod" several times, or you're a liar. I'm sure fallout.ru's people would disagree with you, though.

I had plenty of fun playing jagged aliance 2 and it was all turn based combat all the way

Turnbased combat balanced for long fights. Fallout's turnbased engine isn't

And sneaking in wasteland merc 2 is one of skills that can really pay off. You can do majority of get item missions just by sneaking in to combat location and lockipicking boxes in them and than runing out. And getting the mission items by not ever firing a shot.

Great! Can I level up by doing that? Can I finish the game that way?

I could finish Fallout with sneak. Same with Fallout 2, though it's a bit tougher

[Mr_Newbie]

"if i dont like it, dont play?" very well then, thats what i shall do.

[Riviner_]

"if i dont like it, dont play?" very well then, thats what i shall do.

Thanks for shareing this valuable piece of information with us! I had hard time of getting sleep while anticipating your answer, but now i can FINALLY sleep it all off... anyways, about the mod i would like if there would be technology-tree (hmm, something like that) about the "crafting", like how many diffirent possibilities there are in maximum, so one could start honing those skills (example small guns = 3, medicine = 5) without telling they exactly are since i can see pretty much everything rolls around that "crafting", from various minerals to skills and that is great. I really like it. There's also something interesting in those two mines more then the eye can see... now only if i could reach there...

[Norrec]

Look, I understand that some people are going to want the more challenging version. But Kharn is right; When we tag something, we want it to be more useful. Find ways to make non-combat skills usable, such as speech (My favorite skill ever, I love finding ways to talk through problems in these games) sneak, and such.

I don't even know how we're supposed to make money at all. Do we just keep killing rats and such? I read the walkthrough but it was surprisingly vague. The only thing we can even handle in the beginning are spore plants and rats, and that's about it. How do we find the things people keep freaking bugging us to get?

I would find this more enjoyable if you put in a "Noob area". Not an area where you get Power Armor MK 2, A Guass Rifle, and a Fallout Strategy guide, but an area to give you some barely useful weapons (Like the pipe rifle in Klamath, or the knife you find in that one town in your own game, perhaps leather armor, and other low-level stuff) to help you through those first few hard levels. Make it completely optional, and have no bearing on any quests whatsoever, just a bunch of giant ants and stuff. Completely, Totally, amazing optional. Wanna do it the hard way? Do it! Need a little boost? Come on in!

I might try playing this mod again.

[Haris]

http://pcgames.atspace.com/games/walkth ... afting.htm

Thats the crafting tree.


Here are just some of the russian sites.

http://groza.ru/shownews.php?id=1155
http://www.etype.ru/
http://www.3dnews.ru/software-news/?mod ... e&id=15149
http://bnet.by/
http://fforum.kochegarov.com/index.php? ... =9914&st=0&
http://forum.ogl.ru/read/1049326269/0
http://kamrad.ru/kvb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=71651

There was tons more of them. But exactly as dac and nma they get new newsposts and the old ones slide of, wich means that people dont wisit my site from their site anymore and i can only log 100 last visitors. 2 days ago i had 956 Unique Visitors and yesterday 400.

Are you sure that's the case? Are you sure it's not you trying to pass off your mod being poorly made as people just "disliking it"?

And you are talking about insulting people?
This is by far most advance and most profesionall mod that ever existed so far for fallout 2. We even had a profesional graphics artist that worked on all kinds of games and actually makes money on making game graphics, make us custom inventory graphics. And only reazon we could make this higly advanced mod is cause Miran finished his first year of computer science at univerity level and he was allredy done learning to script with C at profesional level. And C is all you need to script in Fallout 2 engine. So what ever i told him to script he pulled it off.

Turnbased combat balanced for long fights. Fallout's turnbased engine isn't

Jagged Aliance aint balanced for long fights. It takes shorter time to fight in fallout cause you run only one guy. Otherwise its pretty much the same.

Great! Can I level up by doing that? Can I finish the game that way?

Yes you can level up by doing that. You get mission items when you use sneak and lockpick in combat areas and for them you get money than you go to black market and get exp for money. Same as you can play pure crafter. You craft stuff and suply eather brotherhood or slavers or kingpin with stuff. Must have high speach for this to work well. And than you sell them stuff anf go to black market and buy exp.

I don't care. There are tons of people who gave up in desperation before getting anywhere, too. See this thread and your own forum for examples.

Maybe you should go and read my forum again. After complaining about the mod same way as you did i gave them pointers on how to menage and than they keept playing it and now all of them like the mod and are still playing it.



Oh and when it comes to speach being so important in fallout 1 and 2. Here is a litle info you get when you open alot of fallout 2 scripts. It doesnt mather half as much as one would think. Majority of npc in fallout 2 dont check your speach. There are few that check that speach is taged. And there is some like Linete and one enclave guy that rolls -25 against your speach than -50 in next like and -75. Meaning that having speach 175+ in fallout 2 doeast help you at all. Ther are thoe plenty of npcs that act different towards you acording to your stats and gender and allmost none care if you have high speach.

And those dog encounter that you think are shity made. Well those are made by interplay. We did not implement them our selves. And you could meat those in fallout 2 when you where level 1. But here your trying to pull of fallout as if you could talk your way out of it.

[Brother None]

http://pcgames.atspace.com/games/walkth ... afting.htm

Thats the crafting tree.

So how were we supposed to figure that one out from the game?

http://groza.ru/shownews.php?id=1155
http://www.etype.ru/
http://www.3dnews.ru/software-news/?mod ... e&id=15149
http://bnet.by/
http://forum.ogl.ru/read/1049326269/0
http://kamrad.ru/kvb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=71651

That's the same newspost five times, copied over several sites, plus one forum post linking to a newspost. I don't know if you speak Russian or not, but if you did, you'd notice that.

They, whoever originally wrote it, do mention it takes small miracle that such a total conversion can be made, which doesn't comment on its quality, but comments on how good it is that someone works hard enough to build such a big mod, which I agree with

http://fforum.kochegarov.com/index.php? ... =9914&st=0&

That's fallout.ru. They just mention it exists.

And you are talking about insulting people?

Yes, I do. You're dodging my point.

This is by far most advance and most profesionall mod that ever existed so far for fallout 2. We even had a profesional graphics artist that worked on all kinds of games and actually makes money on making game graphics, make us custom inventory graphics. And only reazon we could make this higly advanced mod is cause Miran finished his first year of computer science at univerity level and he was allredy done learning to script with C at profesional level. And C is all you need to script in Fallout 2 engine. So what ever i told him to script he pulled it off.

What does that have to do with anything? I don't care if Leon Boyarsky, Tim Cain, MCA, Josh Sawyer and everyone ever tied to Fallout all worked on it. That's a logical fallacy, Haris, an argumentum ad verecundiam. The skill of the people working on it has nothing to do with the result.

Your reply also had nothing to do with my remark. Again, how do you know me criticism stems from my dislike rather than flaws in the mod?

Also, don't get me wrong, I like the fact that there finally is a full Fallout mod and praise hard workers like you and Miran for it. It's too bad it has to be a piece of shit, though

Jagged Aliance aint balanced for long fights. It takes shorter time to fight in fallout cause you run only one guy. Otherwise its pretty much the same.

Yes it is, because JA centers more on fights. The Fallout engine was designed to do exactly what it does; make a world where people can go for combat, but can solve things in other ways too. As such, it's not balanced as a fighting-only engine.

Yes you can level up by doing that. You get mission items when you use sneak and lockpick in combat areas and for them you get money than you go to black market and get exp for money. Same as you can play pure crafter. You craft stuff and suply eather brotherhood or slavers or kingpin with stuff. Must have high speach for this to work well. And than you sell them stuff anf go to black market and buy exp.

*nods* That's good, I hope I'll stumble on that if I continue the game, I'll honestly say I simply missed that.

One question, though; I start without any instructions in "civilization". If I have a sneaking character, how am I supposed to find the mission locations and figure out how to get fetch items?

Maybe you should go and read my forum again. After complaining about the mod same way as you did i gave them pointers on how to menage and than they keept playing it and now all of them like the mod and are still playing it.

And I already told you that's a sign of poor design. You should be able to play a game without reading a lot of documentation on the site. I don't want my hand to be held and everything being explained, I'd like a mod that I can play stand-alone

Oh and when it comes to speach being so important in fallout 1 and 2. Here is a litle info you get when you open alot of fallout 2 scripts. It doesnt mather half as much as one would think. Majority of npc in fallout 2 dont check your speach. There are few that check that speach is taged. And there is some like Linete and one enclave guy that rolls -25 against your speach than -50 in next like and -75. Meaning that having speach 175+ in fallout 2 doeast help you at all. Ther are thoe plenty of npcs that act different towards you acording to your stats and gender and allmost none care if you have high speach.

Having 175+ in any skill is regoddamneddiculous and unnecessary.

Yes, Fallout often combines speech with intelligence.

For instance, I could talk the Master into self-destroying with good speech and high intelligence, but I'd need both and some info

To convince Granite to attack Horrigan, you need high speech too

(per Per's guide)

Both give options to finish the game on speech alone. How could you possibly compare WM2's given value to that?

And those dog encounter that you think are shity made. Well those are made by interplay. We did not implement them our selves. And you could meat those in fallout 2 when you where level 1. But here your trying to pull of fallout as if you could talk your way out of it.

That's odd, because in Fallout 2 I wouldn't forcefully stumble upon dog encounters at level 1. I'm suere I could meet them, technically, but since I was already level 2 before leaving Arroyo and higher level before travelling so far as to have a lot of random encounters, I hardly see how that's relevant.

In WM2, you're VERY LIKELY to be level 1 when meeting them, in Fallout 2, you'll probably be a higher level before you meet them, if you even do.

[Haris]

Hack when i first played fallout 2 i met deatclaws at level 1 and enclaves partol. And you can gain level 2 in Arroyo, but not all people do. And i found it tedoius and frustrating to travel well at least till i got to san fran and got shit load of power armors and miniguns at level 1.

And when it comes to traveling and finding town. Well that just one more of mmorpgish feelings. To explore the worldmap and learn where everything is. Scripting npc that tells you where everything is wouldnt have been hard but we just didnt want it in the mod.