Duck and Cover

I'm just about to make my first map. any basic tips??

Study the mission maps that came with the game to see how they were created. Take note of elevations that tiles were placed and the general layout with relation to gameplay.

Get a detailed idea of what you want to do with the layout and the story/sequence of events. This will change as you work on the map because you will discover some things that can't be done and other things that can be.

Create the entire map first before you add entities and triggers. As you start to add these things it becomes more difficult to make major map changes.

Keep paper copies/printouts of everything you do. I made a breakdown of triggers on a spreadsheet as well a list of all player indices and team alignment. This was very important when I had computer problems.

Back up to a floppy or cd at least once a week! I can't say enough about that because I lost several months work because I did not do that. Luckily I had up to date printouts.

Make sure you place everything(speech files, entities, sprites, sounds,etc.) in the correct directory structure for installation to begin with. It get's more difficult to do this later on.

I'll think of more, but that will be a start!

Though I have never used the mapper I can give you the advice to draw a skiss of the map, and make sure you have come up with all the dialogue. If you have never used the mapper it's probably a good idea too just test stuff, see if you can come up with cool effects and such...

Yup... Sketch and test, that's the way how things work

where do you find the tilesets?

While it's still there (not much longer...), check out the tutorials on the old DAC site: http://www.rpgplanet.com/fallout/tactic ... ials.shtml

They'll be ported across soon though - don't you worry.

Don't worry about the tilesets for now. If you don't have anything in this directory: Fallout Tactics/core/tiles/, then you will need to use Winzip on Tiles_0.bos on one of the cd's. Do a search for it - I think it is on Disc 2. Decompress the file so that it dumps everything in the directory shown above.

thanks.

Pre plan. The most important thing you can do. We've basically got most of FOT2 done on paper, and about 1 or 2 of the actual maps. You save yourself a lot of time if you plan out your ideas first.

Section8 wrote:We've basically got most of FOT2 done on paper, and about 1 or 2 of the actual maps.

Want to share some secret info with us Section8?

So FOT2 is really being made?

Well, I'm excited.

Pre-planning is definately a good idea when making a single map, and it's pretty much required when making a 3+ map campaign. PP'n will save you time down the road.

Not that I PP all the time, mind you

If you are really in creation of FoT2, are you accepting suggestions? Cause I think I'm having a bunch in one of my notebooks...

Anyway, how much does it cost to make a game now? I think it was in the range of 1million $ 5years back. Can't be that much more. Perhaps IPLY could give a portion of the Shiny funds to it, since it's on production and it would sell despite the (enter the title you prefer) attempt to destroy it selling
I've written here a sarcastic comment about FoT haters that want to make everyone hate Fot as much as they do, but I realised it just brings me to their level, so i'm not going to.

No secrets, there was a press release a while back now that said we were working on it, but we aren't anymore. We haven't done anything on FOT2 for nearly a year now. I'll try and dredge up a copy of that press release for you guys

Section8 wrote:No secrets, there was a press release a while back now that said we were working on it, but we aren't anymore.

Oh, you were talking in the past tense. Yes, I remember when FoT2 was canned. Now I got worked up for nothing.

OTB

Damn... oh well, it was fun while it lasted

If you guys start up development on FOT2 again and need a mapper, you know where to find us