Duck and Cover

1. how do you get artwork to show up without putting it in the master.dat?
I tried to put some artwork from fallout 1 back in the scenery selector.. ( the names are still in the list, the frm's are still there but have been made into "unused art" stickers.. so i thought ( from what Red! told me in another post ) that as long as you have the same folders under the data folder ( ie art\scenery ) then anything in there would overide the ones in the master.dat... not according to the editor, which steadfastly refused to put the artwork in and still used the "unused art" sticker instead..
so i put the frm's into the unpacked dat ( i have it unpacked as master.dat directory and the game seems quite happy to use that instead of the master.dat file.. ) and they showed up..

2. damn it.. i did have 2 questions, but i spent so long explainign the first that i forgot the second... i'll think of it in a minute.. probably right after i give up thinking and press submit...

2. told ya.... my second question is... the same as the first but to do with the maps.txt file... i put an altered maps.txt file in the data directory but the editor insists on using the one in the master.dat... when i put the altered maps.txt in there, it works fine... ( exit grid thing )

i did ask on another thread whether or not the files put in the data directory overode those in the master.dat.. and was told yes. it appears that not all of them do..

Everything you extract from any DAT should be placed into data.

So maps.txt is in data you say? That's right, so it needs to end up in Fallout2\data\data

For your art, it's data\art\scenery

When in the game you can use the "normal" path, but in any case you should avoid that as much as possible. The way Fallout2 works is like this, where the first in the list has the least priority:
- Directory that fallout2.exe (or mapper2.exe) is run from (the "Start in" option in the properties of a windows shortcut)
- master.dat/critter.dat
- data (directory specified in master_patches in fallout2.cfg really, which by default is data)
- patch000.dat

[note that I might be wrong about the order of priority, but so far that's what tests have shown me]

i was going to post an appology for you because i miss-quoted you..
you did indeed say that it was the files in the PATCH000.dat that overode those in the master.dat..
so sorry..

and thank you for pointing out that it needs to be in the fallout2\data\data directory.. ( i didn't think about that one.. )

i'll give it a try...