Duck and Cover

Hey everyone, I just registered on this board and have checked some of the post and I can say that you seem to have a nice lil' community here

I've DLed lots of the tools now, and I've decided to change fallout 2..somehow to enhance the experience(i've played through it so many times that I believe it needs a fresh blow)..maybe I'll remake the Assault Rifle or add a Super Spear.

Okay i've come up with my first question now:

Lets say that I take Vic's Pipe Rifle and edit it and then call it an Enhanced Pipe Rifle or something like that, then I save it as a completely new .PRO file, say 00000532.pro.

How do I then get this item into the game? - Is there some kind of console where I can enter "Create bla bla bla item" or possibly a way of placing the item on an NPC so I can barter/kill the NPC to get it?
Or maybe there's a way of placing it directly on my character through some save editing program?

Well, first you'll need to add it to the items.lst in proto\items.
Then you'll need to either add it as an item on a map, container or person. To do this, ideally you'd use the mapper, but it's not ready yet :p, so meawhile, I can usggest 2 ways. The first and easyest (to mod) would be to open data/worldmap.txt and use a random encounter to generate your item. This is nice since it's so easy to do, however you actually need to trigger the encounter which'll proably be hard... You could probably fiddle with the encounter table and remove all other possible encounters for that type, and then fillde with [Tile ...] section to make this encouter available in more places.
The second way would be using a Hex editor and fiddling with the map yourself, using documentation about the maps (found in another thread on this forum). It's more complicated but easyer to attain within the game.

Oh, now I know why it didn't work when I tried to HEX edit my savegame(prior to posting here).
I had forgotten to put the items.lst in proto\items....Sooo that's why the game crashed..and I who thought I'd just messed up the hex editing part

Okay, well I'll try the hex editing way instead of the random encounter one because imho, hex editing actually seems easier.
Maybe I'll make an attempt at some kind of savegame editor for items too..

I don't get this, I just checked items.lst and it only has references to .frm(item images right?) files..so why should I add it to the proto dir if it's not an index file for the items themselves?

Huh? proto\ITEMS\items.lst. It contains all items... And also notice the order is somewhat weird in it. I don't know how important this list is really, for all I know it might not even be used, but you might as well put it there for safety.

: Can someone please help me... I've gotten a FOT2 Mod done on FIC... all .PRO files set to read-only... But when I start FOT2.. It doesn't get past the PLEASE WAIT screen... How can I play my mod?

you should make it so you can use frank horrigans end boss gun