Slowtrain

erm...help? anyone?

I dunnot what happened. I was just checking out the latest version of the Jag 2 1.13 mod and the next ting I know I've got a new campaign going.

Well, I think it might be worth it to install the 1.13 mod. Its a shame you won't be able to see the game as it was originally intended since the 1.13 mod does add a lot of additonal features and changes how some of the gameplay mechanics work. But I think it does it all for the better. A lot of the features were requests by people who have been playing Jag 2 for a long long time so game balance is kinda out the window since a lot of the changes make the game more difficult while some make it much more easy. But if you take most of the defulat settings, you should have a balance pretty close to the original game. With a whole heck of a lot more stuff! Like I said, I don't know if the 1.13 will help but maybe its worth a shot. Have you tried a fresh install of the donwload?

weird. 1.12 is the Gold final patch version. I've been playing that for years and while it does have its fair share of bugs, the only of those that I've sorta seen is the timer one, but that almost always goes away if you wait long enough. Are you running the game under Linux?

I have no idea, but it is. For starters, Finance screen is completely borked, when you open it, all the numbers there are like $8,935,262,103 and -$923,436,244, and when you exit the screen, your balance is reset to the amount as at the start of the game. A more serious bug is that all dropped loot disappears if you save in the middle of the combat, and then reload. On the other hand, items that are not dropped from the enemies (i.e. found in buildings) respawn if you reload. Sometimes, the screen will lock up with a "timer" icon during enemy turn and you have to restart the game. Your settings in Options are reset if the game is restarted. These are what I've got so far. whoah. that's really messed up. I've never heard of any of those. Maybe your dl got corrupted or somethign went wrong with the install? Have you tried dling a fresh copy and/or doing a fresh install? Also, what is the version number on the game screen? If you press V you should see it pop up on screen in the lower left hand corner. Have you tried installing the 1.13 mod? It started out as a tweak and bug fix a couple years ago and has grown as people made various requests for additions. Its possible that it might fix some of the bugs. Of course, it might make things even worse. Although I don't see how it could get much worse than what you are describing.

The recommended version to use if Jag 2 Gold patched to 1.12, which was the final patch for the game. This is called the 1.13 mod becaause it is kinda the 1.12 addition. However, it should work fine with the original Jag 2 as well. I haven't tried it with that, but the mod replaces so much of the game, that it really doesn't matter which version you use. For anyone who has played and loved Jag 2, this mod is ripping awesome. It is a whole new game with a ton of configurable options. I've never tried the Steam version. Is that different from the Gold pack verison that was published by Strategy First? WHy is it so buggy?

I hope they fixed some of the problems it has with the expansion. I don't like dumbed down games or consolized UIs on my PC games. Consolized UIs are good on consoles, obviously, but not on PCs. I wouldn't hold my breath. Maybe the expansion areas will handle things like scaling a bit differently. Maybe. But my guess is than any changes to the mechanics of the gameplay are minimal. There COULD be more dialog and stuff since it seems like a more unusual gameworld than is usual for ES games. WOuldn't hold my breath on that either though.

For anyone interested: New update to the 1.13 mod released just a few days ago: http://ja2v113.schtuff.com/ Haven't tried it yet, but I will soon!

That's what, 5 patches now. Impressive. I mean, its sad that the game needs 5 patches, but at least the patches are happening. I may even buy th egame one of these days. Hopefully for cheap.

weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

There's different levels of aholity.

That's too bad. Dedicated fans who aren't aholes are one of the best things about computer gaming. All the mods, walkthroughs, news, solutions, save game editors etc and so forth that have enhanced my enjoyment of so many games would never be around without all of you.. So thanks! And good luck towards the future.

haha! Check out this awesome fracas that broke out on the Red Ring Road.

Hi Gorth! I agree with much of what you are saying. Certainly, I think the single biggest challlenge of a system that scales off your pcs level is keeping the player feeling like their pc is improving. The argument that if your pc is improving but everything else in the gameworld is improving as well, then your net forward progress is zero is a very valid point. And watching your pc get noticeably better is a big part of the fun of a crpg. But compare that to Icewind Dale 2. Because of the linear nature of that game, your pcs could never really go backwards. they were always pushing forward to the next new area which was always going to be harder than the area they had just left. So, isn't the end result the same? A "net forward progress of zero" effect.? Your party may be a lot touigher than they were when they were facing goblins, but now they are facing hook horrors, which are a lot tougher than goblins. Now IWD2 maybe a bad example since it is a linear crpg, and Fallout and Oblivion are both non-linear, so that may be a bit of an apple to oranges comparison. I guess what I am looking at more is the design philosphy of the developers and how they feel challenge should be presented to the gamer.. Fallout did kinda scale, but not off the pc level. It changed by area, so "harder" areas would have harder encoounters. Head west to the military base at level 1 and you are going to have an unpleasant run in with a mutant patrol carrying miniguns and rocket launchers. Another game that used a similar scaling was Wizardry 8, which used a combination of level scaling and areas scaling. Wiz 8 would generate all its creatures based on the parties level but each area in the game had upper and lower limits of what could be spawned within that area. this was actually kind of buggy. For example, if you went Arnika below level 5, there was a small chance that the game would spawn level 22 enemies due to some bug with how low a level that area would spawn. It would somehow wrap around to the other end. Also a niote specific to Obilvion: It's important to understand that Oblivion scales its creatures, OFF the pcs level not TO the pcs level. Opponents that the devs have decided should be a challenge, will spawn + x levels higher than your pc. Guards for example are always + 10 levels, Guard Captains are + 15 levels higher than your pc. Run of the mill bandits will generally spawn 1-3 levels less than the pcs own level. So its not as if there is no variety to the challenge difficulty Oblivion presents.

Those are valid points that a developer needs to be concerned about when developing a scaled encounter system, I agree. Just a couple thoughts: A scaled encounter system in a crpg is meant to keep the challenge up for the gamer. Its not different from say how IWD2 was designed, except IWD2 was totally linear, so the challenge difficulty could be pre-set. but the goal in both cases is the same: try to keep the challenge at a certain level. When you give the gamer freedom to roam around a non-linear world at will, this can be a problem. Specific to Oblivion's system: Morrowind did not scale most of its guild and plot critical quest lines (although it did scale creatures in the world), and was severly criticized by a lot of gamers because they would go off and do exploring then get around to the quest lines and they were incredibly easy because the PC was now level 15 and the game wasn't matching that. So Bethesda took that criticism to heart and tried to correct it. They may have not succeeded entirely, but Oblivion is NOT broken in the same way Morrowind was, and to me, that gives great hope that they will learn from Oblivion and correct where that fails.

Josh, certainly you are not saying that an encounter system that has your pc fighting 25 rats while encased in hardened power armor and carrying the turbo plasma rifle is something to be copied and admired? Oblivion's enocunter system has problems, but so does Fallouts. They both could use an overhaul. Which was my only point. Whether some prefers a world with set encounter levels or one that scales to match the level of the pc or some combiantion of the two is entirely subjective. I've seen both done well. As far as companions go, I am only talking about Fallout 1. If one starts to talk about Fallout 2 implemtations then they acknowledge that sequels can make postive changes in gameplay which contradicts the "one must be beholden to Fallout's way of doing things because that is all that is right and good" argument. There was little developer continuity between Fallout 1 and Fallout 2 (iirc Cain and Boyarsky both left before FO 2 development started or shortly thereafter), so there's just as good a chance that any changes made be Bethesda will be as good as whatever was changed between Fallout 1 and Fallout 2.

I expect him not to charge 6 enclave troopers, who are all wearing advanced power armor and carrying pulse rifles, with a sledgehammer.

The change in how companions were handled between FO1 and FO2 is probably the single biggest gameplay difference between the 2 games. As you point out, its obvious that the FO devs didn't anticpate the popularity of the companions. In FO2, the companions were intended to go much farther with the pc. Although its still pretty hard to finish the game with them, especially when Sulik goes charging right into the guns of an enclave patrol.

Well, I read something from some of the Fallout devs awhile back which was a response to complaints that it was so hard to keep Ian, Tycho, Katja and Dogmeat alive to the end. The dev response was that basically they weren't designed to be kept alive to the end. Ian was supposed to be a startup companion to help the player character get aquainted with the world. Tycho was supposed to be help for dealing with Gizmo and the Skullz. Katja was supposed to provide some help near the later parts of the game. The game was designed to be started alone and finished alone. That last part is almost a direct quote. You'll just have to take my word on it though since I have no chance in hell of ever remebering where I read it. So feel free to disagree, since I can't prove it.

I agree. I think SPECIAL will be kept in some form. The atributes if nothing else. A lot will have to be changed to work in a realtime/first person engine though. If they were to drop SPECIAL and use the Oblivion/Morrowind type of skill system, I would be disappointed. Not because those skill systems aren't SPECIAL, but because they are not very good.

SO am I. Piecing together the inner-workings of a new rules set is great fun. And I'm not knocking SPECIAL. I think its the best rule system I've ever played in a CRPG. I'd be perfectly happy if FO 3 uses some version of it. But, otoh, dropping SPECIAL altogther, would not make it not Fallout (to me).

Fallout's encounter system wasn't so great. Wasn't what made Fallout. Learn by doing systems are incredibly hard to balance without placing huge artificial barriers in the game world. I don't like them personally, but losing SPECIAL isn't a big deal. Fallout was designed as a single player crpg, with companions thrown in for a variety. They weren't supposed to last long and/or survive the game. Companions are definitely NOT key to Fallout. Most of Fallout's quest-lines were completely stand-alone and not recognized elsewhere, Killlian wouldn't even recognize you if you went back to him after saving his ass from Gizmo. Bring Tandy back and Aradesh says thanks have some caps and that's it. Sure you get a glabal repuation bump and maybe a "label" or two, but most stand-alone quests hardly made any huge difference over how the gameplay played out ES2 Daggerfall had a faction and reputation system so far beyond what was implemented in Fallout that its not really comparable. Granted that was with Julian LeFay as lead not Todd Howard so game visions are different, but the fact remains that the ES series has already done more with factions and reputatioins than Fallout ever did. Yep, completely real-time combat. FO 3 will definitely be that. And first person. Didn't we have a superr long thread on here talking about how horrible FO combat was not long ago. I was actually one of the few people praising it. I don't see why most people would be sad to see it go, based on all the reason sput forth on that thread. Just some random thoughts. Fallout was a great game, but as usual nostalgia has glorified it to absurdity. I'm really looking forward to see what Todd and his people are going to do with it.

whoah. *checks the temperature in hell*

Yeah, but what defines "worthy FO3" is of course the point of contention. There are those for whom "worthy" = "identical to FO".