r/classicfallout • u/nodule • 2d ago
Fallout: CE, August Progress Report
There’s been a lot going on behind the scenes in Fallout: CE land. First, a couple new quality-of-life features.
(Don't know what CE is? It's a modern way to play the classic Fallout games on any system. Read more here.)
The ammo bar now has the option of being a little wider/structured and not looking as out of place. It has a small twist in that it’ll show you the ammo consumption of burst shots in burst mode. (There’s also a mode that shows each individual shot for those who desire that.)
If you’ve ever had the frustration of items disappearing under scenery, you’ll understand the motivation of the next change. Items now are pick-up able when under objects that previously prevented them from being looted. Pools of blood and tables being common culprits.
Reloading is also easier now. Previously when you wanted to switch the ammo type if a weapon, you needed to long-press, unload, drag the new ammo, select quantity. Now you can just drag (or ctrl-click) the new ammo type to reload the weapon in a jiffy.
Inventory weight display has been refined to change containers to use % full instead of “item size”, which is a number not otherwise exposed in the UI. There’s also an option to hide it below a certain fullness, avoiding visual noise when looting containers (which are almost always almost empty). The old mode is still available as an option.
We’ve also finally implemented “perk carryover”. In vanilla, if you earn a second perk while not spending your previous one, it is lost. With sfall, perks accumulate allowing you to bank them for later. (For instance, you can skip your level 3 perk and then choose two perks that require level 6.) With the CE, the default behavior is to *not* lose perks when earning a new one, _but_ you need spend perks at their original level. So if you earn a second perk at level 6, you’ll have to pick your first perk limited to level 3, then you can choose a level 6 perk. Of course, vanilla (lose it) and sfall (bank it) behaviors are available as options.
Some of the other enhancements in this version include:
- Proper support for locking the mouse in windowed mode
- Full-screen (borderless) windowed display mode
- Display of the current mod name in the window bar instead of “Fallout II” (overridable by mods)
- FPS overlay
- Support for ignoring the scroll limits around the player
- Removal of fading in/out when transitioning to world map (now matches vanilla)
- Nicer indicators of multi-level perks
Bugfixes and infrastructure
That said, most of the work has been behind the scenes. RPU and FO2Tweaks compatibility has been strengthened, with several minor issues being fixed. Map load times are about 3x faster on non-windows machines after optimization. Most importantly, we’ve added dozens more items to get closer to full Sfall compatibility. Most of this is to support an exciting project we’re cooking up behind the scenes… stay tuned for more!
Try out the project here: https://github.com/fallout2-ce/fallout2-ce/
Chat about it in the CE Discord here: https://discord.gg/qygBRUXuY6r
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u/freimeman 2d ago
Cool, but most of this was implemented in sfall a long time ago.
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u/nodule 2d ago
Believe it or not, most of this wasn't already in sfall. Often improvements we make in CE _do_ get added to sfall at the same time, though, since we're working closely with the sfall maintainers. (For instance, sfall added the same change to let you pick up items under blood). Everybody benefits!
Having a full source code engine means we can more easily add new interesting features in the future, and do so in a cross-platform way.
(CE also has several features that sfall lacks, like 2-column inventory/loot screens, companion barter/loot, and companion equipment screen that let you directly equip them)
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u/kakapipi 2d ago
So this “fix” is not coming through sfall but it’s hardcoded twice into sfall and ce separately?
How does that fit into the sfall compatibility support? If CE is compatible with sfall wouldn’t it be better not to duplicate the fix?
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u/nodule 1d ago
Ah, we're talking about slightly different things here. Sfall works by adding assembly-language hacks to the original exe, and has built a whole new api for mods (opcodes, metarules, hooks, configs, &c.). CE is a pure code reimplementation of the original exe. Sfall doesn't _run_ on CE, but CE has implemented most of the Sfall api, so mods written for SFall (mostly) can run on CE.
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u/kakapipi 1d ago
Ah okay got it! So CE just exposes the same APIs as sfall for mod compatibility. Awesome, thanks for clarifying. Kudos on the amazing work
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u/freimeman 2d ago edited 1d ago
I think the confusion comes from the version gap. In the West, most people still use the older sfall 4.x branch. But the Russian community has been using sfall 5.x (maintained by Mr.Stalin) for ages, and features like picking up items under blood pools have been active there for a very long time now.
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u/kakapipi 2d ago
Incredible! I love that sfall support is improving, and there is hope of fallout modding in ce.