The first mod by Alex Free
Allow you to play Fallout 2 v1.02d (PC) and v1.02a (Mac) without having to kill your Wife or divorce her to complete the game, like you can in v1.0 due to glitches. But this makes it more of an intended feature:
It wouldn’t be strange if TWO people had power armour in the Enclave oil rig. So as long as Miria is doing everything the choosen one is (Wearing power armour mostly) no one gets hostile.
It wouldn’t be strange if TWO people were recruits wandering the Navarro base. You need to go through the trap door in the gas station, but then no one gets hostile there anymore either.
Changes:
Better installation instructions.
1) Install Fallout 2.
2) Extract master.dat, critters.dat, and extract patch000.dat last. It is important to extract patch000.dat last because it replaces some of the files you extract from master.dat and critters.dat.
3) Delete or rename patch000.dat to disable it.
4) Run the installer (Windows) or copy the patch000.dat (Mac) to /Applications/Fallout2.app/Contents/Resources/GameData.
Note: The Windows installer will overwrite Scripts/CCDRGRD.int and Scripts/qcSecBot.int, so if you want to back those up you should do so before running the installer.
Miria was never meant to make it to the end game with you. Low health, unable to be told to wait at a location (I laughed when I found this out it’s perfect), doesn’t level up like other companions, and there’s 2 big main story quests where you must be without any companions at the end of the game. But due to a fascinating amount of glitches, you can do it in the unmodified original game. In v1.0, these glitches allowed you to take her anywhere you were supposed to be alone (like Navarro base or Enclave Oil Rig).
From the The Almost Ultimate Fallout 2 Guide On Navarro:
“You can have one NPC along with you and the guards still say you’re alone; people you meet will act as if the NPC isn’t there. This happens because most Navarro scripts assume that the car is included in the “NPC count”, which it apparently isn’t. Unlike Chris, though, they won’t think you’re not alone if you actually are. There is one crucial exception: the guard outside the commander’s office will raise the alarm if anyone is with you except K-9 (you can use Sneak to avoid this), because his script was updated in the patch. Also note that if for some reason you didn’t get the car from the Den, this bug will not happen.”
From the The Almost Ultimate Fallout 2 Guide On The Enclave:
“The reason why you can bring one NPC is actually the same bug as in Navarro. The security bots which attack you if you’re not alone have been updated in the patch and know they don’t have to make allowances for the car counting as an NPC. This also means that if you never got the car from the Den (fat chance) the bug won’t happen.”
So what happened with the v1.02 patch is instead of fixing this bug for every enemy, they fixed it for specifc one(s) in the level that should’ve basically prevented you from completing the level. In Navarro there is only one single person who will ever realize Miria is with you, and that’s the commander’s gaurd. I actually managed:
1) Stealth across the commander’s gaurd’s hall and talk to the scientists to trigger the method of getting the verti-bird plans. I then had to go out the death claw exit, run to the shack with the trap door, and go up the elevator because I could never get another lucky dice roll for that again to work without putting the whole base on alarm.
2) Came back down the elevator and somehow kill everyone on that level while keeping Miria alive (she didn’t even have power armour yet) including the commander and his gaurd. The base was on red alert but it didn’t matter because I could just walk out with the tanker FOB.
So things were looking good. I killed all the creatures in the tanker keeping her alive with power armour and my 3 other companions that didn’t run away almost every fight. Got to the Enclave oil rig. Left everyone outside (funny how I got them back later) except Miria who I couldn’t. And same thing. No one noticed her. Then, I found out there actually is one enemy that can here, the Security Bots. And those things are tough. Funny thing is when you are early in this level the very first sentry bots you HAVE to run by just straight up don’t notice her. Every other sentry bots you encounter after will go nuts though.
Finally after murking the President I had to go down the steps to use his key and convince the scientist to blow his reactor. This is where it got bad. 2 security bots are RIGHT next to them steps. Somehow I managed to kill one, and the other one started fleeing down the hall! This was amazing because unless the sentry bot can SEE me, it won’t get hostile and it’s just sitting still now, facing the opposite direction of the steps so when I came back up the stairs after rigging the reactor it did nothing even though I was with Miria. No one else was hostile either.
OK, so emergency steps are open, I go up. Somehow I managed to get this far, and then I saw it. THREE sentry bots. And a ton of soldiers. And I had a 10 minute timer with much less then 10 minutes so I couldn’t escape back downstairs to heal. And I used all my stimpacks on Mr. President and in my fight downstairs with the other sentry bot.
I really tried. For hours. Even with my Gauss Rifle nailing the sentry bots in the sensors (apparently this could cause it to stop being able to see me and make everyone hostile) there were 3 of them, and Enclave soldiers blocking me, and even worse if I did go down stairs and back up and got lucky and no one was hostile, there were so many soldiers they would physically block me from getting past the doors/hallways. If I had gone back, gotten a ton of psycho and stimpacks, maybe dumped more into energy weapons (I was over 120% though already) I still feel like I could’ve done it. But I gave up and ‘cheesed it’. This is the only time I’ve ever done the cheater spam A strategy. I did it exactly one time to get past the 3 sentry bots, alerting no one and finishing out the game.
I was scarred I lost my other 3 companions outside once the game ended, but I found out in the Ultimate Fallout 2 Guide:
“If you inadvertently leave your party members behind when the oil rig blows, for instance if you had dropped them off on the dock, you can still save them by going to the bridge of the tanker, pressing “Go” (15,000 xp again) and returning to the rig (hmm!). If you’ve got time remaining on the countdown timer, you can re-recruit your NPCs and exit to San Francisco once again. It’s good for a laugh anyway. Since the trips back and forth are instantaneous as far as the game timer is concerned, you may have a few minutes in which to keep doing this.”
Still though, it felt gross using the spam A for ONE SINGLE SECTION. It’s a great challenge. I then looked at the guide again. It was saying v1.02 added these ‘fixes’ for the sentry bots and for the commander’s gaurd. So if I had just played v1.0, I wouldn’t of had to do any of this insane stuff!
Another thing though is I was playing the Mac version from 2002 on a PowerPC iBook G4 mid-2005. This is with the v1.02a patch. No that’s not a typo. And since it was released much later then the PC version, it was basically already 1.02 unpatched. In fact, the v1.02a scripts are even a bit different then the final official v1.02d scripts of the PC version. The patch000.dat file isn’t even the same between both.
So I originally was going to use the Fallout 2 save converter to convert my save files from v1.02 to v1.0. But the problem is the Mac saves are in no way compatible with the PC version.
So then I was wondering well what if I just removed the fixes for these 2 enemies? It has to be obvious if I check the scripts and figure out what fix they put in so they were detecting Miria. But eventually I just came up with a better idea.
It wouldn’t be strange if TWO people had power armour in the oil rig. So I edited the sentry bot script. If you have 1 companion, if the companion is Miria, if Miria is satisfying everything that is required of the player character to walk through the enclave undetected, then do not go hostile. If Miria or the player character or both take off the power armour then it’s hostile immedietly.
So then I thought about Navarro. Same thing, who says we can’t have 2 recruits walking around? Not neccesarily both would have power armour (or any of them), and at this point in the game I only had one suit of power armour I got inside Navarro. So I looked at the gaurd’s script and saw if K-9 is a companion the gaurd doesn’t go hostile. So I added Miria to those same checks, and sure enough I can walk right up to him and have a conversation for the first time with Miria in tow.
So with just 2 small script additions, you can now complete v1.02 like v1.0 with Miria. I checked like I mentioned before and both these scripts were different between the 2002 Mac v1.02a patch and the Windows v1.02d patch. So I did modified scripts and mods for both. The Mac version is weird, your supposed to be able to use ~/Library/Application Support/Fallout2/Data/scripts and be able to put your own .int scripts there. This worked for the commander’s gaurd, but not for the sentry bots. So I ended up just editing the patch000.dat (which already included both these scripts and putting them in there. By replacing /Applications/Fallout2.app/Contents/Resources/GameData/patch000.dat` with my own finally on Mac I was able to get this behavior and mod working.