08.01.2014 Resurrection quantified
Today I would like to answer a frequently asked, yet until now unanswered, question: Just how big is Resurrection? Meaning the overall amount of text, scripts and maps. So I took the Czech version 1.1 and counted it all up for you. However, the answer requires some explanation, due to the branched nature of dialogs and other Fallout specificities. Also since Resurrection is a modification, it uses a lot of content from the original Fallout 2. I tried to exclude this as best as I could, but you should still take these values as estimates. Sometimes it’s just too difficult to tell what is new and what is not.
Texts:
When counting the number of characters in texts, I excluded files that were clearly from Fallout 2. However, we still sometimes used original texts for generic objects that we have then modified (for example a door with an extra bit of unique text). So to compensate for this and at the same time simplify the calculation I’ve excluded the text for item descriptions (including completely new items) and other objects that we added. It’s also important to point out that sometimes a part of the text is repeated with only minor modifications. This is the case for dialogs, which we have for clarity structured the way they appear in the game. Therefore the structure is: Character’s text, under that player’s response choices, then character’s other text, and again player’s responses available at this point.
So how much text is there in the end? I counted 2,471,214 characters (almost two and a half million!), which is definitely a lot.This also includes the text from all 19 holodisks.
Maps:
A map is an area on which you can move without the game having to load anything. Most of the time you travel from one map to another by entering a green shaded area at the edge of a map. This way every city contains several maps. Every map can have up to three floors. This is used mainly for basements and multi-storey buildings. You generally travel between these floors by clicking on stairs or a ladder. Most of random encounters in Resurrection use original maps, so I’m not counting those, though sometimes we edited these maps (some only a little bit, others a lot), making new ones. If you for example want two characters to meet in the desert, you need to make a new map. But it can be based on the generic desert map. Overall Resurrection adds 80 new maps.
It’s interesting to note that the biggest city in the game, Albuquerque, contains 8 maps. If I then add desert maps related to Albuquerque quests (for example gecko hunting), there are 16 maps associated with it overall.
Scripts:
If an object is to do more than its basic behavior, it is necessary to write a script for it. These can be attached to virtually any object: critters, items, walls, maps, etc. For general objects the original Fallout 2 script suffices. General scripts (now meaning new ones) can cover for example all inhabitants of a single city. Such generic characters are usually covered by one or two scripts. On the other hand for important characters it is sometimes necessary to create several scripts, in case they appear on more than one map.
Overall Resurrection adds 726 new scripts, 425 of which are character scripts (meaning all humanoids, animals and robots).
The total number of hours spent working on Resurrection:
Countless.
Daemon