History of Fallout: The GURPS Apps
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- Опубліковано 29 вер 2024
- I talk about how Fallout began its life as three different GURPS apps in 1991. One app made star systems, one simulated combat between two characters, and the third one supported character creation using the rules in any of the GURPS books.
As a person who loves diving into cut content for my favourite games, it is nothing short of amazing to hear one of the creators for one of my favourite games, spend time out of his day to go in-depth about their intended ideas, the history of creating their ideas and about things that inspired them. Thank you for all the videos you have been doing lately, Tim!
Hi Tim,
I was always curious if you ever had any plans for a sequel while Fallout was still being developed with the GURPS license? I had always guessed there was plans to include Psionics with the player meeting the Psykers near the end of the first game and the fact you said GURPS having a balanced Psionics system was one you of the things you liked about it in past interviews
I do like GURPS psionics, and it is better balanced than AD&D, which felt tacked on (and I think it was). But no, we did not think of sequel ideas until close to the end of development. Fallout was considered a B-tier project, given that Interplay had also picked up the D&D license, which had broader awareness among gamers, so I don't think we even considered that it might be more than a one-off project. That changed about six months before shipping, when QA started asking to stay late (unpaid!) to keep playing the game.
This topic is probably worth a video.
That loud and formidable thud the GURPS book made when it was dropped onto the floor was great :-)
That Basic Edition is a thick book!
Just wanted to say, you are a huge inspiration of mine. Fallout has been a huge influence on me as a creative, a GM, and is a huge reason I wanted to become a developer myself. These videos are amazing.
I'm crushed you didn't mention my Mac version of the GURPS Star System Generator. 😛 Great to hear the old stories. What a flashback.
It’s because my brain is now jello, Mr. DeSalvo! Welcome, and thank you for the Mac SSG and Mac GNW too!
Also now my viewers know my stories have to true, because Mr. DeSalvo will keep me real.
Seeing GURPS Fallout at the Steve Jackson Games booth at Gencon got me really excited that ~finally~ GURPS would make it into the "mainstream" CRPGs like the SSI gold box games. It's a damn shame Steve thought the game was too violent and killed the license - though that might just be skuttlebutt.
I absolutely, ABSOLUTELY love character creation apps. I'm big into roleplaying games and different systems, but I'm really bad at understanding mechanics and systems, so having a tool that automatically tells me what each character can and cannot have during creation is just essential. I am amazed at your GURPS character creation tool.
Super interesting! Now I'm sitting here wondering how many arguments I could've solved by simulating them.
It didn't help. People argued that my code was wrong.
@@CainOnGames Sounds about right, haha.
Dear Tim! fallout 1-2 have so many voiced acted characters, so many stories to tell... please, if you like, would you share a story or two about creating talking heads in a future video? :) Thank you very much! ☺
Your GURPS app reminds me of what I'd read about the Traveller 'Imperial Data Recovery System' program from the early 80s! Perhaps that was what you were referring to; I've not actually ever used it, so I'm not certain, but either way your app looked fantastic. Wasteland and Fallout are such true loves of mine, thank you so very much for your work and for making this development history freely available.
You reignited my passion for game development. Life got in the way back when I was 18 but now at 24 I think I can finally handle it and your videos have broadened my hopes for what this game will be.
(Small but intensely dense open world RPG where you can affect the world and almost everything about the story. I’ve been writing it since I was 17, and I truly believe I can do it given enough time.)
I owned almost all editions of GURPS at one point, but played it only once in the faithful year of 1999, using GURPS Discworld. It was the funniest game session I ever played in and to this day remember almost everything that happened in that session. Alas, it was to remain the only time I should play GURPS in my life.
i wish more people kept archives like this, or if they do, that more people would share them. especially around cancelled games. *cough* Van Buren *cough*
There are a design document and a demo online
@@chem-z9718 and i have spent hundreds of hours reverse engineering Van Buren to help with the remake project over the past few years.
Holy shit, you went to UCI?? I have a new favorite alumnus, Zot Zot! ^__^v
Wow you skipped 2e AD&D, you should check out Dark Sun, honestly I think it's the only setting from 2e that never really got ported to anything else. There are two versions of it, one without Morality and one with Morality. It is a setting that does not care about being a D&D Setting, it even has a few rules not used elsewhere like races having their own movement options that are exclusive to them. Summery is Magic caused Global Warming and evil wizards genocided a number of races to become Dragons. It's Mad Max meets Dune but still a fantasty setting.
Thank you for the video! Very informative.
Do you still play GURPS and are there other TTRPGs that are near and dear to your heart at this point in time? What is your favorite system?
A GURPS-based computer-game system would be great imo.
What project did you start working on after Fallout, but before Fallout 2?
Hi Tim, greetings from Argentina, i admire you so much, you are a great inspiration to me. I'm very thankful that you created this channel, i love your videos. Your games have accompanied me throughout my entire life.
Impressive you still have those exe around!
I was not expecting this to pop up in my suggested but I am sure glad that it did. As a huge fan of classic Fallout (New Vegas gets and honorary mention) getting to see some of the stuff that lead up to is amazing. What's even better is getting to see a fellow GURPS fan show how he can use his coding skills to some neat stuff with the system. Kind of wish I could figure out coding since I'd love to make some automated programs that weren't just spreedsheets heh.
I am so sad that I didn't grow up in the 70/80s (I was born in 1999) because there are so many games that I would have played, and some of the older games are near impossible to find to play these days. I noticed that Troika games are available on Steam, so I am able to play Bloodlines, etc. I hope that you are doing well, and It's always a pleasure to watch your videos, and you could talk about anything and I would still be here.
Thanks! I will keep talking!
same but instead of 1999 i was born in 2002
I was born in the late 70's and games have been a part of my life along the way. Games that seemed like technical marvels on a Spectrum now that look like a computer crash. Whenever people talk about gamin history I suddenly come up against the realization of my old age. It does mean I experienced a lot of games first hand, outside of any perspective given by time.
Is there a possibility that you upload this tool for the public ?
I'm just starting with GURPS making a role playing game of a friend of mine from the book 1984.
The original Bard's Tale (along with an ASCI-based unoffical D&D game) was THE game that got me loving RPGs. It was my gateway not only into CRPGs but actually into the PnP side as well. Much love to Bard's Tale.
I have a GURPS character builder program for 4th Ed myself from the official site, but it's nowhere near as pretty as yours.
I sometimes wonder how it would work if Fallout continued with GURPS. SPECIAL had similarities but it had levels and far more hitpoints.
Man! I remember Bard's Tale! I loved that game! I love(d) GURPS too! But i really struggle with information overload easily, and never really got very far in the books. *** It is really nice to hear from one who was there when Fallout was born.
I think one interesting point about the difference between DX and ST chars would be that the investment cost of getting to 18 DX would leave your character much more starved for skills than an 18 ST character. So I think it would have been more fair for you to let the ST character put all their leftover points into the skills you were using to run your combat.
This would give you:
An 18 ST char with 20 Broadsword, 21 Shield, 18 HP, 3d6+1 damage.
An 18 DX char with 17 Broadsword, 18 Shield, 10 HP, 1d6+1 damage.
I'm pretty sure the extra points the ST character has is going to make them far out class the DX character.
And considering the Basic Set rules suggest ST 20+ is fine even for human characters, but other attributes should stay 20 and below, I think I'd have to go with ST being the most value adding stat... Well, in a world where otherwise extremely average humans and broadswords are the only things that exist at least.
Hi mr. Cain! What was your attitude (and the people with whom you worked) towards your competitors in the industry? Were you indifferent, or perhaps you had any strong feelings towards them? Has owning Troika had any impact on your view?
Hi Tim, is there any way you could make that GURPS character creator available online? I know a lot of GURPS folk introducing their players to the game in 3e and I love the clarity of that UI you did. I think it looks great even compared to the best character creator for 4e, GURPS Character Sheet
I play GURPS here in Brazil, we in a middle of a new wave of players and is great even tho 4th edition has 20 years of release the GURPS system is truly a masterpiece.
Awesome! history! Makes me wish I still had my q-basic projects...
I assumed up until about three years ago Steve Jackson of Gurps was the UK one of Games Workshop and CYOA books, kinda nuts that there's a US and a UK Steve Jackson who had a big effect on western p&p games.
That Character Editor is amazing - it would have been like techno-magic to me in 1991!😜 I used to spend so much time just making D&D characters for fun with a stack of papers and books, I would have loved to have something like this back then! Very cool! Thanks for sharing as always Tim!👍
And this, ladies and gentleman, is how videogame’s history happened.
I'm just glad somebody _finally_ put the str vs. dex debate to rest.
Out of curiosity I’d love to view the source of these old apps and how gui programming worked then
Love how your program had advantages and disadvantages as separate libraries. GURPS Character Sheet currently has them in the same library which is hectic even with a search bar. I have both GURPS 4e & 3e and I found it weird that strength increases HP in 4e when you have a separate health stat (imagine my shock when I found out Health increased HP when I read through the 3e rules) but this kinda explains why this change was made. Dex is still something of a superstat lol.
You can also filter them out by tags in GCS so that you only see the one type (there's a drop down to the right of the search bar).
@@nichan008 thanks for this, King
I love gurps! Thanks for talking about it!!
The star map you showed reminds me very much of Starbound. Cool video
I dunno if you already talked about this, if so just point me to where but i did always wonder where exactly did the idea for fallout even come from? I mean the descision to make a post apocalypse set in a 50s style future is quite the unquie aesthestic and idea no one at the time did anything really similiar so i have to wonder what is the exact history of fallout's creation? Was it just a random ides that popped into your head one day and you ran with it or does it have history? Was this a world you or someone at interplay wanted to see out there in some way for years? What exactly complied the creation of fallout's world and story?
That planet generator is pricelessly valuable.
I love how every single one of your stories logically loops back to GURPS. thanks for your stories Tim!
What language was this programmed in? C?
Mostly C, with some assembly language.
@@CainOnGames Maybe you could talk about (and possibly show) the differences between programming 40 years ago and now, especially in gaming. You were able to create your own engines which nowadays not many programmers are able to do (and those who can do it, wouldn't have the perseverance).
Probably about 50-60 hours total, spread over two months, working a few nights per week on it. I’m always making little “code toys”. I’ve got a few going in Unity right now.
Tim I bet you get this a lot but, you seem like such a lovable teddy bear of a person haha :b
9:44 Haha, not too dissimilar from what we got in Fallout after all!
It's interesting that I've never heard about GURBS before your videos (unlike D&D and other similar games). Was it for the USA market only?
According to their website, it was also published in Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, French, Italian, German and Spanish
Wiki editor go brrrrrr
Is it possible to dump demo of GURPS Fallout?
I have no access to it. Someone at whatever remains of Interplay might
hi
this is so cool to watch
Good stuff 👏
Whoa, 93! I was playing GURPS back then too!
Yeah, character creation took a long time with just one book being shared between 4 or 5 guys. We had to put one day just to make characters, and sometimes we wouldn't even play anything with those characters, which was quite frustrating. I still loved doing that, though.
It's been some years (phew!) but let me ask this: If you had to make a new version of that game yourself... Or, in other words, if you had to "fix" GURPS, what would you do? There's always been debate online about this, but I would love to hear it from your perspective.
Sir, I wanted to say thank you. Specifically for creating Dogmeat. My dog died this morning,and I was feeling particularly angry, and evil, and decided to load a fallout save game and just kill everyone, just to kind of throw a tantrum and get it out. Well I loaded my game and the very first thing I see is dogmeat. He took it all right out of me. He has always been the perfect companion. Thankyou.
💚
Its not really a question, but I'd be fine with videos where you talk about GURPs games you ran.
Is UCI the UC school that uses an anteater as its mascot?
When Tim speaks about GURPS, it conjures memories of a friend whose favorite combat maneuver was "Thrust to the vitals."
For GURPS, it always seemed to me that DEX and INT were the abilities you wanted high...though I think that STR was good for mages because it was the source of mana(?).
Frontier Developments desperately needs minds like yours. The mechanical creativity you could bring to a franchise like Elite:Dangerous would be a miracle in space simulation gaming.
Hey Tim, since you’re the grand daddy of Fallout, I thought it only fitting to ask your opinion on it.
What is Fallout about to you? What does it mean to you? Is it an edgy sci-fi RPG about blowing up bad guys and saving the wasteland, or is it deeper than that? (It is way more complex than that to me, I just want to know your thoughts).
Congrats on 10.5k subscribers!
I'm looking forward for each and every video. Best way to have some slack at work. Thank you!
I'm a huge Fallout fan, including the 2 originals. New Vegas and VTM: Bloodlines are two of my favorite games of all time. Thank you for your incredible creativity and effort in developing these brilliant series.
10:21 Those are some very specific skills. I'm guessing that "simul-eject revolver" refers to top break or flip out revolvers, while "single-eject revolver" probably refers to to guns with a single position of the cylinder for loading and ejecting cartridges. Speed load (black powder) is less obvious, but perhaps refers to muzzle-loaded firearms. BTW, many revolvers employed black powder, whether loaded directly into each chamber of the cylinder or in cartridges. The Spear Thrower vs. Spear Throwing dichotomy is the strangest. My best guess is that a character with the Spear Thrower skill is proficient at using an atlatl, while one with the Spear Throwing skill is proficient at throwing a spear without an atlatl.
I LOVE these coding stories. I'd love to hear more about the actual implementation in DOS, like how you wrote/borrowed code to do windows and buttons and mouse pointers.
This reminds me of the galaxy generation from the old Elite games
Would you ever consider sharing the software you made for star systems and character creation? I think it'd be a lot of fun to give them a try
Wow, that's really cool. Thanks!
Yeah this makes sense. I always felt like Fallout couldn't have been made without people with strong tabletop RPG XP.
I guess it must be a very common pattern that a programmer sees a table type game system, and writes a bunch of tools like character editor, combat simulator, etc. And boom, you have all the pieces to make an RPG game. Sad that I have yet to come to that point. But I am itching lately to write a map editor to keep track and build the world.
Those early days at Interplay sound sublime.
I love these tidbits of information you've been uploading, it's both informative and interesting.
That character editor already reminds me a fallout variant.
Очень интересная идея со звездными системами) вообще синтез науки с развлечениями интересная вещь. Когда учитываются разные научные факты. Если вдруг я захочу в будущем попробовать себя в разработке чего нибудь развлекательного, то я попробую связать с орнитологией. В голове представляю игру в открытом мире и возможность играть разными птицами😄 с учетом всех характерных параметров
Incredibly interesting to see how similar the gurps app is to the original fallout character creator!
I could listen to you talk for hours. Its amazing how much interesting stuff you have done in this industry. Fallout was the game that got me into rpgs
Would be nice to see you play Fallout on this channel
What is the history of GURPs?
10k subs let's go
Your telling and stories are a breath of fresh air in a sewers of yt.
What language were these apps written in?
C, with some assembly
Dear Tim, I've watched all your GDC talks a dozen times. You're a great story teller and I've loved everything you've made. I'm a VTMB whore. With everything available to developers today, would you consider making your time travel/fallout precursor you talked about at GDC?