Fallout 2 script library

When the Fallout/Fallout2 script compiler was made, it did not support a preprocessing pass. When the scriptors requested support for preprocessor statements such as #define, we decided the easiest way to provide them with what they wanted was to just use the Watcom preprocessor that we all had sitting on our machines already. It only took a few minutes to cook up a batch file that would preprocess a script file using Watcom and then compile it using our script compiler. This saved us a lot of time versus rewriting the script compiler to have a built-in preprocessor.

Although we used the Watcom 10.x and 11.0 preprocessor, pretty much any C preprocessor should work. Keep in mind that Watcom 11 was released over 6 years ago. Newer C preprocessors are probably far more strict about adhering to the C language standards than Watcom was back then. Using a newer preprocessor may generate warnings or errors that wouldn't have shown up using Watcom 11.0.

I have updated the batch files to support either the Watcom or Microsoft Visual C/C++ 6.0 preprocessors. You will have to edit p.bat to make sure the correct line is uncommented for the preprocessor you are using.

If you do not have access to either of these tools, there is a group in the process of making the Watcom compiler available for download as an open source product. See http://www.openwatcom.org. At the time of this writing, release candidate 2 was available for download. Another free compiler that might work is lcc-win32. It is available for download from http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~lcc-win32/ . I have _not_ tested building the scripts with lcc-win32. Based on my experience getting things to work between Watcom and MSVC, it is likely that the scripts will need some massaging to get them to work with lcc-win32.

Please note that since we used Watcom during development, that is the only one that I can claim will produce the correct output for the scripts. The others should work just fine, but I make no promises.

These are not neccessarily the scripts that shipped with Fallout 2!

I have done my best to put together something close to the scripts that shipped with Fallout 2. However, the source for the scripts was not very well organized and it was difficult to piece together all of the backups into something I could claim was 'it'. For many of the scripts found here, the output files generated by the script compiler are not identical to those that shipped with the game. I have no idea if they are newer or older than what shipped with the game. I only know that they are different.

You may also notice that there are many compiled script files that shipped with Fallout 2 for which there is no source here. Fallout 2 shipped with many compiled script files that were not used by the game. Some of those files are left over from Fallout 1. Others were used for testing, renamed or cut from the game before it shipped.