With the recent news of Fallout 3 arriving I dug out my Fallout 1 and 2 discs to relive the dirt and glory once more. A bit of the way into Fallout 2 I somehow lost a key inventory item and couldn’t seem to get it back, so a little help was needed.
I remembered the Fallout 2 Survival Kit, aka F.2.S.K., a nice little OS X app for editing saved games. So hit the net to see if I could still get it. Alas, it was listed at version 1.4 at Versiontracker but with dead links to both the app itself and the developers site – so I reported the links as dead to Versiontracker.
Being the digital packrat that I am, I dug through some CD-R archives and found that I did still have the F.2.S.K 1.3.1 version from some years ago. I even had a similar app for OS 9/Classic called the Fallout Character Editor 1.0a2 (only Fallout 1 was ever released for pre-OS X Macs).
I also discovered that the same 1.3.1 version was still hosted online in at least two other places, albeit under a typo (“survuval” instead of “survival”, which doesn’t help searches). It appears that a good number of folks are looking for it still, so I’m hosting the 1.3.1 version renamed nicely for search engines here:
Fallout 2 Survival Kit + Garden of Eden Creation Kit for Mac OS X.
The software was developed by Michael Edgar at Scotiasoft Systems (which is apparently dead and gone).
I also shot off an email to the developer’s address in the read me, which so far hasn’t bounced. If I can get a reply I’ll post the results here.
April 5, 2008 Update:
I’ve located the last known version of this utility sitting on my old Powerbook. You can now download it here:
The Fallout 2 Survival Kit 1.4
PS – Versiontracker still lists the dead link for this despite my reporting it. It would seem that that feature is worthless.
While you’re playing check out the Unofficial Fallout 2 Patch (Mac & Windows + a manual install for geeks). I’ve yet to try it but it may fix what caused my need for the cheat.
October 4 2008 Update:
Just so there is some mention of this glitch somewhere, I discovered that neither Fallout 1 or 2 would launch without crashing when run from within a directory that had an “•” in the file name. I’d bet that any other special characters would also trigger this. So keep Fallout loose in your Apps folder kids.
18 Comments
Well I searched for a good several minutes all over (following all those broken links on VersionTracker and Softpedia) only to find it here.
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Thanks mate, looked for this for awhile. Much thanks.
Thanks for your great effort & sharing.
thanks! this is hard to find! thanks again.
I too was starting to search all over for this editor, having started to replay the older games in F3 anticipation. Good job on locating the apparently sole version of this editor on the interwebs!! Damn tricky tubes!
Thanks for hosting!
I’ve never been able to successfully launch any version of these utilities. I’m running Tiger, but the OS 9 classic runtime environment doesnt work either? Usually I just get an instant shut down, but occasionally some version will give a message like “NilObjectClassException not found” etc..
What are you all doing that I’m not?
Tim,
I believe that error is specific to RealBasic applications, which this cheat was written in. I’m on Leopard, version 10.5.3 as of this writing and can run these OK. I’ll test Tiger on one of the machines I admin at work – maybe a recent update has broken something for Tiger only?
Even so, there’s not much I can do other than to post known instances where the cheat will fail. I’m not a programmer and I don’t have the source code anyway. Fallout 1 and 2 have some bugs as well and may not work well with future operating systems, so cheat or not you may find some other problems.
Wow – this is great. Thanks for digging up the Fallout Survival Kit.
You are indeed the source of last resort.
Thanx!
Thanks for posting the Survival kit link. I couldn’t find it anywhere
I’m having the same problems as Tim. I’m running Leopard .5 and Tiger .11 and neither start it up correctly. Had the same issue with v1.3 albeit it crashing without the exception. I figure it prolly is some RB issue… I don’t know about RB, but does it require some kind of runtime environment I don’t have set up on my computers? Anything about RB compatibility they changed since leopard .3?
On my Tiger Mac I tried reapplying the .11 Combo Update, but it didn’t help. I could be trying a clean install but I’m far too lazy, to be honest…
Oh, by the way, I’m running Leopard on a mini and Tiger on a 12″ iBook, both G4. Maybe an Intel thingy that makes it work on Intel machines, but not on PPCs? I believe I tried runnig it on an Intel iMac and it didn’t work, but I might not have done that, so I could try and get back later on that – if it turns out positive.
Just a heads up. The GECK inventory editor screwed up my save games into oblivion. Did the backup when asked. Didn’t do anything but add some ammo since I was in a tight spot in-game. When I tried to access my inventory after using GECK FO2 crashed, every time.
Went back to GECK but it couldn’t restore my backups and went on DELETING both my edited save games and the backup ones…
Of importance might be that I’m using the Mac version of Killap’s patch that supposedly takes care of a whole load of bugs. That and I’m running Leopard 10.5.5.
Blip,
Sorry you’ve had some problems. I think this is a problem with the Killap update – I’ve played around with the cheat under 10.5.4 at least and it still works as well as it ever did. It never was perfect for me but I normally assume that when using such things.
You can manually back up your characters in the user/Library/Application Support/Fallout (1 or 2) folders. I’d recommend this whenever you decide to use the cheat and or the Killap patch.
I suppose eventually none of this will work any more, but so far I can’t say for sure that the cheat is broken under Leopard. I’m on a PPC mac though, so that doesn’t say much.
Mad props man, mad props.
any one got the problem that they cannot open the file due to an unknown file and it asks you to choose a file and none of them work. am on vista home premium and have got killaps restoration project v1.3 any one know what to do
The Fallout 2 Survival Kit cheat is a Mac OS application. It won’t work on any version of Windows.
I had downloaded 1.3.1 some time ago, but somehow the knowledge it was an old version ticked me off (as did some bugs that are now fixed). I loved fallout 1 and 2. I’m glad fallout 3 has returned attention and brought fame to the fallout universe, but i wish fallout 3 had more of the same feel as the old titles. Not that it’s bad imo but i just miss something that the old ones had. I think it’s great you found that file and are hosting it here now. 1up and many thanks!
Hi, I think I’ve found the solution to what I mentioned in my June 16, 2008 post. I thought this info might be useful to the others experiencing similar problems: when installing, running, and creating your first save data for Fallout 2 v. 1.02, make sure you are logged in as a user with administrative privileges. I believe this causes the files to be created in library directories that the survival kit is familiar with. Afterwords, you can use the Survival Kit from just about any account on the computer without problem.
Now all that’s left with the clunky aspects of the apps themselves, weapons modifications, getting the amo thing to actually work, how to install the reconstruction package on OSX Leopard without crashing the entire map, etc.