Dogmeat (Fallout)

Dogmeat (?-April 20, 2162) is a potential companion that can be found in Junktown in Fallout and at the Cafe of Broken Dreams in Fallout 2. He also appears in the Fallout demo, in a virtually identical role at Scrapheap.

Background
Dogmeat's origins before he became a pox upon Phil's house are shrouded in mystery. What is known is that he came to town with a leather-clad traveler that came from the eastern deadlands (or so he claimed). The traveler was tall, dark-haired with graying edges, wore black leather in the desert and carried a shotgun - in a word, he was the archetypal protagonist of a post-apocalyptic story. Unfortunately for him, when he tried to interfere with Gizmo's business, as protagonists are known to do, the crime boss had his thugs beat him up and throw him from the casino roof. The intimidation tactic turned into a killing, as the traveler broke his neck and died. Dogmeat didn't take to it too kindly and chose to vent his frustrations by laying claim to Phil's doorstep. The poor Junktowner and his partner had to sleep rough for over a month until the Vault Dweller arrived.

Dogmeat adopted the Vault Dweller on December 30, 2161, and as his loyal canine companion soldiered with him across the wasteland, surviving the encounter with the super mutants at the Necropolis that claimed Ian's life and helping him find the water chip. His luck ran out at the Mariposa Military Base on April 20, 2162, when a  force field took his life. The Vault Dweller never really recovered from the loss of his friend. In his words, he "missed the dog".

Companion
ts are equal to a regular human NPC, but since Dogmeat cannot be removed from the party via dialogue like Ian or Tycho, nor can he use weapons or any kind of drugs, his chances of surviving the endgame are low.
 * To recruit Dogmeat, players have to solve Phil's Canine Conundrum by donning a leather jacket and approaching Dogmeat or giving him an iguana-on-a-stick. Once recruited, Dogmeat cannot be removed from the party, meaning players will have to resolve the rest of the combat by fighting (as any companions preclude using disguises at either the Cathedral or Mariposa).
 * Despite being a dog, Dogmeat is a capable fighter. He can attack three times each turn and has a decent chance of knocking enemies down. He is also a low-priority target for enemies, allowing him to get several bites in. However, he only has a moderate amount of hit points and his natural armor is equivalent to just leather armor.
 * His odds of survival can be improved with a steady diet of drugs. A cocktail of Psycho, Buffout, and Mentats, along with a steady supply of stimpaks and super stimpaks can see him through the worst engagements. Alternatively, the player can close him in a room or an elevator, as, being a dog, he cannot open doors.

Companion

 * Dogmeat can be recruited only at the special encounter, Café of Broken Dreams. As in Fallout, Dogmeat will join the party after being fed some iguana-on-a-stick. If the player has none, he will join after seeing the Vault 13 jumpsuit (simply removing armor in inventory). If the player attacks Dogmeat for some reason, Mel will appear and attack.
 * In combat, Dogmeat is even more effective than the original. He has plenty of action points, allowing him to cover a lot of ground and make up to six attacks per turn. Coupled with improved AI and scripting, which allow the player to dismiss him or tell him to wait, he can safely make it through the game.
 * As with the previous game, Dogmeat's survival can be ensured with a steady diet of hard drugs.

Behind the scenes
"I came up with the name "Dogmeat"; this was originally Jake's [Hub] dog, and was originally named "Dogshit" (toning it down was a good call in this case), then Tim or Chris applied it to the other, better pooch. :-)"

- Scott Bennie, Fallout Bible 7


 * Dogmeat is based on the canine companions from Mad Max 2 (aka The Road Warrior) and A Boy and His Dog. His general appearance (Australian Blue Heeler) is taken from Mad Max, while the name is taken from the latter movie, where it is used as an insult towards the psychic canine.

Bugs
"The problem of Sulik, Vic, Goris, and Dogmeat not reaching Stage 6 isn't going to be fixed anytime soon, if at all. In order to better understand the issue, here's a brief description of what normally happens.

When you run Fallout 2, there is a function named partyMember_init that reads the party.txt file, and organizes the data it extracts from the file into a party member table. There is a record for each party member found in the file, and each record is 200 bytes long. Everything about your potential NPC allies is stored in this table, and afterward the engine will extract any information it needs directly from this table. This table is created before the initial Main Menu screen for Fallout 2 shows up.

The root of the problem lies in the fact that Stage 6 is really a misnomer - in fact, it should be considered Level 7 (Level 1 - Base PID, Level 2 - Stage 1 PID, Level 3 - Stage 2 PID, etc.). Apparently, for the original developers, they also made the conceptual error of really thinking that Stage 6 is Level 6, and they defined their data structure accordingly -- that is to say, there is only enough room for the PIDs of the first 5 stages.

Therefore, during game load, the engine reads the party.txt file, creates a data structure internally with the info, and thanks to boundary checking will only read the first 5 PIDs before hitting the end of the record. During level-up, the engine will consult the table it had made earlier, and will of course never been able to find the Stage 6 PID since it's not there."


 * The above explanation is provided by Haenlomal.

Appearances
The first Dogmeat appears in Fallout and Fallout 2.