All my crashing has gone away with 1.6/1.7, and because Martigen fixed a nasty CTD bug in his otherwise excellent Mutant Mod. I played about 3 hours in preparation for Zeta, and about 2 hours into it now and not one crash.
Patch 1.5 causing conflicts with mods and the MMM CTDs made Broken Steel quite a miserable experience for me. I bought and installed Point Lookout, but by that time I was so pissed off I never played it (yet). By most accounts it’s better than Zeta, though I’m enjoying that a lot, so I’ll save it until last.
JeffL
1602
Does 1.7 fix the issues 1.5 created with mods?
1.6 fixed that, I believe.
Still crashing like crazy myself. I give up for now. Maybe when I clean my system and do a Windows 7 install I’ll try again…
Mine was constantly crashing while playing (both indoors and outside) but then I actually finished the main quest and started the Broken Steel content. Since then I’ve only had a single crash… so yeah, they haven’t been fully exterminated but definitely less frequent.
Although it might also be due to the fact that Fawkes has since gone missing… perhaps (s)he was the culprit all along.
Actually I have never had Fallout 3 crash. Maybe I am just lucky. Today I played 4 hours of FO3 and after I finished I noticed I had accidentally left the DVD out of the drive. Does the game not have CD copy protection active with the latest patches?
The protection is in the launcher executable, not the fallout3.exe. If you use FOMM, or have your shortcut mapped directly to the game. you bypass the copy protection. Bethsoft are very good about not fucking customers over, and they tend to keep it mild.
Thanks for the info. And yes I have been using the excellent FOMM utility.
Rimbo
1610
I was at Legoland today with my son, and while we walked through the Lego mock-up of Washington, I had a sudden urge to play Fallout 3 again.
JeffL
1611
Yep, I played the heck out of it, finished the game before the DLC that lets you continue, then had to uninstall for various reasons. Sounds like time to reinstall and load up with mods, DLCs, etc.
Playing Fallout 3 for the first time, but I’m having a couple of specific issues. The first involves the patch process where I seem to be getting a common dll error associated with GFWL - do I have to install this abomination on my PC to fix this? I can’t find a definitive answer.
Secondly, and maybe this is fixed in the patch but I can’t see anyone else complaining about it with the launch version, my VATS “to hit” percentages once I leave the vault have dropped to 0% for all body parts (except torso, usually about 5%) with any gun. VATS was working fine in the vault, 95% to hit for the torso or head when fairly close to the target. Oursite, VATS is unusable. I can still kill things with manual aiming, they go down easily, but why on earth has my VATS skill gone to shit? The weapons are still in good condition, and the melee weapons still work as expected. The only change is that I leveled up on leaving the vault, but I put more points into my weapon skill.
Dean
1613
I was having this glitch too (sometimes still do). It seems the fix is to tap out of VATS and tap back in, then the percentages will be correct.
No luck with that fix Dean, it’s borked. I’ve installed GFWL now and the 1.7 patch crashed the entire system at 100%. Nice. The game runs though so I’m not sure if it’s gone in or not. Still the same behaviour though, the game’s unplayable with VATS.
I’m going to start a new character and see whether that fixes it.
Ok, this is totally fucked up. Going back to a previous save game inside the vault when VATS worked, and now it’s giving me the same 0% issue. So I uninstalled the game, and reinstalled it (without the patch yet). Started a new game, and now I’m getting no speech sound effects. I played through to the radroach infestation, and VATS is STILL not working. After a compete reinstall. What the hell is going on?
After a bit more research, it seems that my VATS problem is not uncommon on the PC, and as there’s a five month old thread about it on the official forums with still no fix it seems unlikely to be solved anytime soon. Great stuff. Looks like I have a choice then of avoiding VATS altogether (are there any situations where this will make the game impossible to complete?) or buy the 360 version and forgo all those lovely mods.
Alternatively, seeing as this is my dad’s PC and his copy of Fallout that I’m trying out, I cross my fingers and hope that the retail version I buy in Australia actually works on my rig. God I love PC gaming!
emphasis mine.
That’s the exact same way with a few problems, including crashes for some of us.
OrfBC
1618
I know this has been asked a million times before, but this is a big thread, so:
If I were to start Fallout 3 for the first time, say, this weekend, and I have deliberately avoided reading very much at all about it, which mods should I download? And which DLC? I am not averse to picking it all up if its all good.
For DLC, I recommend Broken Steel and Point Lookout. The former for the benefits it brings (such as the increased level cap to 30) and the latter for the content (fantastic DLC in my opinion). Broken Steel’s content might be fun too for all I know, but I didn’t actually play any of the content it introduced and may not ever do so, unless I decide to start a new some day. Mothership Zeta isn’t exactly a superb expansion as they go, but it’s interesting and fun at times, and I happen appreciate the 360 achievements it brings.
For mods, I would checkout the Fallout 3 Mods thread. Start by reading the last page, paying particular attention to the second post there (where Istari6 asks a similar question). The SagerFO Slow 250 mod in particular served me pretty well, although I picked it up rather late in retrospect. FOMM (mod manager) is also supposed to be very useful. Hope this helps.
I’d echo those DLC recommendations, and also add that The Pitt is a great way to start out a new character, since it’s balanced with the expectation that you start with no gear.
