So…erm…
Just a bit LATE TO THIS PARTY. (if there was a newer party going on search didn’t invite me man :( )
Well i finally got Fallout 3, GOTY, on DVD (not Steam, but crappy GFWL that is now dead), and decided to mod it up some. That’s where i’ve been these last few days, cause man is Bethesda trying to make it difficult for modders and those that love mods or what? Heh…i’ve gone through the whole history of it’s patches (the infamous 1.5 ‘breaking’ all free mods etc) just because i had to learn this shit to mod it up. What a bloody temperamental game!
But it has a certain gritty something about it. I’m still in the early stages but plan to write a little mod write up in relation to getting this game running on Windows 7 (and i presume 8) and ALL the issues you will have (as i’ve had them all, i think). I hope the game is worth it.
Oh a quick modlist:
Fallout 3.esm
Anchorage.esm
ThePitt.esm
BrokenSteel.esm
PointLookout.esm
Zeta.esm
Unofficial Fallout 3 Patch.esm (the newer one - probably buggy like the old one, apparantly)
CRAFT.esm
CALIBR.esm
FO3 Wanderers Edition - Main File.esm
StreetLights.esm
DCInteriors_ComboEdition.esm
FO3 Wanderers Edition - Alternate Travel.esp
FireLightFix.esp
DarNifiedUIF3.esp
MaintenanceShed.esp
AbandonedShack.esp
FO3 Wanderers Edition - Main File.esp
FO3 Wanderers Edition - DLC Anchorage.esp
FO3 Wanderers Edition - DLC Broken Steel.esp
FO3 Wanderers Edition - DLC Mothership Zeta.esp
FO3 Wanderers Edition - DLC Point Lookout.esp
FO3 Wanderers Edition - DLC The Pitt.esp
Dragonskin Tactical Outfit.esp
LeatherBackpack -eng.esp (edited in FO3Edit to reduce armour from 25 to 4)
Merc Adventurer Armor -eng.esp
Fellout-Full.esp
Fellout-Anchorage.esp
Fellout-BrokenSteel.esp
Fellout-PointLookout.esp
Fellout-Zeta.esp
falloutshelter.esp
HZSmoothLight -FO3.esp
megalight.esp
Merged Patch.esp
NMC’s Performance Textures as the texture replacer.
Used some tweaks to the ini files as mentioned on Tweakguides:
http://www.tweakguides.com/Fallout3_4.html
Using FOMM (fallout Mod Manager)
FO3Edit
Boss (for most of the load order)
FOSE
3GB enabler
As the main utility software to set it all up. Anyway i’ll put up more details in this post as i get around to it…heh and i thought Oblivion was already getting ‘twitchy’ in terms of massive modding (and keeping stable), Morrowind i kick that around with about 240 mods no real problems, Oblivion is more like 100 (before it freaks out badly). But boy FO3! And Bethesda doing their best to make it even more painful. Anyway, fingers crossed it is all ok now, it runs i’ve been in the game for about 20 hours (over a few chars) and it is doing what i think it should. Now pass me those mag’s of 7.62, we’ll talk later.
I loved FO3 at release and picked up the complete version on Steam over the holidays. I tried to get it modded up but eventually gave up in frustration. Was just way too finicky to get rolling. Glad to hear you got it all working though, such a great game. Maybe I’ll give it another shot someday.
I liked Fallout 3 but I feel Fallout New Vegas is a much stronger entry in the series. I played FNV three times to completion, starting a few more characters through the years as well, and have like 150 hours in that one, so I urge Zak to check that one out, if he hasn’t already.
I agree with Bleed (or is that Mr. TheFreak?), I enjoyed Fallout 3 but NV was a lot more interesting to me. Though I burned out on each at some point and had to put them aside for quite some time before I came back and finished them. Actually that’s the case with every Bethesda game I’ve played - they’re great, but there’s almost just too much stuff in there.
Scotten
5485
Ditto, I’m ~ 50 hours into Skyrim when real life interrupted my game, and I haven’t been able to get back. But the later games make modding way easier; Steam Workshop and the better mod tools I’ve seen. But I think Fallout 3 was my favorite story so far.
Weapon mod kits is a pretty neat mod. I mention it because I don’t see it on Zak’s list.
I had a very easy time modding Fallout 3, but I didn’t use any of the ones that changed/improved graphics. I think it was just FWE, CRAFT, CALIBR, FOIP, weapon mod kits, Darnified UI, and possibly one or two other mods I’m forgetting that made the others play nice with each other. And most of those mods were required by FWE, which was the big one I wanted to use on my second playthrough.
Yeah, I’ve never made it through a Bethesda game in one go. They’re too long. The odds that real life will intrude are really high when the game you’re playing is that long.
The only reason I was able to do it on my second try with Fallout 3 is because I’d just gotten laid off. And I just took a month completely off before searching for work again. A month completely filled with Fallout 3 with a lot of graphics mods.
Well, it took me two days or so just to work out my small modding of Fallout 3, so i figure the game should entertain for a lot longer :)
@ Bleedthefreak and others, Steam is a no go for me, so no Fallout New Vegas (or Skyrim…sigh) is possible. It’s a technical issues (my gaming PC’s are offline, as they are also work PC’s - so ‘security’ etc) as well as a gaming ‘moral’ one, i’m for DRM free like GoG in relation to DD.
@ J Thomas, well i do love my guns (not quite ‘survivalist’ amercian levels, but ex-army etc) and the i had thought the FWE mod added more weapons (maybe even a version of that mod?) and i wanted to avoid conflicts, but as it is i’m finding a few things about the weapons that could do with improvement, so maybe that mod is the way to go (or FO3Edit!). I’ll read up on it and see if it will work as is or need compatible patches etc.
@Shellfishguy, yeah modding on Steam is not really my thing, to many restrictions and not all (most even) mods will play well with that method. Steam adds a lot of extra complication unless you do things exactly as they allow, which most modders do not do. So yeah, glad i got (well would only get) the non Steam version of Fallout 3 to mod up.
In general, now that things are working (Archive Invalidation, i’m looking at you!) it seems a blast, bang bang your dead/zombie raider scum! I have turned down gore levels, as having peoples heads fly off (in half whatever) each time i ‘bump into’ them seemed a bit over the top. It’s like each shot was a critical or something? That kind of graphical violence is just not my thing (besides being a bit ‘silly’).
I might spin out a new thread for this, to better help folks with the modding part etc? But for now i’ll just play and see how it behaves.
This is the thread we used back in the day. There are several points in which someone posted the kind of post where they’d list quite a few mods that they’d use. Maybe start near the end of the thread and work backwards for a bit to find some good advice in that thread.
JeffL
5490
Zak, can they be online long enough to install the games? Because (and you probably know this, but just in case) you can play Steam installed games offline once they are on your PC.
Cool, thanks for that link, my search did not bring it up and that is going to be very handy, cheers man :)
No, not really. At initial installation (of the OS) they got internet access for the MS Updates, but since then they have remained isolated (except for one time for one of them and CK2 (which in hindsight was not worth it, and most games are ‘not worth it’ imho)). My experience in general with online connected PC’s is that they will get infected at some point, so i just rather prefer not to deal with the fallout (heh an appropriate pun!) of all that.
My internet is run through this cheap laptop (that now runs Linux) that is non-essential and can be replaced easily if needed. It’s just my preference.
Hmmm well the modding Fallout 3 thing has hit a rather nasty snag (and not related to that, the StreetLights.esm and Firelightfix.esp are errors in my list above, Streetlights.esm has serious problems with graphical glithces if using any texture packs (like NMC’s), and Firelightfix.esp is already included in the Unofficial Fallout 3 Patch).
Last night i ran LOOT (the new version of BOSS) and after getting it to sort my load order (as i had added some more mods) when i run FO3Edit it only sees the official Fallout.esm and DLC’s! All the mods have vanished from FO3Edits sight! They show up fine still in FOMM, BUT you really need FO3Edit to run the Merged Patch. So yeah, might be a full unistall>full clean>full reinstall time.
And this dude seems very solid in his (recent) advice on modding up Fallout, i definately learned some good new things from him (sadly too late for me!):
Ok sorry to bump this. My promised new thread about building a nice working Fallout 3 mod build is ‘in process’. It’s a few hundred words so far, and a bunch of pics and links and good stuff, and it will be useful to someone :)
Now part of this process of learning the in’s and out’s of modding Fallout 3 ‘well’ has led me to discover something i’m finding very curious. It was while creating my ‘Merged Patch’ in FO3Edit (i’ll get into all those details in the main new thread when it is ready) that i came across this interesting entry in the Fallout 3.esm, that is the main Fallout 3 code that came from my DVD:
FormIDs>LNAM - FormID: WeapUniqueBlackBartsBBGun “Black Bart’s Bane” [WEAP:0006B535]
Anyone remember the huge Oblivion deconstruction and pic i created to explain my displeasure at Oblivion?
My photobucket account is Black Bart. Coincidence? Or what? weird huh. And kinda cool if it is what i think it is, cool to find it this many years later as well. I did say i was ‘leaving’ after Oblivion, so i sort of kept my word, for a good few years.
Anyway some fun to share with the internet :)
It’s a reference to A Christmas Story, the movie. In the film, Ralphie says something about “Now you’re gonna get it Black Bart!” after he gets his famous BB gun.
In Fallout 2 if you aimed at the eyes it would crit 90% of the time, “You’re gonna put your eye out, Ralphie!”
Ah…cool. That makes much more sense! he heh. I had thought the game had done something ‘clever’, like when in CivIV it takes your PC’s ‘name’ and makes your save games have that profile name, or some such. Then i couldn’t find any reference to Black Bart on that PC…so yeah. Thank you for the sensible explanation Bleed :)
As to why i’m bothering my arse with this old game, in part it’s because i do love Beth’s wide open exploration games, and in part the first Fallout they did had much more of that; NV has a more narrow focused story driven play style. What NV does well that Fallout 3 does not is give plenty of quest content, that is quite sparse outside the main quest in Fallout 3 (which i have addressed with a few mods etc). Anyway modding Fallout 3 ‘well’ is more difficult than either Morrowind or Oblivion (and that was pretty unstable), so it is taking a while to work through it, but it is looking worth it.
Joe_M
5495
Just give us a heads up when you’re done with whatever you’re working on. I always have Fallout 3 installed because it’s great for jumping in at any point to roam the landscape and poke around a bit.
Nixxter
5496
This seems a good place to ask my silly question.
My steam version of Fallout 3 doesn’t run on my new gaming rig (which is running Windows 8.1). Steam has a caption on the game page indicating it isn’t optimized for Windows 7 and beyond (no shit, it won’t even launch). Any hopes of getting this resolved, or should I just bite the bullet and play it on my old (Vista) gaming rig?
Bateau
5497
I just followed some simpler instructions that involved copying a .dll into the F3 folder, it worked if you’re interested in me tracking down what I did, but it was for Win 7. So, yeah Fallout 3 doesn’t work “out of the box” on an OS upgrade that came out a year after it was released. Are you pumped for Windows 10?
Sure thing, i’ll make a lovely New Post (with links to the older ones like this one, so we can keep a track on all the Fallout 3 goodness), along the lines of my Massively Modded Morrowind one (that i still need to finish!) :)
If Bateau suggestion or the one Sapper might dig out do not work for you maybe have a look through these from the Bethesda site (it helped me get it working on Windows 7 just fine):
RickH
5500
Seven years after it came out, five years after buying it, after two abandoned attempts after leaving the vault, I finally played this backlog-lurker.
And damn, what a great game. The atmosphere and sense of place are excellent even 7 years later, the game world is huge, the quests have significant variety with more available than a player can do before hitting (the original) level cap, and the hybrid FPS/VATS combat works surprisingly well. What a difference between the precision-guided aiming versus the spray & pray without VATS.
Kinda glad I waited until all of the DLC was out, though. Looks like I would have hated the original ending.
