Charlinho

Thanks for the reply - much appreciated XP PC is a Pentium D Dual Core 3.4 Ghz 4 Gb ram - Nvidia 8800 GT graphics card Win 7 PC is a Q9550 Core 2 Quad 8GB ram - ATI 5970 graphics card using the 13.9 driver I'm new to ATI and reverting back to an older driver turned out to be a real nightmare, unlike Nvidia. Uninstalling the new driver completely and re-installing and older one didn't work plus the AMD site provides no infos on how to go about that. Googling was also useless. So I gave up on that. turning off bUseFaceGenHeads: with XP framerates improved from 3 Fps to 5 Fps facing the Npcs and goes up to 25 facing a wall - with or without the feature disabled with Win 7 the game crashes after about 3-5 seconds - facing a wall framerates are at 45. Activating or de-activating cross-fire makes no difference. I have the same fps problem in the presence of many NPCs with Fallout 3, in this specific case when in My RTS (Real-Time-Settler) settlement. The similarity between the two games is that in both cases the 15-40 Npcs are in Idle mode which means that their ai's kick in more or less randomly i.e. wander, eat, start conversation etc. What I did expect was that there would at least be a significant improvement on the Win7 PC, but there's virtually no improvement, maybe even worse with Fallout. That's where I'm beginning to think that a stronger computer, no matter how powerful, won't make any difference either, that the game engines have reached their limits. I'm hoping here that someone proves me wrong and has stretched his/her games a lot further without any hitches.

I'm quite happy with the Natural Faces mod in combination with a hi-rez skin pack. I can't speak for the mod you're using -never tried it. Modding for Oblivion is the same procedure as for Fallout 3 and New Vegas. Can't speak for Skyrim either because I haven't played it yet. My bet is that all games are pretty much the same for modding.

Playing the 100 % identical game on a Pentium 4 XP SP3 4GB ram and a Quad Core Windows 7 64 Professional 8 GB ram the XP wins the race. The graphics Card on the Win7 comp is twice as fast as the XP. Games like Crysis 3 and Anno 2070 run with at least 30+ Frames with maxed out settings. That info is just to set aside any hardware issues. My Oblivion is heavily modded, no doubt, but if it weren't for the CS and mods I would have stopped caring 4 years ago as is the case with 99% of the other games which I play, enjoy and then forget about. After endless hours of trying out every trick in the book, from anti-stutter mods, Wrye bashing, OBMM-ing, TES 4 cleaning and merging, you name it, bottom line, the same problems persist. Here's the thing that bugs me most: when I'm in an interior cell with 20+ other npcs the framerate drops to around 10 or less fps. If I turn away from them and stare at the wall it goes up to 30. Their AI converstation also then kicks in smoothly. The moment I turn around to face the crowd FPS drops again , sound gets cut etc. My conclusion is that it's got to be a cpu processing issue not graphics. When I'm out in the open, solo, with hi-rez landscape there's no probs at all, smooth sailing. My best guess is that it's got to do with simultaneous, multiple NPC ai processing which is maxing out the cpu - on the other hand why should it make a difference if I'm facing them or not? My questions are: has anyone experienced the same syptoms as mine and did they manage to solve them? will sheer computing power solve the issue or has the game engine simply reached it's limits? XP faster than Win 7 for Oblivion -best info I got so far is that DX 9 is faster than DX10 which is what Oblivion supposedly runs with on a DX 11 computer

After migrating my very heavily modded Fallout 3 from XP 32-bit to Win7-64 I had the problem that one particular area JUST WOULD NOT LOAD. In fact it was my RTS Settlement which for me is the most important part of my game since I spent ages building it and have about 20 companions staying there. The game crashed as soon as I got close and also when loading the last savegame where I always end the day anyway. After trying every trick in the book I remembered that there was a 4GB memory patcher from Oblivion (the large address aware enabler for Fallout 3 never worked for me on xp). So I patched Fose, the launcher and the fallout.exe...and heureka suddenly I was in my Settlement again...I couldn't believe it and saved the game immediately!!! I have no idea why it worked but it did. Every option with fomm and fo3edit which I spent hours on before had been useless. So I thought I should share that experience. For those interested here's the link http://wiki.tesnexus.com/index.php/4GB_memory_patcher

Maybe you know if there's an ingame tool for Fallout 3 like "refscope" for Oblivion which I used extensively. You can click on any npc or object and get all infos on it and in particular whether it's defined in the original Fallout esm or in an addon. The objects obstructing you might belong to another mod which you could then repair with the load order or even disabling it. I once looked around for something like refscope for Fallout but found nothing. Perhaps someone reading this knows.

Fascinating topic. Browsing aimlessly I came across it. And....it cannot possibly be "flogging a dead horse"...ever. I rather get the impression that those who want it silenced are worried about something. Depending on how much a player allows it a role-play game can be a great discovery of oneself and that should never be something to worry about

Very important rule - never use the "placeatme" command. Then you might ask...then what the hell is that command doing there anyway? Good question...no idea.. all I know is that Bethesda themselves warn that it causes savegame bloating and that the object in question is continuously duplicated - which explains why you now have three adorable canine friends...the more the merrier. In my case it was pure luck, as a begginer years ago I came across the moveto and the placeatme, decided on moveto and that's always worked fine. The problem you mention is actually in the savegame, my belief, and savegames, also my belief, can't be repaired. Resurrecting is no probs otherwise...prid and enable only necessary if the npc has left the gameworld and you want his/her ai to resurrect too.

fighting two deathclaw matriarchs with a deathclaw gauntlet was fun....I won finally but it finished off an annual drug supply

actually - I probably would buy a Nuka-Cola Fridge if I saw one...hmm

"esmify self" with Wrye Flash does it, although I've only done it temporarily to mod a mod that's an esp. No idea what happens if you leave it a master - but I suppose that if you can then still create a bashed patch after that it'll be ok.

Firstly, THANKYOU to everybody who posted a reply here. What impresses me most is the high standard of the discussion in general and certain members who give some very extensive, enjoyable plus interesting reading with plenty of food for thought. I hope that someone at Bethesda with some say by chance reads them. If they don't use this site for feedback...then...eem...yeah... Also interesting, I find, is that 99% of the things said were credible despite being totally opposite in opinion. Considering that, together with the quality of the points made, rather than drawing a conclusion about Skyrim for myself, I might sooner be inclined to give Bethesda credit for creating worlds where almost everyone, to a large degree, can find what he or she is looking for. Of course, a lot of the points made are pure facts, indisputable and as far as they’re concerned it’s why I was lucky to have started my first Bethesda game after most of the patches and fixes were out. As long as these things are eventually fixed I won’t want to use a Fatman or Midas Comet on them. But I will remember if it was they or a modder who fixed them. At one stage someone made the point of why I should want to ask the “real fans of Bethesda” another what I meant by “real gamers”. The latter is simple to answer, real gamers i.e. who play, as opposed to reviews in magazines and commercial sites that have, to put it mildly, certain obligations and rules to abide with when it comes to evaluating the supplier side of their income. The “real fans of Bethesda” is a slightly more complex issue, but to put it in a nutshell, if you wanted to buy a good bottle of wine you would prefer to consult a wine connoisseur to an expert on beer. I said to myself, “well..at least 200 hrs should be enough, I hope there are a couple around to read this thread” I am totally taken aback to discover that 200 hrs. is nothing for most, seriously, I thought I was one of the very few lunatics around. None of my friends, family or personal contacts are into gaming AT ALL. Live like that for years on end and you start thinking you might be a freak. Then, inevitably, as the hours and hours with Bethesda accumulated, I started wondering what it was about the whole concept of their games that kept and still keeps me going. I’ve played A LOT of games, totally different genres, but once completed, that’s it, no return. Half-Life 2 or Crysis 2, Mafia2, great games, great atmosphere, play once through, goodbye. The only exceptions are games like Anno, Settlers and Flight Simulator but even they don’t compare to Bethesda when it comes to time spent. No question that it’s the mods that finally do it. If it weren’t for them (and a lot of them are really amazing) the vanilla worlds would become monotonous and I would have left them long ago. But a lot of mods are in essence tools to do crazy and fun stuff with. That, combined with the construction set is, to me, a fantastic duo. Then I’m also extremely grateful to the developers of the tools to make them function. I’ve probably spent as much time getting everything to work together as playing, but no matter how tiresome it was I never even dreamt of giving up, which, come to think of it, is also pretty incredible. However, apart from wanting to know what Bethesda gamers think of Skyrim in comparison to its predecessors there is that undefinable grey zone of hope and apprehension of WANTING to hear very specific comments about aspects of the game, as I’ve experienced, that are being increasingly neglected and underestimated with every new edition that comes out. One, and now comes the point where some might not agree, is individuality and variation in npc dialog. Above all amongst themselves. It dawned on me after completing the main quests of New Vegas. NOBODY SAYS ANYTHING ANYMORE. Even companions stand around like dumbos looking into the void without animations and worse still, WORDS. It’s something that pisses me off (I’m getting angry and losing it). Compared to that, hearing 30 times a day that you encountered a mud-crab is like paradise. "More calmly", in Oblivion npcs are chatterboxes that are always busy and in New Vegas static deaf-mutes, Fallout 3 is in-between. The magazine reviews focus on quest gameplay and above all graphics. I love great graphics but they can’t hold me. It’s what’s in my imagination that holds me, what I visualize, more than what I actually see. A lot of people refused to buy a tv-set when they first came out, calling them a bastardization of radio entertainment. They had a point to make, I believe. Sure, you advertise a game emphasizing it’s fantastic dialogues and nobody buys it. But dialogue is the salt that makes a taste perfect and gets you to visualize, the more visualization, the more imagination involved, the longer it contributes to a game’s lifespan and atmosphere. A really, really impressive scenario is from the modder of the latest part of Mothership Zeta Crew. The conference. “WOW” I thought. “This is the real McCoy!!” A really great voiced scenario. And only then the visual aspect made everything perfect. My hair stood on end. There are a lot of other things to say about the great potential in Bethesda’s games but the general question is “where are they heading?” It doesn’t necessarily have to be a set-back if they focus on consoles more. I have to admit that the game-play graphics I saw on youtube gave me that impression and got me wondering if that didn’t come at the expense of something else, which is then usually audio or dialogue, plus individuality of npc faces (another big difference between Oblivion and Fallout). It's npc diversity and complexity in combination with dialogue that I'm personally most keen on. Npc interaction. A world that stays alive. After the storyline it's mainly that, amongst other things, that'll keep me hooked to the game. That is when I start playing proper. I''ve gotten to know the world, was kicked around, acheived something, made friends and enemies, moved on from a nobody to a somebody, feel at home and important, and now I'm going to turn the tables, do only what I want to do - in full control. This is where I think non-multiplayer has it's advantages. You can decide how much control you delegate to the game or assume for yourself. And you are also the master of time. The more complex the npcs are the more fun it is.For the developers these are of course things that require a lot more work, hence money. But if it's an issue with crossroad-status then there’s trouble ahead. My conclusion regarding that, if my suspicion is right and Skyrim even more silent, and it's successor even more, is that today's fans will finally stop being fans and modders will lose inspiration, they’re only human. But I don’t want to conclude on the (possible) downsides. The upsides far outweigh and I haven’t grown tired of re-visiting Cyrodil, the Capital Wasteland or the Mohave and can’t imagine that I ever will - even if it’s just to say hello to old friends, companions and super-mutants.

Every now and then I have to clear my hard disk of savegames and noticed that of all my games, Oblivion, Fallout 3, and Vegas, Fallout 3 has by far the biggest file size. Oblivion is the most heavily modded game and has only about 10mb per save whereas Fallout 3 has 31mb. I don't think it's a bloat because file sizes remain the same unless I add more mods. In Fallout 3 I put it down to my RTS mod or maybe the stacked containers with loot that I can't sell coz traders have no caps. I'm curious to know how the file size compares to others, whether it's standard or crazy.

Quickest solution, to which I'm inclined, deactivate all mods and load the latest savegame. What stops me from doing that at this point is that it's a big hassle getting all the textures right again, especially with npcs faces. I can't remember in which order I installed the mods and archive invalidation has no memory of that. But once I saw a tool in the mods section that actually remembered your texture settings and restored them...at the time I only took note of that which was short-sighted coz sooner or later it becomes an issue anyway.

Thanks again...I'll give it a try. It's not actually a CTD but a freeze that happens after about 3-8 seconds (If I stand still, otherwise as soon as an action is initiated) . It's as if something that's being loaded is causing it. I can see that my armour has been removed and textures (Pip-Boy arm) looks ok but then suddenly everything stops...gnr still runs in the background.

screenshots 157 and 162 reminded me of things I've seen in my games too and as far as I remember it was when I tried overclocking nvidia graphics card. In any case my guess is that the card is running hot at those particular moments