How do you all put up with this game?

[isgod101]

I already have AII but I get the big red <!> when trying to run the Real Time Settler mod, I cant build anythig >.<

 

Thank you for HUGE manual pot guy!!!!

How many mods are you trying to run? Cause for me anything over like 125 gives me <!>. And it causes a whole lot of other problems (game crashing, cant bring up escape menu, etc., etc.) Try disabling a few or using FO3 Plugin Utility to merge a few.

[csb]

I am running more than 125. A lot more (albeit many are small mods that fix or modify something very small in-game). The biggest cause of such things are mod conflicts, the vast majority of which are fixable easily by learning and using FO3Edit (the FO3Plug-in is also good, but far more limited in what it can do) and creating a merge patch. So get FO3Edit, Miax's great guide on using it, and learn how to resolve mod conflicts and avoid things like ugly "!" and game crashes.

 

Merging two mods together completely (especially by relying on an automated tool) is, I think, not a great practice. Sure, it works ... but you create potential problems when installing mod updates. So overall, it is not the optimal conflict resolution approach.

[mooncarver]

I am one of those lucky few as well. I wont say I never have a CTD or freeze, but they are the rarity and they only happen to me occasionally when I am entering an area with an extreme amount of references for the game to load.

 

Coming to Fallout 3 from Oblivion I had in mind what I needed to do to get a stable game. From the very beginning I have had UF3P, FOSE, FOMM and FO3Edit installed and have been making good use of them. I am convinced that the majority of crashing is caused by a lack of proper game setup and overtaxing by "dirty' mods or unresolved conflicts. There is a little bit of inherent instability with the Gamebryo engine, but in my opinion it's not nearly as bad a game as people like GSManners constantly whine about it being. (Seriously man, if you really hate the game as much as you let on, why do you bother playing it?)

 

If you install and use the correct utilities, and have your PC set up correctly and optimized, you'll find that your problems with Fallout 3 will be cut to the bare minimum. A good place to go for advice on how to set up your machine is TweakGuides.com. I highly recommend using the tweaking companion and following the steps in the Fallout 3 tweaking section of the website.

http://www.tweakguides.com/

http://www.tweakguides.com/Fallout3_1.html

 

well, yes. this is without a doubt the most reasonable thing to do. but on the other hand, i understand his reaction. video games provide distraction from daily life routines. this kind of free time distraction becomes more and more absurd when you have to search the internet for long tech-articles, trying to find a way to make this game at least playable till the end. even then you can never be sure that it will work.

i've read a lot of complaints and praises regarding the playability of this game and my conclusion is, that there are many different hardware and software combinations within every machine which affect the stability and performance of modern games, especially those with a complex open world design like fallout. different combinations of mods makes this even more complicated. thats why i think it's wrong to assume that those who are claiming their version runs perfectly fine are liars as well as assuming that those who can't get it to work are lazy. both cases are very likely, and everything in between as well.

[VergilPrime]

I was using Jessi, Kelsey, RTS, Mini base and a Megaton House upgrade, but guys im an idiot, I somehow managed to install the update for it without the origional mod. I had the ESM but NONE of the meshes installed. My baaad! Im only using FOMM stuff and the Salley fix now (on top of all the DLCs.)

[jasonblake]

Wow, thats horrible. I know Oblivion, Fallout3 and Bethesda's other games are notroious for their bugs and glitches but wow... I've never exprieneced anything that bad. Sure, the game crashes on me every now and then but I just Ctrl+Alt+Delete then reload.

 

My cousin on the other hand had nearly as much luck as you. He rented it for his 360 and got stuck outside BoS becuase of Dr. Li being a dumb ***** (those are his words not mine =P).

[Thasic]

Okay, I see a common thread in almost every reply, "Sure the game crashes once in a while, but...". That is the entire problem. What other game, not made by Bethesda, has inherent stability problems years after release? I am 47 years old. I have been playing computer games since the Commodore 64 was the hot computer. I have never had any program of any kind have regular and near constant CTDs before. Ever. I buy and play a dozen games every year. This is just ridiculous. I don't want to go on a bash Bethesda rant but who else can the finger be pointed at? I am fairly computer competent and I have tried just about every cure I have found on this and other web sites and I still get the big CTD. I am about ready to give up. Dragon Age is out in a few weeks. Then Mass Effect 2 hits the shelves. When these games get released I think I'll just dump this piece of crap in the garbage where it belongs.

[csb]

Thasic:

 

I can name several, but these two will suffice as an example: Witcher and Assassin's Creed also crash on occasion, and usually for inexplicable reasons.

 

The CTD isn't relegated to just games either. I've had crashes in Microsoft Office (Word and Visio mostly), Visual Studio, IBM's WebSphere Application Developer, the list goes on.

 

The reasons are fairly simple, though tracking the exact causes even with dump logs, etc. can be excruciatingly painful:

 

Memory leaks are the #1 candidate. Almost every application of size (and games like Fallout are huge) leak memory over time. Leak it enough and BOOM.

 

Second is related to resource allocation at the system level -- sometimes pointers get confused and end up pointing to null. This can be application-caused or operating system-caused. As equally frustrating to debug as the memory leak issue, because many of them are not reproducible consistently in testing.

 

Lastly is exception handling. The application (in this case Fallout3) encounters something that occurs that was allowed for and an exception is thrown. Developers try to catch these and find a non-fatal and graceful way to recover. However, in large applications -- just as with memory leakage and resource allocation issues -- it is hard to do, especially when the application framework gives wide latitude to the user's interaction. As George Carlin would've said, "We're silly bits of protoplasm from the planet earth." And we do goofy stuff in-game that the developers never even considered, and therefor no graceful recovery was allowed for.

 

The last area to cover is by and large our own fault as much as Bethesda's:

 

On Bethesda's end, their troubleshooting assistance overall generally sucks. I've dealt with them and it is frustrating beyond belief. Their insistence on using SecuROM as their security package doesn't help much either. Especially in regards to Windows Vista. This makes for very, very frustrating installation experiences.

 

Okay, now let's point the finger to us -- the user. I buy the game, I install the game. Things don't go right. So I must ask myself:

 

Did I look at forums, etc. before I installed the game? Oops. No, sorry to say, I didn't.

 

Did I bother to make sure things like video drivers and codecs were up to speed for Fallout3? (Especially after suffering similar issues with Oblivion). Oops, my bad. No I didn't.

 

Did I RTFM? Oops. *point to signature block*

 

But I have now :) ... and by reading the forums, by implementing sound advice that has been proven effective, I now enjoy a pretty much stable Fallout3. Does it crash on occasion? Yes. But so do a lot of applications, so I can't just single out Fallout3.

[hubba12]

FO 3 is not unstable. It is simply not as forgiving as other games.

 

If I put a loaf of bread on my backseat and hit the breaks - no problem.

 

If I put a wedding cake on my backseat and hit the brakes - huge problem.

 

Does anyone blame the wedding cake? (I know, this analogy sucks but maybe you get the idea.)

[Branimirzg]

I had only few crashes in more than 300 hours of gameplay...and those crashes were caused

by 100 mods...Game will work good if you don't mess up to much...

[VergilPrime]

I get what your saying, but look at Halo 3 for example. Huge game, shiney game, we love you game. How many game stopping glitches? 1! And you have to intentionally defy the parameters of the game to do it.

 

Now Beth is a huge company that makes lots of money and im sure that they could at the very least pay their workers to do their job and FIND those 14 memory leaks and fix them. At least spend a good few months debugging the game stopping issues before moving on to making DLCs ok? Im not talking about the occasional CTD im talking about GAME STOPPING as in YOU CANT COMPLETE THE GAME.

 

When I got to project purity and couldnt get back into the gift shop to follow Dr Li out I thought "Oh my game must be scratched" so I got a new one. Didnt help. I replaced my 360 (for like the 7th time) and that didnt help. I thought maybe Beth was working on a new patch to fix the issue, what i found was they were releasing their umpteenth DLC that you can spend more of your money on.

 

So let me get this straight... Beth spends their time making new addons for the game when some players cant even finish the main game? And I checked the forums on Bethsoft, when I saw how many people had those issues it was like retarded. And they werent getting back to those people either, they were helping people with CTDs and what not, but they wouldnt even aknowledge the presence of some bigger issues.

 

So yeah, I blame the cake bakers... mmm cake metophore...