Fallout 4

[Art Blade]

I met Cait, a tough as nails Irish girl, a cage fighter in the Combat Zone. I think she's going to be more fun than Piper, the journalist, to hang out with in the wastelands.

By the way, dogs love to fetch stuff that you throw away and tend to bring it back. Fun game. Come to think of it, one shouldn't expect a dog to come back if one throws a hand grenade away and the dog goes for it as if on steroids. If one hears the explosion, one can only hope that the dog wasn't as fast as the grenade. Perhaps betting on dogs might be a good idea to make some money..

[Art Blade]

Erm.. she's quite a handful. Basically indeed the complete opposite of Piper. What one loves, the other one hates and vice versa. I might have to get Piper back unless I want to change my gaming style towards being a complete badass and bully.

Yeah.. will do that, get Piper back.

[PZ]

I was browsing the Nexus and found a sniper rifle I could not resist installing - called "The Dude". I have yet to try it out.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Yeah, Cait is fun, but has a different style. Take off all your clothes and run around, she likes that. ahem. But her side quest is really good, I would suggest just running around with her and not doing any quests or talking to people (kinda like Strong the super mutant) until you get her affinity up to where you can do her quest, and her attitude changes after that.

I did the same thing with the main quest, and left the three factions all alive at the end, though after that, the game isn't really coded for that type of ending, so you'll get some weird requests like PAM will send you on missions to kill BoS patrols, even though you're still friendly with the BoS (if you did it right) so they won't attack you, so you just walk up to them and murder them. This won't get you in trouble with the BoS either, since those patrols don't "exist" to them, as they are created by the quest from PAM. If you want power armor, that's the way to go, as you'll get 2-3 sets, mostly complete, each time.

There is a loading time speed up mod, but I don't see it listed on my Nexus account page, so not sure where I got it, I'll look at what it is when I get home tonight. But essentially, to dumb the game down for use on those console things hooked up to TVs in the living room, the frame rate is locked at 60 fps. The game can actually freak out if you unlock the frame rate and run it at a higher rate that a decent video card in a PC can run the game at, opposed to whatever sandwich crackers and cheese they have for video cards in a console. Since the game is locked at 60fps ALL THE TIME and the game engine runs at that speed, loading times are longer than they need to be. Anyway, the mod unlocks the frame rate during loading screens and makes it go as fast as your video card can run. I think the frame rate on my machine bumps up well over 200fps during load screens and maybe over 300fps. Anyway, it's supposed to make load times faster, but I didn't notice that much difference, but I never saw two minute load times either. Since I added the high res texture DLC right after adding the load screen fps unlocker, I think I'm back to the same times I was before. Or something like that.

[Art Blade]

PZ, I've got tons and tons of weapons of all flavours and I've already got a hard time deciding which ones to carry around and which ones to stash away for later use (as if ever) so I'm not yet ready for weapon mods

D_B, thanks for your post. Sandwich crackers and cheese for vid cards in a console, eh? I burst out in one loud HAHA! when I read that, nice. Cheers for that. I'll consider switching companions at least once in a while. Right now I'm catching up on perhaps 15 quests that I piled up and I'm working my way down that list, with Piper. Then I'll switch out girlfriends, I'll use Cait to cheer me up while running around naked. Ahem. And ah, do her side quest, that's why, yes.

The frame rate locked at 60 fps, I heard about it. One guy on YouTube said he had to lock it again because going over 60 fps ruined the lip sync during his videos. I noticed that but didn't know the reason for the lip de-sync. Two minutes or so is a lot, which is what it felt like. I actually need to use my stopwatch from my keyboard to take the time and see what the real loading times are.

[LowPolyOWG]

It's Bugthesda's decision to lock physics calculation to the frame rate

[Art Blade]

why, oh why are they doing that? Ah, they forgot that a gaming PC compared to a console is like a super $p@rts car compared to a tricycle -- I mean those tricycles with pedals, for kids to play with.

Or, more likely, probably they thought, "hey, let's annoy the living daylights out of any PC gamer so they understand a gaming PC is no better than a console and therefore if they want to game they should simply buy a console for a lot less money than a gaming PC. Yeah. That will ensure our jobs in the console game development. Yeah, let's do that"

[LowPolyOWG]

It's more like this: "Let's use an ancient engine rather than give it a massive overhaul/write a new one since we are some incompetent monkeys. Also, modders will fix it anyways, why should we"

[Art Blade]

that's true -- games that allow modding are way better off regarding bugs and playability, however not all bugs can be fixed by the community.

[LowPolyOWG]

True, especially when it comes to engine specific settings (physics/lighting and rendering). You would need a software engineering degree within game development to fiddle with that.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Here's the loading mod:

http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/10283/?

It turns off vsync during loading screens, so it can use the full power of this space station.... errr... maybe I'll just have this cheese & crackers....

[Art Blade]

thank you, D_B

I just had a massive pizza diavolo that was completely hidden under a thick coat of molten Gouda and Mozarella 

[Art Blade]

It can be expected to shorten the significant load time under SSD environment.
(Under HDD environment does not seem to have much effect)

I'm running FO4 from an HDD so it's likely not going to help much. In the meantime I have been taking the times of several loading screens and they were usually only around 15 to 30 seconds. I think when it takes forever, it mainly happens when I'm in Diamond City. Coming out of a building an loading that city environment seems to be the worst. I haven't been there yet to take the time but I'll let you know once I got it.

[Art Blade]

I now had 01:20 (or 80 seconds) loading time when coming out of an underground station (why is it "subway" in AE?) into the wasteland. Feels like an eternity. And it was not even near DC. I'm curious what the loading time there will be like.

I had to get down into the underground station because it was one of Preston's rescue missions that I nearly failed because I had been ignoring it for quite some time. It was the "kidnapping at county crossing" mission where a farmer was held captive by some type of raiders.

Actually, I had been ignoring it since we last talked about Preston handing out those jobs on end and to better avoid him. Turns out that the mission had a timer. I first noticed that after returning to Sanctuary. During the conversation with Preston about a mission success (I think it was about the Flinch farm and they wanted to join the minutemen) I got a mission failed notification. Hm?

I thought, well, might be because I talked to Preston. So I reloaded a quicksave and instead of chatting with Preston, I started to empty my deeeeeeeep pockets and sort that stuff into containers at Sanctuary. Then the mission failure popped up again. Now it was clear it was on a timer. I used two savegames back when I was still on the Flinch farm and went to the underground station from there, wasn't far, and managed to pass the mission this time.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Ah, yeah, without an SSD drive, you really don't see much improvement, as those platters can only spin so fast.

What's "AE"? They are technically subway stations, though unlike Fallout 3 you don't have to use them to get to other places, you can just walk there as it's one big map, unlike FO3 where it was a bunch of smaller maps and you essentially teleport between them when using the subways.

Once Preston gives you a Minuteman quest, it's on a timer, so it's best to just go do it and get it out of the way. Only don't talk to Preston after you've done it and he won't bother you for a while. It will auto-complete on it's own after a set amount of time, then he might find you and give you another one. You can try to avoid him as best you can, but he may just teleport to you once you enter the settlement he's in. Then if he does give you one, just do it and don't turn it in again to give you another reprieve for a while. I forget what level you have to be at before they taper off and eventually stop, but it's somewhere after level 60, maybe 80?