I started FO3 GOTY edition...

[PZ]

... the other day. It was not designed for Windows 10, but with a tweak it ran just fine. I forgot how much I liked this game

[Art Blade]

Finally some quality time.. I already thought you'd have even less time now than before retiring 

[PZ]

  The other day was the one time I was able to do a bit of gaming, and that was mainly to help mandru get through the installation.  He sounded like he really wanted to play the game.

[Art Blade]

didn't he just I'm sure you made his day 

[PZ]

 

[mandru]

My FO3 GOTY is an enjoyable blast but it's started giving me a Yao Guai level real world fight. 

The first day I loaded it and played for 6 hours or so without a glitch.  The second day and since I'll randomly get total system lock.  I have to hard close the computer by pressing and holding the power button followed by a restart. It's not something that can be recovered using the Ctrl+Alt+Delete method of accessing the Task Manager to close and reboot just the game.

Sometimes I'll load it up and get in a few hours of uninterrupted play time.  Other times (more often than not) I'll get into the game and have a series of crashes that occur the first time I kill anything forcing a total system restart.

I've pushed through some of this game play tie up by overwriting my last Save Point after every skirmish even if I know there's another enemy right around the next corner.  Also after a series of 3 or 4 quick crashes when killing the same enemy I've opened the console, targeted the problematic enemy by clicking on them and then used the Kill command.

I hate losing the level building XPs but if it's a group of enemies that I can only get halfway through before a crash I'll resort to using the console Kill on the whole lot, make a stop to over write my last save before attempting to loot them (because you never know if going out into the open will draw more fire), and then proceed on with what ever task or whim I'm pursuing.  Once I get past a problem spot with that tactic I'll go back to normal game play and often I'll be able to make kills with out the chronic crash interruptions for a good length of time but always covering my progress with saves after every encounter.

I've also found if I've covered a lot of distance on foot those regular saves will allow me to keep any loot I've picked up scavenging along the way before encountering that next big crash simply because the act of killing something has "Wrath of Khan-ed" my PC back. 


I've still got to figure out if all of the FO3 GOTY content is actively running or if I have to complete the base game and then they unlock. 

[PZ]

Sorry to hear that you're having problems playing, mandru, but if you are up to a challenge, you might try this fix that I found on a gaming web site:

"I know that there are so many threads about this already but i cant find any information that would apply to me. I purchased the game through steam today, taking advantage of the awesome summer sales, and love it however i cant deal with the crashing. It just freezes and i have to end the task to do anything. What can i do to stop it?"

I remember this. Had to change some configurations in the .ini file. Let me check if I find the fix. Try this:

Step 1)
Open up the fallout.ini file in: My Documents\My Games\Fallout3
Find the line:
bUseThreadedAI=0
change it to:
bUseThreadedAI=1
Add another line after it and insert:
iNumHWThreads=2
This will limit the game to 2 cores and prevent the engine bug from causing the game to freeze.

That fix seems to have fixed the random crashes for some but not all folks.

Also, how are you starting the game? Steam or direct exe launch?

If you are using the official Fallout 3 launcher, it allows you to check the DLC you want loaded when you play the game - essentially the FO3 DLC is like a mod that is being added in when the game starts.  If you are using fallout3.exe to directly start the game, then you are not given those options.

[mandru]

Thanks for the tip PZ.

It was scary for me but the change has been made and we'll see how it goes. <insert fingers crossed emoticon here  >

[Art Blade]

good luck, mandru

[T.V.]

I've still got to figure out if all of the FO3 GOTY content is actively running or if I have to complete the base game and then they unlock. 

The GOTY content should be active from the start.
If You have the "The local Flavor" quest in Your Pip-boy, and an undetected location named "Riverboat Landing" in the south east, then at least the add-on "Point Lookout" is active.

If You still have problems with crashes, I strongly recommends the "UPDATED Unofficial Fallout 3 Patch" http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout3/mods/19122/?, witch also includes the fix PZ described. 

[PZ]

Thanks for the post T.V. 

I did not know of that Nexus mod, but it definitely would be something I would try if I experienced the random crashes.

Best of luck mandru - I know how exasperating technology problems can be

[mandru]

T.V., thanks I appreciate the info on the FO3 mod but I'm too leery of making changes on a game that could force me to experiment with modding.  I've watched several videos of installing modding tool and it's usage and it just goes too far over my head to attempt.

PC's?  I just drive them.  I don't climb under the hood and tinker with or try to hot rod stuff I don't understand.



PZ, with that change to the ini. file on my first attempt at running the game I was able to sustain a 4 hour session.  It was a good sign that something was improved.

However at about the 4 hour mark the system again crashed but in a weird way.  This time the game went down showing my desk top but in the instant before everything froze up a 1 inch wide white horizontal bar displayed completely across the middle of the monitor with the center justified text "   11:00pm East Coast   ".

The oddity of this was that I don't think that the text was drawn from the game.  The entire base game FO3 is situated on the East Coast so there would be no need to qualify the time zone and the fact that the crash occurred at 12:08am in my time zone which would have made the actual time on the East coast 2:08pm considering the 2 hour delay.

I don't believe that there is anything I own that doesn't have some sort of idiosyncrasies as part of the package.  But still 4 hours between crashes would be an acceptable improvement.  I'm going back into the game in a bit to see if my luck holds out with this ini. file patch.

[PZ]

Good luck mandru - I'm keeping fingers crossed for you. 

That error message might have nothing to do with the game, but a legacy from something else running on a crashing system.

I have not played in a while, but I did experience one freeze-up while still in the vault at the beginning of the game.

[mandru]

I found out that weird bar across my screen on that crash I described was FO3 related but why it had that text message is still a puzzle.

On an otherwise fairly easy quest I was having trouble locating Agatha's violin in vault 92 so I exited the game and looked up a tips page to see what I was missing.  I left the tip page open and reentered the game so I could Alt+Tab back and forth between the two only FO3 is not forgiving with that sort of window manipulation.

When I needed some prompting I switched to the tip page easily but when I tried to go back to the game it had crashed and would only display as that bar across the screen I described above and the text this time identified it as "Fallout 3".  So only the game crashed and not the entire system.  A quick visit to the Task Manager to force the game to close and I was able to log right back in and because I'd made a save right before this event there was no loss of progress. 

I find I'm now getting play sessions of several hours at a time without crashes.


An added bonus of traveling on foot (for exploration value) from vault 92 back to Agatha to deliver the violin I stumbled across the crashed Zetan space craft and picked up the powerful alien blaster that easily turns my targets into piles of ashes similar to the Martian ray blasts from the old '1953'  War of the Worlds movie.

The only downside to the alien blaster is that ash piles don't glow the way laser goo does.  It makes recovering loot from the fallen in a hostile encounter with several enemies over a sizable area considerably tougher.  But then there's no shortage of enemies that want to attack first and eat me later, so it all evens out I guess. 

[Art Blade]

perhaps one trick makes the game more obedient: Before ALT-TABbing out, press ALT (keep it pressed) and press ENTER. That should make your game go into windowed mode. From there, you should be able to just toggle between your browser and the game. Once you're done, do the ALT+ENTER again so it goes back to fullscreen mode.