Fallout 3 discussion

[Crandaeolon]

Unfortunately for me, Fallout is not as playable as it appeared; it's stuffed chock full of graphical glitches. My interface keeps disappearing for one, text is unreadable half the time for another. It's mildly unplayable. Any ideas?

Hmm. Works fine for me - did you try Win98 compatibility mode? It sometimes helps with older games.

150 days?! I rested to heal after one fight with a scorpion I found in a random encounter, and it took 9 days! There had better not be much to do before that timelimit is removed; I like to take my time in these games.

Without spoiling much, you can extend the time limit quite easily by 100 days. The time limit can be removed completely as well, but that is near endgame anyways.

Character creation tips:

Gifted is a must-have Trait. Drugs are great in tough spots, so Chem Resistant is another good one to pick - halved effect time is no biggie but avoiding addiction is very useful. Small Frame is so-and-so. Other Traits do generally more harm than good, with maybe the exception of Fast Shot, and whatever you do, don't pick Skilled.

Bonus Rate of Fire @ level 9: 7 Agi, 6 Int, 4 Per. Hitting requirements should be no problem.

Toughness is another good perk. 6 Str, 6 Lck. Harder to hit reqs with traditional agi-int characters, but damage resistance on top of armour is nothing to sneer at.

Going for Sniper is probably not smart in Fallout 1; it's 8 Per, 8 Agi @ level 18. Should be rather easy to attain in Fallout 2 though.

XP and skill-boosting perks are generally rubbish.

Drugs can be used prior to leveling to reach Perk requirements.

[econ21]

Other Traits do generally more harm than good...

I liked Good natured - you gain a lot of pluses that you will use and whereas most of the minuses will be in combat skills you won't use. Tagging your preferred combat skill(s) makes it very easy to offset the one or two minuses you do care about.

[frogbeastegg]

It grows weirder. If I alt-tab it will bring back my vanished interface, so I've managed to get a bit further. However I think some of the quest resolutions are not saving/registering correctly. For example

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

I took down Gizmo. I had the tape recorder in my inventory while I talked him into hiring me to be his new assassin. I then took the evidence to the guard near the gate. He asked me to join the raid on Gizmo. I did, and killed the fat lardy lump with the aid of the guards. I got XP and stuff, and the guard congratulated me on some good work. Next time I talked to him the guard had changed his tune. Now I'm a murderer because I took Gizmo down without evidence and in an illegal way, and had better leave town.

Gah! The quest has now reappeared in my quest log as incomplete.

Other quests are refusing to advance at all. The "take down the Skullz" quest won't budge; I think I've done what I should, and checked a walkthrough in my desperation to get an idea of whether all is working correctly or not. According to the two guides I checked I have done the right things for the quest to advance. I'm not being offered the necessary dialogue options.

I've got a nice level 4 character and I was beginning to enjoy myself.

[TinCow]

Sounds like you've got a very bugged game. Did you install any player-made patches or did you just stick with what was on the install disc? IIRC, FO2 was borderline unplayable until fans fixed a lot of the bugs 'unofficially.'

[frogbeastegg]

The game installs itself as version 1.2. I haven't added anything to it, no player patches and no attempt at installing a seperate official patch.

The absolute worst thing here is that I was beginning to like the game!

(Mind you, I do like being able to alt+tab in and out of it without load times, game glitches, or my PC slowing down a bit because of the game occupying a large memory footprint. Less keen on needing to alt+tab out of it every other minute though.)

[discovery1]

Yeah, Fallout is very buggy. Its worth it though. For the kill Gizmo quest, as far as I know you always take the evidence to the guy who owns the store(Killwater?). He then sends you to the guard.

The break up the skullz is as I recall tricky(they are the gang at the back of the hotel right?). You have to choose the right dialogue paths and even the slighest misstep screws you over. And you probably need the right stats to get them, since as I recall you have to talk your way into their gang.

[Crandaeolon]

Quests, particularly dialog-oriented ones, sometimes require right attributes to complete. Mentats can help with these.

Occasionally the quests are also time-dependant, meaning that you have to wait a specific time (day, night etc.) or simply enough time to pass for something to happen.

I liked Good natured - you gain a lot of pluses that you will use and whereas most of the minuses will be in combat skills you won't use. Tagging your preferred combat skill(s) makes it very easy to offset the one or two minuses you do care about.

Yeah, Good Natured is okay. Still, you'll benefit a lot from high combat skills and yet can get by with around 70% for most other skills.

[econ21]

According to the two guides I checked I have done the right things for the quest to advance.

Were these the two you checked?

Per Jorner's nearly ultimate guide to Fallout:

http://user.tninet.se/~jyg699a/fallout.html

and Steve's Guide to Fallout:

http://www.the-spoiler.com/RPG/Inter...6/stevefo1.htm

I think they are the best two walkthroughs, IIRC. (I know I advised you not to let yourself get spoiled, but I confess I used walkthroughs a lot - I fear your experience is reminding me why).

[Whacker]

Frogness, you did the right things to advance/complete that question in particular, as the Galvanized Bovine suggested I also think your game is severely bugged. Best thing I can suggest is to uninstall the game, reinstall fresh, then install these two patches:

v1.2 http://www.teamx.ru/cgi-bin/load.cgi.../fallup12w.rar

v1.3 "unofficial" http://www.teamx.ru/cgi-bin/load.cgi...s/fallup13.rar

I know your game says v1.2, but I found that when I installed FO2 from my DVD (I think we have the same thing, white label), it said it was patched but it really wasn't, so I suggest you manually install both of the above no matter what.

As to your graphics issues, that's hit and miss as far as I can tell. I have an AMD/Nvidia 6800/XP Pro SP2 machine and it's always worked fine for me, no matter what. People with ATI cards have reported problems. Give this a read here, might help you out: http://www.nma-fallout.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5061

Good luck!

[frogbeastegg]

Gah! Shortly after that last post the game made my money vanish. All of it. With no warning. ~:mecry I had a save game 15 minutes before that (I'm saving in multiple slots obsessively) but now I'm paranoid about it happening again.

I'd done the Gizmo quest in the right order, and had it completed. There didn't seem to be any time or stat requirements, or if there were then my character passed them. For some reason it reactivated with a bad ending when I spoke to the guard again to see if I could get anything about the Skullz gang.

I checked some guides on gamefaqs. There's quite a few fallout guides there.



I'm getting on better with some of the interface (more a case of getting used to the pain than liking it) but buying expensive items is enough to make me want to quit! Surely the developers included an easier way to pay for very expensive stuff?! Clicking on your money, selecting "all" and clicking "done" over and over to add 999 caps to the table is not at all fun.

How do you do these focused shots I keep seeing people talking about? The PDF manual is not easy to find specific subtopics in.

I stopped playing earlier this afternoon with a strong level 4 character in the Hub area. None (I forgot to enter a name; the game didn't prompt for one) has combat armour and a sniper rifle, and skill book pumped small gun and healing skills (hehe, I discovered how easy it is to gain massive piles of money at gambling, though my skill is only 57%). He has a dog and Ian following him. So far he's (I was going to play female; I forgot to make the switch. D'oh!) succeeded in every quest he's tried, having passed through Vault 15, Sandsomething, Junktown and part of the Hub, collecting every quest he can along the way. None is finding life easy, perhaps too easy, and he isn't an uber build character.

Um, I do wonder if I'll go back to it. :hides behind the ramparts of Castle Froggy, pulls up the drawbridge and releases the sharks into the moat: While it became enjoyable between bugs, it isn't anything special. I know it is old and later RPGs took lessons from it, but that doesn't help the fact I've done this kind of thing many times before, and with better interfaces, less bugs, better graphics and atmosphere, and more gameplay possiblities (proper parties!).

Is there something worth slogging on through all the blackscreening and vanishing interfaces, bugs, that interface for? If not I might skip to the second game.

EDIT in light of Whacker's post: Question transformed into, is it worth the hassle of reinstalling the game and fiddling about with windows settings I'd rather leave as they are since I'll inevitably forget I need to put them back. I'd probably do best to start a new character as well, losing an entire day's play

I've got a Nvidia card :cough: BFG geforce 8800GTS 640MB :cough: with an intel Core2Duo E6600 and 2GB DDR2 corsair XMS2 RAM. For a game like Fallout it's so far past overkill that a new term is needed. (EDIT again to remove the embarrassed smiley. Why am I embarrased!? I built it myself and I'm damned proud of the shiny black frog machine of 1337 mad speed )

[Crandaeolon]

I agree that the abundant equipment and resources in Fallout(s) is something of a flaw; the post-apocalyptic survival feeling is quite not there. There aren't many alternatives in the RPG genre however.

Stalker has plentiful equipment too, but at least the weight limit and deteriorating weapons & armour are restrictive enough to force some hard choices. Still, it's more of an FPS game with no real character development.

[econ21]

How do you do these focused shots I keep seeing people talking about?

IIRC, on the bottom of your screen, on the central panel with the picture of your current weapon on it, there should be a small dot on lower right corner. Click that and it will increase the AP requirement to fire the gun by one. When you try to fire, you should get a green on black diagram of the target's anatomy and be able to choose which part to target. There is one trait (fast shot?) that prevents you making any such targeted shots - you won't get the option to click the dot on the weapon panel.

Is there something worth slogging on through all the blackscreening and vanishing interfaces, bugs, that interface for? If not I might skip to the second game.

Given your tech problems, I'd be tempted to see if you can play FO2 without those hassles. But then I came to FO after FO2 and always preferred the sequel.

I fear you may not like either game much - you've experienced a fair amount of the game (the second is really just more of the same) and if it has not hooked you yet, it may never do.

[TinCow]

I gave in and reinstalled. There are few things in RPGs more pleasurable than blowing away a rat after you finally get your hands on a gun.