Fallout 3 crashes

[WildW]

I'm currently enjoying Oblivion-with-guns, since the start of the weekend. However, I'm also experiencing most of the crash problems that lots of people seem to have endured. After a time, sometimes 30 minutes, sometimes 5 minutes, or 1 minute, but always when in the big outside room, the game will crash and the graphics driver seems to die (screen goes blank.)

I have tried everything I can find on all kinds of forums, from tweaking ini files, making sure I don't have ffdshow installed, nvidia drivers from newest to oldest that will support my 9800 GTX+ . . . all do the same thing.

I am now convinced its the graphics card though. I swapped out the card for my old Radeon 4670, and the game runs fine for hours without hint of a problem - almost considering swapping my 9800 for a HD4850, so I thought I'd ask . . . you folks who've had crashing issues with Fallout 3 going to a black screen and locking up the PC . . .are you all using Nvidia cards?

 

[shortylickens]

Dont worry about it too much. I have a Radeon 4870 and the game still crashes frequently, even with the latest drivers and patches and stuff.
It is what it is.

 

[ShawnD1]

I think it's a driver problem. My 8800GTX worked just fine when I got the game. I did a driver update a week ago and now the game crashes every once in a while.

 

[exar333]

I had massive CTD issues with my 8800GTS, but when I upgraded to my GTX260 (and then GTX285) these issues have dissapeared. Part of my issue initially was my Asus audio card (Xonar DX) was having driver issues with FO3. I disabled that and used onboard, and that helped a lot. I still would get crashes in the open areas (memory leak?) every 20-30 minutes.

 

[WildW]

Strange thing is, the crashes are almost reproducable . . . if I reload and go to the place where it crashed last time, it will generally crash there again.

I guess the answer is to wait for a patch, and in the meantime play on the 4670. . . it's just. . . not so nice.

 

[chizow]

What driver are you using? There was a documented problem in one of the 181 drivers that was fixed with the 181.20 WHQL and beyond. Make sure you have the latest driver from Nvidia. 182.08 is the latest WHQL, 182.46 the latest Beta.

Also, try turning down your texture quality or turning off AA. I know its not desireable, but Fallout 3's texture requirements and your card's VRAM amount can quickly lead to degrading performance and/or crashes. I noticed this right away, not with the standard textures, but when I used a few of the largest high-res 4096x4096 texture mods, I started to get crashes with a GTX 280. I could see similar happening with a 512MB part at higher resolutions, particularly with AA and/or triple buffering/vsync enabled.

Another thing you can try is turning off UAC if you're using Vista. I actually started getting crashes and hard locks only on exit after the 1.01 patch and traced it back to UAC and GFWL. Its kind of amazing that this game ran more stably for me unpatched when I first got it and has gotten more flaky after each patch. All the mods I've installed to improve the gameplay probably don't help either.

 

[acheron]

I didn't have much trouble with Fallout 3; I have a 4850. *shrug*

Did crash a couple times when alt-tabbing to another app and back, but if I just stayed in the game I never had a crash.

 

[40sTheme]

Try going to Documents\My Games\Fallout3 and cut Fallout3.ini out and put it somewhere else; it should create a new one. Often this helps stop the reproducable crashes. Other than that, do you have any mods on?

 

[nitromullet]

Originally posted by: acheron
I didn't have much trouble with Fallout 3; I have a 4850. *shrug*

Did crash a couple times when alt-tabbing to another app and back, but if I just stayed in the game I never had a crash.

Just the occasional crash here. Not really any more than your average game. Hell, the Xbox 360 version even crashed on me a few times. The alt-tab thing is broken though - don't alt-tab without saving your game first.

 

[ShawnD1]

Originally posted by: nitromullet
Just the occasional crash here. Not really any more than your average game. Hell, the Xbox 360 version even crashed on me a few times. The alt-tab thing is broken though - don't alt-tab without saving your game first.

My friend noted that his PS3 version was also a bit buggy in a few places, although it didn't crash. Some of the crashing is very likely caused by the game code itself, not drivers or voodoo magic.

About the repeatable crashes. The only time that has happened to me was when I had followers like that Jericho guy. Going through a door with him following me would crash every single time. If I told him to wait there, I could go through the door without issue. I could even go back to the previous room, get Jericho to follow me again, then go through the door without a problem. This game is really weird like that.

 

[Zenoth]

I've quit playing Fallout 3 (simply un-installed it) due to frequent crashes, while none of my other 30+ games crash nor freeze at all, either with default hardware settings and frequencies or while over-clocked, or while having beta or WHQL drivers, no matter what I've tried, even with my new GPU (it crashed just as often as it does now with my previous G80 GTS 640MB). And it was the exact same with Oblivion and even Morrowind (although Morrowind was certainly the most stable out of the trio).

It has to be a GameBryo engine issue, that thing is as old as dinosaurs, and at least dinosaurs have made their time and nature went on with something else, apparently Bethesda likes GameBryo a lot. I still pray to all known Gods that they don't use yet another variant of GameBryo for Elder Scrolls V, in which case I would simply not even consider it for a millisecond. And believe me I'm not happy with that, not only because I bought the damn thing, but because I actually like Bethesda games, they're just unstable or way too sensible to very specific hardware and software configurations that many other games, some even as old as from a decade ago seem to never be affected by.

 

[450R]

Originally posted by: Zenoth
I've quit playing Fallout 3 (simply un-installed it) due to frequent crashes, while none of my other 30+ games crash nor freeze at all

Same experience here. The best part is watching Bethesda pump out DLC packs instead of patches.

 

[Zenoth]

Originally posted by: 450R

Originally posted by: Zenoth
I've quit playing Fallout 3 (simply un-installed it) due to frequent crashes, while none of my other 30+ games crash nor freeze at all

Same experience here. The best part is watching Bethesda pump out DLC packs instead of patches.

Even with patches... when it's possibly linked to the engine itself, I don't think they'll be able to fix the crashing/instability/sensibility of it with mere patches, they'd have to re-work all of the engine branches (A.I, textures capabilities and limitations, animations system, renderer, etc). While I myself don't know jack about how to make games I for sure know that as a gamer did my best to apply all of the "fixes" I've read from Bethesda and the community alike, and nothing worked, not even a fresh Windows install.

I'm pretty sure that they are aware of it themselves. They need to get rid of the damn GameBryo engine once and for all and use a working, capable, flexible and more importantly stable one that already exists, instead of spending two or three years, if not more, to create one by themselves from the start. They want to make, and are probably already developing Elder Scrolls V as I type this, their engine selection has been made already, that's for sure, and for that title in particular it's too late to change it, but we don't know what they're using for it.

I for one would like to see the Dunia engine for TESV (that's the engine for Far Cry 2). It's very stable (at least for me, although I don't like Far Cry 2 much I must say that it runs very smoothly at its highest settings, it's stutter-free, it can load a GIGANTIC amount of terrain data under a single load session, which TESV will certainly need, and it NEVER crashed once, nor froze once on me, ever). There are other options, such as CryEngine 2, or maybe CryEngine 3, but even though I have my hopes and dreams for a good and stable TESV game I think that somewhere inside me it tells me that Bethesda just once more decided to "enhance" the GameBryo engine yet again, and considering that for me TESV is my biggest hyped game right after Diablo III I know that if it's still running under "another" iteration of the GameBryo engine it will end up being also the biggest loss.

 

[CP5670]

I found that the microstutter fix greatly reduced the frequency of crashes as well. I was getting them much more often before I set that option.

 

[Dorkenstein]

I think I am done with this game, as sad as it makes me to say it. I really don't want to play without my mods, and even though I have played by the rules and patched the game and GFW Live, I still get the same identical crashes each time under the same circumstances. I tried the FPS limiter, the quad core fixes, *.ini tweaks, basically I scoured google for days to try each fix for the crashes, no matter how ridiculous, and I still can't play for more than a minute or two at a time. I really wanted to play the Pitt also, but this is just no fun. It should be a game, not beta testing or research homework.

I've tried disabling my most drastic mods and I see no improvement. It could be my load order but I don't know enough about that. CP5670, what microstutter fix are you referring to? Before the majority of my crashes I do get severe stuttering, even when using the FPS Limiter batch file.

 

[CP5670]

It's a simple ini tweak described here.

It has a couple of side effects and messes with the game speed, but overall I think it's far better than the alternative. The game looks horribly choppy to me at anything below 70fps without it. The increase in stability is another benefit.

 

[43st]

The crashes have really made this game frustrating at times. There is also so much conflicting info on the internet that all you can do is take a poke at it and hope it fixes something. Not to mention the idiots on the Bethesda forums always asking for Dxdialog's and never solving shit with it (which just makes browsing those forums quite unproductive)

My game has been fine for a couple weeks with no crash, and then I installed some higher resolution weapon, armor and landscape textures and the crashes have returned. I'm going to try to comment out some directories and see if it helps, but the crashes can come so infrequently that it makes tracking something rather difficult. My crashes are always a frozen screen, most of the time I can safely get back to the desktop.

 

[mindcycle]

The game crashed for me every few hours the whole time I played it. I managed to get through it by the crashes pretty much mean i'm not all that interested in the DLC or replaying it anytime soon. Which is too bad since it was an excellent game.

 

[ShawnD1]

Originally posted by: CP5670
It's a simple ini tweak described here.

It has a couple of side effects and messes with the game speed, but overall I think it's far better than the alternative. The game looks horribly choppy to me at anything below 70fps without it. The increase in stability is another benefit.

From the linki:

Edit your FALLOUT.ini (Dont forget to make a backup)

VISTA: "C:\Users\[your username]\Documents\My Games\Fallout3\FALLOUT.ini"
and change iFPSClamp=0 to iFPSClamp=60

XP: "C:\Documents and settings\[your username]\My Documents\My Games\Fallout3\FALLOUT.ini"
and change iFPSClamp=0 to iFPSClamp=60

Does this really make the game more stable? I turned this off when I saw how much it slowed the game down. The game practically paused when a mutant swings a weapon.

I'll set it to 120 (twice the graphical frame rate) and see if it helps. If setting it to 60 stops crashes, then maybe the crashes are caused by trying to process a ridiculous number of frames like 1000/s.

edit again:
That variable makes no sense at all. Setting it to 120 is slower than 60. How is that even possible? I tried 30 and now the game is much faster than 60. What kind of crappy math does this engine do? Frame rate = 1/variable?

 

[ShawnD1]

I set it to 1000 just to see what happens. The result is that the game runs like normal (micro stutter), but it doesn't slow down when things get laggy. When it was set to 0, my game would lag really hard when a car exploded and the frame rate would drop. With it set to 1000, car explosions or having lots of things on screen do not lag the game. Everything is still happening real time, and only my frame rate drops. I've been playing for about 30 minutes and so far no crashes. I'm even not saving my game just so murphy's law makes the game crash sooner, but it hasn't happened yet.

 

[Zenoth]

The iFPSClamp variable is linked to the iPresentInterval one as well, which needs to be set to 1 (it should already be set to 1 by default though). That second variable is V-Sync, and the actual game's Launcher V-Sync option does not apply properly, so if one for instance wants to turn V-Sync off completely then he/she needs to set that variable to 0 manually.

Also, with iFPSClamp it simply syncs the frames with the monitor's refresh rate, so obviously on an LCD the frames will be limited to either 60 or 75, since the standard refresh rate on LCD's is 60Hz by default, while some more recent ones can do 75Hz. On CRTs it's obviously higher, since it can go as high as 180Hz on lower resolutions (let's say at or below 1280x1024). So by setting that variable to 1000 or even 200 it won't do much "better" than it would if it would be set to the actual monitor's refresh rate at the desired game resolution.

And, additionally, if V-Sync is turned on in the game it's highly recommended to turn "Triple Buffering" on in the NVIDIA's Control Panel, and to set "Vertical Sync" to "Use the 3D Application Setting". I myself have tried that tweak amongst countless others, and while it does indeed provide more stability my game still crashed often enough (approximately once per two or three hours of constant game-play, but it did crashed at least one time per gaming session, which is certainly not acceptable).

 

[ShawnD1]

Originally posted by: Zenoth
Also, with iFPSClamp it simply syncs the frames with the monitor's refresh rate, so obviously on an LCD the frames will be limited to either 60 or 75, since the standard refresh rate on LCD's is 60Hz by default, while some more recent ones can do 75Hz. On CRTs it's obviously higher, since it can go as high as 180Hz on lower resolutions (let's say at or below 1280x1024). So by setting that variable to 1000 or even 200 it won't do much "better" than it would if it would be set to the actual monitor's refresh rate at the desired game resolution.

Feel free to test your hypothesis. If you set it to 60, the game runs at maybe 1/10 its normal speed. If you set it to some silly number like 1000, it runs a lot more like its default speed.

 

[Zenoth]

Originally posted by: ShawnD1

Originally posted by: Zenoth
Also, with iFPSClamp it simply syncs the frames with the monitor's refresh rate, so obviously on an LCD the frames will be limited to either 60 or 75, since the standard refresh rate on LCD's is 60Hz by default, while some more recent ones can do 75Hz. On CRTs it's obviously higher, since it can go as high as 180Hz on lower resolutions (let's say at or below 1280x1024). So by setting that variable to 1000 or even 200 it won't do much "better" than it would if it would be set to the actual monitor's refresh rate at the desired game resolution.

Feel free to test your hypothesis. If you set it to 60, the game runs at maybe 1/10 its normal speed. If you set it to some silly number like 1000, it runs a lot more like its default speed.

Believe me, and I'm not saying that just for my ego and to naively try to be right, but I've tested that game more than you can imagine, I'm also a modder for it, and I made mods for Oblivion, I know that engine, not entirely on how it works, but I know how it acts and reacts in the game itself.

That "hypothesis" is a fact, and in my game it doesn't run at half the speed. As long as there's not too much going on screen at once it will run at the exact number I've set it to which corresponds to the variable's setting. But because the GameBryo engine can barely endure its own self it doesn't take much for either Morrowind, Oblivion or Fallout 3 to slow down considerably, which is also why by default none of those three games are exactly the type of games you would call fast-paced or action-oriented by countless enemies on-screen (pure example), which only the modding community ends up making, which often results in people wondering just why with new mods the game suddenly runs about 30% or 50% slower than it was running under vanilla settings.

 

[ShawnD1]

video of what I'm talking about

That's clamped at 60. My system is as follows:
E6600
8800GTX
3gb ram
Vista 32

I'm playing the latest version on Steam.

 

[Dorkenstein]

Woah, what crazy rifle is that towards the end?