Why fallout 3 so buggy?

nyker96

Diamond Member
Apr 19, 2005
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I got the fallout 3 goty edition, started playing it for like 10 days and it's been crashing on me like 20 times. I put in all kinds of "fixes" it's still buggy as hell. I'm running in a win 7 machine, maybe it wasn't designed for win 7 but still they should at least make the effort to cut down on the crashes esp. that FO3 new vegas is also using the same exact engine.

sorry just felt like vent some frustration.
 

KeithTalent

Elite Member | Administrator | No Lifer
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Great question; I own two copies of the game (a hard copy and a Steam copy) and have never been able to get either of them running. Complete waste of money. :D

KT
 

shortylickens

No Lifer
Jul 15, 2003
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With patches it runs OK in Windows XP.

But to answer your question I think its very difficult to create a HUGE free form game with all kinds of models & textures that swap out constantly, not to mention loads of complicated scripts and still have everything run perfect all the time.

Baldurs Gate 2 had similar problems when it first came out needed some official patches and lots of fan patches. And it didnt have complex meshes and monstrous textures or anything.

The stupid rail shooters we've been seeing a lot of recently tend to run much better, but are also lacking in depth because the engine wasnt set up to do much besides look pretty.

Oblivion had a big ass fan patch that fixed something like 10000 issues and it still wasnt everything. Dunno if Fallout 3 and New Vegas have anything similar.
 

wuliheron

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Feb 8, 2011
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The Gamebryo engine it uses is old and was always buggy. We're talking around 9 years old and for its time it was cutting edge and totally revolutionary to be able to create an open world game. However, too many textures and geometry to load all at once and balancing that against the characters and action obviously isn't that easy. That's why I always laugh when people suggest taking games with really complex graphics like metro 2033 and making them open world. The whole reason they have those complex graphics is because the space they have to deal with is much smaller. Even games like Crysis with great graphics and an open world feel actually limit where you can go and how much you can see from any one particular point.
 
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Modular

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Jul 1, 2005
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I got the fallout 3 goty edition, started playing it for like 10 days and it's been crashing on me like 20 times. I put in all kinds of "fixes" it's still buggy as hell. I'm running in a win 7 machine, maybe it wasn't designed for win 7 but still they should at least make the effort to cut down on the crashes esp. that FO3 new vegas is also using the same exact engine.

sorry just felt like vent some frustration.

It's one of those things IMO - just like nVidia and Ati drivers. Some people always have trouble and some people never do.

I have not had one crash in either FO3 or NV ever...maybe it's certain chipsets it doesn't like?
 

shortylickens

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Jul 15, 2003
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It's one of those things IMO - just like nVidia and Ati drivers. Some people always have trouble and some people never do.

I have not had one crash in either FO3 or NV ever...maybe it's certain chipsets it doesn't like?

I've had a wide variety of chipsets, CPU's and video cards, and Fallout 3 crashes on any of them. The patches did help though.

And New Vegas is considerably more stable for me, even with loads of 3rd party mods.
 

DaveSimmons

Elite Member
Aug 12, 2001
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Oblivion (another Gamebryo game) has the same engine crashes -- play too long and memory and/or resource leaks may crash your graphics driver.

Oblivion, FO3 and New Vegas are all very much worth playing despite that though.
 

RobertPters77

Senior member
Feb 11, 2011
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Consoles.

When a game is made for Consoles and ported over to the PC chances are it will suffer from alot of problems because Consoles =/= PCs. And most devs live by the 'I'll patch it later. Promise.' phrase.

Oblivion had the same Problems for me on the 360 and PC.

Morrowind I had almost no issues with. And it was ported over to the Xbox later in development.
 

mmntech

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Sep 20, 2007
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Oblivion (another Gamebryo game) has the same engine crashes -- play too long and memory and/or resource leaks may crash your graphics driver.

Oblivion, FO3 and New Vegas are all very much worth playing despite that though.

Gamebryo also has a bug that makes it unstable on multi-core systems. Locking it to two cores solved 95% of my crashes. Elder Scrolls V is dumping it for the Creation Engine, which Bethesda developed internally. Hopefully it's better.
 

ibex333

Diamond Member
Mar 26, 2005
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Pretty much all of Bethesda's games/dlc are buggy.

Not true.

Its buggy because Bethesda has the programming skills of a retarded monkey.

I disagree. You just gotta keep your computer in good shape. Update drivers, scan for viruses, watch for heat, etc etc. How else do you explain me not having much issues with Bethesda games and you being frustrated?

I got the fallout 3 goty edition, started playing it for like 10 days and it's been crashing on me like 20 times. I put in all kinds of "fixes" it's still buggy as hell. I'm running in a win 7 machine, maybe it wasn't designed for win 7 but still they should at least make the effort to cut down on the crashes esp. that FO3 new vegas is also using the same exact engine.

sorry just felt like vent some frustration.

No.. No.. No... Don't be mad at the game or the devs. They are not at fault here.

Fallout 3 is not buggy at all. It's just you and a few others like you. I played Fallout 3 a week after release date and it maybe crashed only a few times in several months. There was never any serious bugs I can think of.. nothing that could prevent me from playing and enjoying the game. I beat the whole thing, plus every single expansion THREE times over. Trust me, I would know.

So basically it's you/your computer. Buggy drivers? Cheap/incompatible hardware? Viruses? Poor maintenance on your part? Check everything you can.

New Vegas is another story... Yes I did have quite a few crashes, but no "bugs" short of something looking odd or out of place. But nothing that prevented me from finishing quests or playing.

Dead Money expansion is a complete nightmare though. Definitely feels like a somewhat rushed/unfinished product. There is a glitch that pretty much makes you start the WHOLE thing over again. There is simply no way around it. And when you restart you gotta pray that this time, the glitch doesn't trigger. The game would also crash for me every time when I obtained a certain perk, and I was about to start screaming or throw a tantrum, but this particular problem went away with patches.


PS: Fallout 3 is one of the very best games to ever grace the PC platform. I honestly put it high up there on a pedestal just below masterpieces like Planescape Torment, Baldur's Gate and the like. So to put it lightly, it angers me when people say anything bad about Fallout 3.
 
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KeithTalent

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Nov 30, 2005
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Not true.



No.. No.. No... Don't be mad at the game or the devs. They are not at fault here.

Fallout 3 is not buggy at all. It's just you and a few others like you. I played Fallout 3 a week after release date and it maybe crashed only a few times in several months. There was never any serious bugs I can think of.. nothing that could prevent me from playing and enjoying the game. I beat the whole thing, plus every single expansion THREE times over. Trust me, I would know.

So basically it's you/your computer. Buggy drivers? Cheap/incompatible hardware? Viruses? Poor maintenance on your part? Check everything you can.

New Vegas is another story... Yes I did have quite a few crashes, but no "bugs" short of something looking odd or out of place. But nothing that prevented me from finishing quests or playing.

Dead Money expansion is a complete nightmare though. Definitely feels like a somewhat rushed/unfinished product. There is a glitch that pretty much makes you start the WHOLE thing over again. There is simply no way around it. And when you restart you gotta pray that this time, the glitch doesn't trigger. The game would also crash for me every time when I obtained a certain perk, and I was about to start screaming or throw a tantrum, but this particular problem went away with patches.

Hmm, so we can take your word for it, or we can trust the opinions of the other dozen people that posted here. :hmm:

KT
 

Zenoth

Diamond Member
Jan 29, 2005
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Fallout 3 is not buggy at all. [...]I played Fallout 3 a week after release date and it maybe crashed only a few times in several months.

It's not buggy, at all, but it crashed a few times. I laughed. It's like saying "yeah it was super dry, but there was some water on it". But anyway, seriously, the GameBryo engine was pre-historic, I made mods myself for Fallout 3, I tempered around with it, I know how unstable it was. There is a number of lucky players out there who experienced "just a few crashes" in "several months", it doesn't mean that the game is stable.

Additionally, the console versions were known to crash regularly, the issues of crashing with Oblivion and Fallout 3 were not only for the PC where as we known the hardware and system configurations can cause all sorts of problems even though the software might well be stable by itself, even for the consoles where the hardware and the configuration is the exact same for everyone it still crashed. Just check the tech support sections of the console and PC versions of both Oblivion and Fallout 3, even Vegas, heck even Morrowind crashed on my original XBOX.

But anyway, Fallout 3 is a good game, I'm not saying it's boring. I really liked it and I myself made modifications for it two of which are available on the Nexus. But the point is that it is and will always be a very unstable game, or rather I should say that it's a game running under a very unforgiving engine, it just doesn't take much at all to make it cough.
 

Cerb

Elite Member
Aug 26, 2000
17,484
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I got the fallout 3 goty edition, started playing it for like 10 days and it's been crashing on me like 20 times. I put in all kinds of "fixes" it's still buggy as hell. I'm running in a win 7 machine, maybe it wasn't designed for win 7 but still they should at least make the effort to cut down on the crashes esp. that FO3 new vegas is also using the same exact engine.

sorry just felt like vent some frustration.
I have yet to play a PC Gamebryo game that isn't buggy. The devs could have done better in many areas (physics/threading, FI), I'm sure, but whether it's directly causal or not, Gamebryo sucks. It sucked 10 years ago, and it sucks today.

Also, here's what has help greatly for me:
- Enabling large address space awareness (took care of most CTDs)
- Installing into a directory with no special permissions (fixed audio, some CTDs, and <1 FPS combat).
- Tweaking the ini, especially setting thread counts, and increasing buffer sizes.
- Unofficial Fallout 3 patch (mod)
- Fallout Stutter Remover (mod, requires FOSE, IIRC; set the max FPS to 60, if you get it)
 
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Bateluer

Lifer
Jun 23, 2001
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Not true.
I disagree. You just gotta keep your computer in good shape. Update drivers, scan for viruses, watch for heat, etc etc. How else do you explain me not having much issues with Bethesda games and you being frustrated?

I keep my computer in excellent condition, its never had a virus, drives are always current, temps are normal, etc. I'm not the only person who beat themselves bloody trying to get FO3 to work. In the end, I had to play through it on my back machine, a A64X2-4000 and Radeon 4350. Had to run at lower resolutions and details, but at least it was moderately stable. FO3 could have been an excellent game, had they actually polished it. It needed several more months of bug stomping. It was never even patched properly, Bethesda was more concerned with pumping out DLC than actually fixing the existing product.

PS: Fallout 3 is one of the very best games to ever grace the PC platform. I honestly put it high up there on a pedestal just below masterpieces like Planescape Torment, Baldur's Gate and the like. So to put it lightly, it angers me when people say anything bad about Fallout 3.

Uh, no. FO3 isn't even in the same league as Torment or BG2. Its half backed story line alone would keep it from that honor.
 

Mem

Lifer
Apr 23, 2000
21,476
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Great question; I own two copies of the game (a hard copy and a Steam copy) and have never been able to get either of them running. Complete waste of money. :D

KT

Last time I played F3 was on Vista x64,it was ok and I completed the game but it needed a few more patches due to bugs,performance issues etc..anyway thought I try a new install of F3 on Win7 x64 with latest patch and weight mod to see how it plays,so far it runs better ie smoother and only had one crash so far which was as a baby(lucky it auto saved before the crash).

I'll see how it plays on Win7 x64 as I progess but so far no real complaints.

Btw F3:New Vegas was also fine on Win7 x64 for me,think it only crashed once throughout the entire game.
 

supremor

Senior member
Dec 2, 2010
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I guess I should feel lucky I never had any real issues with FO3, I think it crashed on me maybe once or twice and that was without patching mind you.
I found it to be considerably more stable than Oblivion was at release... but yea a game doesn't get such a reputation for being buggy and unstable for no reason, Gamebryo just sucks.
 

Modular

Diamond Member
Jul 1, 2005
5,027
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Hmm, so we can take your word for it, or we can trust the opinions of the other dozen people that posted here. :hmm:

KT

Have you ever complained when something just worked as it should? Of course not! The "vocal majority" is always made up of those who feel slighted because they have issues, it isn't indicative of an actual sample of people who own the game.

I have had close to ZERO problems with any Bethesda game and literally not a single crash. This includes the following games:

Fallout 2
Fallout 3 - had a slight stutter, and VATS would slowdown at times
Fallout: New Vegas

Morrowind
Oblivion

This is with these games being modded and not at all. Installed and reinstalled, etc. It's also been on 3 different systems (all AMD processors though now that I think about it, maybe it's really an Intel problem :) )

Maybe I'll go start a thread stating as such :D
 
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manimal

Lifer
Mar 30, 2007
13,559
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Ive been waiting since launch to play this game. The crashing on every single system I have pissed me off enough to put it away each time.
 

SZLiao214

Diamond Member
Sep 9, 2003
3,270
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The only place that has crashed for me so far in New Vegas is when you are in freeside and the random Kings members run up to you to give you random stuff. I will crash while they are running to me or when they are running off.
 
Apr 28, 2010
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The only place that has crashed for me so far in New Vegas is when you are in freeside and the random Kings members run up to you to give you random stuff. I will crash while they are running to me or when they are running off.

Original Fallout 3 crashed so much, I didn't bother finishing it.

New Vegas is running smoothly (with about 20+ mods and all DLC) I've spent over 40+ hours with it so far, and haven't crashed a single time.

I like the game a lot more than Fallout 3, too. If you haven't played either, I'd skip Fallout 3, and go straight to New Vegas.
 

nyker96

Diamond Member
Apr 19, 2005
5,630
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Thanks for all your replies, this thing was just driving me crazy. after 20 or so crashes, It literally made me feel jumpy like something will happen at any moment. I mean it's been used for so many years since oblivion as I understand it. I think they should have figured out all the bugs on this thing already.

to previous poster, I believe new vegas also use the same engine, why you are not experiencing I wonder why. do you know what version of executable is your new vegas game? at this point I don't know if I will buy FO3:NV I need more assurances about its stability.