Fallout 3

What works

The situation appears to be little different to when I submitted my previous report: The game generally runs great, however there are some issues and I recommend using Wine Staging for this game instead.

What does not

• Transparency Multisampling does not work.
• Anti-aliasing causes some weird issues if it is enabled at the same time as HDR, where odd flashing "blobs" appear here and there
• Having both AA and HDR enabled also causes grass/vegetation to fail to render properly on my AMD GPU. Applying the workaround used to get the game to run on Intel GPUs fixes this but introduces other issues with flickering lighting.
• Having anti-aliasing enabled may cause the HUD and post-processing effects may start disappearing when facing in certain directions after playing a while when playing at higher resolutions and AA settings (though I haven't seen the latter for a long time and suspect it may have been an issue with the Nvidia drivers on my old system).
• Object LOD fade-in doesn't work smoothly for all objects & affected objects will abruptly pop in instead.
• Some bodies of water (mainly towards the north of the map) have flickery lines around their edges.
• There were problems with the game slowing to a crawl when there was any mouse movement (even in the menus) on my system with Intel graphics.
• The pip-boy radio fails to play many music tracks (this does not apply to staging releases).
• The pip-boy radio has playback issues with certain transient stations, e.g. ranger emergency frequency, relay tower broadcasts (the latter of which cause the game to crash - recommend saving before attempting to listen to any of those).

For the latter two issues, installing native quartz can stop the crashes with some radio stations and get music playback working to an extent, but playback then becomes very stuttery so it's not worth it. Music playback works with at least 3.10-staging without needing any tweaks/workarounds though, and the mouse slowdown issue with Intel graphics doesn't occur with 3.10-staging either. I haven't tested any newer staging releases yet.

These are quite long-standing issues; you can see my old reports of these issues for CrossOver (which includes screenshots) here: https://www.codeweavers.com/co...

I have uploaded some save games to demonstrate these issues: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ya8h...

Details:

• Quicksave - Radio music playback fail: the pip-boy radio is active & tuned to Galaxy News Radio, which is playing music. With non-staging builds this music does not play properly.
• Quicksave - Anti-aliasing + HDR causing grass etc to render improperly on AMD GPUs: Start the game with anti-aliasing and HDR enabled, look at the grass. Then restart the game with anti-aliasing or HDR disabled and look again.
• Save 5 - Object LOD pop-in: Look at & move towards the pylon in the distance.
• Saves 5, 6, 7 - Transparency multisampling: Compare against Windows or see the screenshots I posted on CodeWeaver's forums.
• Saves 8, 10 - Anti-aliasing + HDR causing odd rendering glitches: Do not move, just look around. You'll see the flashing blobs appear; with save 8 these usually appear around the barrels in the lower left, with save 10 look around the base of the lamp post near the building
• Save 11 - Flickering water edges: Just look around
• Save 12 - Some transient radio stations cause the game to crash: Simply flip the switch then tune the radio to the new station. The game will hang.
• Save 15 - Radio music playback fail: the pip-boy radio is active & tuned to Galaxy News Radio, which is about to play some music. With non-staging builds all you hear is silence once the music starts playing.
• Save 15 - Step forward until the Ranger Emergency Frequency is picked up, then switch the radio to it. It starts to play but soon cuts off.

Changing the Windows version to Windows 8 as suggested by another report made no difference.

Workarounds

I strongly recommend disabling winegstreamer as this can cause frequent random crashes on some systems (and aside from this issue it seems to make no difference whether it is enabled or not, so it's best to just disable it to be safe).

If you're using a system with Intel graphics a workaround is required to get the game to run. Two registry keys are required; just run these two commands to add them:

reg add "HKCU\Software\Wine\Direct3D" /v VideoPciDeviceID /t REG_DWORD /d 0x402 /f
reg add "HKCU\Software\Wine\Direct3D" /v VideoPciVendorID /t REG_DWORD /d 0x10de /f

What was not tested

I have only briefly tested this version of Wine (and 3.13) to see if any of the previously discovered issues have been resolved, so most of the game was not tested.

Hardware tested

Graphics:

• GPU: AMD
• Driver: open source

Additional Comments

This report is based on my notes and testing during the creation and maintenance of my wrapper for the GOG version of this game: https://www.gog.com/forum/fall...

Prefix configuration:

- CSMT was enabled
- Wine Gecko was not installed (Wine Mono was installed for the sake of any mods/mod tools that may depend on it, but doesn't seem to be required by the game itself)

If you're using an AMD GPU with the open drivers, this game benefits from enabling OpenGL threaded dispatch; set mesa_glthread=true for a small improvement to performance.

Tested systems:

AMD R7 1700 @ 3.7GHz, 16GB RAM, AMD RX 480 8GB (main system)
Intel i7-2600k @ 4.5GHz, 16GB RAM, Nvidia GTX 750 Ti
Intel i3-6100, 4GB RAM, Intel HD 530 graphics

The main system and i3-6100 system are running Linux Mint 19 64-bit with kernel 4.15.0-33 and stable Mesa 18.1.7 from Padoka's PPA; the Nvidia system is running Linux Mint 18 64-bit and using Nvidia's proprietary drivers (396.54).

Last updated 2014-07-21 by Jonas Jelten

Fallout 3 GOTY installation guide

This guide works with a completely fresh 64bit (x86_64) wineprefix.
DO NOT SET WINEARCH=win32

The guide was created using wine-1.5.17 on Funtoo GNU/Linux x86_64.
It should also work on other GNU/Linux distributions.

32bit x86 will probably not be supported.
This means: I assume you are under x86_64 (aka 64 bit system)

==> You have to install x86 libraries for Fallout, as it is a 32-bit game

• On Debian-based systems (ubuntu,mint,etc): install ia32-libs
• On Archlinux: enable [multilib] repo and install lib32-...
  
• On Funtoo/Gentoo: enable USE=abi_x86_32 for wine or install app-emulation/emul-linux-...

And so on, you get the point. Refer to your distribution FAQ or forum for help and support installing x86 libraries on x86_64.

Look at the test results/bugs below for version changes affecting Fallout 3.

== DVD/Steam version

• If you own the Steam version, just follow this guide.
• If you have the DVD version, use your brain, and also follow this guide. Apply the 1.7 patch after you finished the installation process by DVD. 

== Overview of installation steps

• Create wineprefix
• Configure wineprefix
• Install fonts
• Download, install, run Steam
• Download the game
• Start the game for automatic dependency installation
• Install missing dependencies (msasn)
  
• Run the game for creating FALLOUT.ini
• Patch FALLOUT.ini
• Run and play the game.

== About this guide

The following text block is a shell command. You have to execute them with your terminal (xterm, gnome-terminal, urxvt, ...).

Search on the web or ask in the forums if you need help.

echo "This is shell code, execute it in a terminal!"

== Create a fresh wineprefix

This guide assumes you create a fresh wineprefix.

export WINEPREFIX=~/.wine-fallout3

• This command sets a environment variable
• It is used by all wine programs to know where the "Windows installation" is located.
  

Make sure the wineprefix is set correctly all the time you execute wine and fallout-related commands!

• you can check whether you have set it correctly by:

echo $WINEPREFIX

• This should print your installation directory name
  

== Configure this wineprefix

Now we create a new "Windows installation" and customize its behaviour.

winecfg

• Default Windows Version: Windows XP
• Under "Graphics"
• Activate "Automatically capture the mouse in full-screen windows"
• 
  
• Under "Desktop Integration":
• Default save-file path will be ~/My Games/Fallout3/
• You can change the location for the configuration/save files:
• Set "My Documents" to the desired path (optional).
• This will result in save-files and settings being saved to this directory
  

== Install fonts

• This is distribution specific. Ask in your distro forum for installation help
  
• you need the following fonts:
  
• ttf-dejavu
• ttf-bitstream-vera
• corefonts (arial, times, ...)

DVD version: skip this step.

cd /tmp && wget http://cdn.steampowered.com/download/SteamInstall.msi && msiexec /i SteamInstall.msi

• Install Steam to C:\Steam
• • The spaces in "Program Files (x86)" cause problems sometimes...
    

cd $WINEPREFIX/drive_c/Steam && wine Steam.exe -no-dwrite

• log into your steam account
• Steam can be left open for the whole installation procedure.
  

• Steam version: Download Fallout3 - Game of the Year Edition 
• DVD version: insert DVD, mount it, and execute the installer:

wine /mountpoint/of/game/dvd/setup.exe

• Steam version:
  
• To install the first set of dependencies, launch the Game.
• Steam will install .Net, DirectX and Games for Windows Live.
• Quit the opening Fallout launcher, if it shows up!
  
• DVD version:
• Do nothing.
  

• Download msasn1.dll and move to "C:/windows/syswow64"

curl http://www.dllbank.com/zip/m/msasn1.dll.zip | funzip > $WINEPREFIX/drive_c/windows/syswow64/msasn1.dll

• Only for DVD version:
  Download gfwlifesetupmin.exe and install it:

wget -O /tmp/gfw.exe http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/5/8/55846E20-4A46-4EF8-B272-7F988BC9090A/gfwlivesetupmin.exe && wine /tmp/gfw.exe /nodotnet

• Steam version: Click run game in your game library
  
• DVD version only:

wine "$WINEPREFIX/.drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Bethesda Softworks/Fallout 3/FalloutLauncher.exe

• The launcher will open
• enable all data files (these are the DLCs)
• configure options -> adjust graphics settings etc.
• ~/My Games/Fallout3/FALLOUT.ini has been created now
• If you changed "My Documents" path in winecfg before, the config will be in there.
  

• apply this patch to Fallout.ini: http://pastebin.com/SVqfWG0K
  
• do this by executing this command:
  

cd "~/My Games/Fallout3/" && curl "http://pastebin.com/download.php?i=SVqfWG0K" | patch

• This patch adds multicore support, and disables water refractions.
• If you chose another game-save-file path ("My Documents"), change the cd command path appropriately
  

== (optional) Install uncut patch

This patch replaces four game files, removes censorshit (whoops, typo), and also fixes some launch problems. 

cd "$WINEPREFIX/drive_c/Steam/steamapps/common/Fallout 3 goty/" &&
wget -O - "http://home.stusta.mhn.de/~006619/fallout3uncut/fallout3uncut.tar.xz" | xz -d | tar vx

== Run/play the game

• Reminder: WINEPREFIX has to be set correctly!
  
• To launch Steam:

export WINEPREFIX=~/.wine-fallout3 && cd $WINEPREFIX/drive_c/Steam && wine Steam.exe -no-dwrite

• You should create a script for the above command.
  
• In Steam, start Fallout3 regularly
  
• Recommended Steam launch script:
  

#!/bin/bash
# Fallout 3 Steam launch script

export WINEPREFIX="~/.wine-fallout3"
cd "$WINEPREFIX/drive_c/Steam"

wine Steam.exe -no-dwrite

• recommended DVD version launch script:

#!/bin/bash
# Fallout 3 DVD launch script

export WINEPREFIX="~/.wine-fallout3"
cd "$WINEPREFIX/.drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Bethesda Softworks/Fallout 3"
wine FalloutLauncher.exe

That's it, you should be able to play Fallout 3 now. Report problems at the comment section below.

I'm happy about any feedback improving/correcting this guide, so please leave a comment down below :-)
You should also submit test results so the game's wine-compatibility-rating is up to date and known for most distributions. Thanks!

_

This section is out of date. Try the steps from the Steam installation guide above first, but install from your DVD instead of Steam.

This guide was created for wine 1.2, the above guide is for newer versions!

Install Wine-1.1.33 or newer. It is strongly recommended that you install the latest version of wine (wine 1.2). The official information on Wine HQ will always be written for the latest version of wine.

Steps & Requirements:

• Winetricks extras: d3dx9, cc580, Directx9, vcrun2005
• Games for Windows Live client (Requires override of msasn1.dll)
  
• Install Fallout 3
• Modify Fallout.ini (Only if you have a dual or 2+ core processor)
• Install patch (Not required, but it's to your benefit)
• Troubleshooting/Fixes
  

Winetricks extras:

Open a Terminal

Download winetricks by typing :-

wget http://www.kegel.com/wine/winetricks

Install DirectX libraries and native comctl32.dll by typing :-

sh winetricks d3dx9 cc580

Install Directx9 and vcrun2005 winetricks packages by typing :-

sh winetricks directx9 vcrun2005

Game for Windows Live client:

Now we need to install the Games For Windows LIVE client, follow the steps below :-

Download msasn1.dll from the link - HERE

Extract the DLL files and copy them into your C:/windows/system32 folder of wine

Override msasn1.dll in Wine Configuration - Set as native.

Now download the installer for Games For Windows LIVE from the link - HERE

Note : If you experience issues during that installation of Games For Windows LIVE try changing your windows version to Windows 7 in your winecfg.

Now we need to install the Games For Windows LIVE program but without installing the .NET framework, to do this run the code below in Terminal :-

cd /where/you/downloaded/the/file
wine gfwlivesetupmin.exe /nodotnet

Now in the Libraries tab of your winecfg add xlive.dll as native.

The Games For Windows LIVE client has now been installed.

NOW INSTALL THE GAME FROM STEAM OR THE DISK

(Note: DISK 1 IF YOU HAVE GAME OF THE YEAR EDITION)

Now if your CPU has 2 or more cores then follow the steps below, if not then skip over this section.

If you have 2 or more cores, do the following  :-

1) Open ~/My Games/Fallout3/FALLOUT.INI
2) Find bUseThreadedAI=0 and change it to bUseThreadedAI=1
3) Add iNumHWThreads=2 after bUseThreadedAI=1
4) Save file

If you downloaded the game from STEAM then it will already be the newest version and you will not need to patch or install the DLCs (if you own game of the year edition from STEAM). If you own a retail version then you will now need to patch the game. Follow the steps below :-

Make sure your Fallout 3 disk is in the tray (Disk 1 if you own Game Of The Year Edition)

Fallout 3 1.7 patch:

Download the latest patch from the links below depending on your location

US Patch (North America Only) - HERE

UK / EU / Rest of world patch - HERE

Run the patch with wine and it will install.

Now the game will run, see below for how to install the DLCs.

IMPORTANT - To run the game, right click on the fallout3.exe in your C:/Program Files/Bestheda Softworks/Fallout 3 and select "Open with wine windows program loader". DO NOT run the game by using any desktop shortcut or wine menu entry or by the fallout launcher. Use the fallout launcher to set graphics and resolution etc. but don't use it to launch the game.

Install Fallout 3 DLCs

To install the DLCs, follow the steps below :-

If you have the Game Of The Year Edition from STEAM you will already have the DLCs and you are ready to go.

If you own a retail version insert your disk now (Disk 2 if you own the Game Of The Year Edition).

Run the disk's .exe with wine and the DLCs will install.

Note : Some people are finding that the DLCs don't activate when in game. This can be solved, see the DLC Fix section below.

This concludes the installation process for Fallout 3 with wine on Linux.

Troubleshooting/Fixes:

If you have any problems, see the FIX SECTION below for solutions to common issues or you can post a comment and we will get back to you.

DLC Fix

Note : This seems to be a problem with retail disks of the Game Of The Year Edition. The STEAM version should be fine.

Some people have difficulty in getting the DLCs to load. Normally you should receive a message after you have exited Vault 101. However, it seems that some people are not getting the message so the DLCs are not activating. This can be fixed by following the steps below :-

First open~/My Documents/My Games/Fallout3/FALLOUT.INI

Find the line bInvalidateOlderFiles and set it to 1.

Then open the fallout launcher (the .exe is in the same folder as the fallout3.exe) and click on DATA FILES and make sure that they are all selected. Click OK and then launch the game. The DLCs should load in after playing for a few minutes (you will have to have exited Vault 101).

Resolution FIX

Some people have a problem when starting Fallout 3. The menu is displayed but then crashes. This is because sometimes when the game alters your resolution it can break.

Solution 0: You can activate the virtual wine desktop
Solution 1: Set your resolution in Linux to the game resolution manually before you launch fallout3. Change it back to your normal Linux resolution when you finish playing.

Radio / Music FIX

If VATS and Radio stations crash the game, and there is no ingame music, try this:
install quartz.dll with winetricks

Open winecfg, goto library settings, and configure:
quartz = builtin, then native

You can also try to install proprietary mp3 codecs: winetricks l3codecx

The corresponding wine bug: http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=31566

steamoverlay

Fallout’s mouse doesn’t seem to work correctly with either the mouse patch or these settings.

- The mouse patch: doesn’t work with Fallout’s 1.1.0.35 patch.
- bBackground Mouse -setting: setting it 1 DOES make menus usable, but it’s quite a problem when you run this in windowed mode as when you move enough the mouse, it goes outside the window... I have dualhead so I need/want to run this windowed.
- MouseWarpOverride were thought to fix this problem with bBackground Mouse -setting? Well, just gives problems here. Don’t set it. MIGHT be useful if you have non-patched version. So you gan set to Direct3D registry key MouseWarpOverride="enable" or MouseWarpOverride="force"

­Updated (20th July 2010)

Note : If you experience issues during that installation of Games For Windows LIVE try changing your windows version to Windows 7 in your winecfg.

Patch 1.7 requires Games for Windows - Live 3.0 client. To install it follow these steps:

1) Download msasn1.dll from e.g. here
2) Override msasn1.dll in Wine Configuration. How to Override DLL
3) Download gfwlivesetupmin.exe from e.g. here
4) Install gfwlivesetupmin.exe but without .NET Framework (wine gfwlivesetupmin.exe /nodotnet)
5) Only set xlive to native in Wine Configuration.
6) Download and install 1.7 patch for Fallout 3

Note:Should you have any issues running Fallout 3 because of 'xlive unimplemented function' errors, see the fix section above.

Fallout 3 can be easily installed and patched by PlayOnLinux. You can download PlayOnLinux from here. There is an video made by DaweyYT on YouTube showing installation of Fallout 3 by using PlayOnLinux here.

It has been reported that the game slows down dramatically when entering VATS or into a speech. The problem hits owners of GeForce 7xxx and older graphic cards. Proposed fixes are:

• Patch Fallout 3 to the latest version
• Update driver for your graphic card
• Apply one of the patches from bug #16816

fix proposed by Bogdan:

• Set graphic settings higher
  

fix proposed by Claudio:

• Set OffscreenRenderingMode to backbuffer