Fallout 3 Freezes/Crashes – Possible Fix

 Games for Windows, Gaming  1 Response »
Dec 202009
 

More than 2 cores in your machine? Play fallout 3? Then read on!

Ok, so one of my friends bought me Fallout 3 – Game of the Year Edition through Steam for my Christmas (the same one who bought me Fallout 3 Collectors Edition for my birthday last year interestingly enough) and I thought “cool, that would be good to pick away at over the holidays”. After I installed it through Steam I spent some time faffing around trying to enable the downloadable content (check the “Data Files” option on the launcher ;) I started a new game (lost all my old save games anyway).

Every time  I would get a few minutes in and the game would just freeze, I spent quite a while searching the internet and the possible things I considdered were:

  • Graphics drivers – Nope, update to date nVidia drivers for Windows 7
  • Windows 7 – Nope, this is reported to happen on XP, Vista, 2008 and 7
  • Background Changing – (Windows 7 feature which has messed up other games in the past) Nope, disabled it and it still froze
  • The ffdshow Audio/Video fix – (Add Fallout3.exe and FalloutLauncher.exe to the list of applications that ffdshow excludes), Nope

Then finally, after hours of searching and finding nothing I came across a blog post by Nicholas Head which nailed it!

The game engine has some issues with processors that have more than 2 cores. You can force the game to only use two of them and it will stop the freezing. I haven’t had it freeze once since I did this several days ago.

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.

I tried it and wow, the game has been running stable for hours since!

So, thank you Nicholas for posting that rather useful piece of information and good luck to all of you affected by this, enjoy you time roaming the Capital Wastelands!

Posted by Andy Gibson at 00:14  Tagged with: , ,

The End (And Beginning Of) A Gamertag

 Gaming, Life, Xbox Live  No Responses »
Jul 062009
 

rockstarnorthThings have been changing in my life over the past 2 years and I felt it was time to close the last few doors to my teenage life as I move forward. After 6 years of further and higher education I have entered into my first full-time job with the great folks over at Rockstar North in Edinburgh. I am really looking forward to starting so I have my fingers crossed.

This prompted me to look back through my life and my online personality, reading old journal/blog posts and realising how much has changed in even such a short space of time. I used to use the internet handle or nickname “Syberius” which was entirely made up on the spot back during 2002, four years after I first found my way onto the internet. It has been used all over the place, on the PHP Code Gallery, my tag for UberNet and IGUK when I work with them, a domain name… the list goes on. An added irony is that in the new Star Wars film, there is a debate over whether or not Kirk says James ‘Tiberius’ or James ‘Syberius’ which I find amusing if a little strange that people obsess over these things.

So, while playing on the 360 this week between sorting out admin stuff and unpacking the flat (GTA 4 for anyone interested, wanted to complete it before I start work ;) ) I felt that the Xbox Live Gamertag needed to change, that I needed something newer and fresher. It took 4 hours, 5 Simpsons episodes and the Simpsons Movie to do it, not to mention a string of names that were already taken but my new Gamertag has been created!

I give you… ForbiddenBacon

Syberius RuneOk, so I changed my Gamertag, why write a post about it? Two reasons, if I am on your Xbox Live or GFW Live friends list then you may be wondering who ForbiddenBacon is, well now you know. Second so I can close this door in my own mind and say goodbye to the tag that served me well for 7 years.

So, I look forward to see you out there on Live, just hoping I get more time to play games once I start work but somehow I doubt it ;)

Posted by Andy Gibson at 18:43  

And you enter your Dawn of War 2 pre-order code where?

 Games for Windows, Gaming  17 Responses »
Feb 202009
 

Update [20/02/08]: If you would like even more free wargear and extras (Chapter Command Wargear Set) from THQ, all you need to do is register your game on MyTHQ and you will get some free bonus content which can be added to your LIVE profile the same way as described below. You may need to be quick as the UK site does say for the first 100,000 people to register their copy. Note: This is not the free (Artificer Wargear) set that THQ were giving away if you pre-ordered from them directly.

Update [23/02/08]: Relic put a post up on the forums after my blog post with pretty much the same information: http://community.dawnofwar2.com/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=11232

Ok, so this isn’t development related but since someone *cough*THQ*cough* forgot to inform some of the customers who pre-ordered Dawn of War 2 how to use their pre-order code, I felt I should post the missing information. Dawn of War 2 was released today but if you are in the UK and you pre-ordered from Amazon, Game, HMV or direct from THQ, you got a pre-order code which depending on where you ordered from, unlocked different things for the game. I believe other countries have similar things using the same pre-order code system.

I should point out that I got the game from Amazon.co.uk so I do not know if Game, HMV or THQ actually tell you what to do with it, but all I got from Amazon was:

Dear Amazon.co.uk Customer,

Thank you for pre-ordering Dawn of War II from Amazon. We’ve teamed up with THQ to offer you a free Sternguard Wargear set giving you a host of in-game items. Please find your code enclosed.

This was followed by the code details. Right, so first things first, the game uses steam as it’s deployment platform, lets start there. I checked the Steam client for any options around DoW 2 to add a coupon or something similar, I found zip.

Ok, maybe you need to enter it in game, perhaps through the Games for Windows Live interface as that is the multiplayer platform. I hopped in and started looking, played with the GfWL interface, looked around still no option to redeem this code.

I decided to google for it and I found a couple of people having various problems getting the code recognised but not saying where they were trying to enter it. Then I found references to a Games For Windows Live Marketplace client, ah-ha! The missing piece became clear, Microsoft have released a desktop client for Games For Windows Live (I was wondering how long this would take), once I installed it (you can find it here by the way if it isn’t already installed) everything became clear.

1) Load up the GfWL client and click marketplace in the top left

2) Click on Redeem Code on the left of the sceen

gfwl-code

3) Enter the pre-order code into the boxes

gfwl-code2

4) Click redeem code and confirm the wargear set

gfwl-code3

5) Be happy that it all works and click on the My Media tab to see the download progress.

gfwl-code4

I hope this has helped, would be fine if Amazon gave clearer instructions on what to do with the code.

Posted by Andy Gibson at 11:30  Tagged with:
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