Fallout 3: Game of the Year Edition Forum

For a very long time now I've had certain issues with Fallout 3, and now that I've finally found the time to do some proper testing here's what I've found:

Everything appears to work to begin with (except music on the pip-boy radio which doesn't play properly; it seems to work in Wine-Staging 1.7.50 using POL although I only gave it a brief test there) but after playing a while there starts to be some graphics corruption - I've found a reliable way to trigger this is to start blowing up vehicles (I have a "lucky" savefile that's good for testing this, where I encountered the firelance random event near the supermarket).

First there will start to be a bit of graphics corruption happening during big explosions. After this happens using a stealth boy will result in constant graphics corruption for the duration of its effect and the edges around water start to appear very dark.

Explosion- http://imgur.com/SskYbZS
Water- http://imgur.com/jCfS73r
Stealth boy- http://imgur.com/ZVFcJFS

Once that initial graphics corruption starts occurring, another frequent problem is for the HUD & postprocessing effects to disappear when facing certain directions. I have discovered that taking a screenshot using ksnapshot sometimes seems to fix this particular issue, at least temporarily - but only while running the game in a virtual desktop and only when running the game below 1920x1200 (my monitor's native resolution).

Now you see the HUD- http://imgur.com/LUD5mia
Now you don't- http://imgur.com/pxakLZ6

Resolution appears to be a factor here- I have tested at 1440x900, 1680x1050 and 1920x1200. The problem occurs irrespective of virtual desktop being enabled or not (and irrespective of running in windowed mode or not) but only seems to occur at higher resolutions - or if it does occur at lower resolutions then it needs much more time than I tested.

There is also some consistency as to how soon these graphics issues occur... every single time I've tested this at 1680x1050 I can destroy 5 vehicles before getting graphics corruption with the 6th. At 1920x1200 it begins immediately with the first vehicle I destroy.

So far I have been testing the game with everything maxed out. I now intend to start dialling the settings back & seeing what happens.

System specs:

Linux Mint 17.2 KDE 64-bit, CrossOver 14.1.6
i7-2600k 4.4GHz
16GB RAM
Nvidia GTX 970 (proprietary driver 346.82)

Turning off antialiasing seems to solve the graphics corruption issue, still get the problem with hud/effects disappearing though

After many hours wandering the wasteland blowing up every vehicle I can with varying graphics settings, it looks like the water reflection quality setting has an effect on the disappearing hud/effects issue. Setting it to medium instead of high seems to stop the bug from happening... instead the display eventually started flickering very rapidly (in an "if I had epilepsy this would be really bad" kind of way... it was very unpleasant) for a short while.

The black screen flickering issue doesn't seem to be very consistent... I haven't been able to reproduce it so far with the current settings, ultra with AA off & water reflection quality set to medium

Adam wrote:

After many hours wandering the wasteland blowing up every vehicle I
can with varying graphics settings, it looks like the water
reflection quality setting has an effect on the disappearing
hud/effects issue. Setting it to medium instead of high seems to
stop the bug from happening... instead the display eventually
started flickering very rapidly (in an "if I had epilepsy this would
be really bad" kind of way... it was very unpleasant) for a short
while.

After doing some more testing (used the console to give myself an Experimental MIRV + unlimited mini-nukes to make things easier) it seems the black screen/flickering issue and the disappearing HUD/effects issue are both manifestations of the same bug... and it doesn't seem like there are any specific settings that prevent this from happening completely; reduced graphics settings only seem to delay its onset.

Does it happen with a more recent driver version? For example, in Shadow of Mordor (native title now thanks to Feral Interactive) with the 346 drivers you get a general blue tint. Does not happen with 352 or later.

I played Fallout 3 using wine-staging. But I did play in windowed mode at 720p. Maybe that's why I did not see any sort of corruption?

I could try but this has been happening for a long time, on multiple versions of Mint, Nvidia drivers and CrossOver so I doubt that it's a driver issue

Just installed newer Nvidia drivers (355.11) and given it a couple of minutes testing. Anti-aliasing doesn't immediately result in corrupted graphics any more (though I haven't tested long enough to determine if it's completely fixed or just delayed), however the invisibility effect of the stealth boy doesn't seem to work properly now (no visible distortion/"outline" effect). The updated drivers have made no difference with regards to the disappearing hud/effects problem.

Does windowed vs. fullscreen make any difference?

No, these problems occur irrespective of full screen vs windowed and virtual desktop enabled/disabled.

Edit: Actually, running the game at 1680x1050 or below = the stealth boy visual effects work. At 1920x1200 they don't...

At 1920x1200, ultra settings, activating the stealth boy & just looking around is enough to trigger the disappearing hud/effects bug

Also at 1920x1200, ultra settings with antialiasing off = stealth boy visual effects work & it takes much longer for the disappearing hud/effects bug to kick in

At 1920x1200 ultra settings with the "Disable Performance Enhanced Graphics" option set, the stealth boy visual effects work as expected (still get the disappearing hud/effects issue though)

That's certainly an interesting bug. Also explains why I did not see any issue during my playthrough.

Great job on testing it with various settings. That will help against "can't reproduce, works for me" misdiagnosis 😊 .

I'll try to keep this in mind for the next round of command stream debugging for the next crossover release.

From the first screenshot it looks like there is random content in some d3d surfaces. Probably some uploads or draw operations are not properly synchronized...

An update on this:

I upgraded the Nvidia drivers on this system from 355.11 to 358.16 and tested again & it looks like the new drivers have made a big difference. Now when I run the game at 1920x1200 with ultra settings in CrossOver it takes much longer for the disappearing HUD bug to occur.

In Wine 1.8-rc2 via PlayOnLinux it seems to be even more reliable, but only with the updated drivers.

I don't want to declare it fixed just yet, but it's certainly looking like the graphical issues are fixed with the combination of the 358.16 Nvidia drivers & Wine 1.8. I've done my usual MIRV spam stress test (over 1k mini-nukes fired & at least a few dozen cars/vans/buses destroyed along the way) a few times now and not encountered the disappearing HUD issue.

Pip-boy radio playback issues still persist however - some songs don't seem to play, although if you keep hitting escape to open & close the main menu you do sometimes briefly hear the currently playing song. Edit: Just noticed that Wine Staging 1.8-rc2 is available now & did a quick check with that; the Pip-boy radio seems to work properly there

I played normally for a while using Wine Staging 1.8-rc2 & unfortunately the bug hasn't quite been fixed, its behavior has just changed (more difficult to intentionally trigger now & the glitch usually corrects itself after a second or so).

I've done some more testing in Wine Staging 1.8-rc2, it's very difficult to pinpoint a specific cause for the disappearing HUD glitch; the only common factor is that it's always happened when under attack (or when something explodes), so it seems like it's some combat-related effect(s) that trigger it.

Another thing I noticed: I saved the game when the glitch occurred & restarted FO3, then when I went to reload the save I noticed that the screenshot it had taken was completely black (the save did load without issue though). Completely restarting the game is the only way to stop the glitch for a while once it occurs - reloading a save or zoning between areas fixes it briefly but it soon comes back.

I've now done some testing in CrossOver 15. Unfortunately the disappearing HUD/effects issue remains - and it seems that something about CrossOver makes it occur much more readily than in regular Wine / Wine Staging. Music playback via the pip-boy radio is still bugged too.

On another note, I did some comparisons between Windows & Wine and it looks like the "Transparency Multisampling" option doesn't work in Wine / CrossOver. Screenshots:

Scene 1 (Windows) - http://i.imgur.com/ngmwrM9.jpg
Scene 1 (Windows, TM off) - http://i.imgur.com/0dqjhD1.jpg
Scene 1 (CrossOver) - http://i.imgur.com/GtqQ7wt.jpg

Scene 2 (Windows) - http://i.imgur.com/4g3YZKo.jpg
Scene 2 (Windows, TM off) - http://i.imgur.com/NVKQOaF.jpg
Scene 2 (CrossOver) - http://i.imgur.com/2u4XEri.jpg

Scene 3 (Windows) - http://i.imgur.com/jW4kbqp.jpg
Scene 3 (Windows, TM off) - http://i.imgur.com/5uj4g8R.jpg
Scene 3 (CrossOver) - http://i.imgur.com/4Vpt7A5.jpg

Edit: Another thing I noticed is that on Windows distant objects fade in to their higher detail versions as you approach. This doesn't work in Wine / CrossOver though; instead of fading in smoothly they just abruptly pop-in.

I've found another issue pertaining to anti-aliasing in Fallout 3 in Wine / CrossOver.

Every so often I noticed white (and sometimes black) blobs/squares flashing momentarily in random areas during gameplay. Up to now I had no way to recreate the issue (it seemed completely random), but I was lucky enough to stop in a place where the bug was occurring and in exactly the right spot, allowing me to create a save for it :) After testing with that save using different settings, this bug only seems to occur while AA is enabled and is unaffected by the display resolution.

Screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/tCLqrFQ.jpg