Gaming Fallout 3 won't work :/

[R4Liam]

Like the title says, I bought Fallout 3 couple days ago for £5 (good deal yes?). Anyway, I thought I would have no problems running it on my new laptop, here are the specs:

It isn't cutting edge but should be able to play it fine (I can play NFSU2, Orcs Must Die!, CoD2, LFD2, Sims 2 and Minecraft perfectly fine. So why is this game not running Is there a workaround?

 

[Deleted User]

I don't want to seem irritating, but have you updated your graphics drivers?
& Yeah, as Originality points out, knowing your GPU is much more important in a laptop than in a desktop because....
just form-factor / heat creation ~ means that even the strongest laptop cards like my 6990M are going to be weaker than
or equal to mid-range desktop cards. (GPU is pretty much always the bottleneck for games).

 

[Originality]

In addition to updating graphics drivers (which you should do before playing any new game), it would help if you could tell us what graphics you have. You've only shown us your CPU, not any of your other "specs".
EDIT: My guess, you've got Intel HD 3000 graphics. If you've got something like nVidia Optimus (with, say, GT 420 or 520), then it's most likely drivers. If you've only got the Intel graphics, then you may need to look at the Fallout 3 forums to see if they've got a workaround patch for it.
EDIT2: I did a quick search, and I'll just throw in the quote to help you until you tell us what graphics you have.

Fallout 3 (but not New Vegas) requires a DLL hack to even run on Intel integrated graphics, and we saw some shadow rendering issues in Mafia II, but for the most part the titles—both old and new—worked.

 

[Rydian]

Yeah, for gaming generally the important thing is your graphics card...

 

[R4Liam]

Yeah you guessed right originality, I have only a HD 3000. I have tried the .dll workaround (well one I found via youtube) it allowed the game to run but will randomly freeze Should I give up and take the game back or is there any other way?

 

[Deleted member 186944]

If your running integrated graphics you shouldn't be gaming [sad but true], very few games will run, your best bet is to try games out either by demos or torrents. I had bad luck with integrated graphics, anything modern [besides source games {not including portal}] will usually not work or run well on the lowest settings.

 

[R4Liam]

Yeah but as I have stated I can play a lot of new games (Left for Dead 2, Orcs Must Die!) on average setting (I didn't have to alter the settings for them to run smoothly) So why is this an exception?

 

[Originality]

I've never actually played FO3, so I can't even begin to help troubleshoot it. There may be ways to get it working, or you may just need to find a computer with better graphics. If none is available, it's up to you if you want to take it back. Personally, I would keep it, incase you decide to get a computer in future and want to play it.

@sputnix, whilst it's true that IGPs are not designed for gaming, that does not mean you should not be gaming, nor does it mean that "very few games will run". This may come as a shock to you, but the majority of games will run on integrated graphics. The issue is that some of the newer games (and some of the older games) will have compatability issues, either because the graphics are handled in a different way to ATI/AMD or nVidia graphics, or because the devs didn't have the budget/support/skill to optimise their game to work well on integrated graphics. The Intel HD 3000 can run Battlefield 2 and Crysis. Sure, the devs behind it had lots more money to send towards compatability with different graphics chipsets, but it's just proof that it's at least capable of playable gaming on modern games.

 

[Deleted member 186944]

@sputnix, whilst it's true that IGPs are not designed for gaming, that does not mean you should not be gaming, nor does it mean that "very few games will run". This may come as a shock to you, but the majority of games will run on integrated graphics. The issue is that some of the newer games (and some of the older games) will have compatability issues, either because the graphics are handled in a different way to ATI/AMD or nVidia graphics, or because the devs didn't have the budget/support/skill to optimise their game to work well on integrated graphics. The Intel HD 3000 can run Battlefield 2 and Crysis. Sure, the devs behind it had lots more money to send towards compatability with different graphics chipsets, but it's just proof that it's at least capable of playable gaming on modern games.

any card can run a game perse but that doesn't mean it can run it well even on the lowest setting. The OP said he can run L4D 2 and Orcs must die on medium settings, both aren't that graphically intensive and one is a source game, if you can't run a source game on high then you can't run most modern games like fallout 3 with a reliable framerate. here's a link to it's specs http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Intel-HD-Graphics-3000-graphics-solution.43710.0.html, while it looks promising it has horrible frame rate with most games on high, and decent framerate on low at the lowest resolution. It can improve with better drivers but that can be hit or miss.
Also if you actually read my post carefully you would know that I used to game with a INTEGRATED GRAPHICS CARD. I was lucky just to be able to run CS:S and TF2 was barely playable on the lowest settings. His card is better so it should run most games ok on the lowest possible settings. I tried to make my post as nice as possible with what I had to say but I guess it was too negative for you to take.

 

[YayMii]

Odd, my Macbook Air has an i7 2677M with an Intel HD3000, and (while running Windows) I didn't have any issues with Fallout 3. And it ran pretty decently on Ultra settings minus antilaliasing.

 

[Rydian]

I used to game on an IGP.

Of course, Quake 2 was about the most graphically-demanding thing I did... while many games did run in a technical sense, they were unplayable.

That's not a gaming computer.

 

[R4Liam]

@sputnix, whilst it's true that IGPs are not designed for gaming, that does not mean you should not be gaming, nor does it mean that "very few games will run". This may come as a shock to you, but the majority of games will run on integrated graphics. The issue is that some of the newer games (and some of the older games) will have compatability issues, either because the graphics are handled in a different way to ATI/AMD or nVidia graphics, or because the devs didn't have the budget/support/skill to optimise their game to work well on integrated graphics. The Intel HD 3000 can run Battlefield 2 and Crysis. Sure, the devs behind it had lots more money to send towards compatability with different graphics chipsets, but it's just proof that it's at least capable of playable gaming on modern games.

any card can run a game perse but that doesn't mean it can run it well even on the lowest setting. The OP said he can run L4D 2 and Orcs must die on medium settings, both aren't that graphically intensive and one is a source game, if you can't run a source game on high then you can't run most modern games like fallout 3 with a reliable framerate. here's a link to it's specs http://www.notebookc...on.43710.0.html, while it looks promising it has horrible frame rate with most games on high, and decent framerate on low at the lowest resolution. It can improve with better drivers but that can be hit or miss.
Also if you actually read my post carefully you would know that I used to game with a INTEGRATED GRAPHICS CARD. I was lucky just to be able to run CS:S and TF2 was barely playable on the lowest settings. His card is better so it should run most games ok on the lowest possible settings. I tried to make my post as nice as possible with what I had to say but I guess it was too negative for you to take.

I understand. I am happy that it plays any games well to be honest because that is not why I bought this laptop. By a source game which one were you referring to? I said that I didn't have to change the graphic settings so for all I know the games (LFD2 and Orcs Must Die) may still run fine on the highest settings. I will have to try it out.

 

[saloalea]

I had this problem on a Core i7, this is what fixed it:


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